National Finals 2017 Test Piece Intro - Championship

Championship - GALLERY (Howard Snell)

Published by Rakeway Music

 

Originally commissioned for the 2015 Scottish Open contest, the title ‘GALLERY’ refers to six pictures - four of them by Scottish artists. Each picture has a movement, in addition to which there is a very short introduction. They are all linked, though there are short gaps between each movement, the lengths of which are at the conductor's discretion.

 

Duration: Gallery complete is 20 minutes. For the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain 2017, the piece is to be played without Movement 4 - The March Back to Camp - in which case the duration is 16 minutes.

 

The first part of each title given below is the composer's, the second part is of the picture's actual title with its painter:
 

1: Entrance                               No picture - the visitor approaches the Gallery

2: Street Market                       The Barras by Paul Cox

3: The Skater's Waltz                The Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch                                                                                          by Henry Raeburn

4: The March Back to Camp      Gassed by John Singer Sargent

5: Love Story                            Old Couple by Caitriona Campbell

6: Cut-Outs                              Jazz - text and illustrations by Henri Matisse

7: Landscapes                           Two Views from Ben Lomond (looking South~West and                                                                                            looking North-West) by John Knox

 

One of Scotland's best known paintings (Mvt N°3) by Henry Raeburn is there. John Knox of Paisley depicts two views (treated as one) from Ben Lomond (Mvt N°7), while Caitriona Campbell presents Mvt N°5. The three other painters are John Singer Sargent, an American, whose large picture Gassed (Mvt N°4) is from World War 1 - a French artist, Henri Matisse, with a collection of cut-outs that decorate his book entitled Jazz (Mvt N°6) - and an Englishman Paul Cox, with an affectionate watercolour snap of the Barrowland Market, Glasgow (Mvt N°2).

GALLERY is dedicated to two Scottish musicians: Bert Mackay, from Paisley, who, in the composer’s words “taught me the value of determination and hard graft." The second, John Erskine, of the Royal Scottish Junior Academy, “with whom I studied piano for two years," writes the composer. “The latter, very sparing of praise but generous of time and insight, opened my young ears to the great composers and what they were saying."

The score is set out in four groups: from top to bottom they are left, right, centre, rear. Adjudicators will understand that the seating plan is an essential musical requirement for this piece, for which it has been specifically scored. The one element of flexibility at the conductor’s discretion, is the freedom to re-seat players within the Left and Right Groups. There are, however, to be no transfers of seating between the Left and Right groups, which must remain quite separate. The centre group must be set as specified, but the conductor may re-assign percussion parts according to players’ specialities.

 

PREVIOUS MAJOR CONTESTING USAGE

Scottish Open 2015