SACRAMENTO RIVER Tone Poem Full Orchestra - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1875338

SACRAMENTO RIVER tone poem orchestra inc mezzo.This is a journey down the Sacramento River from source to San Francisco Bay. The Introduction describes the towering, quiet, cold Mount Shasta. Next we hear the Big Spring forming a rippling, sparkling, babbling stream (which is the beginning of our river and a hint of the main theme, on Glockenspiel and Harp. As the stream calms, the solo violin gives the main refrain melody. As we join an Indigenous group canoeing, a drum accompanies a flute playing canoe tune from the Chinook. We quickly pass the great falls at Dunsmuir and a calmer stretch leads to Shasta Dam where we enter the very noisy hydroelectric turbine chamber. Downstream, we hear the refrain but in the minor mode because of the environmental damage caused by the Dam. Passing a Maidu encampment, we hear a Native woman sing and play with children (Hee na nee na), and at the Visitor Centre a modern orchestra renders my arrangement of a Maidu tune "for healing" recorded as Ishi, the last surviving member of a Maidu tribe sang it. It's pentatonic. Then we pass a Native woman on the bank singing a lullaby (again, pentatonic, but minor this time). At Sims, we negotiate the rapids--many chromatic runs. Near Sacramento on a calm reach, we watch two swans (two cellos) and if we listen carefully, we hear the song of Humphrey the humpback whale (double bass solo): for this I transcribed the early phrases of a 30-minute song recorded off Hawaii in 1998. Finally, the great River enters Suisun Bay, and its waters flow into the Pacific via San Francisco Bay.




DURATION: 20 minutes.