Clowns - Score
String Orchestra - Sheet Music

Orchestra string orchestra - Grade 3.5

SKU: KJ.O1085F

Composed by Bud Woodruff. Repertoire, Strings. Music book. 32 pages. Neil A. Kjos Music Company #O1085F. Published by Neil A. Kjos Music Company (KJ.O1085F).

9 x 12 inches.

Composer Bud Woodruff pays tribute to the American Circus and the many different clowns and clown acts that have graced the Big Top for many generations. Clowns features a variety of captivating themes which allows the imaginations of musicians and audiences to have fun! For additional learning opportunities, the score and parts contain, Learning Bank: Clowns and the Circus, A Brief Look. performance time – 4:45

Clowns has a unique history. While in college, taking composition lessons from Michael Horvit, I had written a number of shorter works. After completing one, he turned to me and said, “Let’s do something BIG! Think about it for a week and let me know what you are contemplating.” I was just finishing reading the short story by Tolkien on Fantasy, entitled “A Leaf by Niggle,” and it came to me that it would make a great piece for orchestra and narrator, similar to “Peter and the Wolf,” but quite unique, too. ‘Niggle’, a painter, was a very silly character, and very clown-like in many ways. He had two strongly conflicting sides to his personality, so I wanted to depict him with a bi-tonal theme. Dr. Horvit liked the idea, so I set about ‘designing’ a leitmotif for each character, action, or mood. In its final form, it was in two acts and around 30 minutes of music in length. Unfortunately, during a change of location, we moved a box of trash and threw away the box which contained that work, along with everything else I had written to that point. I was crushed, because I could not hope to recall the vast majority of the piece, and I had no spare time to try to reconstruct it. But the Prelude and opening of the work, along with the Finale, stuck in my mind. I reconstructed the Prelude and first ‘scene’ around 2010, but in 2016, got around to deciphering my memories of the Finale, which originally was a wild, downhill bicycle ride. No longer having the middle 25 minutes of the work, I worked the two remaining sections into a piece and, maintaining the underlying humorous intent, entitled it Clowns, because not only would the original title not make sense, but the music reminded me of clown acts I had seen in circuses and in cartoons, not to mention Red Skelton, Emmett Kelly, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin routines and movies.