There had not yet been a surge in pieces specifically written for the wind band medium groups would often play arrangements of folk songs, as well as orchestral transcriptions. Prior to the composition of “First Suite in Eb”, the definition of a military band had become quite vague and was used to describe a wide range of ensembles. Gustav Holst was a British composer in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century. In order to ensure the suite would be accessible to as many bands as possible, Holst ingeniously scored the work so that it could be played by a minimum of 19 musicians, with 16 additional parts that could be added or removed without compromising the integrity of the work.Though this blog’s primary focus is to analyze new orchestral and wind band literature, this week I feel the need to jump back into the distant past to elaborate on the beginnings of the wind band medium. During this time period there was no standardized instrumentation among the hundreds of British military bands of the day, and as a result no significant literature had been previously written for the band medium most British bands up to then performed arrangements of popular orchestral pieces. However, the work was originally conceived to be performed by ensembles significantly smaller than the one at Kneller Hall. Although completed in 1909, the suite didn't receive its official premiere until 11 years later on June 23rd, 1920, by an ensemble of 165 musicians at the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall. 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of the First Suite in Eb by Gustav Holst, now considered one of the masterworks and cornerstones of the band literature.
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