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SKU: CF.YPS300F
Composed by Anthony Susi. This edition: saddle-wire stitch. Mysteriously (q=82). Full score. Composed 2025. 16 pages. Duration 0:02:05. Carl Fischer Music #YPS300F. Published by Carl Fischer Music (CF.YPS300F).ISBN 9781491169384. UPC: 798408101954. 9x12 inches. Key: G minor.
The Snallygaster folklore creature comes alive in this spooky programmatic work for young band. The first accounts began in the eighteenth century from Frederick County, Maryland of a terrifying monster called a Schneller Geist (German for "quick ghost") with a twenty-foot tail, two huge wings, a metallic sharp beak and claws like steel hooks, snatching children and livestock. Allegedly, seven-pointed stars kept the Snallygaster away and can still be seen painted on local barns. It has been reported that the legend was resurrected in the nineteenth-century to frighten freed slaves.It remained a folktale for many years until 1909 when a Maryland paper, the Middletown Valley Register, began printing accounts of Snallygaster sightings in an effort to increase their sales. The publicity led to rumors that the Smithsonian Institution was offering a reward for its capture and that President Theodore Roosevelt considered postponing an African safari to hunt the creature. There were no more sightings of the mysterious beast until twenty-three years later, when it once again appeared in Frederick County as the offspring from 1909, according to the Middletown Valley Register hoax. More recently, the Snallygaster has appeared in a video game and books. Most notedly, author J. K. Rowling referenced the Snallygaster in her 2017 Fantastic Beasts from her Harry Potter world.PERFORMANCE NOTES:This tongue-in-cheek musical portrayal presents the Snallygaster in an eerie minor mode theme with a variety of metallic percussion, symbolic of its metal beak and claws. The slurred eighth notes in mm. 36-39 represent its flapping wings. Close attention to the dynamics, staccato, and accented notes will help magnify the beast. The screams and cows mooing are designed to create a sense of the creature’s looming terror, intended to get a rise from your audience.
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