PROMISED LAND, The - Parts & Score, SALVATIONIST MUSIC
Availability Available Published 18th October 2008
Cat No.JM48922 Price
£69.95 Composer: Kenneth Downie Category: SALVATIONIST MUSIC
Symphonic Variants for Brass Band & Percussion.
Composer’s Score Notes : Doctor Robert Childs and the Buy as You View Band commissioned this music to be premiered in the Own Choice Section of the 2006 European Brass Band Championships held at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, where the band was the Welsh representative. Their performance drew great praise from the audience, and more importantly perhaps from the adjudicators, who awarded the band first place.
The work is in one continuous movement although it can be viewed as being in a five-sectioned arch, with the first, third and fifth sections providing the quick music, and the second and fourth the slow. The title comes from one of the two main sources for the music, the Welsh hymn Guide met, 0 Thou Great Redeemer, which describes the journey of the Christian soul, through many tribulations, to its final destination-The Promised Land The strong, memorable tune to which it is wedded is Cwm Rhondda, written by John Hughes, and this provides the material for much of the quick music. The other source, heavily influencing the slow music, is the lovely Welsh love-song, Myfanwy, by Joseph Parry, with its unforgettable falling sixth intervals near the end.
The work is not a conscious piece of programme music in spite of these associations. In abstract terms it is well described in its sub-title: Symphonic Variants for Brass and Percussion. I am well aware however that music is appreciated at different levels. As a language it is much less precise than that of words and as a consequence its meaning or message is less confined, less explicit. It is, perhaps, unwise to be dogmatic about precise meanings in music. For composers, I guess that the subconscious is often quite busy during the creative process, so that things are never quite as clinical as one would think!
