MUI 301 Syracuse University Shelley Hanson & Jazz Music Essay Write a 2-3 pages with this instructions.These are not music theory or music history assignme

MUI 301 Syracuse University Shelley Hanson & Jazz Music Essay Write a 2-3 pages with this instructions.These are not music theory or music history assignments, but an opportunity for you to investigate this music, and do some creative thinking and writing (your writing may include as much music theory and history as you like, however). We are not looking for a specific set of answers – this is an opportunity for writing through discovery (be creative – everyone’s answers and discoveries will be different!). Islas y Montañas
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Tocata

Volver a la Montaña

Seis Manuel

La Tumba de Alejandro Garcie Caturla https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tonZkKhXeR4
Shelley Hanson (https://www.macalester.edu/music/facultystaff/shelleyhanson/)
Shelley Hanson (b. 1951, Washington, D.C.) is an American composer, conductor and clarinetist.
Dr. Hanson received her Ph.D. in performance, music theory, and music literature from Michigan State
University, and has conducted university orchestras and wind ensembles as a faculty member of several
universities. She is also on the artistic staff of the Minnesota Youth Symphonies.
Shelley Hanson’s compositions have been performed on every continent except Antarctica. As a
conductor, record producer, and clarinetist, she has performed as a soloist with many ensembles: the
Minnesota Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the Las Vegas
Philharmonic, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the U.S. Air Force Band, among others.
Also a conductor, record producer, and clarinetist, she and her band, Klezmer and All That Jazz, have
performed her Concerto for Klezmer Band and Orchestra with the Minnesota Orchestra, Milwaukee
Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and many other groups. Klezmer and
All That Jazz recorded traditional and her original music for the award-winning audio book version of the
classic Yiddish folk tale The Dybbuk.
Principal clarinetist of the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra, she has recorded orchestral and chamber music
for Virgin Records, Teldec, Innova, and others, and was a soloist for the soundtrack of the feature
film Out of the Wilderness. She is the founding director of the Macalester College Wind Ensemble (St.
Paul, Minn). ~ Windrep.org
Islas y Montañas was a four-movement suite commissioned by the Minnesota Youth Symphonies later
arranged for wind band by the composer. Most often, bands program movements II and III as stand-alone
selections with movements I and IV often combined in performance.
Volver a la Montaña (Return to the Mountain) is based on several folk tunes of the Quechua (“Inca”)
people of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Near the end of the movement, the folk song Séperacion is quoted
briefly. The words are “My mother told me not to cry, though I’m leaving the mountains forever.” Over
the past century, many of the Quechua people have had to leave their villages forever because of the
economic difficulty of trying to maintain their traditional mountain lifestyle.
The movement opens with a stately processional, followed by a fast dance that uses the characteristic
Latin American alternation or simultaneous appearance of two- and three-beat patterns. In the return to
the processional theme near the end of the movement, muted trumpets echo the flutes, as sound would
echo in the mountains. ~ Note from the composer provided in the score.
I contacted Dr. Hanson recently asking about Séperacion. Her response:
“I found “Separación” in a very old book of Latin American folk songs, from the downtown St. Paul
Public Library. Fortunately, at that time they were still allowing people to go back into the shelves in the
back room and browse — and I stumbled upon the book. It was from the 1940’s, when the U.S. was trying
to make and keep alliances with Latin American countries. That shows you how long the economic
migration from the mountain culture to the flatland cities had been going on, that the book would have
included a song like that as a “folk song.” People had started having to leave the mountains for economic
reasons from at least the first decade of the 20th century.
One thing I would suggest is making the point that there are all kinds of treasures to be found in PRINT
resources that have not been scanned and are not available online. When I have researched folk music,
often I have found something in the catalog that looked intriguing, and when I went to look at it on the
shelf, it was not THAT publication but one that was several books away from it, in (often) another library
classification, that provided the key. That’s how I found this — I was looking for Puerto Rican folk songs,
and then in looking around on the shelves, found the book of Latin American songs. Unfortunately, I did
not write down the name of the book — it didn’t occur to me at the time that having the reference would be
needed in the future. (When I wrote this piece, I was unpublished, and did not think of myself as a
composer, especially one who would ever be published.)
By the way, weirdly the St. Paul Public Library has a GREAT collection of older Latin American song
publications. I think they must have had a librarian in the 1930’s and 1940’s who was interested in this
music, and assembled things that other libraries don’t have, or at least not in the variety that they have.
The Minneapolis Public Library, usually a great source for music, had very little that was useful to me.
Students so often just research online, and don’t look at the print media. It’s a big mistake, especially when
people are doing theses or senior projects. There’s so much out there that is not available online. To me
that might be the most important thing you could teach them — that there are resources out there far in
excess of what they can find on their laptop, and it’s worth the effort to look at the actual publications.”
She also made note of the specific instruments called for, including the bombo
https://www.boliviamall.com/en/2-51-100/bombo-30cm-of-diameter-p11280.html?gscurrency=USD&source=froogle&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6bbV6fCm6AIVOv_jBx1s3w3RE
AQYASABEgKq3fD_BwE
and the Andean flutes, Quena, “which takes awhile to learn to produce a sound — note the notch that you
blow over. It’s tricky — I got one for research and it took some significant practicing to feel semicompetent.”
https://www.etsy.com/listing/677918066/quena-flute-key-in-g-flute-withcase?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=peruvian+
flute&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&cns=1
And the tarka, “is easier for less-skilled players as it is like a recorder and doesn’t require an embouchure
as the Quena does.
I’ve used this one on school demonstrations with a woodwind-player band director being able to
immediately play the 2nd part of a duet. These pictures are of an older one that is rather intricately
carved.”
https://www.etsy.com/listing/651309401/vintage-peruvian-handmade-woodenflute?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=peruvian+
flute&ref=sr_gallery-1-34
“As far as brass instruments go — when the Spanish conquered much of Latin America, they brought
small military bands with them. When you see pictures of mountain bands including brass instruments, it’s
because of that influence. That’s why I included the “brass band soli” section in Volver, despite its mostly
woodwind-heavy scoring in the rest of the piece.
As an aside and having to do with my piece Seis Manuel — in Puerto Rico, the Spanish not only brought
their own military bands, but the Puerto Rican people were trained to play in them, a tradition of hundreds
of years’ standing. In World War 1, the U.S. needed bands for the all-black American regiments, so the
director of military bands for the black regiments went to Puerto Rico to recruit band members — because
they could all read music and had a band-style background in music.
Lots of those band members ended up being discharged in New York City, where they stayed, and
became the basis for what eventually became salsa music.”
She had an exchange with a conductor in Iowa as about this suite as well which you should find
interesting as we try to recreate the composer’s intent:
“His questions:
I have some questions about how you personally use articulations in your wind music. The more I talk
with composers, the more I notice that the way composers want articulations played varies from composer
to composer (e.g., shape of attack, shape of sustain/decay, intensity, separation/connection between notes).
I’m curious to know what you want in your music. Here are my questions:
(1) When you use accents (>), what is your intent for how these notes are to be played?
(2) When you use staccatos (.), what is your intent for how these notes are to be played?
(3) When you use marcatos (^), what is your intent for how these notes are to be played?
(4) When you use tenutos (–), what is your intent for how these notes are to be played?
My response:
The articulation question is an interesting one. I also work with the Miinnesota Youth Symphonies wind
players, and I was just discussing this with them a couple of weeks ago.
My answer to all of your questions would be “that depends.”
When I talked to the MYS students, I spoke about how different composers in different eras meant
different things by their articulations — that an accent mark in Beethoven was a lot different than one in
Stravinsky. Our job is to understand the style that the piece is being written in, and adjust our playing
style accordingly.
Back when people were hand-writing their manuscripts and there were plenty of copyists’ errors,
sometimes we really don’t know what they wanted. For instance in the Brahms clarinet sonatas (I’m a
clarinet player), there are places where there are decrescendo marks written that might really have been
accents, or vice versa. Composers of earlier eras were a lot less likely to have proofread their publications
carefully — if they were even offered the chance — and they certainly didn’t have editors checking things
over for consistency as some (but not all, unfortunately) modern publishers do.
So — as far as your questions, in my own work -an accent in “La Tumba de Alejandro Garcia-Caturla” is going to be a lot more pointed and harsh than
one in “Seis Manuel” because of the totally different styles of the piece. Likewise with staccato.
I use the line ( – ) to indicate a more legato style. One of the marks I use a lot is the dot with a line over it
which I can’t really show in the email format. I use that to indicate that it’s a longer note, but with some
slight separation. (When I’m teaching I refer to it as “a moment of daylight between notes.”) I see some
composers using an accent with a dot under it and that looks like a good solution to differentiate a longernote accent and a clipped accent.
I do not usually use the “marcato” upside-down V mark because jazz players immediately play it one way,
and classically-oriented players play it just like an accent.
Sometimes I use a dotted-line slur in a fast piece to indicate that if the tempo the conductor is taking is too
fast, they can slur the notes instead. “Albanian Dance” has that (look at the last few measures) because
when it’s at the top end of the tempo range, it’s too fast for the single-reed instruments to articulate — but
when it’s at the slow end of the range, articulating it makes it much more exciting.
In general, I’ve found that it’s useful to actually write words like “marcato” or “secco” or “legato” or
“pesante” etc. along with the dynamic mark in sections where it may not be obvious exactly what the style
is. I do try to mention style of articulations in the “Performance Notes” paragraphs at the beginning of my
scores, so that I can explain what the style is that I intend, as it can be so different from one piece to the
next.”
Don’t be shy about contacting a living composer about music you are working on. Sometimes, you won’t
hear back. Most of the time, however, they are happy to hear you are working on their pieces and will
have much to share with you about their works.
Some questions for you to reflect on:
1) What are your general impressions of this music?
2) Listen the whole suite linked above. What are your thoughts on the whole?
3) hink back to the music we performed with Laura met ie o ora Ăn by olo imŵne and
blivion by stor ia olla.
(https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lWYHPrhTRiylC5qQ81WjJIU06k81Bm34?usp=sharing)
Compare and contrast the selections briefly.
4) We are working to explore more music by underrepresented composers in the band world. Who
are some composers that you have experienced through wind band or other mediums that you
would like to be sure is on the radar for everyone?

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