16 Colours

David Sanford

Subtitle: In Memoriam J. K. Randall

General Info

Year: 2015
Duration: c. 14:20
Difficulty: VII (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Manuscript
Cost: Score and Parts (print) - $140.00; (digital) - $40.00 | Score Only (print) - $20.00

For purchase inquiries, see Discussion tab, above.

Instrumentation

Full Score
C Piccolo
Flute I-II
Oboe I-II
Bassoon I-II
B-flat Soprano Clarinet I-II-III
B-flat Bass Clarinet
E-flat Alto Saxophone I-II
B-flat Tenor Saxophone I-II
E-flat Baritone Saxophone
B-flat Cornet I-II
B-flat Trumpet I-II-III
Horn in F I-II-III-IV
Trombone I-II-III-IV
Euphonium
Tuba
Timani
Percussion (5 players), including:

Bass Drum
Brake Drum
Cabasa
Crash Cymbals (concert and mobile)
Glockenspiel
Maracas
Snare Drum (concert and mobile)
Suspended Cymbal
Tam-Tam
Tom-Tom (4)
Triangle
Vibraphone

Mobile Ensemble (taken from within the ensemble listed above):

Alto Saxophone
Tenor Saxophone
Baritone Saxophone
Cornet I-II
Trombone
Percussion I-II

Errata

None discovered thus far.

Program Notes

16 Colours: In memoriam James K. Randall was commissioned by Charles Peltz and the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, to whom it is dedicated. The work is influenced by, and occasionally utilizes, some of the sonic and generative strategies employed in composer/theorist and Princeton music professor Jim Randall’s (1929-2014) “Inter/Play” series of recordings, and in his improvisation class activities which he labeled “pine-cone games”. The piece also features a recurring fragment of Randall’s own elegy for composer/theorist Godfrey Winham, (“…such words as it were vain to close…”) for solo piano.

The work calls for a mobile ensemble that moves through the auditorium for roughly half of the piece along with the larger fixed ensemble on the stage. The mobile ensemble is kind of a texture through the first part, like electronic tape parts used to be back when those were in vogue in the 70s. The mobile aspect means that it acts as an obstruction, or a sonic "scrim" of sorts which changes for everyone in the audience depending on where they move. At times the sonorities are traded back and forth from the main group to the main group and back. Eventually they become more like a street band who are offset by the main ensemble's own contrasting textural music, and after that they dissolve into the rest of the larger ensemble onstage.

- Program Note by composer

Media

(Needed - please join the WRP if you can help.)

State Ratings

None discovered thus far.

Performances

To submit a performance please join The Wind Repertory Project

Eastman School of Music (Rochester, N.Y.) Wind Ensemble (Mark Scatterday, conductor) - 24 February 2024
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) Concert Band (Courtney Snyder, conductor) – 5 December 2016
New England Conservatory (Boston) Wind Ensemble (Charles Peltz, conductor) – 12 February 2015 *Premiere Performance*

Works for Winds by This Composer

16 Colours (2015)
Corpus (1997)
Seven Kings (2010)
Woodwind Quintet No. 1 (1982)

Resources

David Sanford, personal correspondence, May 2017