Scottish Music Centre - Catalogue

Programme Note

Music for a Brass Band (1962) Martin Dalby

Music for a Brass Band was written in 1962 in response to a commission from the Scottish Amateur Music Association for a new work for the National Youth Brass Band of Scotland. Dalby was still a student of Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music in London at the time. There are five movements each of which are sketches of the character of the music implied by their titles: Prelude, Musette, Dance, Intermezzo and March. The musical material is extremely economical. The Prelude, for example, unfolds from a single coil of semiquavers; the Musette is a single melodic fragment upon a drone, and so on. The longest movement is the last, the March, which develops two main contrasting ideas.

Notes:

Originally 5 Movements for Brass Band

Movements: Prelude, Musette, Dance, Intermezzo and March

Scoring: standard brass band.

First complete performance: National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain (3rd section) Fulham Town Hall, London 16 October 1965.

Some other performances: test piece,The People, National Brass
Band Championships of Great Britain, Third Section Finals, Fulham Town Hall, 16 October 1965.

Caulfield Citizens Band, South Australia, 1968.

Test piece: Ballaral, South Australia, 1968.

Test piece: Tanunda, South Australia,1968.

National Youth Brass Band of Sotland, Aberdeen 9 to 17 July, 1965.

National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, conducted by Arthur Butterworth, Chichester Cathedral, 10 August, 1973.

National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, conducted by Richard Evans, The Leisure Centre, Oswestry,25/04/81.

Radio 3, 22/09/83

Grimethorpe Colliery Band, conducted by Frank Renton, Assembly Rooms, Derby, 10/05/91.

Grimethorpe Colliery Band, conducted by Frank Renton, BBC Radio 3, 09/09/91.

Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited,
295 Regent Street,
London W1R 8JH.

Tel: 0171 580 2060
Fax: 0171 637 3490
0171 436 5815
0171 436 2850

Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited,
The Hyde,
Edgware Road,
London, NW9 6JN.

Tel: 0181 205 3861
Fax: 0181 200 3737

(Score and Parts on sale)

Catalogue No. Boosey and Hawkes Brass Band Journal No. 885.

B & H 19343

Mistake (in some scores): 2nd movement metronome mark is crotchet equals 112. This should be quaver equals 112.

Theft: there is a tune that grows in the middle of the last movement which is unashamedly stolen from some French film or other. The composer remembers nothing of the film save the tune.

Note: While I was studying with him, Herbert Howells was composing his own brass band piece, Three Figures. This proved a highly useful experience, both inspiring and technically helpful: he was learning a great deal about the medium which he passed directly to me. He also sent me to Frank Wright, a "Mr Big" at that time in the brass band world, for lessons in scoring for the band. I never paid Wright for his teaching. Who did? MD.

Completion: Aberdeen, 2 October 1962

Note 2: earlier in 1962, on the 2nd of February to be exact, Dalby completed in London another work in three movements called Music for a Brass Band. There is no question that it was very much a student effort, seen to be rather impractical by many people including the composer and summarily withdrawn. The material consisted of no more than a full score and a reduction of it. Most certainly the composer destroyed them and endowed the name to the next piece he wrote for Brass Band Ñ this one.