[#250] May 06, 2024
1975/1982 | Brass Band/Symphonic Band | Grade 5 | 10'-15' | Suite
Ragtimes and Habaneras, by German composer Hans Werner Henze is our Composition of the Week.
The "Ragtimes & Habaneras" were commissioned by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, one of the most famous Brass Bands in Great Britain. Individual scenes and short pieces of incidental music in typical American dance rhythms have been taken from the Opera 'La Cubana', written shortly before, and arranged and combined in a kind of suite. It is an effective, happy work, full of contrasts and allusions to other music.
Ragtimes and Habaneras were premiered on September 13, 1975, at the Royal Albert Hall, in London, for the BBC Proms, by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and the Black Dyke Mills Band both under Elgar Howarth.
It has a duration of about 14’ minutes and it is cast in eleven short movements.
The original version for Brass was scored by Henning Paul, and calls for the following instrumentation:
Soprano cornet in Eb-flat; 8 Bb-flat Cornets; flugelhorn, 3 Eb-flat Alto horns; 2 Barytons, 2 Euphoniums, 2 trombones, 1 bass trombone, 2 Eb-flat Tubas, 2 Bb-flat tubas.
At the composer’s request, his former student, Marcel Wengler, arranged a version for wind band in 1982, which was premiered by Factory band of the United Stainless-Steel Works, on October 28, 1982, in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, under the direction of Marcel Wengler.
This version has some very small metrical changes and the addition of percussion. It is scored for standard wind band setting, with the addition of 2 flugelhorns and 1 tenor horn.
Both versions are available at Schott Music.
Hans Werner Henze began his musical studies at the state music school of Braunschweig in 1942, where he studied piano, percussion, and theory. Henze had to break off his studies after being conscripted into the army in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War. He was trained as a radio officer. He was soon captured by the British and held in a prisoner-of-war camp for the remainder of the war.
In 1945 he became an accompanist in the Bielefeld City Theatre and continued his studies under Wolfgang Fortner at Heidelberg University in 1946.
Henze had some successful performances at Darmstadt, including an immediate success in 1946 with a neo-baroque work for piano, flute and strings, that brought him to the attention of Schott's, the music publishers. He also took part in the famous Darmstadt New Music Summer School, a key vehicle for the propagation of avant-garde techniques. At the 1947 summer school, Henze turned to serial technique. He moved to Italy in 1953, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Henze's large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music, and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition.
Other works by Henze for winds include:
Concertino for Piano and Winds (1947)
Hochzeitsmusik aus dem Ballett “Undine” (1957)
Muses of Sicily (1966)
Adventures of Don Quixote (arr: Studnitzky) 1993