Format : Sheet music
Score-John Jacob Niles' I Wonder As I Wander arranged for Concert Band.This Christian folk hymn was inspired by a song heard by Niles at a fundraising meeting for evangelicals which heattended in Murphy North Carolina. Niles wrote of the moment he first heard the tune:'A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes wereunbelievable dirty and ragged and she too was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But best of all she was beautiful and in her untutored way she could sing. She smiled as she sang smiled rather sadly and sang only a single line of a song'.Niles requested that the girl repeat the fragment seven times paying her a quarter per performance and left with 'three lines of verse a garbled fragment ofmelodic material—and a magnificent idea'. He completed his composition on October 4 1933 and I Wonder As I Wander was first performed on December 19 1933 at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown North Carolina.This beautifully flowing arrangement by Bob Krogstad conjures up an atmosphere of wistful contemplation.
SKU: CF.SPS33F
ISBN 9780825867903. UPC: 798408067908. 9 X 12 inches. Key: G minor - c minor.
This setting of the hauntingly beautiful Appalachian folk song/carol was originally written for choir by Ruth Elaine Schram and published by Carl Fischer in 2007 (CM9001). It has now been scored for concert band and can be perfomed by band alone or with the Schram choral setting, giving you some great performance options. I Wonder As I Wander is a musically satisfying representation of this lovely Christmas carol.
SKU: PE.EP72822
ISBN 9790577011769. 232 x 303mm inches. English.
I have only visited Damascus once, twenty years ago, on the way to Palmyra. I had a purpose (I was writing music for a play about Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia) but essentially I was a tourist. Like any visitor, I was thrilled to step out of the noisy modern city into the magical ancient world of the walled Old City, its vibrant souk leading to the magnificent mosque, and a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets filled with the smell of unleavened bread.
In Palmyra, I was met with extraordinary kindness everywhere. On one occasion, a little Bedouin boy noticed that I was risking sunstroke wandering bare-headed among the spectacular ruins: he showed me how to tie a turban, then took me to have tea with his family in their tent.
Since then, I have watched helplessly as these places of wonder have been devastated and their inhabitants scattered and killed. When the Sacconi Quartet suggested that I might choose a Syrian poet for our collaboration, I welcomed the idea.
I searched for a long time to find a contemporary poet whose work might gain from any music I could imagine. I felt it was important to find first-hand accounts of the Syrian experience – but, of course, I was always reading them in translation. In an anthology called Syria Speaks, I was astonished to read something that looked like prose, but was full of poetry. It was Anne-Marie McManus’s fine translation of Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky – an eloquent, thoughtful, contained yet vivid account of life in a war-torn country, all the more moving for its restraint.
In setting these words, I have not attempted to imitate Syrian music. However, there is what might be called a linguistic accommodation in my choice of scale, or mode. Several movements are in a mode that I first discovered while writing a cantata commemorating the First World War: it has a tuning that I associate with war, its violence and desolation. This eight-note mode is similar to scales found in Syrian music. I did not choose it in the abstract: it emerged from the harmonies I was exploring in the earlier work, and emerged again as I was looking for the right musical colours to set Ali Safar’s words. In this work, its Arabic aspect is more prominent. - Jonathan Dove
SKU: GI.G-9450INST
UPC: 785147945093.
The keyboard accompaniment is printed in the full score.
SKU: AP.37791
UPC: 038081434179. English. Traditional.
The Appalachian folk carol, Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head, was collected by folk musicologist (and the composer of the tune, I Wonder as I Wander), John Jacob Niles, in the early Twentieth Century. This hauntingly beautiful arrangement of the tune explores the Nativity with peaceful reverence and mysterious wonder. Watson's writing includes expressive tempo changes, lush scoring for full band, transparent episodes for woodwinds, and delicate percussion writing, offering bands ample opportunity for performing with musical beauty and eloquence. (3:50).
