Welcome to our podcast, Fan BFFs.
The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
In today's episode, we will be discussing Elizabethan Dance by Mark Williams.
Cheers to starting the conversation.
All right.
This piece is about two minutes long.
It's in the key of concert B flat and four, four throughout.
It has a very easy range, a single clarinet part, single trumpet part, a doubled low brass,
low reed part.
This piece would be fantastic for a young band, even like an honor ensemble with your
beginning band, something like that would be perfect.
Percussion parts are pretty limited.
Snare, bass, tambourine, and bells.
This is something you could do with a very limited percussion section, maybe two students.
If you have extra percussion that you're looking for parts to cover, you could even double
the snare drum part on tom and double the bells part on marimba.
You have lots of flexibility and options.
This piece is super light and airy.
It's a dance type feel and kids love it because it's pretty friendly.
It's not got a lot of range like Laura said, and the rhythms are also very friendly.
There's just quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, and dotted half notes throughout,
not even a dotted quarter note.
While it is in the key of concert B flat, there are a few little accidentals thrown
in here and there.
You can use the opportunity to talk about accidentals and the rule of accidentals, how
they carry through measures, that sort of thing.
Very modal sounding with lots of A flat accidentals.
It starts off with most of the piece being in the upper woodwind and upper brass for the
melody.
Low brass does not have the melody except for one and a half measures at the very end.
If you have a little bit of a weaker low brass, low reed section, this might be the perfect
piece for you.
I would say the hardest thing is that the tubas have to go down to a low A flat several
times in the piece.
That's something to consider if your tubas struggle with range.
The piece again is light and airy.
It starts out at measure one with just one, two, and three, four, one, and you'll teach
that the woodwinds need to phrase through and don't breathe there.
Four and one, two, and three, and four, one, two, and then they can breathe there before
their pickups into measure three, but the low people cannot breathe there as they keep
the sound moving.
Then it's very much the same thing till measure eight.
This is a great piece for teaching that a dotted half note goes all the way to beat
four.
When you're marking in your parts like Laura and I have discussed on our podcast that we
love to do, I would draw a vibrato symbol over every dotted half note for the flutes
and saxes and an arrow and write off on four.
That way the kids know that they have to push their sound all the way through.
At nine, the clarinets get the melody now with horn and saxophone, so it's the mids
of the group and the uppers get a little bit of a break, but it's the same melody and you
talk about the exact same things with them as well.
There's lots of unison rhythm, the one, two, and three, four, or one, and two, three, four
happening throughout the ensemble.
It would be real important with a young group to focus on matching the style, matching the
articulation, and that would be something that I would even take one of those basic
rhythms and put it on a daily drill exercise.
Have them play it on a concert F, or you can play it on Remington, but just get them to
really listen for matching the style, firm articulation, but lifted.
And again, doing that and incorporating that into your daily drill will help them remember
that and apply it to the music more easily.
While the trumpet part doesn't go up above an A, the horn part does go up to a C, so
that is just something to note if you have kind of a weaker horn section, but hopefully
they can handle that.
Again, it's a lot of the same throughout with uppers having the melody.
There's like a new melody introduced at 17, and the flutes and the oboes, and the bells,
and everybody else can kind of come down, but it is a very tooty piece like Laura said.
So making sure you're talking to kids about balance, who to listen for, what the most
important part is will be important, especially for your low brass and low reeds that do not
have the melody the whole piece.
They're going to want to just jam out, so make sure that they're playing softly underneath.
At 25, we have a cute little woodwind choir with just the upper voices, not even low woodwinds,
and it's flute only, no oboes if you happen to have oboes in your group, and they just
have a little choir and very much like an Elizabethan type of piece.
And then at 29, the middle brass come in with horn and trumpet, and then we finally add
in low brass at 33.
So I love that section.
It's a great opportunity to showcase different colors in your ensemble and then talk about
that with the group.
At measure 33, we come back in with trumpets leading the melody, altos and horns are also
playing along with them.
The low brass are just continuing.
They sit a lot on concert F and B flat in this.
They're playing fifths most of the time.
That's right.
Or a little mini scale every once in a while.
So those middle voices get an opportunity to kind of show off here.
We add the upper woodwinds back in at measure 37.
And again, low brass, their part does change a little bit here.
They go from instead of playing half notes and quarter notes, they have some rest, just
making sure they're counting their parts carefully.
And again, matching style.
This is such a cute little piece and great for the melodies.
I think are really, what is the word that I'm looking for?
Like that.
I think that's right.
That's exactly right.
At 41, everybody's back in and we still have the upper people with the melody and it's
back like the very beginning.
We added tambourine a little while back too, so that just adds to that renaissance-y type
feel.
At 49, it's an exposed section with clarinet and saxophone only.
And so you do want to make sure that your kids sound really good.
It's just for three measures.
But that's an important thing to look at.
It's not like above the break in clarinet or anything.
That just continue making sure that everybody moves together, articulates together and has
the same style.
And then everybody has pickups, three and four and one, going into 53.
And then there's a little flute moment at 54 and 55 alone.
And then it's echoed with the low brass and low reeds.
That's their one little moment in the sunshine for a measure and a half.
And then everybody ends the piece together with an accent.
So throughout the whole piece, there's no style markings other than that last accent,
which is good because you're just teaching the kids just light style all the way throughout.
Almost like, not like march style, but kind of.
It's just like a dance type style.
I love at the end of this that the one and a half measures of low brass feature is cued
in the trumpet part.
So if your low brass can't handle the eighth note technique moving through that, you can
actually cover it in the trumpets.
And I think that's really smartly written for young groups.
It is literally the only time low brass have to play eighth notes.
So again, this piece is great and a piece that I have played several times with my sub
non varsity band and I will consider in the future as well because no matter what the
instrumentation is for your group, you can smartly hide things or feature different things
that are really good for your group.
So we hope that you will consider programming this piece, Liz a beat and dance in the future.
And thanks for joining us on this episode of band BFFs.