Brass quintet standards that should be owned by founders

[cthuba]

Hey all!

I have a few that come to mind:

Albinoni- Sonata St Mark
Bach- Sheep may safely graze
Cheetham- scherzo
Gabrieli- Canzona per sonare
Renwick- Dance 2
Scheidt- Conzona Bergamasca
Scheidt- Centine No 4
Vivaldi -Bach- concerto
Waller- Ain’t Misbehavin’
Brade-Two Pieces
Brahms- St Anthony’s chorale
Pezel- Sonata 22
Speer- Die Bankelsangerlieder

[arpthark]

Depends on the level of the group I suppose, but as far as old chestnuts go, the Malcolm Arnold should be considered.

[bone-a-phone]

I think it really depends where you perform. If you play concerts for symphony patrons or hover in an academic atmosphere things are very different than if you're busking in public areas, playing weddings or churches or libraries or public schools, background music at restaurants or neighborhood parties. I think you need a set of lists for various situations.

Plus, to me, being part of a working quintet means doing some of your own arrangements, and always being on the lookout for material you can adapt.

This is a topic near my heart since I'm in the process of getting a group off the ground. We've started building our book, and we've played most of those suggested. I'm aiming for a book with about 100 tunes from Patriotic and ceremonial to classics, jazz, folk tunes, hymn adaptations, Ragtime, pop, and music written in the last decade. We have the Ewald stuff, but I can't imagine where we would play it. I love the Calvert Monteregian Hills, but I can't of an audience that we'd play for that would sit through it.

We play Putting on the Ritz, Elephant Fly, Take Me Out To the Ballgame, Farandole, Little Brown Jug, some Queen tunes, Beatles, rock from the last 6 decades, and jazz from before that. We have a couple Canadian Brass books. We use familiar stuff like Bankel... to work on entrances, cutoffs, intonation, following a lead player, balance, matching articulation and stuff like that. We have scrounged some off of Musescore, adapted some ourselves, brought our own collections and bought some in anticipation of paying gigs. Right now we're also learning a lot of Christmas music.

Quintet is a huge topic, this apparently hit a nerve bigger than I realized when I started to respond...

[cthuba]

I think it really depends where you perform. If you play concerts for symphony patrons or hover in an academic atmosphere things are very different than if you're busking in public areas, playing weddings or churches or libraries or public schools, background music at restaurants or neighborhood parties. I think you need a set of lists for various situations.

Plus, to me, being part of a working quintet means doing some of your own arrangements, and always being on the lookout for material you can adapt.

This is a topic near my heart since I'm in the process of getting a group off the ground. We've started building our book, and we've played most of those suggested. I'm aiming for a book with about 100 tunes from Patriotic and ceremonial to classics, jazz, folk tunes, hymn adaptations, Ragtime, pop, and music written in the last decade. We have the Ewald stuff, but I can't imagine where we would play it. I love the Calvert Monteregian Hills, but I can't of an audience that we'd play for that would sit through it.

We play Putting on the Ritz, Elephant Fly, Take Me Out To the Ballgame, Farandole, Little Brown Jug, some Queen tunes, Beatles, rock from the last 6 decades, and jazz from before that. We have a couple Canadian Brass books. We use familiar stuff like Bankel... to work on entrances, cutoffs, intonation, following a lead player, balance, matching articulation and stuff like that. We have scrounged some off of Musescore, adapted some ourselves, brought our own collections and bought some in anticipation of paying gigs. Right now we're also learning a lot of Christmas music.

Quintet is a huge topic, this apparently hit a nerve bigger than I realized when I started to respond...

Thank you so much for the well thought response. Namely I’m looking for weddings, churches and some outdoor gigs for fun. Honestly though, I just want to sit with a group of musicians that are really talented as the bands I’m playing in now aren’t quite filling that void.

[MG]

I am guessing that by “founders” you mean the person that forms the quintet? I’ve never heard it phrased that way before.

Anyway, I feel any serious quintet library should include:*.

The Ewald Quintets. All of them although the 4th quintet never excited me as much as the 1, 2 & 3 but important just the same (if memory serves me right the 4th was the first one written but that’s another story).
Three Salutations by Jack End (probably out of print. Too bad. Really cool piece).
Suite from Monteregian Hills by Morley Calvert
Four Outings for Brass by Andre Previn
Sonatine by Eugene Bozza
Brass Quintet No 1 by Malcolm Arnold
Renaissance Dances by Tielman Susato
Three Pieces by Ludwig Mauer
Four Pieces by Ludwig Mauer
Par Monts et Par Vaux by Michael LeClerc (really cool piece but also out of print. Available through library loans).
Centone No V by Samuel Scheidt (I’m not familiar with Centone 4. Did you mean 5?).
Contrapunctis IX by J S Bach

These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I know there are many, many more. Also, after looking at this I realize it is somewhat “old school”. Meaning pieces that I learned, acquired, played, etc. many years ago. I am now in my sixties and have not played any serious quintet music for maybe 20 years. I imagine there are many, many wonderful works that have been written in the last 20 years that should be on this list. The Ewazen piece for brass quintet and piano was a really nice piece to play. Anything by Anthony Plog would be really good I imagine. So, all you youngens pipe in and school us older folks.

* I realize that some of these are difficult. Quite difficult but none the less, they are quintet staples and, IMHO, should a part of every quintet library.

[matt g]

Some good mentions here.

The Morley Calvert piece was a favorite in college.

I used to have a pretty solid book of my own. A lot of it was the Canadian Brass stuff, and it was pops oriented.

Most quintet work is going to be incidental or wedding stuff, so that’s going to dominate the book.

In college, the trombone player (one of them*) was a very adept arranger. A piece that was a huge hit was the Maid Marion them from the Mel Brooks film Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It was really quite lovely. Point being, I agree with the above about having someone like this as part of the quintet making a huge impact.

*For a while we couldn’t find a reliable horn player, but we had two solid trombone players available, and one of them owned an alto trombone. So for a good while, it was 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, and tuba (and I would also double on bass trombone, if needed for a piece like a fanfare). That was actually a pretty good quintet. Played lots of weddings as college kids.

[bloke]

I really don’t consider myself to be a snoot. I’m delighted to work anywhere with anyone playing anything at any time. I enjoy musicians who struggle a bit just as much as I enjoy musicians who are masters of their craft, as long as people are really nice.

I’m also glad to play things that I’ve played oh so many times, even though - internally - I’m not as excited about playing some compositions as I am others. I’ve played quite a few jazz standards way more times than I’ve played some quintet standards, but I think the quintet thing is probably the fact that every single time it’s exactly the same notes.

All of that having been said, about the only collection on your list that really made me smile is the first one.

Someone mentioned the Calvert. That one still makes me smile, but it really really needs to be played with remarkable phrasing and with remarkable humor - in order to entertain.

Someone else mentioned the Arnold above.
Without extremely sparkly trumpets and trombone, I believe that one is best left in the folder.

… I do understand that the point of the post is NOT “how much we happen to ‘like’ particular compositions“, so this response is somewhat of a sidebar.

[Mark]

Jack Gale's arrangement of West Side Story.

[Heavy_Metal]

If you're playing in a church, head on over to https://www.dorm40music.com/index.asp and check out Craig Garner's and Michael Zavosky's brass-and-organ arrangements. Not sure if these are considered "standards" but they work very well.