John Williams “Summon the Heroes” fanfare

[bloke]

I am slated to play this piece this weekend in a sports-themed pops concert, along with most all of the other fanfares John Williams has ever written - plus a ton of other music.

I put the first and last pages of the fourth trombone part up here in a thread, and it may have been taken down.

There are six trumpet parts, four trombone parts plus a tuba. We are managing with 4-3-[1 - tuba part covered specifically on tuba, on a small portion of the fanfare]

The fourth trombone part features nearly all of the tuba part, and the tuba seems to just be added for richness of sound whenever it enters (somewhat like the Dahl - “Music for Brass”).

The fanfarish stuff near the beginning is fourth trombone and is not particularly low – starting on a D above the staff, with sudden downward jumps playing high-velocity figures and then jumping right back up. I’m playing the more military and fanfarish-sounding stuff on the cimbasso, and the more legato and static stuff (roughly 2/3 of the second of three pages) on the tuba.

My regular mouthpiece for the cimbasso sounds great, but I have an old small shank. smaller cup opening, and very small throat 1970s “MIRAFONE F/Eb” mouthpiece that negotiates wild skips very and very gymnastic playing more easily, albeit with a slightly smaller sound.
I will be using that mouthpiece on this fanfare. Perhaps a positive (??) is that it sounds like a “large trombone“ rather than a “giant trombone“. That having been said, my regular mouthpiece is better for some of those rock charts where it sounds good (yes, to the MD) in the same way that the bass trombone sometimes sounds good overwhelming a big band.

Anyway…
I’m glad I tried out this old mouthpiece on this piece. It will have saved me hours of practicing.

[the elephant]

I have two "gimmick" (or "special purpose"?) mouthpieces that I will *never* sell.

One is a Wick that they stopped making in the late 1980s. It has a 28 mm opening and is nearly as deep as a 24AW. It is *perfect* for Bydlo as you can get up high enough but have the cup depth needed to make a small tuba sound decent in the "bassline" part of that movement.

The other is a Kelly 18 (clear blue, if anyone really G.A.S.) that makes "The Ride" super easy on the Holton. I have no idea at all why this is. It is the best low-range piece I have ever found, and I have used it on "Fountains" too. It is some sort of malformed thing, since it is injection-molded plastic and ought to be exactly the same as any other Kelly 18, but I have yet to find another that works for me this well.

I totally get what you are talking about. I do not change mouthpieces often, but I *do* occasionally mess around with things to see if there is something better for me out there. Usually, there isn't. But once in a while, I stumble across something that solves a specific issue. In most cases these sort of suck for general use, so they just sit in a drawer until that specific need ends up in a folder on my stand.

Have fun with this folder of music. I bet it will be fatiguing, but also smile-generating.

Tonight the orchestra is playing some very physical tuba stuff down in Poplarville, MS. One thing I love, but is very taxing to play full and connected all the way through is the Williams "Hymn for the Fallen" from Saving Private Ryan. I love that tuba part! (Oddly, the part played by BSO is not exactly the same as the published part. It is simpler on one exposed line. I simplified it in the same way out of need the first time we played it a few years ago. Since then I worked it out. I assume the recording part was done this way because those guys have to record stuff quickly and this was safer. It is not a big change, but it makes a big difference. I will play it as written tonight because I actually spent ten minutes working it out. I needed to sing it several times to get the intervals in my head. Alternatively, the differences between the recording and the written part look like perhaps an editor "simplified" it with an octave shift in the middle of the line, thereby actually making it more difficult to hear correctly. I will state here that I hate bad music editors, in case this has not come across in all my years of blathering in this community.)

We are also playing a Beatles medley that is nearly impossible for the low brass to play as written, AND it is super taxing to get through. I like it, but hate tuba parts written by keyboardists who fail to consider how their stuff will actually sound when played on the instrument specified. Some of this material is full-on "Supreme Idiot Level" crap! This Beatles medley is mostly superior stuff, but "Can't Buy Me Love" is more like "Can't Buy Me a Clue" for about 32 bars. He needs to be spanked for this. HAHAHA!!!

Also, we are doing a lot of a particular "other" Hollywood "genius". All of his stuff sounds like variations on Spiderman. It is good stuff, to be sure, but four of them strung together end up sounding like a theme and variations.

[bloke]

This mess ain't slow, and needs to be really clean ...Check out Boston Pops with Williams conducting...

[bort2.0]

The worst thing about this fanfare, when played slow, is watching the conductor wave his arms about as if it's doing something. Don't fanfares just kind of "go", and not really need a conductor?

[the elephant]

In truth, most music is better when not conducted by most conductors.

I hate working with church "Music Directors" who think that "Everything is Mahler!"

[bloke]

The Boston thing had most of the trumpets in the balcony. I would say that either a monitor or a non-nonsense stick-waver.

I’ve never heard anyone complement Mr. Williams conducting technique.

The typical community band lowered eyebrows instruction to fellow bandsmen is “WATCH THE DIRECTOR !!! ”

The standard advice to struggling subs in symphony orchestras (from four-figure pay annually to six-figure pay annually) is “Stop looking at that guy and play. ”

The worst thing about this fanfare, when played slow…

Were it that this were slow…
I could use any old mouthpiece, and wouldn’t have to practice it at all.

Performance tempo is +/- 90 bpm.
Were it only 70, the eighth notes would only be 140, which would be an easy sight-reading tempo.

The “Mad Irishman” (our beloved stick-waiver) studied in Germany and Hungary…”sturm und drang”… always Rest assured, the reading rehearsal will be right up to tempo… or a bit more - for “gotcha” purposes.

[bloke]

DEBRIEFING:

There are different ways to look at a passage:

- “This is hard, but I’m going to do it, dammit, because it’s on this piece of paper, I’m tough, and I can.”

- “What is the non-wind player composer’s intention, here, for the overall sonic effect?”

I put some time in on the first couple of lines of this fanfare on my F cimbasso, mastered it, went back and went through it quite a few times with a YouTube video, so I could play it just as confidently with all those other brass player pitches occurring at the same time in my ears, and was ready to play this at the first rehearsal.

Probably what I really should have done, though, was to master the passage as written (just in case the music director might have asked me to play my part by myself), and then (during rehearsal run-throughs and the performance) leave out the first batch of upper D’s - avoiding the treacherous major ninth jumps down to the C over-and-over while triple tonguing. The three other trombonists were playing that D, it would’ve sounded the same, and would’ve been safer.

No other trombone parts featured this wild interval jump, and I suspect Williams just really wanted a strong tonic sound when that activity started in the music. Again, sometimes the struggle is between a player’s ego (mine ) and common sense. It was good to master the passage, but also would’ve been > practical (wise) < to leave those upper D’s out, during the actual rehearsals and performance.

[arpthark]

DEBRIEFING:

There are different ways to look at a passage:

- “This is hard, but I’m going to do it, dammit, because it’s on this piece of paper, I’m tough, and I can.”

- “What is the non-wind player composer’s intention, here, for the overall sonic effect?”

I put some time in on the first couple of lines of this fanfare on my F cimbasso, mastered it, went back and went through it quite a few times with a YouTube video, so I could play it just as confidently with all those other brass player pitches occurring at the same time in my ears, and was ready to play this at the first rehearsal.

Probably what I really should have done, though, was to master the passage as written (just in case the music director might have asked me to play my part by myself), and then (during rehearsal run-throughs and the performance) leave out the first batch of upper D’s - avoiding the treacherous major ninth jumps down to the C over-and-over while triple tonguing. The three other trombonists were playing that D, it would’ve sounded the same, and would’ve been safer.

What you need to do to practice this is transpose the opening passage of the Hindemith Sonata up and play it inverted on the cimbasso so that the ascending major ninths become descending major ninths. Then you can perform it, give a lecture recital on how you "rediscovered" Hindemith's music, and write a dissertation.

I've gone ahead and done the legwork for you, so I'll just need a footnote citation name drop:

[bloke]

amazing...

[bloke]

"Peter, Peter pumpkin-eater" is also a good interval study, yes...??

...and in-season, too.