Little Fantasy, for Horn and Piano, on "General Taylor" (Donation piece)

In thanks for a generous donation from my friend Ryan Peters.

PDF available here! (PDF for the horn part here!)

Shortly after the turn of the new year, I was surprised by a very kind and generous donation from an old friend. So I went back in to our common history and suggested that the piece I would write in response could be an elaboration on "General Taylor," a tune we both enjoyed from our appreciation for Great Big Sea and similar folk groups.

The earliest source I could find for either tune or words for General Taylor dates to 1914; the song likely refers to American General (and President) Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850. The song is a funeral procession, describing the many things to be done to honour the memory of the dead. This Fantasy... is not. Context is more or less disregarded in this one in favour of just playing with the melody.

Hopefully this little piece provides some interest and joy to horn players out there! And if you'd like a piece like this for yourself... the donation button is below!

Little Fantasy on "General Taylor" by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Your donations can help me keep writing these! Click to feed a composer!

Partita on a theme by Monk

NOTE: ORIGINALLY THE PIECE WAS NAMED "PARTITA," AND I FAILED TO CHANGE THE NAME OF THE BLOG POST BEING WRITTEN CONCURRENTLY WITH THE MUSIC. OOPS, I GUESS.

Anther hymn tune which occasionally I've been known to warm up to. While its repetitious nature and simple harmonies leave me a little cold much of the time, "Ascension," by William Henry Monk, is nonetheless an energetic and entertaining piece, full of opportunity for adaptation.

And so. Variations. A straight reharmonization could be interesting, too, but I didn't do that. There's not a lot of extremely difficult passagework (until the fugue, anyway). There was a deliberate attempt to vary the textures more than anything else, and so concepts of registration (except where needed in the pedal) and dynamics are left up to the performer, at least for the moment.

The theme, found in just about any hymnal I know, and the first variation. The theme is just the hymn spread across the open score, although there's no reason that it couldn't be played in the manuals alone.
The first variation is intended as a two-voice march-time piece. On its own, usable as an introduction to the hymn, if you don't mind a half-speed introduction. Not much to say about it, the right hand expresses the melody, the left hand dances around it, life is good.

The second variation is a trio in strict canon, because apparently I have a good dose of self-loathing. The pedals, at 4' pitch, have the theme, which, as you can see, has been converted to triple time, while the manuals have a canon. Despite the same notes as the theme, we're in E Minor here, not G Major.

Now we're wandering in to new territory. In the style of a sarabande, varying between E Minor and E Major.

Toccata. Straightforward. The theme's hidden in amongst all those sixteenth notes.

Back to a trio. The theme is reduced and stretched out and altered and all sorts of things, but it's there, trust me. It forms the basis for the left hand's ostinato, and the framework of the right hand melody in the second line.

And finally.

Fugue. I don't really know that there's much to say about it, but there it is.

And the finale. Back to G Major for an abbreviated restatement of the theme, and a long cadence.

So. A piece for Ascensiontide.
PDF link is here.
Comments are welcome.

Variations on Monk's "Ascension" by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Folk song for choir - Voyaguer rowing song #1

I'm a massive folk-song geek. I play some of the most complex music on one of the most complicated instruments in the world, and yet putting a simple vocal line with a simple accompaniment is often what attracts my attention. And my memories of the voyageur songs from my upbringing in French immersion schools are some of my favourites.

V'la l'bon vent is a voyageur rowing song. At least it is in my memory. It's got a wonderful energy behind it that drew me in as a kid, and about six years ago I wrote an arrangement for choir that I'm about to share.

PDF is available here.

There's the first three pages, representing two choruses and two verses. The verses are, by and large, unaccompanied. The verses are all in 5/4 time, while the choruses are in four-beat bars. The accompaniment basically stays out of the way, keeping time and reinforcing the harmony.

And yet, I still find the arrangement charming and fun. I hope you do too.

V'la l'bon vent by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Piano music (still religious)

I mentioned that I'd get away from organ music all the time.

Pange Lingua is an ancient piece of plainsong (wikipedia info here) with a compelling little tune. Very simple and straightforward. Six lines of music, ranging an octave. Several years ago, I wrote a little set of variations on the tune for the piano. The style is one I would use at St. John's College while improvising during communion - high in the piano range, in perpetual motion, with wavelike figures. Eventually (in the second variation), this set breaks in to overtone playing of the sort Messaien asks for, where the right hand softly plays the natural overtones of the melody, colouring it. This has become a favourite technique of mine at the piano, and has figured in to some of my solo preludes and similar pieces, and in to the previous mentioned Sonatina for Piano and Violin. It's also a part of my writing in my Flute/'Cello/Piano trio which will no doubt be seen here soon.

I had some fun with the image file this time and made it in to an animated GIF, slowly scrolling through each page in turn so you can get an idea of each variation. It should change once every five seconds. For those interested in the five-page PDF file, it can be found here.

Pange Lingua Variations by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.