Product Description
This is a suite of pieces written variously for recorder orchestra and for chamber orchestra
The five movements are:
1 Meinau Rag
2 An Amble round Mercury
3 Pretty How Town
4 Landscape before sunrise
5 Little Laser Lady
Each movement has its own story and reflects various places where the composer has lived or poems that have inspired him:
Meinau Rag was written in honour of his 8 month stay in La Meinau, a suburb of Strasbourg,
while teaching English at the nearby Hotellery School
- it was one of several "ragtimes", a style he experimented with on the guitar at that time.
An Amble round Mercury refers to the pond and associated statue of Mercury in the centre of Tom Quad at his college, Christ Church Oxford. The ostinato theme is one that he has used on many pieces and was originally written to accompany a setting from the Book of Elijah - "and in that day thou shalt say O Lord" - in his college days.
Pretty How Town, a perky and rhythmically complex piece, is based on the poem - "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e.e.cummings.
The more laid back Landscape before sunrise is based on a setting of many ways in which the world says "Goodnight" and is inspired by the view from the composer's 18th floor flat in Aldgate
East overlooking a multicultural population. The rhythms of the original song "Goodnight" follow the phrases in each language: "Good Night, buona notte, gute Nacht, kali nykhta, oyasumi
nasai, nos da..."etc
Little Laser Lady, an upbeat end to the suite, is based on a poem by a friend of the composer, whose girlfriend (and wife to be) would always visit him in her Laser (a make of car in
Australia)
(She is the sun in the afternoon, she is the night's familiar, she comes on a beam of yellow gold light......)
The orchestration is: Piccolo [except in the 4th movement], 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, Clarinet, Bassoon and string orchestra including double bass.
The pdf file contains just the scores.
Separate movements are also available with the pdf containing score and parts in each case.
The sound sample is an electronic preview of the first movement.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.