Symphonic Band Concert Additional Notes

Felix Alexandre Guilmant (1837- 1911)
According to a website dedicated to his memory which includes a list of recordings, he was "one of the greatest organists in the late nineteenth century...  Guilmant was world famous in his day and made three concert trips to the United States of America... Guilmant was a great improviser and a well-known teacher. .. His own oeuvre [as a composer] is large: 94 opus numbers and many unpublished or unnumbered works."

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562 -1621)
According to Classical Net, "he is widely considered to be the greatest of Dutch composers" and "one of the major figures in the transition from Renaissance to Baroque compositional styles."   "Sweelinck was one of the great transitional figures in Western music, known for his formal rigor and theoretical knowledge of the most influential compositional schools of the time."

The piece "Ballo del granduca" refers to an Italian dance composed by Emilio de Cavalieri to be performed at the marriage of Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany.  Other composers did their versions of this dance.

Percy Grainger (1882 –1961)
Grainger was a composer, arranger and a popular pianist of his day.  Born in Australia, he relocated to the United States in 1914.

"Children's March (Over the Hills and Far Away)"demonstrates Grainger's"thorough understanding and effective scoring for wind band... obviously influenced by his period of service in the U.S. Army between 1917/19, having enlisted as a bandsman (2nd Class) in the Coast Artillery Band. A brilliant and extravagant example of this ability is embodied in the Children's March 'especially written to use all the forces of the Coast Artillery Band which I was serving in 1918.' This is one of his earliest wind compositions which required a piano as a n integral part of the ensemble."--Eric Banks. "Children's March is considered to be one of Grainger's most memorable contributions to the band literature."--Dana Perna.

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) 
While Sousa "wrote an incredible number of marches, the one I love is The Fairest of the Fair. He wrote it in 1908 – the only work he composed that year. He wrote this for the Boston Food Fair, and the story goes that he was inspired by a lovely lass he saw, but never met."--Lori Sutherland

Richard Strauss (June 1864 – 1949)

Strauss is considered a leading exponent of late German Romanticism.  In 1962 pianist Glenn Gould called him "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century."  "Allerseelen " is a love song he composed in 1885, which remains "among the most popular he wrote."