Format : Full Score and Set of Parts
SKU: HL.234744
9.0x12.0x0.035 inches.
Composer's Note: The Lullaby from The Unicorns arose from an opera libretto I commissioned from John Heath-Stubbs (1918-2006) in the late 1960s. In his story two unicorns are discovered in a remote part of Africa. Both the East and West want to obtain them for research so they send out rival expeditions. The Western technique is to lure the unicorn with a young girl singing a lullaby. Both East and West capture unicorns but the mythical animals escape in the end. I never completed the opera but I made a six-movement suite from it called The Unicorns. There are three songs and three instrumental numbers and the first performance was given with Elisabeth Soderstrom and Solna Brass under Lars-Gunnar Bjorklund at Ekensbergskyrkan, Solna, Sweden on 31 October 1982. This version was recorded and my arrangement of the three songs for voice and piano was recorded by Marilyn Hill Smith. The career of the Lullaby continued with a version for clarinet and piano, which I premiered with Jack Brymer aboard the Sea Princess in the Mediterranean on 29 September 1986. The oboe version was for Sarah Francis, and Duke Dobing and I have recorded it for flute an piano. Lullaby can be played with a variety of solo instruments and is also available for piano left hand and piano solo.
SKU: AP.1-ADV7602
UPC: 805095076028. English.
Ulla in Africa: Afro-Funk includes optional easy and medium solos, transposed and adjusted for B-flat and E-flat saxophones. Arranged for saxophone quartet (SATBar/AATBar). Compatible with the edition for clarinet ensemble.
SKU: AP.1-ADV6420
UPC: 805095064209. English.
The listener recognizes immediately the sound and flavor of the African highlife and Latin funk styles.
SKU: AP.1-ADV25003
UPC: 805095250039. English.
SKU: PR.140401330
ISBN 9781491134412. UPC: 680160684939.
Nathaniel Dett was among America’s leading composers in the early 20th century, and MAGNOLIA SUITE is a beautiful example of his rich, hybrid style. Deeply inspired by the music and mission of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Dett’s piano music springs from the late Romantic traditions of florid texture and embellishment, along with programmatic titles and raw emotion. It is notable for melody writing inspired by and paraphrasing African-American song. The 18-minute MAGNOLIA SUITE contains five movements, any of which may also be performed separately. This edition by Lara Downes provides a clean, new engraving that corrects the many errors and unclear indications appearing in the historical printing.Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in a place that was built on freedom. The little village of Drummondville, Ontario was founded by enslaved Africans – Dett’s ancestors among them – who traveled the Underground Railroad out of the American South into Canada. Their journey brought them to a safe haven, a place where fortunes and futures could be transformed in the span of one generation, to lives full of new possibilities. You could call it “the place where the rainbow ends,” which is the title of the last movement of Dett’s Magnolia Suite.When Dett wrote these pieces, he was a young teacher at Lane College in Tennessee, a historically Black college that had been founded in 1882, the year of his birth. A place built on freedom, with the purpose of educating newly-emancipated slaves – a place designed to nurture the blossoming of ideas, the vibrant flowering of minds set free. This music is inspired by the gorgeous splendor of the magnolia blooms on that college campus, and also by the shared histories, experiences, and aspirations of the community that Dett found there.These five pieces pay affectionate tribute to lineage and legacy. They express gratitude for the bittersweet beauties of the present; nostalgia for the past (a bit romanticized, as the past always is); and an effervescent optimism for the future that awaits us in the place where the rainbow ends.
