Symphonic Band Concert Set for Dec. 9

by Richard Veit

Baylor University's Symphonic Band-a 52-member ensemble conducted by Michael Haithcock, professor of conducting and director of bands-will present its second concert of the fall semester at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 9, in Jones Concert Hall in the Glennis McCrary Music Building.
Assisting Haithcock will be Jeffrey Grogan, assistant professor and associate director of bands.
The program will open with Richard Wagner's "Huldigungsmarsch." Wagner wrote this work in 1864 for his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
The Symphonic Band also will perform Johann Sebastian Bach's familiar "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," in an arrangement by Alfred Reed.
In composer Martin Ellerby's words, Paris Sketches "is my personal tribute to a city I love, and each movement pays homage to some part of the French capital and to other composers who lived, worked or passed through it." The work is in four descriptive movements: "Saint-Germain-des-Prés," "Pigalle," "Père Lachaise" and "Les Halles."
Another programmatic French composition, Darius Milhaud's Suite Française, dates from the time of World War II. According to the composer, "A publisher asked me for an easy piece for a school band, so I wrote my Suite Française and used folk tunes from Normandy, Brittany, the île-de France (of which Paris is the center), Alsace-Lorraine and Provence in order to acquaint students with the folklore of the provinces where the Allied Forces were fighting to free my country."
The concert will close with Alfred Reed's Russian Christmas Music. Like the Milhaud suite, this work was also written in 1944. Its four main sections are titled "Children's Carol," "Antiphonal Chant," "Village Song" and "Cathedral Chorus."
The Symphonic Band concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.