George Nicholson: Muybridge Frames - Tenor Trombone & Piano

To downlaod the sample score click on the link below
https://warwickmusic.egnyte.com/dl/5q0Cm07rtD/TB162_sample_score.pdf_


This piece was written in 1992 in response to John Kenny's request for a substantial large-scale concert work for trombone and piano. it developed from two points of departure, both drawn from early photographic imagery. The celebrated 1917 publicity photograph of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band is a startling trick shot in which two brass players appear to perform from inside the open grand piano - the slide of Eddie Edward's trombone projects over the end of the keyboard. I began to consider the possibility of musical situations in which the sound of the trombone would effectively be initiated by the piano, and vice versa, and the question of to what extent the indentities of the two instruments could merge.

I was also interested in composing a work in which the two players would, to a large extent, develop seperate discourses. Here, the early motion photography of Eadweard Muybridge provided a useful stimulus which led directly to the formulation of the framing device of the title.

Just as Muybridge, in his Animal Locomotion collection of 1887 presented movements in discrete photographic images (allowing people to see for themselves whether or not a galloping horse did in fact momentarily lose contact with the ground!), so I imagined certain points in the piece, in which the developing relationship, between the two musical discourses would become explicit, as in the freeze one or other instrument appears to initiate, while the other follows.

The work is laid out in one continuous movement in five sections, representing a single cycle of possibilities, departing from synchronicity and then returning to it in the final section.

George Nicholson


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SKU: TB162
Composer: George Nicholson
Difficulty: Advanced
Instrumentation: Tenor Trombone; Piano 
Range: Bb1-Eb5