Downloads.Html [Accessed November 29, 2011]

Florida State University Libraries

Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2012 A Performer's Guide to Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson's Sunstar for Solo B-Flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Recorders Kenneth C. Trimmins

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF MUSIC

A PERFORMER’S GUIDE TO DR. THOMAS JEFFERSON ANDERSON’S

SUNSTAR FOR SOLO B-FLAT TRUMPET AND TWO CASSETTE RECORDERS

KENNETH C. TRIMMINS

A treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Music

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2012 Kenneth C. Trimmins defended this treatise on June 27, 2012.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

Christopher R. Moore Professor Directing Treatise

Richard Clary University Representative

Paul Ebbers Committee Member

Patrick Meighan Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the treatise has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

I believe in the old saying about a village raising a child. I would like to dedicate this document to the “village” that raised and educated me; my entire family, former teachers and friends who have been so supportive of me during my life of learning.

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank God for giving me the strength and presence of mind to accomplish this wonderful achievement. The completion of this treatise would not have been possible without the encouragement, assistance and support of many people. First, to the members of my committee: Christopher Moore, Richard Clary, Patrick Meighan, and Paul Ebbers. Thank you so much for the advice, patience, and understanding that each of you shared that was beneficial to the completion of this document. I would like to express my heart-felt gratitude to my trumpet professor, Dr. Christopher R. Moore; as my mentor, he was exceptionally supportive of me from the very beginning. Although I enjoyed a successful career as a professional commercial trumpet player before attending The Florida State University, Dr. Moore accepted me into his studio and was able to mold me into the stylistically diverse performer and teacher that I am today. Thank you for taking a chance on me. Family is very important to me, and without the love, patience, understanding and sacrifices of my wife Florence and our children, Katrina and Kenny, I would not have been able to complete this treatise. I also would like to express tremendous gratitude to my mother, Mrs. Willie R. Trimmins who encouraged me, sacrificed so much to buy my first trumpet, and attended every one of my graduation ceremonies; I love you with all my heart. Also, a great amount of gratitude is given to Matthew Martin, a former student of mine who served as the electronics technician during my lecture recital, recording engineer of my chamber recital, and shared his expert knowledge of computer-generated music writing software and helped create the “time-analysis” example. Last, and certainly not least, I want to thank Dr. Thomas Jefferson “T.J.” Anderson for his patience and friendship during this entire project. He is an amazing, caring and talented man and I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet him and his lovely wife Lois. Thank you for your hospitality and sharing so much of your life’s experiences with me. I sincerely hope he will write an autobiography soon, for it would be a fascinating read.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v List of Tables ...... vii List of Figures ...... viii Abstract ...... ix Chapter One: Introduction ...... 1 Chapter Two: Biographical Notes on Doctor Thomas Jefferson Anderson ...... 7 Composers...... 9

Scholars ...... 11

Chapter Three: Doctor Anderson’s Multiple Performance Platform Concept ...... 13 Chapter Four: Extended Techniques and Their Use in Sunstar for B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes ...... 20 Chapter Five: Analytical Profile of Sunstar B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes ...... 29 Trumpet A: Giocoso ...... 30

Trumpet A: Tempo ad lib ...... 31

Trumpet A: Andante ...... 32

Trumpet A: Allegretto ...... 34

Trumpet B: Cantabile ...... 36

Trumpet B: Grazioso...... 37

Trumpet B: Vivace ...... 38

Trumpet B: Tempo Ad Lib...... 40

Trumpet B: Dolcissimo ...... 40

Chapter Six: Performance Practices for Sunstar B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes ...... 42 Articulation……………………………………………………………………………………44

Musicality ...... 47

v Improvisation………………………………………………………………………………….50 Extended Techniques ...... 51

Trumpet A, Giocoso Movement...... 51

Trumpet A,Tempo ad lib Movement ...... 52

Trumpet A, Andante Movement...... 53

Trumpet A, Allegretto Movement ...... 53

Extended Techniques: Trumpet B ...... 54

Technology ...... 54

Chapter Seven: Summary and Conclusions ...... 56 Appendix A: Transcription of Dr. Thomas J. Anderson Interview ...... 58 Appendix B: Annotated Bibliography of Selected Published Chamber Works ...... 68 Personals, A Cantata for Narrator, Chorus, and Brass Ensemble ...... 70

Chamber Symphony for Chamber Orchestra ...... 71

Variations on a Theme by M.B. Tolson ...... 73

Transitions, a fantasy for ten instruments ...... 74

Re-Creation, A Liturgical Music Drama ...... 76

Inaugural Piece...... 78

Fanfare to the School Volunteers for Boston ...... 79

Bahia, Bahia for Chamber Orchestra ...... 80

Appendix C: Mockup of Sunstar’s Combined Solo Parts ...... 82 Bibliography of Works Cited ...... 98 Biographical Sketch ...... 100

vi LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Salient Features of Trumpet A ...... 26 Table 2. Salient Features of Trumpet B ...... 27 Table 3. Fundamental Sunstar Articulations ...... 47 Table 4. Exercises to Facilitate Musicality ...... 49

vii LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Bernard Fitzgerald’s Prelude for Trumpet Alone, first page ...... 5 Figure 2. Yo Yo Ma and T.J. Anderson ...... 12 Figure 3. Darius Milhaud ...... 13 Figure 4. Aspen Music Festival, Aspen, Colorado ...... 15 Figure 5. Sunstar Trumpet B, Cantabile measures 1–8 ...... 30 Figure 6. Silent two minutes and five seconds start to Trumpet A Giocoso ...... 30 Figure 7. Sunstar measures 52–60, Trumpet A Giocoso ...... 31 Figure 8. Opening measures, Sunstar Trumpet A, Tempo ad lib ...... 32 Figure 9. Brahms lullaby excerpt ...... 33 Figure 10. Anderson lullaby excerpt, Andante from Trumpet A ...... 33 Figure 11. Sunstar Trumpet A, Allegretto, measures 1-20………………………………………35 Figure 12. Sunstar Trumpet A, measures 21-47 ...... 35 Figure 13. Sunstar Trumpet B, Cantabile ...... 37 Figure 14. Sunstar Trumpet B, Grazioso ...... 38 Figure 15. Sunstar Trumpet B, Vivace ...... 39 Figure 16. Sunstar Trumpet B, Tempo ad lib; Gillespie-like melodic content ...... 40

viii ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to describe a unique unaccompanied trumpet solo composed in 1984 by Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson entitled Sunstar for B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes. Although this paper is not intended as an historical source, the author includes a synopsis of trumpet history prior to the twentieth century with particular emphasis on the unaccompanied trumpet genre and composers use of extended techniques. During research for a lecture, the author was surprised to uncover a relative small number of unaccompanied works written for the trumpet. Further research uncovered an even smaller number of similar works composed by African American composers. Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson’s composition offered a distinctive opportunity for study on many levels. Sunstar for B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes employs technology, in the form of recording media, to create a multi-level performance platform using a monophonic instrument. It also combines classical and implied jazz elements throughout, and makes use of numerous extended techniques to deliver an interesting presentation. A performer’s guide is included to aid those who might have questions performing in one or both genres. A selected annotated bibliography of trumpet and chamber works by Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson is also included in the document.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

Common study in many university level trumpet studios includes an applied curriculum based in learning, preparing and performing solo works of different musical periods. For that reason it is very unusual to find a student who has not been exposed to the trumpet works of Joseph Haydn, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Philip Telemann and Giuseppe Torrelli, as well as composers of the twentieth century such as Alexander Arutunian, Henri Tomasi and Joseph Turrin. These prescribed works, although varied in complexity, expression and other factors, are fundamentally similar, using traditional compositional forms, theoretical construction, and based on widely accepted and easily explained orthodoxy. Another distinguishing and obvious characteristic shared by these works is that they are all composed with additional instrumentation that is used to strengthen the work’s performance. While researching topics for a lecture on trumpet solos, it became obvious that the unaccompanied solo is a genre of composition that is somewhat neglected by composers. Scott Whitener’s book, A Complete Guide to Brass, lists several categories of recommended trumpet literature, yet the category labeled “Unaccompanied Trumpet” lists only sixteen unaccompanied trumpet solos dating from the early eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century.1 Bach’s Six Short Solo Suites for Trumpet, one of the sixteen pieces listed, technically could be eliminated because it was originally composed for cello. Another interesting discovery during research on this topic was the relatively small number of African American composers who have ventured into this realm of composition, as indicated in Hornes’ Brass Music of Black Composers. Of the over 200 composers listed in this resource, only four black composers have completed works for unaccompanied trumpet.2 Maurice André, Wynton Marsalis and Philip Smith are among the most admired trumpet players of our time and are partially responsible for the popularity of the trumpet

1 Scott Whitener and Cathy L. Whitener, “Recommended Literature” in A Complete Guide to Brass Instruments and Technique (New York: Schirmer, 1997), 41. 2 Aaron Horne, Brass Music of Black Composers: A Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 335. 1 as a solo instrument. Whether performing works with orchestras, jazz bands or other types of ensembles, their presentations are of the highest quality. Trumpet players like these demonstrate exceptional instrumental control and musicality. However, even among these musicians, performances of unaccompanied solo works are rare, due to the lack of literature for the unaccompanied trumpet. The unaccompanied trumpet solo category has been, for the most part, neglected by composers. This is an interesting dilemma since the early trumpet, with its military and ceremonial responsibilities, was originally an unaccompanied solo instrument. Familiarity with the history and evolution of the trumpet may generate theories on why, throughout centuries of music history, we have so few unaccompanied trumpet solos. Although a definitive answer to the question is not offered or even attempted in this document, one can only speculate about the difficulty that exists in writing for a monophonic instrument. The composer’s creative process is stretched to its limit, forcing the employment of creative means to develop musicality, excitement and interest. The challenges involved in writing for unaccompanied trumpet are vast; however, performing an unaccompanied solo is an incredible endeavor for the soloist as well. The player must not only have total command of the instrument (i.e., fundamentals in tonguing, finger dexterity, and sound production), but for an effective performance should have a thorough knowledge of musicality and expression. Therefore, in writing and performing an unaccompanied piece the composer and performer must have an interdependent relationship with each other. The composer must create a composition that contains interesting and challenging elements and the performer must be able to interpret these elements and perform them in a logical and artistic way. This document, although not written as a definitive historical source on the trumpet and its literature, may serve as an impetus for further study in the developmental history of the trumpet and music composition. The author believes that every trumpet player should have a general knowledge of the evolution of the instrument and its role in the different periods of recorded music and world history. Knowledge of major evolutionary advancements, beginning with the natural trumpet, may foster a greater appreciation and (more specifically) a greater understanding of the modern instrument and its capabilities. Although many references to the trumpet

(or trumpet-like instruments) are found in the bible and other literary sources, the author will limit this discussion to short evolutionary highlights leading to the development of the contemporary trumpet including, the natural trumpet, slide trumpet and keyed trumpet.3 These choices represent a small number of the many trumpet designs, however they are significant since they could be considered historical milestones. By the late middle ages, trumpet designers had developed an instrument that had a cylindrical tube, expanding bell and required an appropriate mouthpiece to produce a series of notes conforming to the harmonic series. The natural trumpet, also called the Baroque trumpet, primarily was used for signaling and ceremonial playing until performers developed the ability to play in the clarino (upper) register of the instrument which produced something close to a diatonic scale.4 During the late eighteen century (c. 1775- c. 1793) several isolated experiments in trumpet development failed to produce an acceptable instrument. However, in the mid- 1790s, experimenter and virtuoso trumpeter Anton Weidinger (1766-1852) introduced the keyed trumpet-a design which incorporated moveable flaps over tone holes that lowered and raised the pitch. It was for this instrument that Joseph Haydn, a friend of Weidinger, wrote his famous concerto in E-flat which remains a prominent work in contemporary trumpet repertory.5 The English slide trumpet of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century although not an agile instrument, was considered an orchestral asset rather than a solo instrument since its tone blended well with the strings and woodwinds. The instrument was played predominantly by English performers even 40 years after the valve was invented.6

3 Johann Ernst Altenburg, Essay on an Introduction to the Heroic and Musical Trumpeters’ and Kettledrummers’ Art, for the Sake of a Wider Acceptance of the Same, Described Historically, Theoretically, and Practically and Illustrated with Examples (Nashville: Brass, 1974), 5. 4 Donald Murray Campbell, Clive Alan Greated, and Arnold Myers, Musical Instruments: History, Technology and Performance of Instruments of Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006), 193-194. 5 Edward Tarr, The Trumpet, 3d ed. (Chandler, AZ: Hickman Music Editions, 2008), 97. 6 Ibid. 98-99. 3

Each developmental improvement of the trumpet was an integral part of giving the instrument chromatic capability. However, it is the invention of the valve (1815) that not only made the trumpet fully chromatic, but also solved the tone production problems that plagued the slide and keyed trumpets.7 The new capacities of the nineteenth century trumpet were quickly accepted by composers as they began to incorporate it into the orchestral fabric as well as use it as a solo instrument. The twentieth century saw an increase in the number of compositions for unaccompanied trumpet. Armed with the latest technologies in trumpet design, composers had a musical instrument with more capability than ever before. What could be the earliest unaccompanied trumpet solo written in the twentieth century is Bernard Fitzgerald’s Prelude for Trumpet Alone (Figure 1). This 1935 composition, although written for the trumpet, is stylistically reminiscent of one of Bach’s cello suites. During the mid-twentieth century a group of progressive composers from Europe, known as Les Six, including Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre began to question the developmental perception of music.8 Their push for different forms of music set in motion an entirely new conception of works that would combine traditional fundamentals of music with new elements that included non-musical ingredients. Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson, a very young and impressionable composer at this time, was intimately exposed to this means of expression when he studied with Milhaud, and spent a portion of his career creating works that could arguably be labeled avant-garde.

7 Ibid. 102. 8 Trevor Herbert and John Wallace, “The Trumpet Before 1800” in The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 249. 4

Figure 1. Bernard Fitzgerald’s Prelude for Trumpet Alone, first page

Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson, or “T.J.” as he likes to be called, is an African American composer who has studied with several influential composition teachers and has developed a unique style of writing. He takes musical elements from classical traditions and combines them with other ethnically identifiable sources (including jazz, African rhythms, and other globally linked musical idioms) and has created a style that is

5 held in high regard by other composers, educators and performers around the world. After studying with Darius Milhaud in the mid-twentieth century, Dr. Anderson added existing analog recording technology to his arsenal of compositional devices and created Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes, an unaccompanied work for trumpet. This work presents a wealth of study opportunities for other composers and for trumpet soloists as well. This treatise highlights Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson’s compositional accomplishments, in particular the 1984 trumpet solo entitled Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes. It offers an explanation of its overall construction, analysis and a performance guide.

CHAPTER TWO BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON DOCTOR THOMAS JEFFERSON ANDERSON

Relatively few African American music composers have enjoyed a more diverse life than Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson. Born to a well-educated middle class family in Coatesville, Pennsylvania on August 17, 1928, Dr. Anderson is a composer of international renown who has given the world almost 70 years of varied compositions from instrumental and vocal solos to works for large ensembles and chamber groups with interesting and unusual configurations. He has devoted his life to high standards in music composition and has an ability for cleverly merging elements of classical and jazz idioms. According to his official website, Dr. Anderson has produced numerous orchestra and wind band pieces, songs, chamber music and solo works which number over one hundred. Most of the compositions were commissioned by distinguished individuals and prestigious organizations. The number of completed works increases dramatically when considering his unpublished compositions. His scholarly and professional success is highlighted by his level of education and honorary degrees and the respect he has earned as a composer and educator. It seems that Dr. Anderson was destined to be a musician and educator. His father, Thomas Jefferson Anderson Senior, was the principal of James Adams School in Coatesville, Pennsylvania before moving the family to Washington D.C. where he had been hired as Professor of Education at Howard University in 1940. His mother, Anita Turpeau Anderson, a classically trained pianist and student at Howard University, often performed in churches and introduced five-year-old T.J. to music with piano and violin lessons.9 After moving to Washington D.C., young T.J. found many musical activities to occupy his time; he conducted a children’s toy orchestra, sang in numerous choirs, and learned to play as many musical instruments as possible including violin, saxophone, double bass, horn, bassoon and trumpet. At the age of fourteen, T.J. experienced life as a professional jazz musician, touring as a member of the Tate Wilburn Band of Cincinnati,

9 Email message from Dr. Anderson, November 1, 2011. 7

Ohio.10 T.J.’s exposure to diverse musical styles prepared the way for his multifaceted compositional approach of combining jazz, classical, African, Negro spirituals, avant- garde and Asian musical elements into his personal design. In 1946, Thomas Jefferson Anderson left Washington D.C. to study music at West Virginia State College, a historically black university in Charleston, West Virginia.11 He graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor of Music degree and was immediately accepted into the graduate program at Pennsylvania State University. In 1952, Anderson received a Master of Music Education degree from Pennsylvania State University, and worked in the public school system a few years prior to becoming a graduate student at the University of Iowa, where in 1958 he received his Doctor of Philosophy in Composition. Anderson’s first university faculty instructor position was at West Virginia State College from 1955 to 1956. Subsequent positions held from 1958 until his retirement from Tufts University (1972–90) included faculty and chairman positions at the Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma (1958–63), Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee (1963–69) and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia (1969–71).12 Dr. Anderson’s expertise and talent as a composer and educator were recognized early in his career as he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor by several universities including the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1990), the California State University in Chico, California (1991) and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1993).13 Dr. Anderson accepted a Rockefeller Foundation grant and from 1969-71 served as the Composer-In-Residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Shaw. During his tenure with the orchestra, Dr. Anderson received nationwide recognition for his orchestration of ragtime pianist and composer Scott Joplin’s opera entitled

10 Personal interview with and email correspondence from Dr. Anderson, September 17, 2011 and November 12, 2011 respectively. 11 Email message from Dr. Anderson, October 3, 2011. 12 http://tjanderson.com/vitae.htm [accessed November 12, 2011]. 13 Ibid. 8

Treemonisha.14 During the years 1992 to 1997, Dr. Anderson served as an associate professor at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and performed many times as Composer-In-Residence at the music schools of Northwest University in Evanston, Illinois and Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.15 The legacy of a composer, teacher and mentor can be measured by one’s artistic and social contributions and by the lives and contributions of his students. Dr. Anderson’s achievements in music, art and life are reflected by his students who have gone forward to become some of the most influential composers, scholars and performers in the world. The following are students of Dr. Anderson who have become respected scholars and performers in many artistic disciplines.

Composers

William Banfield, Professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts

 B.A., New England Conservatory of Music

 M.T.S., Boston University

 D.M.A., University of Michigan

 Leader of the BMagic Orchestra

 Member of the Bill Banfield Trio

 Author of Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers

and Black Notes: Essays of a Musician Writing in a Post-Album Age

 Recipient of National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the

Humanities, Jerome Foundation and Lila Wallace Foundation awards

 National Public Radio host

14 David Baker, Lida Belt Baker, and Herman Hudson, The Black Composer Speaks (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978), 1. 15 http://Tjanderson.com/vitae.htm [accessed on November 12, 2011]. 9

 Works performed by the National, Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Richmond, Akron,

Toledo, San Diego and Sacramento symphony orchestras

 Recordings with TelArc, Atlantic, Innova, Centaur, Albany and Visionary

records16

Trevor Weston, Associate Professor at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey

 Graduate of Tufts University with a double major in music and history

 Master of Music degree from University of California in Berkeley, California

 Ph.D. from University of California in Berkeley, California

 Awarded the prestigious George Ladd Prix de Paris from University of California

in Berkeley, California

 Active performer throughout the United States

17  Numerous commissions that are performed around the world

Andrew Kirschner, Associate Professor at School of Art and Design, University of

Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan

 Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Composition, University of Michigan

 Master of Music, University of Michigan

 Bachelor of Music (Saxophone), New England Conservatory of Music

 Bachelor of Art (Philosophy), Tufts University

 Composer, performer, writer and media artist

 Recognized and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mary

Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, Meet the

16 http://www.berklee.edu/faculty/detail/william-c-banfield [accessed November 17, 2011]. 17 http://trevorweston.com/ [accessed November 17, 2011]. 10

Composer, the American Music Center, ArtServe Michigan and the American

Academy of Arts and Letters18

Scholars

Gerdes Fleurant, Professor Emeritus at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts

 Emeritus status attained in 2005

 Author of Dancing Spirits, the first in-depth analysis of the music of the Rada rite

of Haitian Vodoo.

 Author of many articles on the folk and ritual music of the Black World

 Specializes in the music and culture of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America

 Founder of the Leocardie and Alexandre Kenscoff Cultural Center and the Gawou

Ginou School in Mirebalais, Haiti

 Work has been grounded in the tradition of Applied Ethnomusicology

 Retired in 2005 but continues to build and administer the Gawou Ginou project,

and to research the music of the Central Plateau19

Lewis Porter, Professor of Music at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey

 Ph.D. from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts

 Jazz pianist and composer

 Author of seven books including Lester Young (1985), Jazz: From Its Origins to

the Present (1992), The John Coltrane Reference (2008) and numerous articles on

jazz

18 http://art-design.umich.edu/people/detail/andy_kirshner#cv[accessed November 17, 2011]. 19http://www.wellesley.edu/albright/Archive/2011Archive/faculty/2011fleurant.ht ml [accessed November 17, 2011]. 11

 Founder and director of graduate program in Jazz History and Research

 Leading scholar and jazz historian

 Adjunct positions at Tufts University, Brandeis University, The New School and

Manhattan School of Music

20  1996 Grammy Award nominee

Dr. Anderson retired from academia in 1990 and currently resides in the Durham, North Carolina area. He continues to add to the list of compositions he began decades earlier. Although many of his works are published, there are a number are unpublished pieces located in his personal archives including an unaccompanied trumpet solo composed in 2009: In Memoriam John Hope Franklin. Written 25 years later than Sunstar, this piece is similar in that it features virtuosic playing and the use of extended techniques. Most of Dr. Anderson’s works are commissioned and performed by well- respected orchestras, small ensembles and individuals to include orchestras from Atlanta, Cleveland and London, university ensembles from Harvard, Indiana, Tennessee State, Tufts, and virtuoso cellist Yo Yo Ma (Figure 2).21

Figure 2.Yo Yo Ma and T.J. Anderson

20 http://gsn.newark.rutgers.edu/jazz/lewis_porter/bio.php[accessed November 19, 2011]. 21 Thomas J. Anderson, “Chronological List of Compositions by T.J. Anderson” in T.J. Anderson, Composer,http://tjandersonmusic.com/works.html [accessed October 14, 2011]. 12

CHAPTER THREE DOCTOR ANDERSON’S MULTIPLE PERFORMANCE PLATFORM CONCEPT

Much of the information in this chapter is derived from telephone and personal interviews and email correspondence with Dr. Anderson between January 2011 and April 2012. Other sources include Dr. Anderson’s personal website and articles about his lifetime achievements and compositions, as well as written accounts by past students and other scholars and researchers that give details about Dr. Anderson’s life from the early 1960s to the present day. Dr. Anderson’s concepts for his composition style began early in his life in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and as a teenager growing up in Washington, D.C. His influences include his classically trained mother playing gospel music in church on the piano, violin lessons, vocal and instrumental conducting, and jazz trumpet performance as a young man. It was not until Dr. Anderson began study with composers on the university level that his work began to take shape; especially influential was his time with Darius Milhaud during the Aspen Music Festival in 1964 (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Darius Milhaud

Dr. Anderson has been composing solo, chamber and large ensemble works since the second half of the twentieth century. A compilation of his completed works begins with his 1958 composition Pyknon Overture, written in partial fulfillment for his University of Iowa doctoral degree; although, he had actually started composing years earlier.22 Unfortunately, records of many of his early compositions have been lost, and the composer’s recollections of them have since faded from memory, making historical documentation impossible; however, a listing of his works are located on his website. It was his experience and training with prominent composition teachers including George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig and Darius Milhaud that most influenced Dr. Anderson’s varied compositional style. This chapter will focus on Darius Milhaud’s influence on Dr. Anderson’s compositions leading up to the construction of Sunstar. Though he had already experimented with bitonal harmony, Dr. Anderson’s style became even more pronounced after studying with Milhaud at the Aspen Music Festival in 1964. During his formative years, Dr. Anderson was fascinated by the different sounds made by all instruments and systematically learned to play many instruments from the brass, woodwind, percussion and string families. Practical knowledge of these instruments gave him a unique and personal insight into blending melody, harmony and rhythmic components into his distinctive compositions. Years later, Dr. Anderson discovered that he shared a common belief with composer, conductor, violist, educator and theoretician Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), one of the main innovators of musical modernism, that composers should be fluent in as many instruments as possible.23 This familiarity with many instruments would eventually play a major factor in Dr. Anderson’s unique approach in many of his compositions. Dr. Anderson’s 1962 composition entitled Six Pieces for Clarinet and Orchestra, dedicated and premiered by clarinetist Earl Thomas and the Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Guy Fraser Hamilton, clearly demonstrates his interesting and significant exploration in the avant-garde movement. In describing this work Dr. Anderson comments, “In [this composition], I have made my first attempt in the direction of bi-harmonic and multi-

22 Ibid. 23 Steve Schwartz, “Classical Net - Basic Repertoire List - Hindemith” in Classical Net - Classical Music Information and Reviews, http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/hindemith.php [accessed November 12, 2011].

rhythmic linear planes.”24 He includes an historical recording of this piece on his website with the addition of commentary by a local radio personality. The juxtaposing and haunting melodies and motifs of the work seem to intentionally clash with each other as they are played in different keys and in sometimes slightly altered forms. The Aspen Music Festival (Figure 4) began in 1949 and became host to many musicians and composition teachers from around the world including French composer Darius Milhaud.25 During the Second World War, Milhaud was forced to move from France after its fall to Germany and settled in the United States. He became associated with Mills College in Oakland, California and soon fell in love with the American culture and people.26 In 1947, Milhaud returned to France and was appointed Professor of Composition at the Paris Conservatory, but spent subsequent summers until his farewell concert in 1971 teaching at the Aspen Music Festival.

Figure 4. Aspen Music Festival, Aspen, Colorado

Almost 40 years before their meeting, Milhaud had already firmly established himself as an important figure in the avant-garde movement. As early as 1915, Milhaud saw polytonality as a “tonal,” melodic antidote to the disintegration of the diatonic system and experimented with it

24 http://tjandersonmusic.com/downloads.html [accessed November 29, 2011]. 25 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDENZwLD9_g [accessed January 21, 2012]. 26 Paul Collaer, Darius Milhaud, translator’s note, rev. Jane Hohfeld Galante (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1988), vii.

in many of his compositions.27 Milhaud’s 1920 composition entitled Les Choëphores for Orchestra consists of five etudes with four simultaneous fugues in contrasting keys (in A for winds, in D-flat for brass, in F for strings). However, Milhaud does not completely relinquish the boundaries of tonality, as he uses common tones of each fugue, played by the piano, as a connective tissue.28 Maurice Ravel, during a 1928 lecture in Houston, Texas, defined Milhaud’s musical attributes and seemingly defended his radical style by comparing him to Beethoven and Strauss: Darius Milhaud is without doubt the most important of our young French composers, and his contributions frequently assert the breadth of his musical concepts. These characteristics are far more singular than the fact that he uses several tonalities simultaneously, a device that we can find employed embryonically even in the chorales of J. S. Bach and in certain works of Beethoven and definitively developed in Richard Strauss.29

For eight weeks during the summer of 1964, Dr. Anderson attended the Aspen Music Festival and was exposed to and influenced by the teachings of Milhaud’s theoretical doctrines and composition techniques which he [Milhaud] had almost four decades to develop. Signs of a non-traditional and ultra-modern approach to composition were already beginning to emerge in Dr. Anderson’s works before his time with Milhaud. Although Dr. Anderson’s completed works around the mid-1960s do not immediately show Milhaud’s influence, his experience at the Aspen Musical Festival would eventually transform and eventually define his writing style. By combining African American folk music elements such as negro spirituals, call and response, jazz and polyrhythms with traditional classical elements of tonality, form and theoretical principles, he merges many genres into a contemporary style that could be interpreted as avant-garde. In 1965, Dr. Anderson expanded Milhaud’s concept of multiple performance platforms and incorporated them into Squares: An Essay for Orchestra, recorded in 1966 by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the direction of conductor Paul Freeman.30 When interviewed for

27 The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, l. [incomplete citation] 28 Don Michael Randel, ed., The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 590. 29 Paul Collaer and Madeleine Milhaud, Darius Milhaud, trans. Jane Hohfeld Galante (San Francisco: San Francisco, 1988), 87. 30 David Baker, Lida Belt Baker, and Herman Hudson, The Black Composer Speaks (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978), 12.

this treatise, over 50 years after Squares’ completion, Dr. Anderson defines the “orbiting concept” and recalls the thought processes which directly led to the concepts used in Squares and several other compositions including Sunstar. Well, in an earlier work called “Squares” I thought of sound platforms. That is levels of sound this way (motions with his hands) not in terms of dynamics in which the whole orchestra is forte or piano. I thought of this. Then I thought about breaking off things. And orbiting to me means, and this is not just in Sunstar, it’s in a lot of my works, where I have one thing going on and independently (totally) another piece going on. This is what I think of when I think of orbiting. So that I have the ability to combine two, three or even four different concepts simultaneously. Although they appear collectively, each orbiting factor has its own dynamic, own interpretations and I would say that there are motifs that interlock, but they are just motifs and not melodies, so there is a connection but the connection is very slight. I’ve done a lot of things in this way.31

It was Milhaud’s influence, mentorship and friendship that galvanized further development of Dr. Anderson’s previous compositional style of merging African American folk music, jazz and classical elements as well as angular and harmonic diametrics. Arguably, Dr. Anderson’s most prolific and experimental periods in composition occurred between the years of 1980 and 1989, almost 20 years after studying with Milhaud. Dr. Anderson recalled a conversation with Milhaud that provided the impetus for what is probably the most innovative unaccompanied trumpet solo composition in his career: “A number of years ago I talked with my teacher Darius Milhaud about his String Quartets Nos. 14 and 15. These two works had three performance modes; two separate string quartets or an octet (the string quartets played simultaneously).”32 A commonality among Dr. Anderson’s compositions is his clever mix of traditional forms, harmonies and rhythm combined with jazz influences such as call and response, ensemble configuration and thematic material. In 1980, a major shift in styles occurred as Dr. Anderson directed his efforts toward sound platforms that he labeled “orbiting ideas.” This concept involved the use of multiple performing groups or stations in a chamber work. In an orbiting composition, each group performs independently and separately from the others. Often the groups do not play in the same key or time signature, or start or end the work together. This method ensures the uniqueness of every performance and requires complete concentration as well as flexibility from the performers.

31 Personal interview with Dr. Anderson, September 17, 2011. 32 Telephone interview with Dr. Anderson, March 2011.

Dr. Anderson’s intentional combination of unlike subjects and events could place his compositional style in the avant-garde genre; however, he emphatically disagrees that any of his works are intentionally conceived as avant-garde or even atonal pieces. In the case of Sunstar, because it is written for an unaccompanied soloist, Dr. Anderson uses the interesting melodic relationships between linear intervals instead of keys. However, by recording certain excerpts and simultaneously playing an entirely different excerpt over the recorded one, the performer creates a different harmonic relationship with each performance. Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes was completed and published by Dr. Anderson in 1984 and signaled his continuing development and radical exploration in multiple performance platforms, a compositional concept he began nearly twenty years earlier. T.J.’s multiple performance platforms originally began with Squares, an Essay for Orchestra, a work commissioned by West Virginia State University in 1965 for its seventy-fifth anniversary, in which Dr. Anderson explores bitonality using a large ensemble.33 Further development of this concept is also evidenced in the 1991 composition entitled What Ever Happened to the Big Bands, which uses a smaller ensemble of three instruments. Sunstar is rooted in avant-garde ideology, and contains unlikely combinations of opposing theoretical principles, unusual rhythmic-angular motifs, jazz, gospel and classical elements and an ingenious use of modern technology, all of which are employed onto the individual performance platform. Sunstar can arguably be classified in the genre of unaccompanied instrumental music because the performer is essentially playing along with previously recorded excerpts, even though at certain specific points in the solo up to four different notes might be sounded at one time (which makes for an interesting and somewhat unpredictable performance scenario). Information on Sunstar including analysis and performance guide is explored in subsequent chapters. When one thinks of music in the avant-garde genre, one might immediately think of revolutionary composers like John Cage, Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg and even Igor Stravinsky-composers involved in musical experimentation who purposely created works so radical that they often provoked unfavorable commentary from audiences and even other

33 http://tjandersonmusic.com [accessed October 2, 2011].

musicians.34 With the passage of time, the works of these composers became accepted by a public who once considered them disturbing. For example, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) reportedly was so disturbing to the audience that it incited a riot at its premier. Dr. Anderson’s compositional style combines many concepts that stem directly from his life’s experiences; exposure to classical and jazz music, the performance of many different instruments, and the influence of his composition teachers. However, his individual development in the use of multiple performance platforms by an individual soloist using recording technology is strictly his own personal design. Sunstar is the only work that employs so many platforms, and certainly the only one to use technology. Perhaps, like the works of other composers not initially readily accepted by listeners, Sunstar may be included in solo contest repertoire in the not-so-distant future. Nonetheless, the work should be recognized presently as an innovative attempt to create interest in the unaccompanied trumpet genre and help galvanize modern composers in the creation of similar works.

34 Dominique-René de Lerma, “Black Composers and the Avant-Garde” in Black Music in Our Culture: Curricular Ideas on the Subjects, Materials and Problems, 1st ed. (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1970.The Oberlin Printing Company), 63.

CHAPTER FOUR EXTENDED TECHNIQUES AND THEIR USE IN SUNSTAR FOR SOLO B-FLAT TRUMPET AND TWO CASSETTE TAPES

The stage is empty, except for a low stand and a chair. Enter a trombone player, immaculate in white tie. He points his instrument in the air and plays a single loud, high note. He repeats the action, at six-second intervals. At the fifth attempt, no sound comes. Rattled, he becomes more energetic. He has a tin basin, which he holds over the bell of his instrument: occasionally, he sings a pert “wa” and the trombone, the basin acting as lips, mimics him. The notes come faster. The player is frantic, then hysterical, but the harder he works the less sound he makes. Paralysis ensues. The trombonist utters a bewildered “WHY?” and crumples onto the chair. From this position he plays a complex, tormented lament. The sound is continuous; even when inhaling he groans and rattles his basin. The instrument enunciates syllables; sounds are distorted, losing any sense of defined pitch, and, more often than not, the trombonist wails and plays at the same time. The borders between instrument and player, voice and blown sound, speech and the tin lips of the basin, become blurred, and as the last note dies away it is difficult to tell if it is played or sung.35

The preceding excerpt describing Luciano Berio’s trombone solo entitled Sequenza V is an outstanding example of how a composer, with the use of extended techniques, can create excitement and expression in an unaccompanied setting for a monophonic instrument. Compositions using extended techniques add an interesting dimension to the fabric of a work, keeping the listener’s attention by offering unusual musical and non-musical elements. Because of the nature of the instrument, the trumpet is an outstanding vehicle with which to employ these musical and non-musical elements in an unaccompanied composition. Prevalently used in avant-garde music and jazz, extended techniques are not a twentieth century invention. Extended techniques were used by composers of the Romantic period and by musicians from the Medieval and Renaissance periods to bring out expressive musical textures that could not be duplicated by conventional means. “Muting was certainly done in Renaissance times; Gluck occasionally hinted at a flutter tongue, if there were demons in the offing; and

35 Trevor Herbert and John Wallace, eds., “Frontiers or byways? Brass instruments in avant-garde music,” The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25.

Weber wrote chords into the cadenza of his horn concertino.”36 Players of the English slide trumpet surely experimented with glissandos and experienced the sensation of the rattle one feels as one plays a note while singing another.37 Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913), alluded to in an earlier chapter, caused a riot during the premier performance. Possibly the composer’s writing of lip glissandos of a twelfth in the horns along with the busy orchestral texture was, in part, responsible for the insurrection.38 One of the earliest compositions for unaccompanied trumpet, Bernard Fitzgerald’s Prelude for Trumpet Alone is a clear illustration of a composer taking a step into uncharted territory. Although this composition cannot necessarily be placed in the avant- garde genre, the composer’s call for the trumpet to be “stopped” does represent an early twentieth century composer’s attempt to use extended techniques on a brass instrument. During the avant-garde movement, particularly after World War II, the number of unaccompanied works increased. Dr. Paul Ulrich’s 1989 dissertation entitled An Annotated Bibliography of Unaccompanied Trumpet Solos Published in America comments about the dramatic increase of compositions for the trumpet and other monophonic instruments since 1950.39 Because of its inherent harmonic limitations, writing for a monophonic instrument can be challenging; however, technological advancements leading to the development of the modern trumpet make it easier than ever to create the exotic sounds that are now being written into unaccompanied music by contemporary composers.40 Dr. Thomas J. Anderson’s 1984 composition Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes represents the evolutionary changes by composers in the works of unaccompanied trumpet music and their use of extended techniques as expressive tools. Sunstar contains many extended techniques, but is uniquely different in that it also utilizes electronic technology in the form of recording media, thus creating another dimension in which to stimulate the performer as well as the listener. A myriad of challenges are faced by both performer and composer in unaccompanied works. The composer must be acutely aware of challenges faced by the performer when creating

36 Herbert and Wallace, 256. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 258. 39 Paul Ulrich, “An Annotated Bibliography of Unaccompanied Trumpet Solos Published in America” (DMA diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989), 1. 40 Oxford Brass Companion, 272.

an unaccompanied work. He must also employ certain instrumental subtleties that will make the work’s performance captivating for the performer as well as the listener. It is the responsibility of the performer to present the work in a way that is expressive and meaningful. Extended techniques present the composer with an opportunity to incorporate multiple color changes by a single instrument. The concertos of Haydn and Hummel signaled acceptance by composers of the trumpet into art music, due in large part to the invention of the valve. Unfortunately, since those popular works were written, composers have all but excluded unaccompanied compositions; therefore, unaccompanied trumpet solos before the twentieth century are virtually nonexistent. A certain amount of difficulty must be conceded in creating works for monophonic instruments compositions that are as enjoyable and exciting for artists to perform as for listeners to hear. During the late nineteenth century, a developing schism between composers of compositions rooted in cultivated traditions and those dissatisfied with the stagnation of the same traditions was evident. Works by composers associated with the avant-garde movement generally are considered radical departures from the traditional forms of music.41 In the effort to create more and more interestingly expressive works, avant-garde composers began using unorthodox harmonic configurations, space, angular and shorter motifs, and complex rhythms, which during the early twentieth century was extremely uncommon. In writing for brass instruments they began using the entire range of the horn, different kinds of articulation, multiple mutes (for the different timbres they produced), and new ways to make sound and nondescript sound (otherwise known as noise). Although the use of extended techniques is not exclusively connected to the avant-garde movement of the early twentieth century, the jazz genre has seemingly accepted its practice more readily than the traditionally classical setting. It is fair to say that pitch bending, growls, different types of articulation, and other forms of expressive playing were cultivated by early jazz players for the primary purpose of providing humor and to emulate the human voice and emotions. For example, the trumpeter in Spike Jones’s “City Slickers” created a type of snuffle sound by

41 Dennis Arnold, The New Oxford Companion to Music, vol. 1, “Avant-garde” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983),122.

alternating fast sucking and blowing on the mouthpiece.42 The music of Army Air Corps bandleader Major Glenn Miller and other Big Bands during the 1940s included sounds created by using mutes to distort the natural sound of the instruments. History clearly shows that early avant-gardists and jazz pioneers borrowed certain aesthetics from each other as their individual styles developed.43 The inclusion of extended techniques is a most effective practice in unaccompanied works because for the most part these compositions concentrate on particularities of timbre and pitch (and in some cases rhythm) to create musical excitement.44 In essence, extended techniques can be described loosely as any unconventional production of musical and non-musical sound incorporated into the musical fabric of a composition. The interesting ways of creating these musical and non-musical sounds will be examined closely in this chapter, as well as their inclusion in Dr. Anderson’s Sunstar. The following are common extended techniques employed by brass players:45

 use of quarter tones

 precise notation of mute opening and closing

 hitting the instrument

 making pops by pulling tuning-slides out rapidly

 playing (buzzing) on the mouthpiece alone or plugging it into other components of the

instrument

 use of multiphonicsplaying one note on the instrument while singing another note

 singing text through the instrumentrenders text unintelligible but makes an interesting

sound

 flutter tonguingproduced by rolling an R while playing

42 Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments, 261-2. 43 Musical Landscapes in Color, 370. 44 Simon Wills, “Frontiers or byways? Brass instruments in avant-garde music” in The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments, ed. Trevor Herbert and John Wallace (New York: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997), 297. 45 Ibid., 262.

 slap tonguingcreating a percussive “whht” sound by blowing hard and poking the

tongue into the mouthpiece

 extreme volume changes

 growlinguse of guttural or throat sounds while playing

 partially depressing valves while playing (sometimes referred to as “half-valving”)

 diverse tempo changes

 cross-pitch glissandos

 playing in the extreme high and low tessituras of the instrument

 improvisationcreating a unwritten solo using established chord progressions

Much of the more specific information on Sunstar including history and performance practices will be covered in a subsequent chapter; however, it is important to illustrate how the composer combined extended techniques and existing recording technology into the developmental process of orbiting platforms, thereby transforming a single-layered unaccompanied solo into a multi-dimensional work. Illustrations in this chapter highlight the extended techniques borrowed predominately from the jazz genre and how Dr. Anderson used them in an avant-garde setting. Sunstar is a unique work that enables the trumpeter, with the aid of recording technology used as an extended technique, to satisfy the rigorous demands of unaccompanied playing. It has previously been discussed how the employment of extended techniques enhances the performance of monophonic solos by providing interesting sounds, whether musical or non- musical, to linear playing. Composers especially from the avant-garde, like Dr. Anderson, draw on these added skills to create flair and interest in their single-lined, unaccompanied compositions. By simultaneously playing live excerpts with previously recorded excerpts the trumpeter creates, with each different performance of the work, varied and interesting harmonies that are impossible without the use of the recording medium. Also, this technology is the only way in which Dr. Anderson’s orbiting platforms concept can be demonstrated by a monophonic instrument.

To have reached its place in evolution, the modern trumpet has undergone a tremendous number of technological advances. Many different types of materials have governed the type of sound the trumpet produced; the valve gave it the ability to play chromatically, and the mouthpiece gave playing the instrument performance comfort as well as extended range. One could argue, knowing how change is not always popular, that each evolutionary deviation in the trumpet was not easily accepted. The same can be said about use of modern recording technology in classically derived art music. However, when unorthodox principles governing the avant-garde composer are factored into compositions, it is easily understood why technology was readily accepted and used in the genre. Technology in art music is not always accepted by serious music-minded individuals; however, The International Trumpet Guild-the world’s largest trumpet consortium and major advocate for use of modern technology for advancement in trumpet music-has a committee set in place whose sole responsibility is to recognize and “consider the latest technological advances relative to the performance, recording, and presentation of music, and utilize this technology for the presentation of information to the members of the Guild.”46 The following tables illustrate the extended techniques used in Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes:

46 International Trumpet Guild,“ITG Handbook: Bylaws,”

Table 1. Salient Features of Trumpet A

Movement or Melodic Content Form Tempo Tessitura Extended Section Techniques

Giocoso Call and Response Through Composed 120 bps 2 Octaves Smears Low B-flat to High B-flat

Timed Improvisation Call and Response Through Composed Performer’s Discretion 2 Octaves and a 4th Extreme dynamic contrasts Low A to (FF to pp)

High D Multiple Tonguing Glissandi

Random and Unusual

26 Intervallic skips

Plunger Mute

Pitch Alternation

Rips

Tone Choking

Andante Lullabies Through Composed 72 bps 2 Octaves Wide Slow Trill Low A to High A

Allegro Song-like ABA 120 bps Low A# to High B None

Table 2. Salient Features of Trumpet B

Movement or Melodic Content Form Tempo Tessitura Extended Section Techniques

Cantabile Fanfares Through Composed 60 bps Low G-sharp to High D- Extreme dynamic flat Contrasts (pp to FFF) Wide (angular) Intervals Straight/Jazz (eight notes)

Grazioso Call and Response and Through Composed 72 bps 2 Octaves Slow-wide trill Fanfares Low B to High B

Vivace Rapid Scales Through Composed Performer’s Discretion 2 Octaves and a major 2nd Wide Intervals Low B-flat to High C Smears Trills Cup Mute

Tempo ad lib. Gillespie-like motif Through Composed Timed Sections Major 9th Jazz Improvisation Low D-flat to E-flat

Dolcissimo Reflective Through Composed 60 bps 2 Octaves Rips Low B to High B Extremely soft dynamics

Dr. Anderson’s utilization of recording media, the cassette recorder, can be considered an extended technique because the composer uses the recording process to add multiple layers of sound to a monophonic instrument, especially in an unaccompanied solo setting. Extended techniques, in some form or another, have been a part of musical expression as long as music has been a part of human existence. However, their use took center stage during the early twentieth century avant-garde movement that started in large part with a few composers who had become dissatisfied with the confines of traditional tonality. This radical movement occurred with the development of jazz and makes it understandable how the two would share similar extended techniques. Technology, including the evolution of musical instruments and the development of different types of mutes, mouthpiece construction, and electronics has created even more ways to produce different manifestations of sound, as Sunstar illustrates. Recorded media and extended techniques, along with Dr. Anderson’s compositional style, arguably help bring an interesting and exciting appeal to the genre of unaccompanied trumpet solos.

CHAPTER FIVE ANALYTICAL PROFILE OF SUNSTAR FOR SOLO B-FLAT TRUMPET AND TWO CASSETTE TAPES

By all accounts Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes is a complicated work of unusual sophistication that combines different elements from music disciplines that have rarely (if ever) been joined in an unaccompanied trumpet composition. An argument is presented that this type of writing, because of its over-reaching scope, stretches the limits of the soloist because it requires command of trumpet fundamentals, as well as extensive knowledge of both classical and jazz performance (i.e., extended techniques, jazz rhythms and improvisation, and electronic recording media) to perform the work convincingly. The original direction of this chapter was to provide a traditional analysis of the work. However, Sunstar is not a traditional work, and a formal and traditional analysis could possibly overlook or even omit some of its unique qualities. The composition is published in two parts and, with the exception of the recording process, offered to the listener as a single albeit multi- dimensional presentation. Therefore, the author of this document has combined the two solo parts into a theoretical representational model to provide a visual mock-up of the combined solo parts as they would exist in a performance situation (see Appendix C).The process of merging the two parts highlights a possible attempt by the composer to control the harmonic integrity of the work, as specific and strict time-code instructions are included throughout the work. The overall structure of this composition is as unique as the performance itself. Sunstar is made up of two separate parts, each containing multiple sections or movements of contrasting tempos and styles. In general terms, the work is an unaccompanied solo that, with the aid of recorded media, gives a solitary trumpeter the ability to perform as if there is more than one soloist playing. Although the parts for Trumpet A and Trumpet B begin simultaneously, it is the Trumpet B (Figure 5) part that the listener hears first. The Trumpet A part, which is pre-recorded prior to the actual performance, has two minutes and five seconds of recorded silence before the first note of the recording begins. Therefore, unless the soloist plays with perfect time, the probability of vertical precision is unlikely.

Figure 5. Sunstar Trumpet B, Cantabile measures 1–8

According to Dr. Anderson, Sunstar is a composition without preconceived theoretical development; however, careful investigation yields a complexity of musical elements that clearly demonstrates the composer’s mastery. Interestingly the majority of the composition is through- composed without the repetition of melodic content or recognizable melodic theme. Contained within the movements of the two parts (Trumpet A and Trumpet B) are fanfares, call and response figures, songs and lullabies, scales, improvisation, and gospel elements that, with the aid of two tape recorders, provide the orbiting performance concept of multiple performance platforms. A profile of analytical and salient features of this work is provided below.

Trumpet A: Giocoso

After two minutes and five seconds of silence (as the Trumpet B part is being played), the recording of the Trumpet A part begins with the warbling low B-flat, the tonic note of this movement (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Silent two minutes and five seconds start to Trumpet A Giocoso

The movement is clearly through-composed and can be characterized as being a dialogue between two separate entities. This technique labeled call and response is used in the jazz genre, and refers to passages (in this case, motifs) passed through the melodic lines in a responsorial

style.47 Each passage, whether call or response, is signified by a distinctive pause and has similar but not identical melodic references. The call motifs appear in measures 2–3, 7–10, 14–16, 20– 21, 27–28, 36–40, and 48–50, with significant and sometimes extremely shortened spaces between response motifs identified in measures 4–5, 11–12, 18–19, 22–26, 29–34, 42–46, and 52–53.The final statement (Figure 7, mm. 52–60) can be identified as an extended conclusion stated by the call reference.

Figure 7. Sunstar measures 52–60, Trumpet A Giocoso

The melodic motifs of the call and response phrases contain wide and chromatic intervals that are deceptively atonal; however, a rhythmic examination reveals that most of the chromatic material occur in relatively weak parts of the measure, and are used as leading tones to a note of significant weight and tonal prominence. Although the resulting sonority is atonal, this movement never departs from the B-flat tonality.

Trumpet A: Tempo ad lib

There are more extended techniques included in this movement than any other. Although a certain amount of free will is given to the performer to play the extended techniques, the composer keeps strict control over timing information by dictating how long each section is to be played. For that reason, the author of this document calls the movement “controlled virtuosity.” As if to announce the movement’s D major tonality, Dr. Anderson begins it with an angry flurry of D-naturals and C-sharps, with the soloist utilizing alternate fingering positions to produce different note sonorities and choke tones which tend to disguise the actual pitches of the line (as shown in Figure 8).

47 Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles, History and Analysis (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice- Hall, Inc., 1997), 89.

Dr. Anderson uses serial-like deception in the third fifteen-second section of this movement with staccato eighth notes (B, E, D#, A, D, C#, G, C, F, [B], F#, [A], [D#], G#, A#). If it were not for the repeated notes (B, A, and D#) this passage would complete a 12-tone series. Similar occurrences of this serial-like deception pervade the movement’s melodic structure, with each section offering slightly altered permutations of the series.

Figure 8. Opening measures, Sunstar Trumpet A, Tempo ad lib

Trumpet A: Andante

The Oxford Dictionary describes a lullaby as a quiet, gentle song sung to send a child to sleep.48 This movement is fashioned in the form of a childlike lullaby due to a number of considerations: tempo, volume, time signature, and melodic phrasing. The use of wide intervals of the melody and limited extended techniques keep the expression in the avant-garde genre. A comparison can be made between the Andante movement in Sunstar’s Trumpet A part and Wiegenlied, more popularly known as Brahms’ Lullaby, by Romantic composer Johannes Brahms. Lullabies are written in many different time signatures; therefore, the fact that the lullabies of Brahms and Anderson both use the 3/4 time signature is coincidental. However, this relationship is substantiated when the rhythmic pulse (strong-weak-weak, strong-weak-weak) of the triple meter is considered. Even though an exact melodic correlation cannot be established, phrases of the two lullabies exhibit similar falling qualities (as shown in the Brahms excerpt,

48 Oxforddictionaries.com/definition?q=lullabies [accessed February 17, 2012].

Figure 9, measures 4, 10, 11, 15–16 and the Anderson excerpt, Figure 10, measures 3, 6–8, 12– 13, 21–24, etcetera).With Anderson’s recommended tempo of andante being a relaxed 72 bpm and the dynamic level at piano, its effect can only be described as being calming in nature.

Figure 9. Brahms lullaby excerpt

Figure 10. Anderson lullaby excerpt, Andante from Trumpet A

Trumpet A: Allegretto

In comparison to the other movements of the entire piece, including both Trumpet A and Trumpet B parts, the Allegretto of Trumpet A is different in three significant ways. First, its ternary form gives it the distinction of being the only movement to have a form other than through-composed; secondly, it is devoid of any extended techniques, and finally, it has unique and unusually lyrical melodic content. One could argue that this movement, with its stark comparative differences, is Dr. Anderson’s return from the avant-garde to a more traditional western classical style of composition. Prior to this movement Dr. Anderson’s treatment of the work is firmly rooted in classic avant-garde methodology; the use of extended techniques, bitonality, short motifs, rhythmic complexities, mixed classical and implied jazz elements, and electronic media to create an unaccompanied solo for a monophonic instrument is without a doubt innovative, if not unorthodox. In this movement, the demonstration of writing in the most basic and classically western style is observed with a three-part or ternary form of composition.49 In contrast to some of the relatively unpopular traits of avant-garde music, the ternary form is a safe and popular form for a composer to use since repetition of the A theme and variety supplied by the B theme embodies the structure of stability. In this movement, the A theme has E major tonality and is identified from measures 1–20 (Figure 11).The B theme, which traditionally signals a departure from the preceding tonality, is represented in measures 23–42 (Figure 12); however, in this case the departure appears to migrate at random. The recapitulation of the A theme occurs in measures 45–65 (not shown) with an almost exact repetition of the original theme. Also common to this form is an inclusion of a coda section which is identified in measures 66-70. Of special note is the two periods of rest located in measures 21-22 and 43-44 (as shown in Figure 12), which the author considers a transition from one theme to another.

49 Joseph Machlis, The Enjoyment of Music, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 1970), 50.

Figure 11. Sunstar Trumpet A, Allegretto, measures 1–20

Figure 12. Sunstar Trumpet A, Allegretto, measures 21-47

Trumpet B: Cantabile

Generally speaking, the form of the first movement in the Trumpet B part may be accurately described as through-composed. During the first two minutes and five seconds of this movement (theoretically occurring between measures 1 and 40), the soloist signals the start of the piece with a sforzando tonic note (f), followed by dynamically contrasting fanfares of irregular rhythms and wide intervallic leaps (Figure 13). Many of these fanfare-type motifs center around the augmented fourth interval (mm. 3, 6, 22, 24, 28, 36) and can often extend across measure lines, or are written within the fanfare (mm. 8–9, 10–11, 13, 14–15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24, 25–26, 32–33, ). A strong argument is presented that the rhythm of the motifs, although not precisely written as such, can be loosely interpreted as being associated with the swing-style triplet used in the jazz tradition.

Figure 13. Sunstar Trumpet B Cantabile

Trumpet B: Grazioso

This movement is a continuation of the through-composed form that prevails for most of the entire composition. Because the previous movement ends in F major, the first measure of this movement (F#-whole note) could be conceived as a chromatic modulation and would also be the

third degree of the dominant seventh chord (V7) that firmly establishes, in the second measure, the new tonic of G major (Figure 14).The movement has similar angular, fanfare-type motifs as those identified in the Giocoso movement of the Trumpet A part. Careful analysis of each of the mostly two-measure statements reveals decorative exploitation of ascending and descending major and minor seconds.

Figure 14. Sunstar Trumpet B Grazioso

The first note of the movement (F#), as previously discussed, is a minor second from its target note (G) in the second measure. The next fanfare (third and forth measures) shows the same type of relationship; however, instead of being a minor second, the composer changes the mode to major with B to A. The use of other notes and rhythms give disguise to the actual intervals; however, examples of the employment of major and minor seconds are dispersed throughout the work without exception, with the longest succession of major and minor seconds occurring in measures 17–19 (not shown).

Trumpet B: Vivace

This movement is through-composed and represents an alternation of major and minor tonality in a deceptive display of rapidly changing passages. After thirty seconds, a specified time allotted for the performer to stop the recording process and rewind the tape and push the play button on the second recorder, scale sequences and soaring intervallic sequences-two main characters of this movement-are immediately displayed. The opening melody (Figure 15) begins with a scale

built on the dominant seventh chord (G7) and is reinforced in the second measure with a repetitive succession of Gs and Fs, again strongly emphasizing a dominant seventh chord. In measure 3 the tonic chord is realized with a C major scale; the Es and Ds in measure 4 suggests a dominant E7 chord. This relationship is realized in the following measure with a strong suggestion of A minor or Aeolian mode (relative minor of C major) for the next two measures. Dr. Anderson uses chromaticism to disguise the actual simple A minor tonality of the movement; however, similar to prior movements, the rhythmic value of the most dissonant passages is quick, especially when compared to rhythmically slower passages that reinforce a single tonality.

Figure 15. Sunstar Trumpet B Vivace

The inclusion of widened slurs (a type of jazz articulation which is identified in the score as lip and valve tremolos), whether by use of valves or embouchure, aids in obscuring the true tonality because, dependent upon the performer’s flexibility, they create a rapid ascending and descending glissando or pseudo-scale affect. However, as before, the composer elects to end the tremolo almost without fail on a chord tone found to be A minor.

Trumpet B: Tempo Ad Lib

The cornerstone of the twentieth century genre of jazz is the art of improvisation; however, its true lineage dates back to the Baroque period of music where performers were expected to add embellishments to a pre-existing harmonic framework.50 In this movement the soloist is given approximately two minutes to display instrumental virtuosity and knowledge of jazz improvisation over a prescribed framework of rhythmic motifs and a harmonic chord progression. Although Sunstar is dedicated to Dizzy Gillespie, legendary jazz trumpeter and personal friend of Dr. Anderson, the composer rejects any contributory influence by him. However, the author of this document proposes a possible correlation between the initial motif (Figure 16) and melodic content found in Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts” and “Never Go Back to Georgia,” a chant inserted over the Afro-Cuban tune called “Manteca.” The tonality of the entire movement is based in E-flat; however, chromatic inference and written accidentals suggest B major, which is substantiated in the fourth, five-second improvised section where the soloist plays in the E- phrygian mode.

Figure 16. Sunstar Trumpet B Tempo ad lib; Gillespie-like melodic content

Trumpet B: Dolcissimo

Despite the disjunct intervals contained in the melodic content of this short through- composed movement, it is arguably the most lyrical part of the entire composition. The mood created by the slower tempo (bpm is at a suggested 100) and softer dynamic (p) is reflective and calming; however, an ambiance of gospel-like reverence is substantiated by the freedom that is given to the performer, as this movement is the only one that does not have strict, prescribed

50 Ibid., 275.

timing information (other than suggested metronome marking). Probably the most noticeable feature of this movement is the fact that it is true to the traditional form of conventional unaccompanied solos; by the time this movement is reached, the playing of recorded media has ceased and the soloist ends with an unmistakable and extremely tonal V7- I in B-flat major. The sophistication of Dr. Anderson’s compositional style in Sunstar is due in large part to his ability to employ multiple elements from different musical genres into a single amalgamation. Unfortunately, a large majority of the more interesting components (i.e., extended techniques and complex rhythms) attributed to the avant-garde are lost because they are recorded prior to the actual live performance. Dr. Anderson uses the first two minutes and five seconds of the work as an introduction played by the Trumpet B part. The entrance (played in another key from Trumpet B) of the pre-recorded Trumpet A part is surprising to the unsuspecting audience. From that point Dr. Anderson’s multiple performance platforms are demonstrated by a monophonic instrument with the aid of electronic media. This chapter was created to give insight into the construction of Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes. The author has presented a time comparison form of the Trumpet A and B parts so that if timing instructions are followed, the resulting harmonic considerations are revealed. However, the work’s depiction expressed in this presentation is completely unrealistic because the information will undoubtedly change with each performance.

CHAPTER SIX PERFORMANCE PRACTICES FOR SUNSTAR FOR SOLO B-FLAT TRUMPET AND TWO CASSETTE TAPES

Choosing the subject of my lecture recital was at first a seemingly daunting task. Having been a “jazz and commercial music” trumpet player for so many years, the idea of researching and then performing a classical piece (excluding the more commonly performed works) that would capture my attention and to which I felt I could do justice to was paramount in my choosing Dr. Anderson’s composition. My experience in playing unaccompanied trumpet music was even more limited than my classical playing; I had played most of the more commonly performed trumpet concertos, but all were accompanied by piano. However, there was something quite liberating when I played the cadenzas. My decision to choose Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes was made easier when, while researching trumpet solos by black composers, it became apparent how few unaccompanied trumpet solos existed. Further research revealed that this type of composition is not embraced by many composers. No explanation for this phenomenon is offered in this document; however, during the personal interview for this project, Dr. Anderson offered the following plausible explanation: Well, I’ll say that there are very few requests. I think most composers, I mean, it goes back to the apprenticeship that we served and also working in churches that basically commissioned works. We [composers] were servants of the church. So Bach’s cantatas grew out of that and all of our works grew out of our experiences and demands. And we don’t have demands for unaccompanied solo works for trumpet.51

Dr. Thomas J. Anderson’s Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes is a work that requires the soloist to have command of technical skills, range, flexibility and articulation to successfully perform the composition. The work is clearly rooted in the classical tradition; however, because it also contains elements found in the jazz genre, a better-than- average understanding of jazz principles is highly recommended. As previously discussed, this unaccompanied solo is a direct result of the composer’s further compositional development in

51 Personal interview with Dr. Anderson, September 17, 2011.

multiple performance platforms, an idea that was stimulated when Anderson heard Darius Milhaud’s1948 String Quartets Nos.14 and 15, in which the two pieces were performed independently of each other and then when performed simultaneously essentially formed another piece.52 Dr. Anderson’s exploration of this type of pluralistic writing originally began in 1965 with a work commissioned by West Virginia State University for its seventy-fifth anniversary, in which the composer delved into bitonality using a large ensemble. Almost 30 years later, a 1991 composition premiered in 1992 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North CarolinaWhat Ever Happened to Big Bands, written for alto saxophone, trumpet, and tromboneis further evidence of Dr. Anderson’s total commitment to this concept.53 Of course the author of this document is not minimizing the creative genius of any composer’s talent to create; however, the assumption can be presented in the relative ease of bitonal writing using more than one performer or instrument since each performer can be assigned to a particular key in which to play. A more accurate example of true genius is creating a productin this case, a multi-tonal compositionusing an instrument incapable of producing more than one note at a time. The most radical and arguably most innovative period of Dr. Anderson’s compositional output occurred in the early 1980s with the 1984 publication of Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes. This work is an amalgamation of differing and (some would argue) diametrically opposing classical and jazz principles. It is significant that this work represents an even more exploratory and even drastic endeavor in the composer’s continued experimentation in the employment of multiple performance platforms; however, especially noteworthy is Dr. Anderson’s decision to use the trumpet as his method of expression. A monophonic instrument’s inability to conventionally perform more than one note could give cause for the composer to solicit unconventional means. Dr. Anderson’s answer to this issue came in the form of using two cassette tape recorders which, at that time, provided an instant and more accurate representation of the live presentation. Some would argue against classifying this work as an unaccompanied

52 Darius Milhaud, Notes Without Music: An Autobiography, first American ed. (France: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 311. 53 http://tjandersonmusic.com/downloads.html [accessed February 19, 2012].

trumpet solo; however, the author of this document gives merit to the idea that the cassette recorder is simply being used as an elaborate extended technique. The premier performance of Sunstar took place ten years after it was published by Dr. Richard Burkart at Ohio State University in 1994.54 Unfortunately, performance information on the composition is almost nonexistent, and the only recording available seems to be its premier performance, posted on Dr. Anderson’s website. During a telephone conversation in March 2011, Dr. Anderson revealed that to his knowledge the work had only been publicly performed about three times, and that this author’s lecture recital performance would be the fourth. The author of this document will share personal experiences with learning and performing this work, and discuss performance practices (articulation, breathing, rhythms, and phrasing) along with potential problematic issues (extended techniques, endurance, and technology) involved with presenting this work. Soloists have different and very individual ways of presenting a work, and the author realizes the importance of artistic expression. However, certain fundamentals exist in trumpet playing such that if the player does not possess them, a less-than-desirable outcome results. The design of this chapter is rooted in the techniques and abilities required to perform the solo. With all of its complexities, Sunstar is written for the mature player; someone who has command over the trumpet and possesses technique (flexibility, endurance, and articulation), understands musicality principles, and has an above-average knowledge of jazz improvisation. It is also highly recommended that the soloist does not attempt to operate the audio equipment while performing the solo, as it requires an enormous amount of concentration and could be distracting.

Articulation Performers of brass instruments must use and control the tongue muscle to execute a variety of musical passages befitting the genre in which they are playing. Even though agreement about the process is lacking, articulation is a fundamental learning principle for playing brass instruments that should be developed before the player deviates to the different genres (i.e., jazz, commercial, pop, funk, classical, etcetera.) that require more specialized approaches to articulation. Articulation on brass instruments is related to the player’s use of his tongue, breath,

54 http://tjandersonmusic.com/works.html [accessed March 20, 2011].

and embouchure in starting, stopping, accenting, slurring (and combinations of the above) of a tone on the instrument.55 The tongue is arguably one of the most important aids in brass playing, and must be thought of in relation to proper embouchure and breath support and not as an entity unto itself.56 The tongue should always be relaxed and must work in coordination with the embouchure in all types of articulation situations of high, low, fast and slow brass playing. There are two basic types of articulation in brass playing: 1. Slurring from one note to another, in which case the tongue articulates the first note in

the phrase and the following notes are played in a sliding, non-articulated fashion.

2. Tonguing from one note to another, in which a succession of notes is played by

means of continuous tongue action.

Most pedagogues advocate the use of the “T” and “ah” syllables to place the tongue in the correct position during articulation. The “T” syllable (and its derivatives such as “tu,” “too,” and “tee”) raises the tongue and allows for brilliant hard attacks and playing in the higher tessituras of the horn. The “ah” syllable (and its derivatives such as “la,” “du,” “lu,” “thu,” and “da”) lowers the tongue and allows for a softer attack and low register playing. The trumpet player must become comfortable and adept in the process of transitioning smoothly through the entire range of the horn using the different articulation methods. Playing jazz articulations can be extremely confusing as not all of them are played as they are written. In an effort to provide a consistent approach to interpretation of rhythms and articulations, a set of twelve instructions known as the Jazz Bill of Rights was created by University of Louisville professor and jazz pianist Jerry Tolson.57 A rule of jazz articulation adhering to the seventh of the twelve instructions refers to the treatment of the two notes followed by a rest (as denoted with the motif in the tempo ad lib movement of Sunstar’s Trumpet B part; Figure 16) states that the last note should be articulated with the syllables “doo-dot.”58

55 Norman J. Hunt, “Articulation” in Guide to Teaching Brass(Dubuque, IA: W.C. Brown, 1984), 38. 56 Ibid. 57 J. Richard Dunscomb and Dr. Willie L. Hill, Jr., Jazz Pedagogy: The Jazz Educator’s Handbook and Resource Guide (Miami, FL: Warner Brothers Publications, 2002), 75. 58 Ibid., 75.

The example used to illustrate this uses two sixteenth notes; however, the articulation remains the same. Because the character of the movement is strictly from the jazz genre, this style of articulation should only be used during the tempo ad lib movement of the Trumpet B part. The author will omit discussions involving jazz articulations because there are many variations, some of them unique and specific to different types of players, resulting in a less-than-uniform presentation.59 Conversely, and in what could be the most important distinction between jazz and classical staccatos, is that in classical articulation the emphasis seems to be on an accented and detached staccato sound, while jazz articulations tend to be longer.60 It is of considerable interest to note that all of the extended techniques used in the entire composition and discussed in chapter 4 have roots in the jazz tradition, and in the improvised part of the Tempo Ad Lib movement of Trumpet B, the soloist is free to include any type of articulation. Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes is unique in the fact that it contains articulations common to both jazz and classical traditions, the latter being the most prevalent. Not including articulations associated with the extended techniques discussed earlier, the following is a list of fundamental articulations found in the work with denotation of how each is used and from which genre it originates.

59 James Moore,“Fundamental Differences Between Jazz and Traditional Trumpet Playing,” International Trumpet Guild Journal, ed. Chuck Tumlinson (January 2009): 49. 60 Ibid., 48.

Table 3. Fundamental Sunstar Articulations

ARTICULATION CLASSICAL JAZZ LOCATION

STACCATOS X Trumpet A:

 Giocoso  Tempo Ad Lib

Trumpet B:

 Cantabile  Vivace

SLURS X X Trumpet A and B

DOUBLE X Trumpet A: TONGUING  TempoAd Lib

TRIPLE X Trumpet A: TONGUING  Tempo Ad Lib

Musicality

Some musicians may feel that musical expression and demonstrating technique involve two different forms of study. The truth is that no separation of the two should exist in musical performance; missing either element renders the performance drab, lacking and certainly nonmusical. In order to demonstrate musicality the performer must not only be able to rationalize good phrasing, but also must have the instrumental technique to logically exploit that phrase. One could argue that music associated with the avant-garde genre, with its unusual intervals, unorthodox rhythms, and use of extended techniques favors technique and lacks the many subtleties associated with musical expression. The author suggests that true musicality involves having the technical prowess to perform any note and rhythm, and a thorough understanding of what is needed to make the demonstrated technique fluid. By no means is the assertion that all

avant-garde music is nonmusical; however, some compositions written in the 1950s and 1960s certainly stretched the realms of what was expected in traditional music. Although Sunstar was written many years after the world was presented with the ability to generate sounds artificially, it represents a contemporary composer’s attempt to bond technology with nontraditional and traditional means of expression into an extremely musically enriched presentation. Most critics would agree that instrumentalists develop musicality over a period of time, and that musicality is a by-product of learned technique, perseverance (enthusiasm) and an understanding of phrasing. The act of playing an instrument can be both physically painful and mentally straining because the performer not only thinks about his musical statements, but also must allow himself to become an integral part of the musical fabric.61 Musicality, arguably, is a critical element in performance that is most difficult to understand, and if not developed can cause both performer and listener to lose interest. Because the work merges very different genre principles, the author presents exercises and methodology that could facilitate musicality if a performer desires. The methods listed above are suggestions by the author and not intended to be a definitive source for any type of methodology. However, the books listed are considered staples in trumpet pedagogy and are highly recommended because they have been proven beneficial to many trumpeters around the world.

61 David McGill, Sound in Motion: A Performer’s Guide to Greater Musical Expression (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), 11-12.

Table 4. Exercises to Facilitate Musicality

ISSUE(S) SCORE SUGGESTED METHODS LOCATION Smears, Smears, Glissandi (Rips) Trumpet A: Giocoso The Allen Vizzutti Trumpet Method Book 1 (p. 15-24) Trumpet B: Vivace Dolcissimo Staccatos Trumpet A: Giocoso Practical Studies For The Trumpet by E. F. Goldman Tempo Ad Lib (p. 2-6) Trumpet B: Cantabile Slurs Trumpet A: Giocoso The Allen Vizzutti Trumpet Method Book 1 (p. 15-24) Tempo Ad Lib Trumpet B: Cantabile Finger Dexterity Trumpet A: Tempo Ad Lib Technical Studies For The Cornet by H. L. Clarke (p. Trumpet B: Cantabile 5-7) Single Tonguing Trumpet A: Giocoso Practical Studies For The Trumpet by E. F. Goldman 49 Trumpet B: Cantabile (p. 2-6)

Vivace Double Tonguing Trumpet A: Tempo Ad Lib Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (p. 175-182) Triple Tonguing Trumpet A: Tempo Ad Lib Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (p. 155-174) Lyrical Playing Trumpet A: Andante Lyrical Studies for Trumpet or Horn by Giuseppe Allegretto Concone (entire book) Trumpet B: Dolcissimo Low Tessitura Playing Trumpet A: Giocoso Low Etudes for Trumpet by Phil Snedecor (entire Tempo Ad Lib book) High Tessitura Playing and Endurance Trumpet A-Andante The Allen Vizzutti Trumpet Method Book 1 (p. 120- Tempo Ad Lib 128) Flexibility All Movements The Allen Vizzutti Trumpet Method Book 1 (p. 15-24) Intervals Trumpet A: Giocoso The Allen Vizzutti Trumpet Method Book 2 (p.7-18) Tempo Ad Lib Trumpet B: Vivace Improvisation Trumpet B: Tempo Ad Lib A New Approach To Jazz Improvisation by Jamey Abersold (Vol. 3)

Improvisation The ability of an instrumentalist to create on-the-spot interpretations of unwritten music is a difficult and sometimes unobtainable goal; however, in the area of jazz playing it is more common place than in any other musical genre. Improvisation is considered by some as the highest level of virtuosity, in which a soloist transforms the melody into patterns bearing little (or no) resemblance to the original melody, and is often associated with the jazz genre.62 This association in itself is most interesting because jazz improvisation has its fundamental beginnings in the European tradition of Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven’s piano music.63 Besides the rhythmic aspect, an interesting and often undisclosed difference in the comparison of the two styles is that the European tradition generally involved one performer, while the American tradition can involve as many as eight or more musicians improvising at the same time.64 Because Sunstar is an unaccompanied solo involving one performer, argument can be made that the work is more closely related to the European style of improvisation than to the American style. Dr. Anderson’s Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes is dedicated to Dizzy Gillespie, jazz trumpeter and one of the prominent innovators of a complex and highly rhythmic style of jazz called bebop.65 During the personal interview for this treatise, the author pointed out to Dr. Anderson that the two short motifs located in the Tempo ad lib section of the Trumpet B part in which the soloist has artistic license to repeat as many times as possible within a 45-second timeframe could possibly be attributed (at least in style) to Gillespie. The two short motifs and their treatment serve as a written preparation for the unwritten and strictly improvised section that follows, in which the performer plays a melody in accordance with the written chord changes.

62 Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, ed. Philip V. Bohlman and Bruno Nettl (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 70. 63 Joseph Machlis, The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening, 3rd ed.(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1970),413. 64 Ibid. 65 Lewis Porter, Michael Ullman, and Ed Hazell, Jazz: from Its Origins to the Present (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 19932), 188-197. 65 Berliner, 122.

Author’s note: The last part of the Tempo ad lib section instructs the performer to play in the E-flat Phrygian mode. The notes in this mode can be enharmonically spelled to produce a B major scale.

Extended Techniques

Sunstar is a unique trumpet solo that is comprised of two separate parts labeled as Trumpet A and Trumpet B. A score for the piece was never written; therefore, all of the instructions are literally handwritten on the title page. The part labeled Trumpet A is pre- recorded on cassette recorder number one in advance of the actual performance. During the actual performance, cassette recorder number one should be placed on the performer’s left and set at a volume that allows for adequate playback. The part labeled Trumpet B is played in front of the audience, with the second tape recorder used to record the pre-recorded part for Trumpet A along with approximately four minutes of the live Trumpet B part before it is rewound and played back along with the continuation of the Trumpet B part. The solo duration, according to timing information available on the parts, should be approximately ten minutes and fifteen seconds. However the actual performance duration might be different, depending on the performer’s musicality.66 Author’s note: The visual component of watching a soloist execute extended techniques is almost as exciting as hearing the interesting sounds they produce. This visual dynamic is unfortunately lost, as the part labeled Trumpet A, pre-recorded and performed without an audience, contains a majority of the composition’s extended techniques.

Trumpet A, Giocoso Movement

Timed silence (first two minutes and five seconds); reminiscent of twentieth century avant-garde composer John Cage’s Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds. However, unlike Cage, Dr. Anderson utilizes this “recorded” silence to start the work with the live Trumpet B part. Dynamics (throughout); Mozart once compared musical dynamics to colors of a painting, describing them as degrees of shading, rooted in the nature of our emotions. Mystery and fear might call for the softest piano, while a triumphant display calls for a forte or even louder

66 Thomas J. Anderson, Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Recorders (T. J. Anderson, American Composers Edition, 1988).

response.67 With the exception of only a few instances, rarely does Dr. Anderson call for any forte passages; instead the Trumpet A part should be performed on the softer, mysterious side of the dynamic continuum. Smears (mm. 2–5, 18–19, 45–46, 55–57); an expressive articulation considered part of the jazz language and accomplished by using the embouchure to bend a particular note to a desired pitch.68 Dr. Anderson indicates that the performer should slowly smear downward and upward in a wide vibrato fashion. Staccato articulation (throughout); the most basic kind of tongued note; a fragment of a long note.69 The performer should perform staccato notes in this part as dry as possible, and allow for taper and a continuation of the airstream when applicable. Shakes (mm. 11–12, 50, 53–54); essentially considered very fast lip slurs, as the embouchure remains firm and nearly steady. This effect, when played properly, can be as smooth as trills created with the aid of valves. It is most commonly used in the jazz genre and can be accomplished by moving the jaw in a slight up-and-down motion and using slightly more air compression.70

Trumpet A, Tempo ad lib Movement

Time (eight separate timed sections); the soloist is given fifteen seconds in which to perform each of the eight excerpts. The soloist experiences a sort of “controlled” freedom, as Dr. Anderson dictates the exact amount of time in which the soloist is to perform the excerpt. Pitch alternation (first, second, and fourth sections of timed movement); all brass instruments resonate at natural harmonics (partials) corresponding to the length of their tubing. Although these partials can be reproduced by means of different valve combinations, there is a slight variation in intonation.71 By instructing the performer to play them in a swift manner, Dr. Anderson uses the partials of D (1 + 3 harmonics), E (open, 1+2 or 3 harmonics) to produce an excited sound.

67 Machlis, 25. 68 Gridley, 45. 69 Wesiberg, 18-19. 70 Hickman, 125. 71 Hickman, 285.

Flutter tonguing (eighth section of timed movement); a twentieth century technique originally used by Strauss to imitate sheep sounds. Schoenberg and other composers simply considered it another sound with no further significance. Flutter tonguing can be done in two different ways, with either the front or the back of the tongue. Using the front of the tongue is preferred by brass players and is created by applying a moderate amount of tongue pressure to the back of the teeth while moving an airstream into the mouthpiece.72 Choke tones (first, second, and seventh sections of timed movement); Dr. Anderson described this effect being accomplished as the approximate sounding of the written note (signified with an X) while halfway depressing the valves. Open (o) and closed (+) playing with mute (second, fifth, sixth and eighth sections of timed movement); this effect, mostly used by jazz performers to achieve a “doo-wha” type of sound, is accomplished by holding a plunger mute with the left hand while covering (closed position) and uncovering (opened position) the bell while playing.73 Glissando in combination with open and closed mute playing (second section of timed movement); a “slide” between notes that is accomplished by slightly depressing one or more of the valves while blowing strongly, creating an exciting and brilliant sound. This style of playing requires skill and practice to accomplish.74 Dr. Anderson uses this effect in combination with the open and closed plunger mute, creating an additional level of difficulty.

Trumpet A, Andante Movement

Slow wide trill (mm. 30, 31, 42 and 43); see description of shakes above. Dr. Anderson instructs the performer to play the widest interval and as slowly possible.

Trumpet A, Allegretto Movement

No extended techniques.

72 Arthur Wesiberg, The Art of Wind Playing (New York: Schirmer Books, 1975), 114- 115. 73 Hickman, 364. 74 Hickman, 30-31.

Extended Techniques: Trumpet B

The soloist’s first entrance occurs in the part labeled Trumpet B. In contrast with this particular part, in which the composer has elected to display the majority of extended techniques, the part labeled Trumpet B has only minimal extended techniques. However, the part has more recognizable melodic elements, including fanfares, call and response, rapid scales, jazz improvisation and gospel inflection of both parts combined. With the aid of recorded media, Dr. Anderson successfully demonstrates the multiple performance platforms using a monophonic instrument that is performed by a single musician. As discussed earlier, Trumpet B lacks many of the extended techniques found in the Trumpet A part. An argument can be presented that many of the compositional devices (i.e., wide intervals, chromaticism, and articulation) used by Dr. Anderson in its construction are closely related to the extended techniques in Trumpet A. These devices are discussed earlier in this chapter.

Technology

The aftermath of World War II gave birth to more far-reaching innovations in music than any previous conflict.75 Two pre-World War I movements known as futurism and Dadaism can be considered precursors to the movement that lead to the inclusion of technology in music expression. The first precursor is the Italian movement known as futurism, which is associated with musicians who found music in indiscriminate noises and foreshadowed the achievements of Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) and of electronic music.76 The second precursor to the technological association with music was the dada movement, the rejection of the exaltation of any art form. The musicians associated with this movement produced works of absolute absurdity.77 John Cage, an American composer directly influenced by this movement, was a literal mocker of traditional music. His 1952 piano composition entitled Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds required the performer to sit at the keyboard and do nothing for four minutes and thirty-three

75 Machlis, 431. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

seconds.78 Interestingly, Dr. Anderson’s mentor and composition teacher Darius Milhaud was an active participant in Dadaism when he composed the music for a Jean Cocteau scenario entitled The Nothing Doing Bar (Le Boeuf sur le toit) in 1919.79 As technology advanced after World War II, so did the imagination of composers as they found interesting ways to include it in their works. The post-World War II emergence of electronic music had three distinct stages: magnetic tape recording, evolution of synthesizers, and finally the use of computers as sound generators. Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes is representative of the first stage; the composer uses recording media as an elaborate extended technique that allows the merging of the pre-recorded (recorded prior to the live audience performance) part labeled as Trumpet A with a second part labeled as Trumpet B, performed in front of the audience and simultaneously recorded by a second tape recorder. Performance of Sunstar is not exceptionally difficult to execute. However, operating the cassette recorders and playing the solo is tedious and using a separate individual to operate the machines will make for a seamless migration through the work.

78 David Ewen, Composers of Tomorrow’s Music: A Non-Technical Introduction to the Musical Avant-garde movement (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1971), 154. 79 Ibid., 146.

CHAPTER SEVEN SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this treatise the author discussed the history of the trumpet as a solitary instrument, the eventual acceptance of the trumpet by composers of art music, and how the quest for chromaticism resulted in an unbalanced ratio between unaccompanied trumpet solos and solos with accompaniment. Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson’s Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes was chosen as an example of a contemporary composer combining jazz and classical elements in an exciting work that also includes avant-garde techniques and modern-day technology. This treatise presents a short biography of Dr. Anderson, a detailed history of the work, an explanation of extended techniques used, detailed time analysis, and practical suggestions to help a soloist present an effective interpretation of the work. Sunstar is written in a manner consistent with other compositions by Dr. Anderson that exploit the composer’s fascination with multi-tonal writing and dissonance. This work is the composer’s radical attempt at bi-tonal writing using a monophonic instrument with the help of two cassette recorders to create his multi-performance platform. Like most of his works since the 1960s, Sunstar is deeply rooted in the classical traditions of the past as well as certain inferences to the jazz and avant-garde practices of the twentieth century. Recording technology is used to create two distinct layers of dissonance, and although serialism may be suspected, separating the layers as demonstrated in the author’s time analysis clearly reveals that the perceived serialism is cleverly deceptive. With the employment of extended techniques throughout Sunstar’s Trumpet A part, the performer will use a variety of traditional and unorthodox articulations to create interesting sonorities that are common practice in unaccompanied works in the avant-garde genre. The use of a recording device is offered by the author as another extended technique, because the performer uses a previously recorded part unknown to the audience to enhance the live performance. To successfully execute the work, the performer must be well-versed in classical and jazz playing. Unfortunately, the extended techniques (including technological and improvisational) could be daunting obstacles and might deter trumpet players who do not have the knowledge and ability to execute them.

Although Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Tapes has not reached the level of acceptance as other trumpet works, it is worthy of further study and greater performance. Throughout his career as an educator and composer, Dr. Thomas Jefferson Anderson has demonstrated a passion for types of musical expression that stretch the imagination and ability of both music and musician. At the very least, Dr. Anderson has indeed added a unique composition to the gradually expanding repertoire of the unaccompanied trumpet solo.

APPENDIX A TRANSCRIPTION OF DR. THOMAS J. ANDERSON INTERVIEW SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

KT: You studied with Milhaud?

TJA: He was at Aspen teaching, and I knew of him as a composer because he was the first one to successfully combine jazz and classical music in his “Creation of the World” in that saxophone ensemble. That’s a major piece. So I was interested in studying with him, a very nice man, a very modest man. But a very good teacher and he had so many students.

KT: He [Milhaud] started in the classical genre and then he merged classical and jazz. You, on the other hand, started in jazz…

TJA: Oh no, violin was classical, and then I went into jazz. I have never in my mind separated the two. I mean, certainly, there are practices in both fields that you separate, but (Louis) Armstrong said it: “There are only two kinds of music, good and bad.” There’s bad classical and there’s bad jazz.

KT: How many compositions (whether solo or chamber) have you completed that involve trumpet?

TJA: I don’t have any idea.

KT: Do you remember your first solo work for trumpet?

TJA: I don’t have any idea. Once I write a piece, I’ve done it so I don’t have to go back to it. I mean, Beethoven had four and five revisions of things he was working on. And, you can see how the work progressed. And Picasso, when he did “Guernica,” there were steps that he took to change, so they can process that in terms of pictures of what he was working on. I think my method of working is that I work a lot of the things through my mind before I get to the paper. I

mean, I sorta have an idea of what I want to do and it’s clear in my mind what it should be. Now, that doesn’t mean I do what I have in mind, but what it does mean is that I’m already gotten. Once I get to the paper, I may cross out something here or there, and if you study my scores the manuscript shows that. But rarely do I write a piece over again or make major revisions. I take that experience and move it to the next piece, and I think that’s more important to me.

KT: You include the trumpet in many of your compositions. From reading other documentaries on you, I know you believe in Hindemith’s dictum that composers should be familiar with as many instruments as possible. Is trumpet your favorite instrument to write for?

TJA: I wouldn’t say that. My favorite instrument would probably be the cellowhich I never played. I wrote a piece commissioned for Yo Yo Ma, so the cello is a fascinating instrument, but I don’t think in terms of instruments. It’s like this, if you ask a mother which is her favorite child, and if she has six, I guarantee she couldn’t tell you, she just doesn’t know. It’s the same with me. I don’t know what instrument would be my favorite. What I have chosen, based on my career, has been based on commissions, as in terms of ensembles…they want it for this and that. That, basically, is what dictates my [work].

KT: Aaron Horne’s Brass Music of Black Composers: A Bibliography shows only four black composers, you being one of them, who have ventured into compositions that feature the trumpet as an unaccompanied solo voice. Why do you think there are so few black composers in this realm of composition?

TJA: Well, I’ll say that there are very few requests. I think most composers, I mean, it goes back to the apprenticeship that we served and also working in churches that basically commissioned works. We [composers] were servants of the church. So Bach’s cantatas grew out of that and all of our works grew out of our experiences and demands. And we don’t have demands for unaccompanied solo works for trumpet. If we did and if it were for a jazz musician, it would be a lot of improvisation and very few notes written. He would want it that way, at least the jazz musicians I know. They wouldn’t want to practice on it. And for what I do demands that they practice on it. So that when I wrote Sunstar, basically, I dedicated it to “Diz” and the composer Hale Smith, and I wanted to write a piece that Diz would be interested in playing and capture

what I think is the vitality. And I think I did that, but he never got a chance to play it. He died before he could work on it. That’s how that piece came about.

KT: Did you send pieces of Sunstar to Dizzy, to get input from him?

TJA: No, no, I don’t do that. In other words, I write the piece…I would do that if it were a trumpet concerto. I would do it, but a solo trumpet piece, no.

KT: Have you written a trumpet concerto?

TJA: No. Do I hear a commission coming?

KT: Perhaps you do. In regards to Sunstar, I’ve played it. A very interesting piece, and I would like you to talk about your “orbiting” technique used in its composition. What sparked your interest in creating such a unique piecetwo pieces; one part pre-recorded on tape and the live playing of the other?

TJA: Well, you think of it as in terms of a duo. I think at one time [during the solo] I have four parts playing. And I think the technology enables you to do that. But I thought fanfare a lot. It occurs to me now that I was thinking fanfare a lot.

KT: The extended techniques that you include in Sunstar, the slow vibrato, fast vibrato, glissandihow did they come about?

TJA: Well they have always been in music. I mean singers and violins use them. In other words, what I have done is I’ve developed my own way of communicating. My own musical personality, so that becomes [my] style and it has evolved over a number of years. What you may see in one work, you may never see again then all of a sudden it will come back. Technique is only the servant of the composer and each work has its own character. So, what I tried to do, being a trumpet player, and thinking of Gillespie, I tried to have [in it] what I think of his personality and my compositional skill together.

KT: You dedicate Sunstar to your friend Dizzy Gillespiedid he have any influence on the piece?

TJA: Oh no! No melody…in other words, I didn’t put any of his melodies.

KT: There is a part of Sunstar, near the end of the Trumpet B part that I found to be very “Dizzyesque” [singing the first motif of the tempo ad lib movement in Trumpet B].

TJA: Oh yeah! Now that you say that [singing the part], that’s a motif, but that was unconscious. And if you told me that, I would have used it…I don’t know what I would have done. But I made no attempt to go back and remember or listen to recordings of Gillespie. There was no attempt…that was subconscious.

KT: When I was playing it, I remember thinking that’s Dizzy for sure! I could hear him playing something just like that. It was so befitting because it’s right near the end, right before the slow part. You included improvisation which was very nice.

TJA: That’s nice, I’m glad you caught it. So it does have Gillespie in it.

KT: The procedure you use in the composition of Sunstar, you called “orbiting.” I remember reading that you got the idea from another composer. Will you please elaborate on that?

TJA: I don’t remember.

KT: Can you elaborate on the orbiting concept itself?

TJA: Well, in an earlier work called Squares I thought of sound platforms. That is levels of sound this way (motions with his hands) not in terms of dynamics in which the whole orchestra is forte or piano. I thought of this. Then I thought about breaking off things. And orbiting to me means, and this is not just in Sunstar, it’s in a lot of my works, where I have one thing going on and independently (totally) another piece going on. This is what I think of when I think of orbiting. So that I have the ability to combine two, three or even four different concepts

simultaneously. Although they appear collectively, each orbiting factor has its own dynamic, own interpretations and I would say that there are motifs that interlock, but they are just motifs and not melodies, so there is a connection but the connection is very slight. I’ve done a lot of things in this way.

KT: I mentioned to you a few months ago, during my study of Sunstar, that initially I thought it was atonal. But I was very wrong!

TJA: That’s what I think. I think of bitonality or tritonality, multiple pitch centers going on at the same time. Because if one ensemble is playing in D and the other in A-flat, I’m thinking of the relationship between D and A-flat.

KT: In the book The Black Composer Speaks, you mentioned that you were working on an opera. Did you complete it?

TJA: The Shell Fairy, a children’s opera. Yes I finished it. It’s never been played but I did finish it. I did it with the psychiatrists Chester Pierce and Sara ______and we worked on it together. Chester, one of my closest friends, retired from Harvard, said to me, he said, “You’re going to have to write the greatest music in the world. It has to come from the shell.” A heavy demand, I don’t remember what I wrote but we did write it.

KT: Would you like to see it performed?

TJA: Oh yeah! I want to see everything performed. But I think, like now, I’m working on a piece that I don’t have a commission for. This piece is about the death of Osama Bin Laden. The text is by my son’s wife, Pauline. Pauline regretted the fact that Americans celebrated in the death. And I feel the same way. I’m reminded of the Hemmingway remark in For Whom the Bell Tolls and I think it was John Dunway who said “the death of any man diminishes me.” And I think we have to really be careful about what we celebrate and what we really are implying in our celebrations.

KT: Your works employ a delicate mixture of traditional harmonies and jazz harmonies. How do you determine [in your composing process] which harmonies to use?

TJA: I just respond. I remember when I was studying with Dick Hervig at the University of Iowa, I told him that Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalm was influenced by jazz. He didn’t believe it. The Halleluiah section is definitely jazz harmonies. And he (Hervig) said, “that’s the way you hear it!” And now I understand that. Stravinsky liked jazz and he had written a jazz concerto for Benny Goodman. And so, he didn’t know a lot about jazz but he was certainly influenced by it. So, I never (in my mind), I never say this is a classical section or contemporary avant-garde section. I just put down what comes to me spontaneously. I think the flow of the composer should be unconscious. Totally unconscious! Otherwise you become trapped and then you say I’m going do this now, and then I’m going to do that now. I remember I was talking with Berlioz once and we were talking about form, and Luciano was saying “what you have to do in music is let the music dictate itself.” Which I thought was great, and I understood that. You don’t say I’m going to go from here to here and this is going to be an exposition and a recapitulation and development and so forth. You start off with those things in mind. You may have an exposition, development and recapitulation but you don’t consciously say that this is going to be eighteen measures or thirty measures long and then I’ll go to the second theme. To me, that’s a terrible way to write music.

KT: You spent some time with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. How did you get the position of Composer-in-Residence?

TJA: That came through the Rockefeller Foundation. They asked me if I would be Composer-in- Residence with Robert Shaw, and I was fortunate to be with him. He was a great mentor in certain ways. Shaw would study scores all the time. I remember, like he would perform a Tchaikovsky symphony, like the fourth or sixth. He would perform it three or four nights in a row. He would record the performances. Every performance was taped and studied. In other words, he had it down to the second what he wanted to do. And none of the performances were alike, all of them were different. But the timing was close on every one of them, which I found fascinating.

KT: You orchestrated Joplin’s opera Treemonisha?

TJA: Yes I orchestrated it. Bill Balcom and I edited the Joplin opera. And I did the original premier performance with Robert Shaw in 1972.

KT: What are your thoughts on modern composers?

TJA: Well, I think of myself as a modern composer. The day that I’m not, I’ll no longer be relevant. At least I’d like to think that I am. I admit that I don’t know as many of them as I used to know, but I do study scores. There’s a Takahachi violin score that I’m studying now and I always study scores. George Lewis who is at Columbia wrote a book on the Art Ensemble of Chicago, The Creative Musician, a fascinating book and he sent me some of his music, very impressive. So I get music from people like George and I always want to know what young people are doing. So I don’t have any standards nor do I have any preconceived ideas of what it should be.

KT: Have you ever worked with pop singers?

TJA: I wrote a pop song. A song for a rock band that was done by a classical singer. I can’t remember her name, but she teaches at the New England Conservatory.

KT: Can you describe this song?

TJA: The piece was written for Bird Songs of the Mesozoic, and that group was popular some years ago. The leader of the group was one of my former students. So, I wrote the piece, I was having an anniversary at Tufts and I wanted a piece that involved his band. That’s how that piece came to be.

KT: What advice can you offer to the young composer?

TJA: I can only offer the advice that they should study scores. I think one of the weaknesses of young musicians is that they have already assumed what they want to do. Once you do that you don’t have an open mind. What’s popular today will be gone in five or ten years from now. Once you close your mind off to what you want to do, you are no longer in the ball game, as far as I’m

concerned. You have to have an open mind and you have to be musically and intellectually curious. And if you hear something that you like, regardless of who the composer is, go study the piece. I remember one of the first pieces that I got involved with was Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, and that French horn ostinato that I liked so much. And now when I hear the piece, I ask myself, how did I like something that conservative? What happened is that I had grown. And I think that I wouldn’t choose it now to study because it doesn’t interest me now. But at the time, it opened up a lot of things for my development as a composer. I think all composers should think in terms of mentors, people that they continue to listen to and be inspired by their works and understand how it’s done. It’s one thing to like something and another to understand it.

KT: I see you as an advocate of education and other things. Now do you see yourself an advocate?

TJA: I’d like to think of myself as an advocate of many things. Certainly, I’d be an advocate of equality. I’d be an advocate of contemporary music and of art. One of my best friends is Richard Hunt, the sculptor in Chicago. What I’m saying is I’m an advocate for a lot of things. Creative writing for instance. My son and his wife are creative writers and Leon Forrest, the novelist, is one of my best friends, so Richard Leon and I have come through this experience together. It is very interesting that although we are in three different disciplines, we relate to different things, yet all of us being African American have had the same experience. And that experience means when you’re young and you show promise, everybody will support you. Once you get to a certain level and you become a threat, things disappear. Richard hasn’t been able to overcome it. Several years ago, he won the International Sculptor of the Year, and he just did a film on his life, which I did the music for. It’s being shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; it’s going to be premiered sometime in October. So I’m saying that regardless of support, you have to go in and do what you have to do. And I don’t think for one minute that I have written any less music if I had been commissioned or more. I’ve done what I wanted to do. You have to sort of create your own venue and go on with your life. Richard and I have done it. Leon died, but he has certainly made his contribution.

KT: In Sunstar, you used call and response in much of the piece. Do you remember what other devices you used?

TJA: No. I’m sure it’s got call and response, it’s got development, modal and homophonic devices too. But in terms of remembering Sunstar, no. I’m glad you played it!

KT: Me too! I loved it! During my recital, I was a little apprehensive about it because of the technology that was required to perform the piece. I used Zoom recorders and I had a student at the eleventh hour volunteere to work some or most of the setting up the equipment. I wanted to do it all myself, but I just couldn’t do it. He controlled the recording. I learned a valuable lesson that day. You should not refuse help, especially when you are in need of it. He controlled one recorder from the audience and I had the other recorder on stage with me. I had two nice speakers on either side of the stage and the entire visual aspect of the performance looked very nice. But it was such a good experience and I did the lecture first about you and the piece. I’ve been to lectures where basically you can fall asleep and you won’t miss a thing. During the lecture as I described your life and explained the piece, I took notice if I had the attention of the audience. Your life was interesting to people…at least the way I presented it. And believe me, you have had a very interesting life, but when I started playing the piece it was so fresh and so new, because there are not that many “Sunstars” out there.

TJA: Well you mentioned that I’ve had different experiences, and I wouldn’t expect there to be. In other words if it reflects me, I’ve had one set of experiences and this experience is reflected in the music. If everything else is true, nobody has had this. I make no attempt to be original or different or the founder of a school of composers. None of that stuff has ever occurred to me, so you just make every attempt to let each piece stand on its own. I remember when I was in Atlanta, I did a piece that was the dedication to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Center. It was based on a Negro spiritual, and someone told me that there was a little kid that was at the concert, had a big crowd, Mrs. King was there, and they said this little kid went to sleep. And when they played my piece, they said he woke up, and stayed awake the whole time. So, here’s an African American child that I linked with and that’s exactly what I want. Because his experiences will be more attuned to me than other listeners. The ability for that child to connect with all classical music, as well as jazz, Asian, and African music is really what you want to see. And for that kid to connect and stay awake the whole time, he had been sleeping throughout the first part of the concert. So, what you say, in terms of certain audiences make a link is true. I

remember when did I my piano concerto, commissioned by the University of Iowa for the hundredth anniversary with Donnel Fox as soloist, my former student, I remember it was interesting because after the concert was over they rushed to him. All of these pianists went to him because, in that concerto, no notes are written for the piano. Not one note. Yet instructions are there telling him when he should play and when he shouldn’t play. But that piece, I found it very interesting, that it was the pianist was the one they wanted to talk to. So the piece came across through the piano. I thought that it was very successful. It has never been performed again, but it does what I wanted it to do.

KT: That’s exactly why I chose your work, because after listening to Sunstar and hearing your other pieces, and seeing the reaction that your music got from the younger generation of musiciansSunstar was written some thirty years ago and it still gets a positive reaction from young people. I think that’s why I decided to follow this through to my thesis because I think the new generation will learn about you. They need to learn about you and your work. I would like to sincerely thank you for sharing your time with me today.

TJA: I look forward to reading what you write.

APPENDIX B ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED PUBLISHED CHAMBER WORKS

The author has compiled selected works of Dr. Anderson that feature trumpet. For each work, the following information is provided, as applicable and if known, in an annotated form:

Title

Date of composition A distinction (if plausible) will be made if completion and publication date is different.

Instrumentation A complete listing of required instrumentation according to the score.

Dedications and/or Any known information regarding performers involved in commissions the development of commission of the work.

Premiere Any known information regarding the premiere of the work.

Publication information All available publication information.

Duration As indicated in the score.

Tessitura (for trumpet The pitch range of each work is provided according to the only) following system: The F-sharp below low C is indicated as F#1, one octave above is indicated as F#2, two octaves is indicated as F#3, and three octaves is indicated as F#4.All other pitches follow the format of the F-sharp below them; for example, low G is indicated G1 and the G two octaves above is G3.

Equipment Identified as any additional tools used by the performer to provide the prescribed effect specified by the composer (i.e., mutes, etc.).

Extended techniques See chapter 4.

Notation considerations Any conventional or nonconventional methods that may or may not influence performance will be considered.

Performance Any performance considerations that may influence the considerations selection of the work; may include venue requirements, theatrical requirements, or detailed information regarding the work’s performance.

Personals, A Cantata for Narrator, Chorus, and Brass Ensemble

Date of composition: 1966

Instrumentation: Two B-flat trumpets Two F-horns B-flat tenor trombone Tuba

Dedication and commission: Fisk University in celebration of its centennial anniversary

Premiere performance: Nashville, Tennessee; Robert Jones, conductor

Publication information: American Composers Alliance (BMI)

Duration: 15 minutes

Tessitura: B1 to C3

Equipment: None

Extended techniques: Wide intervallic skips Pitch alternation Extreme dynamics Staccatos Flutter tonguing

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: None

Chamber Symphony for Chamber Orchestra

Date of composition: 1968 Instrumentation: Two violins Viola Cello Bass Flute (piccolo) Oboe Bb clarinet Bassoon Horn Bb trumpet Trombone Two percussionists Harp

Dedication and commission: Commissioned by Dr. Thor Johnson for the Nashville Little Symphony

Premiere performance: Nashville Symphony Orchestra; Thor Johnson, conductor; 1969

Publication information: Subito Music Corporation

Duration: Fourteen minutes

Tessitura: B1 to C3

Equipment: None

Extended techniques: Wide intervallic skips Extreme dynamics Staccatos Shakes Trills

Flutter tonguing Note alternations

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: None

Variations on a Theme by M.B. Tolson

Date of composition: 1969: Lois Anderson Instrumentation: Soprano Violin Cello Alto saxophone B-flat trumpet Trombone Piano

Dedication and commission: Dedicated to Lois Anderson (composer’s wife)

Premiere performance: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Players; T. J. Anderson, conductor; 1970

Publication information: Subito Music Corporation

Duration: Fifteen minutes

Tessitura: G1 to C-sharp3

Equipment: None

Extended techniques: Wide intervallic skips Glissandi Extreme dynamics Staccatos Shakes Trills Choke tones Flutter tonguing

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: None

Transitions, a Fantasy for Ten Instruments

Date of composition: 1971

Instrumentation: Flute

B-flat clarinet Bassoon F-Horn B-flat trumpet Violin Viola Cello Piano Dedication and commission: Commissioned by the Berkshire Music Center in cooperation with the Fromm Music Foundation

Premiere performance: Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music; Charles Darden, Conductor

Publication information: American Composers Alliance (BMI)

Duration: 13 minutes, 30 seconds

Tessitura: A-flat1 to C-sharp3

Equipment: None

Extended techniques: Shakes Smears Glissandi Wide intervallic skips Pitch alternation Extreme dynamics

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: None

Re-Creation, A Liturgical Music Drama

Date of composition: 1978

Instrumentation: E-flat alto saxophone B-flat trumpet Violin Cello Piano Drums (set with snare, large and small tom-tom, bass drum, high hat cymbals, and ride cymbal) Two male readers One female reader One male or female dancer

Dedication/commission: Commissioned by Richard Hunt

Premiere performance: Chicago, Illinois; T. J. Anderson, Conductor

Publication information: American Composers Alliance (BMI)

Duration: Not specified

Tessitura: B-flat1 to A3

Equipment: Cup mute

Extended techniques: Shakes Smears Glissandi Jazz improvisation Wide intervallic skips Pitch alternation Extreme dynamics Flutter tongue

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: Separate and layered staging for orchestra, dancer, two male characters, and female character is suggested. Diagram of staging is provided on score.

Inaugural Piece

Date of composition: 1982

Instrumentation: Three B-flat trumpets Three tenor trombones

Dedication and commission: Dedicated to Bernard and Marie Harleston

Premiere performance: City College by the City College Brass Ensemble for the inauguration of Bernard Harleston as President of City College on February 18, 1982

Publication information: American Composers Alliance (BMI)

Duration: Three minutes, 30 seconds

Tessitura: Bb1 to C-sharp3

Equipment: None

Extended techniques: Wide intervallic skips Pitch alternation Extreme dynamics Staccatos Shakes Choke tones Wide vibrato Flutter tonguing

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: Composer provides appropriate performer staging in score.

Fanfare to the School Volunteers for Boston

Date of composition: 1986

Instrumentation: Three B-flat trumpets Four F-horns Three trombones Tuba Tenor drum

Dedication and commission: None

Premiere performance: City Hall Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts; T. J. Anderson conducting students from the New England Conservatory

Publication information: American Composers Alliance (BMI)

Duration: 4 minutes, 30 seconds

Tessitura: A1 to B3

Equipment: None

Extended techniques: Timed ad lib Wide intervallic skips Pitch alternation Extreme dynamics Staccatos

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: None

Bahia, Bahia for Chamber Orchestra

Date of composition: 1990

Instrumentation: Two flutes Two oboes Two B-flat clarinets Two bassoons Two horns One B-flat trumpet One trombone Two violins One viola One violoncello One double bass Drum set

Dedication and commission: Made possible by a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation and dedicated to Alda and Jamary Oliveira

Premiere performance: North Carolina Symphony; Gerhardt Zimmerman, Conductor; March 20, 1998

Publication information: Subito Music Corporation

Duration: Thirteen minutes

Tessitura: Bb1 to D-sharp3

Equipment: Mute

Extended techniques: Wide intervallic skips Glissandi Extreme dynamics Staccatos

Shakes Trills

Notation considerations: Handwritten manuscript, but easily readable

Performance considerations: None

APPENDIX C MOCKUP OF SUNSTAR’S COMBINED SOLO PARTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED

Altenburg, Johann Ernst. Essay On an Introduction to the Heroic and Musical Trumpeters' and Kettledrummers' Art, For the Sake of a Wider Acceptance of the Same, Described Historically, Theoretically, and Practically and Illustrated with Examples. Nashville: Brass Press, 1974.

Anderson, Thomas Jefferson. Sunstar for Solo B-flat Trumpet and Two Cassette Recorders. New York: American Composers Alliance, 1988.

Anderson, Thomas Jefferson. Squares: An Essay for Orchestra. New York: American Composers Alliance, 1975.

Anderson, Thomas Jefferson. T. J. Anderson. http://tjandersonmusic.com/index.html

An Autobiography: Notes without Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.

Arnold, Dennis. “Avant-garde.” The New Oxford Companion to Music 1. New York: University Press, 1983.

Baker, Lida Belt, David Baker, and Herman Hudson, eds. The Black Composer Speaks. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Pr, 1978.

Banfield, William C. Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2003.

Bate, Philip. The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development and Construction. London: Ernest Benn, 1966.

Berliner, Paul F. Thinking in Jazz: the Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1994.

Campbell, Donald Murray, Clive Alan Greated, and Arnold Myers. Musical Instruments: History, Technology and Performance of Instruments of Western Music. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006.

Collaer, Paul, Jane Hohfeld Galante, and Madeleine Milhaud. Darius Milhaud. San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1988.

Dunscomb, J. Richard, and Dr. Willie L. Hill Jr. Jazz Pedagogy: The Jazz Educator's Handbook and Resource Guide. Miami, FL: Warner Bros Pubns, 2002.

Ewen, David. Composers of Tomorrow's Music: A Non-Technical Introduction to the Musical Avant-Garde Movement. New York: Dodd Mead, 1971.

Gridley, Mark C. Jazz Styles,history and Analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1997.

Herbert, Trevor. The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1997.

Hickman, David R., and Amanda Pepping. Trumpet Pedagogy: A Compendium of Modern Teaching Techniques. Chandler, AZ: Hickman Music Editions, 2006.

Horne, Aaron. Brass Music of Black Composers: a Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996.

Hunt, Norman J. Guide to Teaching Brass: 3rd Edition. 3rd Edition.Dubuque, IA: W.C. Brown Co, 1984.

International Trumpet Guild.ITG Handbook: Bylaws.http://www.trumpetguild.org/handbook/bylaws.html [accessed January 2, 2012].

Lerma, Dominique-Rene de. Black Music in Our Culture: Curricular Ideas on the Subjects, Materials and Problems. 1st Edition. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1970.

Machlis, Joseph. The Enjoyment of Music Third Edition. New York: WW Norton and Co. Inc., 1963.

Mawer, Deborah.Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s. Aldershot, UK: Scolar, 1997.

McGill, David. Sound in Motion: A Performer's Guide to Greater Musical Expression. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

Moore, James. “Fundamental Differences between Jazz and Traditional Trumpet Playing.” International Trumpet Guild Journal (January 2009).

Porter, Lewis, Michael Ullman, and Ed Hazell. Jazz: from Its Origins to the Present. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1932.

Tarr, Edward H. The Trumpet. 3rd ed. Chandler, AZ: Hickman Music Editions, 2008.

Ulrich, Paul Bradley. An Annotated Bibliography of Unaccompanied Trumpet Solos Published in America. Diss. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989.

Wesiberg, Arthur. The Art of Wind Playing. New York: Schirmer Books, 1975.

Whitener, Scott. A Complete Guide to Brass. 2nd ed. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997.

Wills, Simon. “Frontiers or Byways? Brass Instruments in Avant-Garde Music.” The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments, 1997.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Born in Brunswick, Georgia, Kenneth C. Trimmins was exposed to music at a very young age, and remembers there always being a piano in his childhood home. Although church music was prevalent in the house, Mr. Trimmins was fascinated with every type of music that he encountered via radio, television and recordings. At age ten, during a routine music examination given by the Glynn County public school system, it was determined that Mr. Trimmins had an affinity for music. With his older brother having played the drums a few years earlier, he “inherited” a drum but when it quickly lost its favor, a trumpet was offered by a cousin and the rest is history. The bulk of his school days were spent practicing the instrument, playing in school bands, at special church occasions and other social functions. Mr. Trimmins attended and received a Bachelor of Art in Music Education degree from Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia where he experienced formal training in classical and jazz pedagogy. He credits the instruction of his applied instructors and, in particular saxophonist and jazz professor Bob Greenhaw, with providing the impetus for learning and performing multiple musical genres. After graduating from college, Mr. Trimmins joined the United States Air Force as a Bandsman and spent twenty-three years serving the country as a musical ambassador in the United States and around the world and garnered well-respected recognition as a jazz and commercial trumpet player and band leader. A few years before retiring from the Air Force, he attended and received a Master of Music degree from Mercer University, Macon, Georgia in classical trumpet performance. A few months before retiring from the Air Force, Mr. Trimmins accepted an adjunct teaching position at Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, Georgia where he taught Applied Trumpet and music appreciation classes for one year. In 2009, Mr. Trimmins became a doctoral candidate and a graduate assistant in the trumpet studio of Dr. Christopher Moore at The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, while (simultaneously) performing as the adjunct trumpet instructor at Albany State University, Albany Georgia. After completing the required coursework towards a Doctor of Music degree in (classical) Trumpet Performance in 2011, Mr. Trimmins was invited to become a full-time faculty member at Albany State University where he currently teaches applied trumpet, jazz improvisation, and instrumental conducting as well as conducts the Albany State University Concert Band, Brass Ensemble and Trumpet Ensemble.

100

Mr. Trimmins has performed in venues all over the world in front of millions of people and countless millions more via many forms of media. A featured international classical soloist, in June 2011, he performed with the Honduran Philharmonic Orchestra in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and U.S. State Department officials herald his performance as "a great success in our cultural exchange program and enabled us to showcase teamwork at its best." As a jazz soloist he has performed in numerous jazz venues including (to name just a few) The Clearwater Jazz Holiday, The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, Atlanta Montreux Jazz Festival and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Mr. Trimmins serves as a clinician, soloist, conductor, and adjudicator and enjoys sharing his vast experience and expertise with young musicians and often performs master classes where he instructs performance techniques in contemporary and classical genres.

101