Product Description
Marvin Hamlischs score for the 1973 movie The Sting revived interest in ragtime music. Ragtime, of course, is music, often in march-time, that features syncopation, a "ragged" beat. It originated in African-American districts of large cities and first flourished during the period, 1895-1918. One of the most successful ragtime composers was Scott Joplin, known as the "King of Ragtime." Hamlisch used several Joplin compositions as background music for the George Roy Hill-directed film, and one of those was this beautiful and contemplative 1909 composition, "Solace: A Mexican Serenade."
In All Music Guide to Classical Music: The Definitive Guide to Classical Music (Woodstra et al., ed., CMP Books: 2005), Blair Johnston called "Solace" a "musical hybrid" neither authentically Mexican nor authentic ragtime. It is, instead, a habanera, but also a "very lovely piece of Americana."
This brass quintet arrangement of "Solace" was adapted from the Joplin piano score. Like the score, this arrangement is in 2/4 time and contains a lot of 16th notes. Joplins tempo instruction, however, is "Very slow march time," and the metronome marking suggests 96 eighth notes a minute, so in reality the actual tempo is an andante 4/8. Trumpet 1 has some B-above-the-staff notes in the last section, Trumpet 2 has a few interesting rhythmic figures in section B; Trombone has 3 or 4 F-above-the-staff notes, and Tuba plays a couple of top-of-the-staff As in section D and at the very end. Plus, of course, the piece is syncopated.
Completed in 2017, this arrangement runs about 6 minutes, 10 seconds. Contact the arranger, Les Smith, at lessmith@ufl.edu; he would be delighted to hear from you. For more arrangements by Les, enter "Sweetwater Brass Press" (without the quotation marks) in the SheetMusicPlus search box.
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