Festival Fanfaronade

By Deborah Baker Monday

Item Number: CF.YAS142

ISBN 9780825899058. 9 x 12 inches. Key: E minor.

Festival Fanfaronade is a festival style piece with a touch of a fanfare for strings by popular composer Deborah Baker Monday. After the decisive opening, the piece moves ahead with driving syncopated rhythms and angular melodic figures along with shifting tonalities for a truly dynamic piece; a perfect festival piece.
When Ms. Monday was asked to write this piece, she asked the conductor what the students liked. He said asyncopation!a And there is plenty to go around in Festival Fanfaronade!. The opening twelve measures set a tone of nobility and strength with beautiful harmonies. Then, an undercurrent of driving rhythms thrusts the music into high gear. The momentum never stops as all the instruments pass the melodic material back and forth. The key is E natural-minor with a few accidentals that give it harmonic drive. A variety of articulations are written to expand the character of your ensemble, such as marcato, legato, staccato and spiccato. These bowing styles should be practiced on open strings and then in scales, until the students are able to differentiate the technique required to produce the desired effect in the music. The word afanfaronadea is defined as bragging, blustering, bravado or a fancy word for a fanfare. As the title suggests, Festival Fanfaronade! will keep your orchestra engaged for an exciting performance. As an opening piece or a grand finale this piece is a winner for your next concert or festival.

About Carl Fischer Young String Orchestra Series

This series of Grade 2/Grade 2.5 pieces is designed for second and third year ensembles. The pieces in this series are characterized by:
--Occasionally extending to third position
--Keys carefully considered for appropriate difficulty
--Addition of separate 2nd violin and viola parts
--Viola T.C. part included
--Increase in independence of parts over beginning levels