Austin Symphonic Band Performing Marching Song
Austin Symphonic Band. February 14, 2023 concert at the Connally HS Performing Arts Center in Austin, TX. ASB performing Marching Song by Gustav Holst (arr. Timothy Reynish). Assistant Music Director Bill Haehnel conducting. "The Sun Never Sets" Concert.
Video and Sound Production: Eddie Jennings
From the program notes written by David Cross:
Marching Song (1906)
Gustav Holst (1874–1934), arr. Reynish
Gustav Holst was not an instant success. He was weak and sickly as a child and his hands were not up to the endurance required of a concert pianist. He was at first denied entrance to the Royal College of Music, but undeterred, he wrote an operetta (largely influenced by Arthur Sullivan) at the age of 18. He persevered through practice to become a fine organist and trombonist. He was a lifelong friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams and enjoyed a collaborative association in which they would often bounce ideas off each other. Holst was a devoted educator and taught at Morley College and St. Paul’s Girls School for decades.
Marching Song comes to us from Holst’s larger work, Two Songs Without Words. Scored for small military band and written early in his career, it was dedicated to Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams responded, “It was nice to open your parcel and find my initials over your pieces—I don’t know what you owe to me—but I know all I owe to you—if I ever do anything worth doing, it will be greatly owing to having such a friend as you ‘at my command’ as the folk songs say, always ready to help and advise—and someone whose yea is always yea and nay, nay—which is a quality one really wants in a friend and so seldom gets.”
Listen for:
• A staid first theme with crisp dotted eighth–sixteenth rhythms introduced by trumpet and euphonium.
• An extended phrase second theme, smooth in contrast to the first theme’s angular nature.
• Blurring of the bounds between major and minor modes.
