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Program Notes
In 1856, the editor of America's most influential music
publication of the time, Dwight's Journal of Music, complained that, "...all is
brass now-a-days - nothing but brass." He could not have been less exasperated
after the Civil War which had flooded the country with military brass band
music. But were it not for local bands and the touring organizations led by
Patrick Gilmore and his followers, it is probable that European classical
ensemble music would have remained unheard in many locales of what was still
largely a rural nation.
 In their quest for variety of repertory, bands featured new music for skilled
soloists in pieces that complemented their marches and classical selections.
Although Gilmore's 22nd Regiment Band had re-introduced woodwinds into the
ensemble, brass instrumentalists still dominated as solo performers. Featured
soloists (important attractions for bands of the time) often composed pieces that
showcased their best musical features. Their repertory also paralleled the
concert selections of singers, stressing transcriptions of sentimental songs,
arias, and other excerpts from classical literature, some in versions laden with
embellishment and cadenzas, others preserving melodic simplicity.
One of a number of early bandsmen to have emigrated from the British Isles,
Jules Levy (1838-1903), the World's Greatest Cornetist by his own admission, had
written Whirlwind Polka as a showpiece before he joined the Gilmore band.
Alessandro Liberati (1847-1927) was an important rival of Jules Levy; his
Gabriel's Trumpet Polka exhibits the rapid tonguing ability for which he was so
admired.
After the death of Patrick Gilmore in 1892, several of his bandsmen joined John
Philip Sousa. Over the years, Sousa employed many outstanding soloists including
cornetists Liberati, Herbert L. Clarke and later Frank Simon (1889-1967), whose
lyrical Willow Echoes was composed during his tenure with the band from 1914 to
1921. Later a professional bandleader himself and a professor of trumpet at the
University of Arizona, Simon was a founder (with Sousa, E. F. Goldman and others)
of the American Bandmasters Association.
Thomas V. Short, a musician of Australian origin who emigrated to America in
1878, became an important member, soloist, and director of a number of bands. He
composed Short & Sweet as a cornet feature for himself in duet with Albert Sweet
(1876-1945), a musician who went on to be an important director in his own right.
The arrangement by Henry Charles Smith of one of the best loved segments of
Tschaikovsky's score for the ballet The Nutcracker (1892) stands within the band
accompanied solo tradition in two respects. Not only does it contain a melody
likely to be familiar to audiences, it is music which is idiomatically suited to
this specific performance medium.
When Camille Saint-Saëns visited New York in 1915, his name was already closely
associated with an excerpt from his grand opera Samson & Delila (1877),
specifically the portion of the love-duet from Act II which begins with the words
"Mon coeur s'ouvre". A favorite with concertizing sopranos even today, it was
only one of many lyrical opera excerpts appropriated for solo use by
instrumentalists of the time.
In his long and brilliant career, trombonist Arthur Pryor (1870-1942) frequently
graced New York recording studios with his phenomenal technique. During a stint
with the Sousa Band from 1896 to 1903, he recorded several of his virtuoso
compositions, including The Patriot, with its quotes from patriotic tunes of the
past; his spectacular variations on The Blue Bells of Scotland; and his
brilliant waltzes, Thoughts of Love and Love's Enchantment. In the following
years with his own band, he preferred to record ballads of lavish sentimentality
such as Oh, Dry Those Tears by Theresa Del Riego (Mrs. Leadbetter, 1876-1968), a
London violinist, pianist and composer.
Recorded by Pryor with piano accompaniment, the parlor song Non è ver' was
composed by the otherwise forgotten London based conductor and opera composer,
Tito Mattei (1841-1914). This arangement for band and baritone horn was prepared
for Mark Lawrence by Anthony Kaye.
Although performances with the Gilmore Band of virtuoso trombone compositions
such as his Phenomenal Polka established Frederick Innes (1854-1926) as the equal
of cornetist Jules Levy, he never recorded even with his own band, believing that
limitations of the medium distorted musical realities too greatly. In fact, many
compositions recorded during this period had to be truncated to fit time limits,
while the medium's physical constraints forced reductions in ensemble size to
numbers far from ideal. Thus, modern recordings such as these may more
truthfully reflect the values of a repertory whose still fresh appeal is based on
both exuberant display and touching lyricism.
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