Romance For Bassoon And Orchestra

SKU: TM.00757SC

Melodie and Serenade Espagnole; solo/pf.

SKU: BT.YE0030

An easy virtuoso work published here for the first time and now much performed. Recorded Slatford/Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields (EMI). AMEB (Australian Syllabus) 2004. Orchestral material on hire from Yorke Edition (notSpartan).

Programme Note:

As a young professional player in the 1960s, my work as a double bassist with chamber ensembles and small orchestras took me all over the world. This presented an unparalleledopportunity to scour libraries and archives wherever I went. Long before the advent of the photocopier and e-mail, research was far more challenging than it is today. Eastern Europe was particularly difficult to access, withmanycollections kept under lock and key for all but a few hours a week. One quickly found colleagues who were keen to share information gleaned in passing, even though they had no specific interest in one's own particularspecialism (it is so often the peripheral topics that fascinate as much as the main subject under investigation, and one can quickly be side-tracked into political and social issues that have only slender bearing on the job inhand!).

In the early 1970s James Brown, the then sub-principal oboist of the English Chamber Orchestra with whom I was working at the time, stumbled across a small collection of double bass manuscripts at the RoyalDanish State Library in Copenhagen. They were by Franz Anton Leopold Keÿper (b. c.1756, d. Copenhagen 7 June 1815), a double bassist of Dutch origin who worked as principal of the Royal Chapel Orchestra in Copenhagen.Keÿper's son was the bassoonist Franz Jacob August Keÿper (1792-1859). The collection included a number of concertos, some chamber music, and various naïve fragments. Although hardly the work of a Mozart or Haydn,the style is characteristic of the period. For an instrument such as the double bass, whose 18th century solo repertoire is largely written for tunings that are no longer in everyday use, Keÿper's music is easily approachablein its.

SKU: PR.476001370

UPC: 680160637140. 9x12 inches.

This piece, dedicated to the memory of a heroic feat, does not desire to be classed as a Symphonic Poem in the generally accepted sense of this term. It does not attempt to picture, or to strictly follow, the various mechanical and realistic phases of this heroic adventure although, on the other hand, it does not entirely avoid allusion to such realistic phenomena as are characteristic of and inseparable from the nature of this adventure and the technical means of its realization. The composer's main object, however, was to try to express in sound the emotional phases of an adventure that might be called a prototype of modern romance; to touch upon its human aspect and its ethical meaning, not only in the relation to the individual, but to humanity in general. To the individual, the venturing Hero, refer the opening phrases; the sinister aspect of a bold inspiration at its first manifestation. To his human environments, his character and conquering spirit, refer certain lyrical as well as martial and ethical themes. According to the nature of the venture, the clash of motoric forces and that of an indomitable spirit with the threatening elements presented themselves for musical consideration as well as the plausible uncertainty of the outcome, the increasing confidence and the final victory, and triumphant victory itself. And as emotion in its purest and most intense form reverts to the primitive, the composer thought it not amiss to make fragmentary use of the anthems of two nations, thus symbolizing the appeal from soil to soil; an appeal that found its joyous echo in all humanity. And in the midst of the turbulent rejoicing stands the lone figure of the Hero whose daring had materialized the dream of aeons.