Week 2

Title: The Crown Imperial

Performers: Royal musicians at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton

Culture: British

Orchestration: Full orchestra plus herald trumpets

Earlier this summer a viral video of and "epic low brass" recording of the theme from Game of Thrones went around the web.  It was recorded by the best professional and studio low brass players in New York City, and it was glorious.  I've read the first two books in the Song of Ice and Fire series and I've seen, albeit two seasons ago, the first two series of the HBO show.  As I write this blog post, I'm revisiting the first series through the generosity of my in-laws, and I'm hoping to be caught up by the end of summer.  The theme is rustic and rural on the HBO series, but the NYC low brass version was epic and powerful.  It evoked the power of the Iron Throne, the nobility of Ned Stark, and the imperial ideas of Joffrey Baratheon, despite his rather youthful and despicable antics.  The use of the brass has always conjured a sense of regal in Western music.  One of my favorite expressions of this brass fanfare to conjure the sense of regal monarchy in Western music is Walton's Crown Imperial.  I got to perform the band transcription at Wisconsin as an undergrad, and while I've never conducted the standard transcription, I've used the Bocook reduction for commencement ceremonies.  It creates that sense of "English regality" that the Crown Imperial was designed to evoke (it was written, after all, for the coronation of HRH Elizabeth II's father and used for her coronation as well).  The video that I've selected is from William and Kate's wedding of three years ago.  This particular video begins with the ministerial party, His Grace +Rowan, and the other officials processing from the Abbey, and at about 0:45 into the video, the herald trumpets announce the royal couple, followed by their procession accompanied by the Crown Imperial with extra fanfare augmentation from the herald trumpets.  Our text for this week speaks of these occasions where the instrumental selection in non-Western cultures evokes a sense of the regal, of rank, and of place in society.  In Anglo and American cultures, we use brasses to evoke the regal and to introduce ceremony, whether it be monarchs, their children, as well as commencement exercises, and other such formal ceremonies.  There is even a chart indicating how ruffles and flourishes (fanfares and drum patterns) are deployed for American state officials, with the President receiving four ruffles and flourishes followed by Hail to the Chief.