The Celebration of the Deep rides again! As a 4 horns & piano arrangement!

Today I went through the score and parts for the 4 horns and piano arrangement of The Celebration of the Deep — I’ve been working on this since late December 2020/early January 2021, ever since Tanja Nissonen of Turku Finland got in touch to ask if there was such a piano arrangement. Her request and willingness to have her horn quartet play the piece (they all liked it when they listened to the sound file I sent of the orchestra version) really inspired me to get cracking, and I was able to send her a more-or-less finished version by the middle of January 2021. I had been thinking about and planning out such an arrangement in my head, but had not worked on more than a concept for it, and before I heard from Tanja I had been drafting a one horn and piano arrangement, seeing if that was possible. This is as part of my musical legacy project — how to help my compositions have the support to get launched into the world so that players and listeners can find them.

Bill Cowdery has helped a lot with the piano part, editing for ease of playing and making some very good suggestions overall for what the piano should play to make the piece express optimally. What fun! He has an amazing theory background as well as being technically so proficient, and good taste musically.

And today I found not only some dynamic markings that either were missing or doubled, but also a few staccato markings on half-notes, clearly counter-productive! Hah! The amount of editing and proofreading that needs to happen is always remarkable to me! Last month I made a pass through to look at slurs for styling, and before that I adjusted which horn played what lines in the beginning to even out the demands/opportunities for each of the 4 horns. Also had to fix rests that weren’t showing as multi-bar rests because I had individual rests in some of the bars (there used to be notes there?). Oh, and then looking up random features in Sibelius to remember how to do stuff.

I love having lots of different kinds of composing tasks/adventures to engage in, but haven’t yet actually played my violin today, so that is where I’m headed next, if my energy holds up. One nap already today! Am still reacting after the second Pfizer vaccine shot I got on March 27th, but nothing too terrible. Some vertigo, a rash, fatigue off and on, chills, hard to sleep more than 6.5 hours at a time.

Tanja’s group is called 4th Line Horn Quartet, of Finland, and hopefully they will be performing and recording The Celebration of the Deep this summer. I’d love to go to Finland to hear it in person! Wouldn’t THAT be a treat?

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