Vast as the Ocean

SKU: HL.263038

UPC: 888680952907. 12.0x16.5x0.565 inches.

“Over the years my orchestral music has become simpler and more expansive. Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1991-95) contains four different musical textures. In the White Silence (1998) has three. For Lou Harrison (2002) reduces this to just two. In Dark Waves (2007), I finally got to one. When I first heard that piece I began to wonder if I could sustain a similar sound for a longer span of time. The result is Become Ocean, a meditation on the vast, deep and mysterious tides of existence. The title is borrowed from a mesostic verse that John Cage wrote in honor of Lou Harrison's birthday. Likening Harrison's music to a river in delta, Cage writes: Listening to it we become ocean. Life on this earth first emerged from the sea. And as the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.” John Luther Adams.

SKU: CL.012-4524-75

The Ocean of Fire is a unique and challenging work that takes the listener on an exciting journey through the mysterious and vast untamed nature of the Arabian Peninsula deserts. Clever use of the Arabic (or Byzantine) scale creates the characteristic Arabic or middle-eastern sound that is popularly used in film scores. This exciting work focuses on providing every instrument with engaging and challenging music by interweaving motives and melodies to create a unique soundscape. Compelling!

SKU: HL.14029708

8.25x11.75x0.183 inches.

The title of this piece is taken from the late astronomer and educator Carl Sagan's book Cosmos (1980). Sagan was a great voice in the pursuit of knowledge and reason, an invaluable force in the struggle against ignorance and superstition. His vast historical knowledge and sensitive ear for the poetic also allowed him to adorn his various texts with short quotations from original folklore through history, quotations which I have used as mental and spiritual appetizers, heading some of the movements in this piece. Serenade also reaches out to other inspirational sources, such as William Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad and British science-writer John Gribbin, another great educator and popularizer. The Darwin quotation heading the second movement was also found in Sagan's book Cosmos (it is originally from Charles Darwin: On The Origin Of Species) and so was the quotation about The Backbone of the Night. The Ku-Fu-quotation can be found in Sagan's last great work THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD (1995).

SKU: CL.011-4525-01

Somber and majestic, The Sea of Eternity conveys a feeling of hope and peacefulness. The flowing nature of the melody, combined with the ocean drum, creates a sense of calm wonder, evocative of the vast size and emptiness of the sea. An excellent teaching tool to develop phrasing, blend, and balance. Haunting and evocative!

About C.L. Barnhouse Command Series

The Barnhouse Command Series includes works at grade levels 2, 2.5, and 3. This series is designed for middle school and junior high school bands, as well as high school bands of smaller instrumentation or limited experience. Command Series publications have a slightly larger instrumentation than the Rising Band Series, and are typically of larger scope, duration, and musical content.

SKU: BT.AMP-273-010

9x12 inches. English-German-French-Dutch.

The inspiration for this piece came from the address of the person who commissioned the work: Morse Street, Houston, Texas. It pays tribute to the immense skill of the engineers who succeeded in submerging a wire across the Atlantic to send messages in morse code from America to Europe. This technical ingenuity provided the perfect source of material for a transatlantic musical message. This work explores the vast expanse of the Atlantic and makes use of Irish melodies to celebrate the point where the cable enters into the Atlantic Ocean.

Die Idee zu diesem Stück entsprang aus der Adresse des Auftraggebers Morse Street, Houston, Texas, welche an die schier unglaubliche Leistung erinnert, eine Leitung für die Übertragung gemorster Nachrichten quer durch den Atlantik zu legen. Dieser technische Triumph bot sich als Thema für eine transatlantische musikalische Botschaft an. Die Musik vermittelt die endlose Weite des Atlantiks und es erklingen - dem Ausgangspunkt des Unterfangens zu Ehren - auch irische Themen.

Morse Street, Houston, Texas, l’indirizzo della societ che ha commissionato questo brano, evoca l’incredibile prodezza tecnica realizzata nel 1866: la posa del primo cavo telefonico sotto-marino attraverso l’Atlantico che permetter la trasmissione dei messaggi in codice Morse. Il brano inizia con una descrizione dell’impressionante distesa d’acqua dell’Atlantico. I temi dell’Allegro vivo ricordano i colori e i paesaggi irlandesi, punto di partenza di questa grande avventura tecnologica.

SKU: PR.46500013L

UPC: 680160600151. 11 x 14 inches.

I n 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clarks Corps of Discovery to find a water route to the Pacific and explore the uncharted West. He believed woolly mammoths, erupting volcanoes, and mountains of pure salt awaited them. What they found was no less mind-boggling: some 300 species unknown to science, nearly 50 Indian tribes, and the Rockies. I have been a student of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which Thomas Jefferson called the Voyage of Discovery, for as long as I can remember. This astonishing journey, lasting more than two-and-a-half years, began and ended in St. Louis, Missouri and took the travelers up more than a few rivers in their quest to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. In an age without speedy communication, this was akin to space travel out of radio range in our own time: no one knew if, indeed, the party had even survived the voyage for more than a year. Most of them were soldiers. A few were French-Canadian voyageurs hired trappers and explorers, who were fluent in French (spoken extensively in the region, due to earlier explorers from France) and in some of the Indian languages they might encounter. One of the voyageurs, a man named Pierre Cruzatte, also happened to be a better-than-average fiddle player. In many respects, the travelers were completely on their own for supplies and survival, yet, incredibly, only one of them died during the voyage. Jefferson had outfitted them with food, weapons, medicine, and clothing and along with other trinkets, a box of 200 jaw harps to be used in trading with the Indians. Their trip was long, perilous to the point of near catastrophe, and arduous. The dream of a Northwest Passage proved ephemeral, but the northwestern quarter of the continent had finally been explored, mapped, and described to an anxious world. When the party returned to St. Louis in 1806, and with the Louisiana Purchase now part of the United States, they were greeted as national heroes. I have written a sizeable number of works for wind ensemble that draw their inspiration from the monumental spaces found in the American West. Four of them (Arches, The Yellowstone Fires, Glacier, and Zion) take their names, and in large part their being, from actual national parks in Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. But Upriver, although it found its voice (and its finale) in the magnificent Columbia Gorge in Oregon, is about a much larger region. This piece, like its brother works about the national parks, doesnt try to tell a story. Instead, it captures the flavor of a certain time, and of a grand adventure. Cast in one continuous movement and lasting close to fourteen minutes, the piece falls into several subsections, each with its own heading: The Dream (in which Jeffersons vision of a vast expanse of western land is opened); The Promise, a chorale that re-appears several times in the course of the piece and represents the seriousness of the presidential mission; The River; The Voyageurs; The River II ; Death and Disappointment; Return to the Voyage; and The River III . The music includes several quoted melodies, one of which is familiar to everyone as the ultimate river song, and which becomes the through-stream of the work. All of the quoted tunes were either sung by the men on the voyage, or played by Cruzattes fiddle. From various journals and diaries, we know the men found enjoyment and solace in music, and almost every night encampment had at least a bit of music in it. In addition to Cruzatte, there were two other members of the party who played the fiddle, and others made do with singing, or playing upon sticks, bones, the ever-present jaw harps, and boat horns. From Lewis journals, I found all the tunes used in Upriver: Shenandoah (still popular after more than 200 years), Vla bon vent, Soldiers Joy, Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy (a hymn sung to the tune Beech Spring) and Fishers Hornpipe. The work follows an emotional journey: not necessarily step-by-step with the Voyage of Discovery heroes, but a kind of grand arch. Beginning in the mists of history and myth, traversing peaks and valleys both real and emotional (and a solemn funeral scene), finding help from native people, and recalling their zeal upon finding the one great river that will, in fact, take them to the Pacific. When the men finally roar through the Columbia Gorge in their boats (a feat that even the Indians had not attempted), the magnificent river combines its theme with the chorale of Jeffersons Promise. The Dream is fulfilled: not quite the one Jefferson had imagined (there is no navigable water passage from the Missouri to the Pacific), but the dream of a continental destiny.

SKU: PR.465000130

ISBN 9781598064070. UPC: 680160600144. 9x12 inches.

Following a celebrated series of wind ensemble tone poems about national parks in the American West, Dan Welcher’s Upriver celebrates the Lewis & Clark Expedition from the Missouri River to Oregon’s Columbia Gorge, following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Welcher’s imaginative textures and inventiveness are freshly modern, evoking our American heritage, including references to Shenandoah and other folk songs known to have been sung on the expedition. For advanced players. Duration: 14’.
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery to find a water route to the Pacific and explore the uncharted West. He believed woolly mammoths, erupting volcanoes, and mountains of pure salt awaited them. What they found was no less mind-boggling: some 300 species unknown to science, nearly 50 Indian tribes, and the Rockies.Ihave been a student of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which Thomas Jefferson called the “Voyage of Discovery,” for as long as I can remember. This astonishing journey, lasting more than two-and-a-half years, began and ended in St. Louis, Missouri — and took the travelers up more than a few rivers in their quest to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. In an age without speedy communication, this was akin to space travel out of radio range in our own time: no one knew if, indeed, the party had even survived the voyage for more than a year. Most of them were soldiers. A few were French-Canadian voyageurs — hired trappers and explorers, who were fluent in French (spoken extensively in the region, due to earlier explorers from France) and in some of the Indian languages they might encounter. One of the voyageurs, a man named Pierre Cruzatte, also happened to be a better-than-average fiddle player. In many respects, the travelers were completely on their own for supplies and survival, yet, incredibly, only one of them died during the voyage. Jefferson had outfitted them with food, weapons, medicine, and clothing — and along with other trinkets, a box of 200 jaw harps to be used in trading with the Indians. Their trip was long, perilous to the point of near catastrophe, and arduous. The dream of a Northwest Passage proved ephemeral, but the northwestern quarter of the continent had finally been explored, mapped, and described to an anxious world. When the party returned to St. Louis in 1806, and with the Louisiana Purchase now part of the United States, they were greeted as national heroes.Ihave written a sizeable number of works for wind ensemble that draw their inspiration from the monumental spaces found in the American West. Four of them (Arches, The Yellowstone Fires, Glacier, and Zion) take their names, and in large part their being, from actual national parks in Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. But Upriver, although it found its voice (and its finale) in the magnificent Columbia Gorge in Oregon, is about a much larger region. This piece, like its brother works about the national parks, doesn’t try to tell a story. Instead, it captures the flavor of a certain time, and of a grand adventure. Cast in one continuous movement and lasting close to fourteen minutes, the piece falls into several subsections, each with its own heading: The Dream (in which Jefferson’s vision of a vast expanse of western land is opened); The Promise, a chorale that re-appears several times in the course of the piece and represents the seriousness of the presidential mission; The River; The Voyageurs; The River II ; Death and Disappointment; Return to the Voyage; and The River III .The music includes several quoted melodies, one of which is familiar to everyone as the ultimate “river song,” and which becomes the through-stream of the work. All of the quoted tunes were either sung by the men on the voyage, or played by Cruzatte’s fiddle. From various journals and diaries, we know the men found enjoyment and solace in music, and almost every night encampment had at least a bit of music in it. In addition to Cruzatte, there were two other members of the party who played the fiddle, and others made do with singing, or playing upon sticks, bones, the ever-present jaw harps, and boat horns. From Lewis’ journals, I found all the tunes used in Upriver: Shenandoah (still popular after more than 200 years), V’la bon vent, Soldier’s Joy, Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy (a hymn sung to the tune “Beech Spring”) and Fisher’s Hornpipe. The work follows an emotional journey: not necessarily step-by-step with the Voyage of Discovery heroes, but a kind of grand arch. Beginning in the mists of history and myth, traversing peaks and valleys both real and emotional (and a solemn funeral scene), finding help from native people, and recalling their zeal upon finding the one great river that will, in fact, take them to the Pacific. When the men finally roar through the Columbia Gorge in their boats (a feat that even the Indians had not attempted), the magnificent river combines its theme with the chorale of Jefferson’s Promise. The Dream is fulfilled: not quite the one Jefferson had imagined (there is no navigable water passage from the Missouri to the Pacific), but the dream of a continental destiny.

SKU: CA.2810603

ISBN 9790007251307. Key: E flat major. German.

Based on the extensive Psalm 107, Die mit Schiffen auf dem Meer thrillingly describes a storm at sea, during which God saves the sailors in distress and guides them safely back to land. The musical realization of the tumultuous ocean is framed by hymns of thanksgiving and praise to the Lord. Regarding his compositional process, Christoph Schönherr says: I was particularly attracted by the idea of translating the different facets of the sea into music. It can calm us down, convey a sense of freedom through its vastness, or indeed actually offer a route to freedom. For others, of course, it is the bringer of death.The psalm setting skillfully interweaves sacred music traditions with the fascinating sonic possibilities of big band instrumentation, including its confident use of sassy 12/8 grooves and Latin rhythms.With its identical instrumental scoring, the work is the perfect match for the Missa ad maiorem Dei gloriam by Wolfram Buchenberg (Carus 28.010).. Score available separately - see item CA.2810600.