Last night, I went to Santanta High School to hear Daniel Baldwin conduct the Satanta High School Band’s performance of a piece I hadn’t heard in about seven years, my Variations on a French Carol. I gave Daniel the score and parts when I visited him last year, knowing that he was interested in new music, but not really thinking that anything would come of it. Daniel, however, took the ball and ran with it, and last night gave an admirable performance.
I wrote the Variations in 2001, when I was the band director at Northeastern High School in Springfield, Ohio. It was the first piece I ever wrote for a large ensemble, and the first major piece of mine to get a performance. Since then, I have moved on in style and in some of my ideas, but in the piece you can see that I’ve long been fascinated with rhythm–things like hemiola, asymmetrical meters and metric modulation. In retrospect, it was a tall order for a smallish high school band, but we pulled it together admirably.
What I’ve always loved about the piece is that it isn’t “typical” Christmas music. I’ve never been able to stomach the idea of starting Christmas music with a school group in October and playing a medley of medleys of the same tired melodies, all in (of course) B-flat major. The Variations is a good teaching piece–each section is a study in a different style and texture. Each instrument that was available to me gets a moment in the spotlight. The piece was received well at its premiere in 2001, and at its “second premiere” last night.