March Madness!
Welcome to March. ‘Tis the season of amazing school performances and nail-biting finishes known to most as college basketball tournament season, but to our profession as the month of Music Performance Assessment. It’s also the season of safe programming, controlled sounds, and the maddeningly narrow body of marches we tend to utilize for our MPA program openers. One glance at any district’s MPA program will highlight the tendency among directors to rely upon a fairly static stable of marches for performance at MPA. Why do we perform these same, relatively few marches year after year? Why do we feel compelled to perform a march at all? Is the “warm-up” march, as it is often called, programmed for its artistic, educational, and historical merit? Unfortunately, marches are often employed as a strategy of safety or even out of a simple lack of awareness of the myriad of programming options available to directors for their opening number. As will be discussed here, marches are an excellent tool for teaching critical musical concepts, but such tools are not limited to the march genre.
The march, which dates back many hundreds of years, but only took its western foothold in the British and American military bands of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is an important and fundamental component of the legacy of the American band movement which especially prospered in the first half of the twentieth century. Fueled by the instrument manufacturing industry which sprang into existence to serve the U.S. military during the two world wars, and championed by returning service members, soaring patriotism and the relatively recent advent of football, the band movement and military marches in particular became as iconic an American phenomenon as apple pie.
John Phillip Sousa, “the March King,” became an international celebrity, entertaining audiences in America, Europe, and around the world with his inexhaustible repertory of military marches of unfailing singability and rousing spirit. Sousa’s success as a bandleader and composer of marches secured the American wind band and its then-limited repertoire within the national psyche, giving permanence and purpose to the budding band movement in America. Many great composers
32
and performers emerged from the Sousa era which swept early twentieth century America - Herbert Clarke, Arthur Pryor, Karl King, and Henry Fillmore, to name a few. Their music, prominent at festivals, circuses, parks, and other such public events was the popular music of the day, challenged only by another uniquely American musical genre coming of age at the very same time - jazz.
That marches - military, circus, and novelty alike, are the cornerstone of the band repertoire is an undeniable fact. As a profession, we remain grateful for the work of our forefathers who pioneered a new musical genre through the near exclusive use of these inspiring 2-steps. However, they do lack a certain sophistication of craft, readily acknowledged by the “March King” himself, as being the “secret of their success.” Sousa described his marches as “music for the feet, not for the head,” warning that successful marches are of simple melody, basic harmonic structure, and contain “no confusion in counterpoint.” Indeed marches, by their very origin of purpose, are of simple construction, and generally lacking in substantive melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic development.
So why do we still program them? Marches are an excellent tool for teaching students to hear the simple musical components of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Marches are excellent for teaching the difference between balance and blend and for honing listening skills in students in such a way that they learn to aurally organize sound from background to foreground. Stylistically, the march assists students in learning how to articulate with good tone quality and finesse while creating musicians who can hear and discern a wide range of musical styles.
However, for many directors marches are merely programmed into the DNA, and are performed sometimes out of a sense of professional obligation and without regard to historic, artistic, or educational merit. Marches are such a bedrock to our existence as a profession that to consider replacing them may seem heretical. Yet since there is, in fact, no written rule that one must begin the MPA performance with a march and since it is, after all, “March Madness”, here are three recommendations for FANFARES which can
by C. David Ragsdale
be a refreshing alternative to marches for the inaugural sounds of your next MPA performance. Each of these fanfares, grades 3, 4, and 5, respectively, are written by composers whose works are popular within the modern wind band medium and yet, which do not appear (with one minor exception) on the ABA cumulative list.
YOUNG PHEASANTS IN THE SKY, Satoshi Yagisawa Young Pheasants, by Japanese composer Satoshi Yagisawa, is a thrilling grade 3 fanfare in ABA form. The outer sections are brassy and vibrant while the middle B section provides a warm, lyrical contrast. Marked at 152 bpm, the opening statement, set off by percussion, begins with strong trumpet sounds solidly inside the staff, supported by low brass, and dressed with trilling woodwinds above. The beginning is full and explosive, an exciting, well-scored opening in B-flat major.
After a brief pause, the woodwinds deliver the B section with a warm chorale setting of a beautiful melody carried by oboe and first clarinet. Flutes assist in the ensuing phrase before the supporting arrival of tutti ensemble for a lush and expressive finish. Here again, Yagisawa offers sensible scoring, assisting in the execution of full-bodied ensemble sounds, rich in character, warmth, and expressive opportunity.
The opening fanfare emerges again for the final eight bars; however, this time, trombones and trumpets are featured in a challenging four-bar statement requiring acute articulation, flexibility, and high range (trumpet to B-flat, trombone to A). If there is one area that could move this fanfare from grade 3 to 4, it would be these few bars. Full percussion and timpani escort the fanfare to a boisterous finish, enthralling performers and audience alike.
The 2.5 minute work is scored for piccolo, two flutes, oboe, bassoon, three clarinets, bass clarinet, two alto saxophones, tenor and baritone saxophone, three trumpets, four horns, three trombones, euphonium, tuba, string bass, timpani, extensive percussion, and is available from de haske publishers for about $90.
May/June 2015
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44