Discovering Violin Complete Beginning Method With An Instructional

SKU: PR.114416460

ISBN 9781598067811. UPC: 680160620616. 9x12 inches.

POEM for Flute and PianoKozuch’s POEM is a plaintive elegy, perfect for memorial concerts, in religious services, or as a lyric interlude in recital. Although composed with piano accompaniment, the music is also very effective in performance with organ. Thaddeus Kozuch (1913-1991) was a Chicago-based pianist, composer, and professor at DePaul University and Northwestern University. His beautiful POEM was composed originally for violin and piano in 1937 for his wife-to-be, Jacqueline Frye. He revised POEM for flute and piano in 1988 but the work was discovered only recently in a piano bench by the composer’s daughter, flutist Ann Fairbanks.Although the final pencil manuscript is musically complete, it lacks dynamics, and this publication presents the music as the composer left it.The following performance suggestions are provided by Ann Fairbanks:Many nuances of the work may be left to the discretion of the performer. There are quite a few notes that may be slurred, such as sets of eighth notes or triplet-eighths; if notes are articulated as written, the tonguing should be legato.Dynamics for both flute and piano could be as follows: begin the work p, then crescendo to f in bars 6-7. Decrescendo in 10-11 to a p in bar 12. The most intense section (bars 16-32) should be played with energy and full sonority, including a crescendo in 26 to fin 27. The conclusion, beginning at bar 42, should be played p, with the last measures performed quietly.

SKU: SS.50600030

Commissioned by the Colonial Symphony, Paul Hostetter, Music Director and Conductor. First performed in 2006. Composer's Note: My inspiration for Smiling Dennis is the great bass clarinet virtuoso Dennis Smylie. I have had the pleasure of getting to know Dennis over the past several years owing to our mutual affiliation at Montclair State University. We would meet unintentionally in the halls and begin conversations regarding all manners of topics: from the colorful history of the bass clarinet - and bass clarinetists - to the furious appetite of the New Jersey groundhog. Dennis inevitably finds the humor in things - he revels in discovering the comic story that can often be found, just underneath the topic. When Maestro Hostetter asked me to compose a new piece during his initial season with the Colonial Symphony, and mentioned the possibility of a work related to humor, I immediately thought of the Dennis. When I spoke with Maestro Hostetter the following day, I had already conceived of the title (very unusual for me - I'm much more a musical/visual thinker than a verbal one) as well as the overall musical narrative. Smiling Dennis is a concerto in one movement for one bass clarinetist and twenty string players. Somewhat unusually, each performer has a unique musical assignment - that is, the string players are not aligned into their typical alliances of first violins, second violins and so forth. This permits a more complex string texture, allowing each performer to assert his or her individuality. Indeed, the notion of individuality is essential to this concerto, as it often is in concerti. For example, Smiling Dennis begins with the bass clarinet not quite obeying the conventions of tuning to the orchestra. Rather than simply take the A offered by the Concertmaster, the soloist playfully performs a gently descending series of notes. Offered another A, the soloist repeats this gesture (though with a different descending series). This exchange occurs four times. In the final one, members of the string orchestra join the soloist in the first significant statement of one of the central melodies. The bass clarinet completes this introductory section alone, playing all the way down to a low A, a third below the lowest note in the celli. Following the introduction, Smiling Dennis consists of six sections, somewhat along the lines of a dance suite: an energetic Allegro, a lyric Arioso, a forward Piu mosso, a light-hearted and syncopated dance, a even more energetic passage for strings alone, and finally a modified return to the introduction. In the return, the string ensemble is no longer at all oppositional to the soloist. Rather, in response to the soloist's gentle cajoling and supportive commentary, the strings accompany - with pleasure, you might say - the quiet, individual playfulness of the bass clarinet. The work ends with a return to the soloist's substratum A, accompanied quietly by the strings.