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This is my arrangement of Symphony Fantastique movement 4, March to the Scaffold. This contains a passage which is one of our great bassoon excerpts, originally it’s for the entire bassoon section to play as a 4 player soli. But I set it here as 3 bassoons 1 contra with the other parts playing the pizz. string lines. I think that this arrangement would also work if played on all bassoons without contras.

Symphony Fantastique PDF

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Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a series of 9 suites inspired by the composition style and harmonic procedures of JS Bach. Each of them is set with a different instrumentation and include traditional Brazilian folk tunes as well as popular melodies from 1930-1940.

Number 5 is for soprano and an orchestra of cellos. The original cello parts are divided into 4 cello parts with 2 players playing each part. In my video I stop before the middle section (because I didn’t want to deal with looping myself tempo changes)

Bachianas Brasileiras no 5 pdf

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Die Moldau by Bedrich Smetana represents a river that flows through Prague. It’s in compound meter and has sixteenth notes running constantly in the accompaniment parts, which gives the piece a flowing feeling. I set the viola line into the bassoon 3 part which is pretty busy but fun.

The ‘big melody’ of this movement is a tune called “La Mantovana” dating  from the sixteenth century. It has been used in many pieces, my favorite being Hatikvah which is the national anthem of Israel.

The PDF of my bassoon quintet arrangement is here:

Die Moldau Score pdf

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Dvorak’s Serenade for winds is a piece that doesn’t get programmed enough. There is a whole catalogue of repertoire for large wind chamber ensembles that mostly goes unplayed, this work is one that gets a little more attention.

There are two passages of running sixteenth notes which originally trade off between bassoon, cello, and clarinet. I changed the voicing of this material to make it more bassoonable.

Dvorak Serenade Bassoons pdf

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This Violin concerto by Vivaldi is well known and gets a lot of air time especially in commercials. I thought that it would be funny to set for bassoon quartet since the bassoon has a specific kind of dry articulation. There are some measures cut from the original to make it more bassoon friendly.

The pdf to the sheet music is here:

Violin RV 315 pdf 

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I’m selling the Contraforte! It’s being sold through Midwest Musical Imports This is a chance to get a contraforte on a budget and with no waiting list.

This is the 2 flageolet (bocal vent) model

Included is an extra bocal, flight case, gig bag, push swab, extra drain felts, reeds, fingering chart, stand, contrabassoon reed-bocal adapter

This instrument is suited for a pro player, who is able to make reeds