MUSIC FOR BRASS ENSEMBLE

Transcription

1 MUSIC FOR BRASS ENSEMBLE PURCELL BRITTEN GABRIELI DAVIES AND MORE Graham Ashton Brass Ensemble

2 MUSIC FOR BRASS ENSEMBLE WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI Mini Overture for Brass Quintet 3 02 ANDREA GABRIELI 1532/ (ed. Graham Ashton) 2 Ricercar del duodecimo tuono (Ricercar on the Twelfth Tone) 2 02 JOHANN PEZEL (ed. Graham Ashton) Tower Music from Leipzig [4 41] 3 Intrada I Intrada II Intrada III 1 46 BENJAMIN BRITTEN Fanfare for St Edmundsbury 3 04 Sean Priest (Fanfare I); Graham Ashton (Fanfare II); Geoffrey Payne (Fanfare III); Tom Ashworth director HENRY PURCELL (ed. Graham Ashton) 7 Funeral Music for Queen Mary: March Canzona March 5 45 Christine Turpin timpani PETER SCULTHORPE b An Australian Anthem 3 46 ELLIOTT CARTER b A Fantasy about Purcell s Fantasia Upon One Note 3 26 GRAHAM ASHTON b Fantasy on Catherine s Song

3 ANTONY HOLBORNE Renaissance Dances [4 11]! Heigh Ho Holiday (Galliard) 0 The Fruit of Love (Almand) 1 37 The Choice (Almand) 1 01 $ Fairie-round 0 54 LESLIE PEARSON b.1931 Dance Suite After Arbeau [8 38] % Allemande 1 22 ^ Galliard 2 47 & Rigaudon 2 01 * Basse Danse 2 28 CARLO GESUALDO c (arr. Peter Maxwell Davies) Two Motets ( Peccantem me quotidie (Sinning daily) 4 54 ) O vos omnes (All ye who pass by) 3 36 PETER MAXWELL DAVIES b The Pole Star March 3 17 Total Playing Time Graham Ashton Brass Ensemble Graham Ashton trumpet, flugelhorn Sean Priest trumpet, flugelhorn Geoffrey Payne trumpet 6 Darryl Poulsen horn Tom Ashworth trombone Ian Perry trombone Eric Klay bass trombone Steve Rossé tuba 3

4 Since ancient Greek and Roman times, composers have been inspired by the exhilarating sound of brass instruments. Some have explored the declamatory qualities to summon armies to battle; others have used the softer sonorities to evoke heavenly images. Heralding Olympic champions, performing dance music, celebrating Royal succession whatever the occasion, composers continue to be intrigued by the sound of fine brass playing. The influences of the Renaissance and Baroque eras can be seen in some of today s music. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has been influenced by, amongst others, John Taverner, Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni Gabrieli, and frequently uses terms such as ricercar, fantasia and canzona which have strong associations with Renaissance music. It was Giovanni Gabrieli s uncle, Andrea (organist at St Mark s, Venice) in the 16th century who first applied the term ricercar to a preludial instrumental canzona he d written. With their contrapuntal and rhythmic style, Gabrieli s ricercars were like short overtures, differing greatly from the repetitive, imitative music of his contemporaries. His Ricercar del duodecimo tuono (1589) uses duple and triple time in the same piece and was highly innovative for the period. The term ricercar was also given to extemporary organ music, although this gave way to fantasia or fantasy when pieces took on a more esoteric nature. Extemporary fantasy was usually influenced by a particular theme or composer, although the inspiration behind Fantasy on Catherine s Song was Renaissance England. And who but my Lady Greensleeves? her identity is not revealed, yet at one time this was thought to have been Henry VIII singing of his young Catherine of Aragon. However, the earliest record of the song is some 40 years later, when a Mr Richard Jones registered A Newe northern Dittye of ye Ladye Greensleeves with the Stationer s Company in London on 3 September The lyrics are full of woe: a 16th-century jilted lover pleading with his bored mistress to Come once again and love me. Like most popular music of the time, Greensleeves would have been freely circulated without the constraints of print and more than likely learnt from ballad mongers, tavern fiddlers or perhaps even a friend s latest lute lesson. Fantasy on Catherine s Song begins with open fifths on the horn. These, and the following cantus, are echoed by two off-stage trumpets who thereafter imply distant regality as the trombone hints at Catherine s song. The middle section, Corranto, Sarabande and Galliard-Sarabande, is a modernday look at Renaissance dance forms with fast running semiquavers and florid ornamentation. The 4

5 horn returns to call [his] Lady Greensleeves, this time enveloped by loud, muted trumpets fading to the end. Elliott Carter s Fantasy about Purcell s Fantasia Upon One Note is a well crafted composition for brass where he gives quite precise dynamic instructions to enable the One Note to be heard. It was written in 1974 as a Christmas present for the American Brass Quintet, Carter having already composed a more arduous Brass Quintet for the same group earlier that year. Inspired by Purcell s Fantasia Upon One Note for five viols, the style shows the influence of the neoclassicism that Carter developed during a period with Nadia Boulanger at the Paris Conservatoire in the 1930s. Henry Purcell s music has influenced many composers. His duties as Master of the King s Music were to provide pieces for all state occasions. Sadly, these were not all celebratory, as upon the death of the much loved Queen Mary in 1695, Purcell was requested to compose an anthem for her funeral. He wrote for four flatt trumpets, so called because their trombone-like slide enabled them to be played in minor keys. Flatt trumpets had a very plaintive quality which we have tried to imitate with authentic articulation on our modern instruments. I have also endeavoured to recreate the drama of the approaching funeral cortège with the kettle drum leading impellingly to the entry of the brass quartet in the march. It is likely that the march was repeated after the canzona and so we have recorded it in this way. Composers continue to be called upon to provide music for state occasions. An Australian Anthem by Peter Sculthorpe is taken from his cantata A Child of Australia for soprano, narrator, choir and orchestra, composed as part of the official Bicentennial celebrations on Australia Day in Sydney in Peter kindly rescored his Anthem for the Graham Ashton Brass Ensemble, continuing the traditional association of brass and celebratory music. Fanfares are a vital part of celebratory music and have by tradition always been performed on brass instruments. Benjamin Britten wrote his Fanfare for St Edmundsbury for the Pageant of Magna Carta held in the grounds of Bury Saint Edmunds Cathedral. His style and approach are unique. Three solo trumpet fanfares are played separately and in succession with the performers standing as far apart as possible one to the centre and two on either side. Thereafter, the three parts are played simultaneously in strict tempo, interweaving and overlapping until the last five bars where they join in a declamatory flourish. Cleverly, all three parts are composed around the harmonic series 5

6 of an original Baroque trumpet without valves, and so the fanfare could indeed be performed on three natural trumpets pitched in F, C and D. Ceremonial fanfares in 17th-century Leipzig were performed by the Ratsmusik (Municipal Players) corps who were a humble but highly regarded band of instrumentalists. Ratsmusik ensembles had evolved from the watch-tower trumpeters of the 16th century and it was Johann Pezel s duty as Stadtpfeifer (City Piper) to ensure that the ensemble upheld the tradition of twice-daily performances from the Rathaus (Town Hall) tower according to the 17th-century German custom. Pezel published two volumes of Tower Music and it is for these that he is chiefly remembered today. Witold Lutoslawski s Mini Overture for Brass Quintet is a 20th-century ricercar where Lutoslawski demonstrates not only total empathy with brass instruments but also his genius for logical structure. It was written for Philip Jones wife Ursula and presented to her on her 50th birthday in a performance at her home town of Lucerne, Switzerland, in March 1982 by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. Dance themes play a large part in this recording. Antony Holborne indicated that his dance music was playable on any combination of instruments a very good idea as it ensured popularity and repeated performances irrespective of the musicians available. Leslie Pearson went to the French Renaissance dance master Arbeau for inspiration in his Dance Suite and used the titles of popular steps of the time for each movement. Dance Suite After Arbeau was written for the Graham Ashton Brass Ensemble and premiered at the International Barossa Music Festival in South Australia in 1994 with the composer present. Gesualdo s fascination with the darker side of life and an obsession with love and death in juxtaposition gave rise to a sad and troubled existence, culminating in the murder of his wife and her lover whilst they made love hard to imagine when you hear the divine harmonies in the Two Motets superlatively arranged for brass by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Whether it s the darker side of Gesualdo or a Iively ricercar from Gabrieli, Renaissance influences have continued to capture Davies imagination in much of his composition. One of the greatest living composers, he has a home in the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland, where the Pole Star is like a beacon in the sky and never too far away. Graham Ashton 6

7 Recording Producer & Editor Stephen Snelleman Recording Engineer Jim Atkins Cover and Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd ABC Classics Robert Patterson, Martin Buzacott, Hilary Shrubb, Natalie Shea, Laura Bell 1995 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited. 7

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