Parody Suite

From Wind Repertory Project
(Redirected from Chester Leaps In)
Steven Bryant

Steven Bryant


General Info

Year: 1997-2007
Duration: c. 21:00 (total suite, see relevant page for that work's duration)
Difficulty: VI (entire work - see relevant page for that work's individual difficulty) (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Gorilla Salad Productions/ Hal Leonard
Cost: See page for each work for the pricing information. All works are distributed by Hal Leonard.


Instrumentation

See relevant page for each work's instrumentation.


Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Note

Parody Suite is the umbrella term for my four pieces that quote and rework familiar melodies from other popular band works:


While I've used the term "parody" in this title, I do NOT mean it to imply that I'm belittling or ridiculing any of the original pieces. In fact, I believe it would be more accurate to describe these as "remixes" of the originals, as filtered through my hazy memory of playing these works when I was a student in various bands. They can be performed together, or individually, or in any combination. If you're performing all four, the intended order is: ImPercynations, Suite Dreams, MetaMarch, Chester Leaps In. This ordering preserves some key relationships I've purposely set up across the works, and helps it to somewhat adhere to a traditional symphonic scheme (slow 2nd mvt., march for the 3rd mvt., etc.). This order is not set in stone, however. A common programming approach with several of these in the past has been to pair them with the associated parodied work - Chester Leaps In and Schumann's Chester have appeared on a number of programs together.

- Program Note by Steven Bryant


ImPercynations evolved from a similar impulse as another work of mine, Chester Leaps In, both of which are a part of my Parody Suite. Melodic fragments from various pieces of music tend to embed themselves in my mind, and repeat in short little loops incessantly, necessitating some sort of exorcism. In the case of Chester Leaps In, I took the initial phrase of the melody and juxtaposed it with radically different music, in order to provide some humorous contrast (and perhaps also to try and jar the whole thing loose from my head). With ImPercynations, I took a different approach with the source music, and used various melodies and melodic fragments from each of the six movements of Lincolnshire Posy as foils for each other, so that the entire work is built from material drawn from Percy Grainger’s original. The motivic and rhythmic foundation of the piece is from the first movement, Lisbon, which provides the (mostly) 6/8 meter and the majority of musical material, followed closely by melodies from the sixth movement (The Lost Lady Found), with sprinklings of fragments from the middle movements. Grainger described his Lincolnshire Posy, based on English folk-songs, as a bouquet of musical “wildflowers.” If his music is a bouquet, then ImPercynations is the genetically-altered, crossbred, hybrid offspring of his wildflowers – a musical “Franken-flower.” Welcome to my laboratory.

- Program Note by Steven Bryant


Media


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Performances

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Works for Winds by This Composer

Adaptable Music


All Wind Works


Resources

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