Pierné: Impressions de Music-Hall No.2 L'Excentrique (Little Tich) - wind quintet by Gabriel Pierne Woodwind Quintet - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1697181

Gabriel Pierné: Impressions de Music-Hall No.2 L'Excentrique (Little Tich)

Arranged from the piano version for wind quintet

Preview is an mp3

(English: Impressions of a Music Hall)

The Impressions de Music Hall suite comes towards the end of Pierné’s long and distinguished career - a composer and executant at the height of his powers. It demonstrates the composer’s catholic tastes and capitalizes on the breadth and fluency of his creative experience.

Although he was influenced by Satie, Chabrier, Milhaud, and Stravinsky in borrowing musical elements from popular entertainment such as parody, burlesque, music-hall, ragtime, jazz, circus, and Spanish influences, his music remains rooted in the mainstream French tradition inherited from his teachers, Thomas, Franck, Massenet, and Saint-Saens, making it a little more refined, perhaps, than that of his younger contemporaries.

That he loved to write for the ballet and held a special affection for the music-hall and other forms of popular entertainment is certain.

The present score, originally conceived as a piano suite in the summer of 1925, was transcribed for orchestra a year later. It was then performed as a ballet score (à la Americaine), and transcribed yet again in a version for violin and piano in collaboration with the eminent virtuoso Samuel Dushkin.

This is my arrangement of mvt.II L'excentrique (Little Tich)

The second movement is a portrayal of the English comedian, Little Tich, who spent much of his career performing in Paris. That he should be portrayed in music by both Pierné and Stravinsky, under the same soubriquet “Excentrique” indicates the nature of his popularity.

Little Tich’s trademark Big-Boot Dance had been perfected by wearing boots with soles 28 inches (71 cm) long, enabling him to lean forward at preposterous angles.

Pierné’s orchestral portrayal captures his character with a jaunty march, the theme directed to be played comically and brassily on muted trumpet, punctuated by car horns (muted by a felt hat!), and a wry descending bassoon staccato figure reminiscent of Tich’s absurd leanings.

My arrangement gives the trumpet melody to clarinet 1.

A startling interlude disrupts the flow of the march and bookends a new section that is harmonically rich and richly-scored. After the march is heard for a second time it is followed by a passage in a playfully skipping manner that modulates to B major and another contrasting section in the style of a gavotte. The music becomes more whimsical with upper woodwinds scampering about, eventually sliding into C major for the reprise of the march.