I did an arrangement of the third movement on Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint for bassoon octet. This is a really interesting clarinet piece that puts emphasis on the bass clarinet lines.
The PDF of the arrangement is here New York Counterpoint Bassoons
Here is an arrangement of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide Overture.
I had the opportunity to play a run of the entire prediction a few years ago. It was a reduced version and from my vantage point in the pit I could watch the whole show as it was going on, so I had a lot of fun. Throughout the comic operetta the characters individually going through harrowing ordeals that end up turning out for the better, with each of them better off than they began. The over arching message of the show is “We live in the best of all possible worlds”
PDF to the Score is here Candide Bassoons
I arranged the first movement of Widor’s Organ Symphony for 4 bassoons and 2 contrabassoons. This piece has been a favorite of mine for a long time and I always wanted to do an arrangement but it didn’t seem possible. I finally got around to doing it and I think it turned out pretty good.
The first bassoon. part has high F, F# and G so it would be good to have a high note setup to play the Bassoon 1 part. Here is the PDF of the score and parts.
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.
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
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:
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.
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
Scarlatti keyboard sonatas are a staple for harpsichord and piano players, and a few of them fit well on wind instruments. K.517 is quick but its also fairly simple and repetitive.
I have been arranging and recording some music during this 2020 quarantine period. So I wanted to make the arrangements freely available, I will be posting more of them in the next few weeks.
Passacaglia and Fugue BWV 582 pdf
Kristopher King 