Welcome to our podcast, Band BFFs!
The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
On today's episode, we're going to be discussing as Twilight Falls by Robert Sheldon.
Cheers to starting the conversation!
This piece is a great introduction to lyrical playing for your group.
It is beautiful.
It's in the key of concert B-flat.
It is 4-4 throughout and it is only about two minutes long.
There is a split alto clarinet and trumpet part, but they often double each other throughout.
This piece is so beautiful, as Laura said.
I love Sheldon's writing and this piece is no exception.
I think I've played it multiple times in my career with different levels of band.
I've heard it done all the way into high school sub-non-varsity bands or varsity bands.
This is a great way to showcase your lyrical playing or to use on a fall concert.
Your beautiful tone quality.
It's just really written well.
There are not very many percussion parts either, so that makes it a very accessible piece to
everybody.
It does have optional piano.
I'll be honest, I have never heard it played with piano before.
I think that is a decent option if you have a slew of percussionists and one of them plays
piano well, but do not feel like the piano part is necessary.
I've heard this piece played several times and I've never heard it played with piano
before.
Yes, I echo that as well.
Here at the beginning, we're only at about 76 to 80 on the metronome.
Clarinet and alto saxophone get to start out with the beautiful melody.
Reminder saxes that they're going to color the clarinets.
This is a piece that's all about the mellow tones of the band, the mellow colors.
Clarinet, horn, trombone a few times.
It's just really important to keep those in the back of your mind.
Always crescendoing through half notes and dotted half notes throughout this piece.
Then a lot of times the tuba and the bass clarinet and barry come in on beat four and
kind of beef up the sound of your band and make it sound really full.
The bass clarinet is written very low for the instrument and it just makes it sound
so cool.
Make sure that that bass clarinet player is a beautiful sounding student and can play
everything with a very long, tenuto tongue to go along with your tubas.
The way that this is written, you can do a whole lot with working just your woodwind
choir and balancing that woodwind choir sound and then your brass choir and balancing that
brass choir sound and putting them together.
That's a great way to approach a piece like this, especially the way Sheldon has written
in.
At measure three, you do have an A natural in the trombone, euphony and bassoon part.
Then you have an F sharp and alto and a higher A in the flute part.
Just making sure, again, that we're really listening around and trying to tune whenever
we have some of those more difficult to tune moments.
At measure four, you get this really cool French horn moment.
It is marked accented, but they have tenutos, it needs to be no space.
Make sure they're tonguing firmly, but they're keeping it very, very legato tongued.
The altos, again, color the horn, but horn comes out of the mix here.
Nobody crescendos louder than the horn part.
Suspended cymbal will help to create that moment.
Utilize suspended cymbal based on timpani when they have those moments in here.
They can really help add to that effect.
At five, the trumpets and the flutes get a moment with the horn and alto also being very
important here.
I like to have horn be the focal point at five and flute and trumpet are coloring them.
Making sure that every time they have the ACG and the horns, that that sounds really
pretty and not struggling.
Just make sure that that sounds beautiful there.
Again, just teaching everybody in your band about sneaky places to take breaths, not on
bar lines like your low breathing.
Your low people are going to want to breathe between six and seven.
Don't allow them to do that.
Teach them about other smart places to find breaths after dotted half notes, after regular
half notes if it's a non-melodic part.
This is just a great teaching opportunity for you as a teacher to just get the kids to
see some ways that they can elongate phrases and make it sound like there's no gaps.
I think it's really important.
Sometimes I think we can use the phrase stagger breathe and maybe with an older, more mature
ensemble, they can handle that on their own.
But with younger groups, and I'm sure you've figured out by this point that Katie and I
are a little bit controlling.
What?
How dare you?
I think it's really important to go down the road with kids and actually on a piece like
this and be intentional about you are breathing here.
Your neighbor is breathing here and making students write that in.
We're big fans of writing things in the music ahead of time, but obviously stagger breathing
is something that has to be done once the music is in the kids' hands.
That's a good thing you can do during sectional time for sure.
At measure seven, you have this really pretty clarinet alto sax, kind of like swaying in
the wind sound.
Again, I like it to be clarinet, focal, and not saxophone, but this has the opportunity
to not move together if they're not watching you.
So make sure the whole note is underneath and that they're moving right together.
Eight has Flute and trumpet leading us into nine.
You should teach that tongue.
I would start with those eighth notes articulated so that they are getting that right in time,
and then we can add that slur in later.
I've also taught it where they crescendo through seven and then they crescendo at eight.
It just makes it sound like it's leading somewhere.
And then at eight, it is purposefully written that you're starting stronger and you're
day crescendoing into nine with that flute, oboe, trumpet part, and bells.
And bells, don't let bells be too important here.
Make sure it's again coloring the wind players.
When we get to measure nine, we have the horn and trombone part and tenor sax that kind
of take over the melody here.
It's a beautiful color combination with those instruments.
You have a lot of the upper woodwinds that are kind of just doing this quarter note accompaniment
part that is supposed to be supported.
But the range that this is written in for horn and trombone, you might need to thin
that out.
Maybe two players or so on a part there or alternating.
You play two measures and you play two measures here so that that melodic line in the horn,
trombone and tenor sax can really come through.
You also want to make sure that students are not clipping the last note of the slurs short
on the quarter notes and in the eighth notes, the measures before it.
And then with the melodic line, not dying away on the half note.
One and two, don't die away, four, one.
Making sure they're pushing through that.
Yep.
And making sure that they're not all breathing between ten and eleven.
Again, this is where the breathing assignments come in, making sure that you've been smart
about that.
That's where they're going to want to breathe.
That's exactly right.
And it's an out of tune note.
And so just making sure that we're really listening on that C and the trombone part,
euphonium part.
The tubas need to tongue really firmly here at ten so it doesn't just sound like another
whole note.
It's written to be a different rhythm on purpose and timpani can help out with that as well.
And then when we get to measure twelve, I love this measure.
The dotted quarter eighth note pattern here I think is really important and helps us lead
into measure thirteen.
So that needs to be played.
That needs to be the emphasis of the crescendo here.
And you might even have one player articulate that eighth note to kind of help lead in.
Just be sneaky about it and that'll help give it a little bit more presence.
This is like what we had earlier where you hear the melody and the flute and trumpet and
oboe, but this little conversation happening between alto and horn.
And like Katie said, I really think that horn part needs to come out and be present.
That timpani role that you have in measure fourteen is great.
That's going to help lead into measure fifteen where we go back with these eighth notes.
We have these eighth notes that come back in.
Again, we want to make sure that our fingers are moving really evenly.
All students are moving together.
And then when we land at measure sixteen, that chord is going to be a chord that requires
a little bit of attention, just making sure on beat one and then on beat three that you
are checking the tuning of that chord there.
And that it's moving together for sure too.
Definitely.
And there's these staggered entrances right here.
So this is another place I think that, like, you might want to bop this to help get alignment
exactly right initially.
And then the suspended cymbal timpani and bass drum can really help this feeling of leading
across the bar line from measure sixteen into seventeen where trumpets get to take over.
So when the trumpet and the flute and oboe and clarinet get to take over here at seventeen,
you want to make sure that they're not too bright.
Flutes are above the staff here.
You can take it down an octave.
You can have them have the oboe part.
If I've had a big flute section and played this piece before, I have done that.
I've given some of the kids maybe like one the oboe part.
So that way it's not quite so strident here.
But they should really shimmer up here.
Yes.
As long as they can play it in tune and sound really nice.
The clarinets go up above, almost up above the staff here too.
So again, just making sure that this doesn't sound out of tune or too bright above the band.
The horn has these cool little like beats, three and four moments, like leading tones
into nineteen.
Really bring that out whenever you see that.
Make sure that flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet are leading through the eighteen dotted quarter
note.
One, two, three, four and one, two, three and one, two and three.
No breath right there.
Four and one.
Right.
And then I think that the trumpets can all breathe in twenty while you get this cool
like one, two and three, four from saxophone and clarinet.
So they get to take a breath there.
And this is like the one moment.
This is the sax moment.
Yeah.
So I think that's the one and wrote it this way, maybe I'm not sure, but the saxes are
above the staff here.
And I think that that's on purpose for them to be a little bit more important instead of
them coloring other people.
They get a moment and then clarinet and oboe get to be secondarily important to sax there.
Then the trumpets come back in on beat four.
So we have a lot of like four and one, four, one, everything's leading to one.
Hassing from player to player section to section.
You have to make sure the kids are listening for that and know when they're important and
know their role.
Constituting issues could occur here in the trombone section because we have some divided
notes and some big jumps here.
So make sure you're really listening.
And maybe if you want on that divided part, just to pick like one trombone, one euphonium,
one bassoon and have everybody else play the lower part, it's up to you and what works
best for your group.
And then again, like I was mentioning, we're going pickups into twenty one, but this time
it's just the trumpets with the melody.
So we have to make sure everybody else is softer underneath them.
And then we have this cool little effect here where again, everybody starts louder and then
gets softer into twenty three.
And then we have this cute little one, two, three from flute oboe bells.
And you want to make sure that that's pretty tongueed a little bit firmer.
I've told my flutes to play it kind of like accented with little shimmers of vibrato on
each part.
And actually it says minus oboe.
I forgot about that.
It's flute only.
The flutes are the ones playing this.
So you have to make sure you've divided your flutes out.
Maybe if the first flute part's too loud or out of tune on the upper C, then just have
one person play that and everybody else play the lower.
Again, whatever works for your notes.
Of course it's in bells too.
And then the trumpets again are taking over the melody on beat four after them.
And again, the trumpets are the only ones on the melody and this has been a difficult
spot when I've played this piece before to hear the trumpets without them having to work
too hard.
So you have to tell everybody else in the band to be at a piano level and maybe only
getting up to like mezzo piano mezzo forte by like 25.
They do not need to be a full forte.
That way the trumpets can continue to be heard out throughout the band.
Then you have the flutes and the oboe's coming in again on beat four leading us into 26.
And the big suspended cymbal roll going in and then timpani kind of helps with that
arrival moment right at measure 26 as well.
Yes, and one time that I played this piece, I actually did, I mean this might be totally
weird, but I did have my timpani player play with those like wooden timpani mallets just
so that you could hear that one like rough really good.
So it's worth a try.
You want that to be a focal point.
Yes.
Because it's like that's a big moment in the piece for sure.
Then you're coming down from there and you're day crescendoing one foot tap at a time to
the trumpets having again.
Now the trumpets get the little bell tones one, two, three.
And that's not an easy range.
The trumpets really probably should not take a breath after that long note because it's
hard to reset your face for that E, at least for the first trumpets.
And again like what I said with the flutes, maybe audition it and there's one kid on the
first trumpet, everybody else on the second trumpet, whatever works for your group.
And then the low people have a beat four entrance this time leading us into 28.
When we get to 28, this is kind of like what we had at the beginning.
So this is clarinet lead with saxophone color and adding those low voices in and 29 pickups
on beat four making that very apparent of a firm tongue and making sure that there's
no gaps in the sound between the pickup note and what comes after it.
Flute and clarinet there at measure 30.
And then of course we get the horn and saxophone again.
This is just like the beginning where we don't want space between these lifted, these accented
and tenudo notes here.
We want a firm articulation but no space as we are taking this to the end.
Again, this is all more of the same.
Trumpet flute oboe comes in with the melody at 32 and counter melody.
And this is really important.
Yes, it should sound like they're conversing with each other like the horn part one, two,
three, trumpet on four.
Four, one, two, three, trumpet and flute on four.
So you want to make sure that you can hear each of those one, two, three, four entrances
between those voices.
And I would isolate those voices and work on exactly that to make sure that it is conversational,
seamless and that you can hear all those parts equally.
And they sound like they're touching.
Exactly.
It doesn't sound like one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
You want to make sure the beat four is just as full as the other parts.
Again more of these eighth notes like we had in the clarinet and saxes like we had earlier
making sure our fingers are moving together.
This retardando at the end with all of these eighth notes is something that will need to
be isolated and practiced a lot.
Practice that just counting, counting and fingering.
Practice it without the slur.
Have half of your kids counting, half of your kids playing like all different types of ways
to make this retardando happen together and in time.
And students will want to either make the slur stop going from 35 to 36.
Getting their air.
They won't breathe because you'll have told them not to do that.
But yes, they'll stop their air and then they'll start again at 36.
So the last thing you should hear is that clarinet and sax on the and a four and that's
really just so important.
I would encourage them to do very little decrescendo there to really help everybody to hear the
eighth notes going in.
Everybody else can do it.
They are the pulse.
Right, right.
And that arrival point at 36 is not loud, but it needs to be very in tune with lots of vibrato
because they're going to sit there for a while.
Trumpet two needs to kick on their thumb slide leading into this last little part and the
retardando continues on.
So they're these beat three and beat fours are going to be slower and right on the beat
the just watching really carefully.
And then that final arrival point at 37 is a beautiful chord.
And I think it man, if you can make that shine with the two buzz down nice and low, I would
hold that sucker for a long time.
As long as you can with a beautiful sound.
Yes, yes.
And then the saxophone gets that little like gets that little color moment.
So just encourage them to lean into it not to be annoying about it.
You know, just to make it be just a beautiful last chord.
I just love this piece so much.
I hope you guys will consider using as Twilight Falls and one of your upcoming programs.
I think I might go back and use it again next year because I forgot how much I love this
beautiful.
It is beautiful.
Well, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Band BFFs.