midwalesman
Member
The pros and cons!
Its not often that I write in to agree with someone on this forum but I agree to a large extent with what amgray. How can you say a band improves a piece that originally belonged to another genre of music? A piece written for a Samba band might have some brass in it but its over all timbre is going to mixed with plenty of woodwind and various drums that we do not in our respective bandrooms. Secondly, with no disrespect for the brass band and especially those who play (like myself!), we are not at our best trying to adapt to another style of playing i.e understanding how to play Prague which seemed to baffle the majority or even big band! I have heard big band pieces written for brass band and to be honest it was tight, well played and sometimes edgy, but then again the normal dotted quaver-semi quaver figure instead of two quaver is a stereotypical response because thats the only way a big band piece can be percieved to swing.
As for what music would be good to arrrange ? I agree with the person (Mrs Fruity I think?) that said that the band was important in bringing the Classical orchestral repertoire and Opera to the masses in the Victorian society, BUT society has changed. I believe there is a good cross section of people who now attend band concerts, from working class to the upper echelons of society, so surely they can afford to go to listen to Madam Butterfly in its original context i.e Opera, (especially now where there is a realisation in the orchestral world that they need to cut ticket prices to allow more people to afford to attend their concerts). Having talked to many people in the audience, at our concerts and at a few others, I have found that they enjoy various types of music, ranging from the traditional military band to Jazz and easy listening. This would mean that they have a wide apoprectiation of a variety of arrangements and also a wide variety of the identification of other genres. Hence, arrange,ments are good.
However, we tend to play arrangements that probably range from the early classical period to early romantic. Les Preludes was the test piece for the Open a few years ago, it was very challenging for the player and nice for the audience. This does not mean that I approve of harping back to the same period for arrangements and also my main gripe being why cant we play original brass band music at contests since the people in the audience are predominantly brass band people, little people outside the genre actually wish to turn up to a contest.
So in my opinion arrangements should be kept for concerts, should have a wider variety and have a role in educating a concert audience bit by bit in appreciating the contemporary music which occurs in all music around us.
The lack of understanding of contemporary "noise" (as some would put it!) is the persistence of the band movement to play arrangements of music from a particular era. More complete or nearly complete movements of Mahler, Bruckner through to Messiaen or Ligeti. It would be an interesting experiment to arrange a few of the pieces of Charles Ives since he based some of his music on the experiences of listening to his fathers military bands playing in parade.
As I have confirmed through my research I believe that "UNFAMILIARITY BREEDS DISLIKE OR MISUNDERSTANDING". We hear a Mozart arrangement and think "hmmm...thats a nice tune", I wonder would the reaction be different if an arrangement of Shostakovich' first movement of his 7th Symphony. I doubt it! If we start playing arrangements of newer music surely the music which is then composed by our living composers will become far more understandable through familiarity with its style ?
Anyway amgray, you thought you were BOCing!! lol
Its not often that I write in to agree with someone on this forum but I agree to a large extent with what amgray. How can you say a band improves a piece that originally belonged to another genre of music? A piece written for a Samba band might have some brass in it but its over all timbre is going to mixed with plenty of woodwind and various drums that we do not in our respective bandrooms. Secondly, with no disrespect for the brass band and especially those who play (like myself!), we are not at our best trying to adapt to another style of playing i.e understanding how to play Prague which seemed to baffle the majority or even big band! I have heard big band pieces written for brass band and to be honest it was tight, well played and sometimes edgy, but then again the normal dotted quaver-semi quaver figure instead of two quaver is a stereotypical response because thats the only way a big band piece can be percieved to swing.
As for what music would be good to arrrange ? I agree with the person (Mrs Fruity I think?) that said that the band was important in bringing the Classical orchestral repertoire and Opera to the masses in the Victorian society, BUT society has changed. I believe there is a good cross section of people who now attend band concerts, from working class to the upper echelons of society, so surely they can afford to go to listen to Madam Butterfly in its original context i.e Opera, (especially now where there is a realisation in the orchestral world that they need to cut ticket prices to allow more people to afford to attend their concerts). Having talked to many people in the audience, at our concerts and at a few others, I have found that they enjoy various types of music, ranging from the traditional military band to Jazz and easy listening. This would mean that they have a wide apoprectiation of a variety of arrangements and also a wide variety of the identification of other genres. Hence, arrange,ments are good.
However, we tend to play arrangements that probably range from the early classical period to early romantic. Les Preludes was the test piece for the Open a few years ago, it was very challenging for the player and nice for the audience. This does not mean that I approve of harping back to the same period for arrangements and also my main gripe being why cant we play original brass band music at contests since the people in the audience are predominantly brass band people, little people outside the genre actually wish to turn up to a contest.
So in my opinion arrangements should be kept for concerts, should have a wider variety and have a role in educating a concert audience bit by bit in appreciating the contemporary music which occurs in all music around us.
The lack of understanding of contemporary "noise" (as some would put it!) is the persistence of the band movement to play arrangements of music from a particular era. More complete or nearly complete movements of Mahler, Bruckner through to Messiaen or Ligeti. It would be an interesting experiment to arrange a few of the pieces of Charles Ives since he based some of his music on the experiences of listening to his fathers military bands playing in parade.
As I have confirmed through my research I believe that "UNFAMILIARITY BREEDS DISLIKE OR MISUNDERSTANDING". We hear a Mozart arrangement and think "hmmm...thats a nice tune", I wonder would the reaction be different if an arrangement of Shostakovich' first movement of his 7th Symphony. I doubt it! If we start playing arrangements of newer music surely the music which is then composed by our living composers will become far more understandable through familiarity with its style ?
Anyway amgray, you thought you were BOCing!! lol
