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Ave Verum Corpus (Byrd) – Brass Quartet
Ave verum corpus (Hail, true body) is based on a 14th century poem. This musical setting by William Byrd (1543 – 1623) is considered one of his finest works. A student of Thomas Tallis, William Byrd was the leading English composer of his time, a great master of the Renaissance along with Giovanni Palestrina and Orlando de Lassus, and left a huge legacy of printed music.
The false relation, the E natural in the trumpet and the E flat in the tuba in measure 2 was Byrd's way of emphasizing the word verum.
Excerpt graciously provided by members of the Tower Brass Quintet.
Composer: Anne McGinty
Instrumentation: Trumpet, Horn, Trombone & Tuba
Duration/# of Pages: ca. 3:30 / 7 pages, 8.5″ x 11″
Key: N/A -
Oddball Tomatoe, The
The Oddball Tomatoe (sic) is based on a short story (with illustrations) written by a friend of the composer's when he was in the 6th grade, titled “The Tomatoe That Chomped Up New York City”. The story is about a hungry little tomato that chomp-chomp-chomps everything from the carrots in the garden to the barn, the house and more before acquiring a taste for metal, which made him a metal tomato. The first sentence was the inspiration for this piece: “Once there was a little oddball tomatoe.”
He ate cars, a water tower, the city hall and the Empire State Building and became a danger to every city. While walking to California he snatched a plane out of the air and chomped it. The army aimed bombs at him, to no avail. In Los Angeles it started chomping on the power lines as it thought they were spaghetti. Alas, he got shocked to death and fell in the ocean, never to be seen again.
Only the tuba could possibly become the metal tomato and get that big and calamitous, with lots of chomping grace notes along the way. Only three horns could depict little carrots, large buildings, bombs, New York City, power lines and more.
The story made the composer smile, and the piece is basically program music that attempts to musically depict this extra-musical story. The story, however, is not essential to the performance of this piece.
Composer: Anne McGinty
Instrumentation: Tuba & 3 Horns
Duration/# of Pages: ca. 4:20 / 22 pages, 8.5″ x 11″
Key: N/A