UNIT PLAN

Mysterious Village Michael Colgrass

Alexander L. Armstead

MUS 3470 - Instrumental Methods II Fall 2011

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Table of Contents

Title Page ............................................................................................................. 1

Table of Contents .................................................................................................2

Basic Information.................................................................................................3

Program Notes .....................................................................................................4

Historical Information THE COMPOSER.............................................................................................................................................................4 THE WORK .....................................................................................................................................................................6 RELATED HISTORY .......................................................................................................................................................6

The Work FORMAL ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................................7 ERRATA............................................................................................................................................................................7 PERFORMANCE NOTES.................................................................................................................................................8 GLOSSARY OF TERMS....................................................................................................................................................9 MAJOR CONCEPTS AND SKILLS.................................................................................................................................10

Preparation for Performance OBJECTIVES FOR STUDENTS......................................................................................................................................11

Strategies .....................................................................................................................................................................11 ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDENTS

Practice Excerpts for Students......................................................................................................................................12 Scales...........................................................................................................................................................................13 Listening Assignment #1 ............................................................................................................................................13 Listening Assignment #2 ............................................................................................................................................14 Create Your Own Melody!...........................................................................................................................................15

Writing Assignment..15

PRACTICE GUIDE Remington Dissonance Exercise................................................................................................................................16 Dynamic/Lyrical Warm-Up.......................................................................................................................................17

EVALUATION OF STUDENTS .....................................................................................................................................18 CALENDAR & INTRODUCTION OF STRATEGIES TIMELINE

January........................................................................................................................................................................19 February......................................................................................................................................................................20

Resources OTHER WORKS BY COMPOSER..................................................................................................................................21 SIMILAR WORKS............................................................................................................................................................21 RECORDINGS................................................................................................................................................................22 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................................................................22

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Mysterious Village Michael Colgrass

Publisher: Carl Fischer

Grade Carl Fischer Grade 4

Teaching Music Through Performance Grade 3

Style Modern/Aleatoric Keys Atonal Some focus around F minor Meters Unmeasured, Tempo Indications Quarter = 96, 120, 126, 108 bpm. Total Duration ca. 6 minutes Score Transposed French Style only instruments

that are playing on page. Range Concerns Trumpet 1 High A Special Considerations Performer Independence Free meter beginning and end

Melodic Independence

Instrumentation

1st Flute 2nd Flute Oboe (optional) 1st Bb Clarinet 2nd Bb Clarinet 3rd Bb Clarinet Bb Bass Clarinet Bassoon (optional) Eb Alto Saxophone Bb Tenor Saxophone Eb Baritone Saxophone (optional) 1st Bb Trumpet 2nd Bb Trumpet 1st F Horn 2nd F Horn 1st Trombone 2nd Trombone Bb Baritone (T.C.) Baritone (B.C.) Tuba Percussion (7 players*) Piano * Seven percussion players are needed, including two with wire brushes and two playing a Superball, a rubber ball that is rubbed on the timpani head.

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Program Notes

Michael Colgrass (b. 1932) is a native of Chicago, IL. He began his musical career as a classical and jazz percussionist. He attended the University of Illinois-Urbana, studying percussion with Paul Price and composition with Eugene Wiegel, a student of Paul Hindemith. Throughout his career, Colgrass has been awarded numerous merit awards including two Guggenheims Fellowships, and the Rockefeller, Ford and Fomm. In 1978, Colgrass won a Pulitzer Prize for his composition for percussion quartet and orchestra, entitled Dj vu, and an Emmy in 1982 for a PBS documentary entitled: Soundings: the Music of Michael Colgrass. His compositions cover all idioms from solo works, to pieces for orchestra, chamber ensembles, wind ensemble, young band, and musical theater.

Mysterious Village was commissioned in 2007 by the Colorado Wind Ensemble Commissioning Project Consortium. The piece evokes imagery of an ancient abandoned village whose only inhabitants are the ghosts of the past. The atonal work introduces young players to the world of contemporary composition through modern devices such as free meter, tone clusters and extended techniques. Colgrass Mysterious Village evokes a mystical, ethereal quality that paints vivid imagery of its ghostly citizens and the stories they have to tell.

Biography

Michael Colgrass is a native of Chicago, IL. Born on April 22, 1932, Colgrass began his fascination with music and percussion through listening to jazz, and was specifically inspired by jazz percussionist, Ray Bauduc. It was at age twelve that he bought a drum set with money that he saved through caddying at a local golf course and began instructing himself on how to play. By age twelve, Colgrass had already performed numerous times as a soloist in local talent shows, even forming a jazz band with which he performed. It was not until after he graduated from Riverside-Brookfield High School in 1950 that he began his first formal training as a musician at the University of Illinois in Urbana under percussionist Paul Price. At this time he also studied composition with Eugene Wiegel, a student of Paul Hindemith. He furthered his compositional studies during the summer of 1953 with Darius Milhaud and with Lukas Foss at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, Massachusetts. Throughout his career, Colgrass has been awarded numerous fellowships and grants such as two Guggenheims Fellowships and Rockefeller, Ford and Fomm grants, allowing him to increase his musical vocabulary in inspirations from these studies abroad.

It was the lack of percussion repertoire in the early 1950s that inspired Colgrass to write his first composition. These first pieces were chamber works that highlighted percussion and were written and performed during his time at the University of Illinois. His first piece was Three Brother (1950-51), a piece for nine percussion that was soon followed by other pieces leading to his 1954 composition Chamber Music for four drums and string quartet. His compositions were virtuosic in nature with complex rhythmic and metrical structures.

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Between 1954 and 1956, Colgrass served in the U.S. Army, performing in he Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Germany. After his time in the service, he returned to the University of Illinois, earning his bachelor of music degree in 1956. In the following decade, Colgrass performed as a free-lance percussionist in New York, playing for opera orchestras, dance groups, pit orchestras, film recordings, and in ensembles specializing in new music. During this time he continued to study composition privately with Wallingford Riegger and Ben Weber between 1958-62. It was under their mentorship that Colgrass began to write compositions in the twelve-tone idiom. This changed b