Prelude,
Siciliano and Rondo - Malcolm Arnold, arr. John Paynter
Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006)
was born Northampton, England to a family of prominent
shoemakers. Early interest in jazz led him to take up the
trumpet, which eventually led him to the position of Principal Trumpet
with the London Symphony Orchestra. By the end of the 1940s
his career had become almost entirely focused on composition.
He went on to write 132 film scores, including the 1958 Oscar recipient
Bridge on the River Kwai,
nine symphonies, seven ballets, twenty concertos, a handful of theatre
music, and wealth of brass band and wind band music. He was
knighted in 1993 for his service to music, having been hailed as one of
the major composers of the twentieth century.
The score for Prelude,
Siciliano and Rondo provides the following
program note:
Prelude, Siciliano and
Rondo was originally written for the brass bands for which
England is
well-known. It was titled Little Suite for Brass.
John Paynter's arrangement expands it to include woodwinds
and additional percussion, but faithfully retains the breezy
effervescence of the original composition.
All three movements are
written in short, clear five-part song froms: the ABACA design will be
instantly apparent to the listener while giving the imaginative
melodies of Malcolm Arnold a natural, almost folk-like setting.
The Prelude
begins bombastically in fanfare style, but
reaches a middle climax, and winds down to a quiet return of the
opening measures that fades to silence. The liltingly
expressive Siciliano
is both slower and more expressive, affording solo
instruments and smaller choirs of sound to be heard. It, too,
ends quietly. The rollicking five-part Rondo provides a
romping finale in which the technical brilliance of the modern wind
band is set forth in boastful brilliance.
I attach only one video here. It is the Columbia University
Wind Ensemble performing this piece under my direction at Yale
University in February, 2007. I dare say that, despite its
few faults, it is one of the finer performances on YouTube.
It
certainly has good sound quality, and we certainly articulated the
dotted-quarter-eighth patterns well in the first movement. No
one else can claim both those distinctions! So listen and
enjoy.