The Maestro’s Mashup

Description

The Maestro’s Mashup – Classical Music Medley for Concert Band (Bill Miller)

ABOUT THIS PIECE

Grade: 5
Length: 10 minutes

Hear centuries’ worth of music collide in this imaginative mashup for concert band. “The Maestro’s Mashup” includes over 80 Baroque, Classical, and Romantic-era melodies. How many famous tunes can you identify?

From the composer:
“Shortly after I composed “Anthems Around the World”, a student challenged me to do something similar for classical music. This request was followed up by a playful “bet ya can’t.” Now, naturally, I had to do the only mature thing in the face of such a provocation and prove the kid wrong. Jokes aside, I’d already been toying with the idea for a while. I set to work sifting through endless stacks of paper and PDFs, ascertaining which pieces I wanted to include and how well they’d fit together. Multiple spreadsheets later, I had a rough blueprint of what I wanted to do…but now I needed to actually sit down and write it.

I set myself the following parameters:

1. The pieces had to be from the Baroque, Classical, or Romantic eras (1600 to roughly 1914);
2. A full melodic idea/motif had to fit in order to count;
3. I had to include pieces and composers that weren’t as well known in addition to the “staples”; and
4. As often as practicable, I had to have 3 pieces playing simultaneously.

I was aware of the classical music mashups for piano by the late, great Grant Woolard, and I wanted to see if I could include MORE pieces than he did.I aimed to incorporate 60 pieces of music (including repeats), but I might have gone a bit overboard with a whopping 82.”