World of Pageantry

So we know now what pieces inspire the wows and goosebumps in all of us. Now what about the pieces out there that you've heard four too many times that make you just want to get up and walk out of the concert/festival?

Personally I've always had a problem with Chorale and Shaker Dance. I know it has lost it's vogue in recent years, but wayyyy back when I was in school it was played to death. I've also noticed the same treatment with a very interesting Frank Ticheli piece, Blue Shades. It's a great piece, but I've heard it played (good and bad) soooo many times I just can't wait for it to be over.

Oh I forgot to mention Purple Carnival, and The Circus Bee. Come on folks there are plenty of other upper-woodwind finger bending marches out there for your high school clarinets to butcher. Put them away, please.

Interesting... we had a thread on "kitten-killer" marches, now here's a thread on kitten-killer concert pieces. Okay, I'm game.

Concert pieces that are overplayed (note, I don't HATE all of these pieces, but they're all overplayed and need to be given a rest):
First Suite in Eb (Holst)
Second Suite in F (Holst)
Americans We (Fillmore) (I've heard it a lot in concert, so I'm including it here)
On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss (Holsinger)
Variations on a Korean Folk Song (Chance)
Cajun Folk Songs (Ticheli)
American Overture (Jenkins)
Any Andrew Lloyd Webber medley. For the love of god, people.

I have heard Novena quite alot lately

Phantom Phan wrote:Interesting... we had a thread on "kitten-killer" marches, now here's a thread on kitten-killer concert pieces. Okay, I'm game.

Concert pieces that are overplayed (note, I don't HATE all of these pieces, but they're all overplayed and need to be given a rest):
First Suite in Eb (Holst)
Second Suite in F (Holst)
Americans We (Fillmore) (I've heard it a lot in concert, so I'm including it here)
On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss (Holsinger)
Variations on a Korean Folk Song (Chance)
Cajun Folk Songs (Ticheli)
American Overture (Jenkins)
Any Andrew Lloyd Webber medley. For the love of god, people.

Yeah, our band has played at least 4 of those songs in the past 3 years. So I'd have to agree.

top 2 pieces that makes me jus wanna cry becuz we're pretty this:

pageant
-vince p.
alpina saga
-doss

this pieces are good, but they jus are to not my type........

On a Hymnsong of Phillip Bliss. It needs to be taken out in the back and well....you know.

Anything by Del Borgo. I'm sorry, but it just reminds me too much of Middle School band.

Any Gounod. It just sounds weird to me and I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of French Music.

SCTOOBA wrote:On a Hymnsong of Phillip Bliss. It needs to be taken out in the back and well....you know.

Anything by Del Borgo. I'm sorry, but it just reminds me too much of Middle School band.

Yes...On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss should be destroyed...I played it last year in the county honor band...and it was boring.

Del Borgo? I have no problems with him though. What music did he write? My mind just blanked...

guh we played hymnsong in 8th grade. hated it.
i like robert w smith, but a lot of his songs sound really similar, so with alot of them it's like heard, one heard most. so i can get sorta sick of those.

PantherBandFreak wrote:i like robert w smith, but a lot of his songs sound really similar, so with alot of them it's like heard, one heard most. so i can get sorta sick of those.

Same with Jack Stamp.

Lets face it, the band world faces a challenge of "I wrote one hit piece that made ALOT of money, now I'll write a bunch more just like it and make a bunch more money." Intentional or not.

Its called "Swearingenitis."

I pretty much think they all suffer with various stages of the disease.

Stage 1: Music still has some uniqueness. Occaiosional lapses into "tried and true" motifs, rhythms, progressions, etc.

Stage 2: You do an easier version of your big hit work. IE, "12 Seconds to the Moon" becomes "To Challenge the Skies and Heavens Above." In the worse instances of Stage 2 you don't even bother to do a new piece, IE "Chorale and Shaker Dance" becomes "Chorale and Shaker Dance II."

Stage 3: Terminal stage. Pretty much everything sounds alike, like just another movement in one LONG symphony. Occasionally patient rallies and does something cool...ie, McBeth suffered from this throughout the late 70's and 80's, then all of sudden out of no where came "Of Sailors and Whales."

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Although, to be honest, a lot of band composers skip Stage 2 and go immediately into Stage 3.

Examples of the stages...

Stage 1: Eric Whitacre, David Maslanka, Michael Daugherty

Stage 2: hereby renamed "The Ticheli Stage" of Swearingenitis.

Stage 3: Jack Stamp, Robert W. Smith, David R. Holsinger, numerous others.

Phantom Phan wrote:

Although, to be honest, a lot of band composers skip Stage 2 and go immediately into Stage 3.

Examples of the stages...

Stage 1: Eric Whitacre, David Maslanka, Michael Daugherty

Stage 2: hereby renamed "The Ticheli Stage" of Swearingenitis.

Stage 3: Jack Stamp, Robert W. Smith, David R. Holsinger, numerous others

But you know, in all fairness, we as directors are enablers of this disease. IE, my band plays and likes, "Balkanya" by Van der Roost, so we then buy and play "Puzsta." Or hey, you know "Hymnsong of Philip Bliss" ain't bad, so we buy "Hymnsong of Lowell Mason" then proceed to buy ALL his hymnsong works. Or if you think "Fortress" was good, then "Vesuvius" must be just as good.

Part of this is that we become desperate for a style of piece that we aren't getting, so when a good one comes out, we GORGE ourselves on it till the composer and genre are shot..ie...Larry Daehn and "As Summer Was Just Beginning..." followed by "With Quite Courage" etc. Or Whitacre with "October" which was SO unique, but he had to follow it up with "Sleep."
There is an interesting interview with Whitacre done by the official magazine of Lincoln Center (NY), where he basically says "October" was a piece of fluff and band directors have NO musical taste for eating it up the way we did. I think his statement was something like our musical depth didn't go much beyond Vaughan Williams or Elgar. Quite a statement for someone who wrote "Godzilla eats Las Vegas."

I think my pet peeve is "movie sound effect music." You can read this stuff in the program descriptions on Pepper, IE, "You can actually HEAR the axes thudding into the mighty trees and giant redwoods falling in the quiet forest, chainsaws roaring," as the "PAUL BUNYAN SUITE" reaches its climax!!!!! The composer, in homage to his earlier work, "THE LITTLE PAUL BUNYAN SUITE" ends the work with a hymnsong, "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK."

You know, EVERY composer has a "style" but this is not the same thing.

Just call it $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

jcys

I think that, in the entire history of band music, there have been maybe 10 or 12 really great pieces written for band. 90% of my favorite band works are just band arrangements of orchestral works. Quite simply, Swearingen and Whitacre and Holsinger aren't anywhere close to the level of Khachaturian, Shostakovich, or Tchaikovsky when it comes to composing... you look at the list of some of my all-time favorite wind ensemble pieces...

"Armenian Dances" (Khachaturian)
"Folk Dances" (Shostakovich)
"Festive Overture" (Shostakovich)
"Marche Slave" (Tchaikovsky)
"La Forza del Destino Overture" (Verdi)
"Allerseelen" (Strauss)
"Victory at Sea" (Rodgers)

...and they're all arrangements of major classical works. I mean, sure, every once in a while you'll get a fantastic work composed specifically for band, but honestly, not very often.