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AL FRESCO (Karel Husa)
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'AL FRESCO' IS ANOTHER OF THE BRILLIANT CONTEMPORARY WORKS WRITTEN BY CZECH COMPOSER KAREL HUSA IN 1975. HIS COMPOSITIONS EMIT SERIOUS MESSAGES, I.E. - ENVIRONMENTAL WARNINGS, WAR, HUNGER, EVERYDAY KILLINGS. PERFORMED BY THE 1987 BAYLOR WIND ENSEMBLE
highschool bands jazz bands college bands all region bands community bands concert bands honor bands interlochen arts academy marching bands national music camp tmea all state bands university bands
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Contemporary band compositions, classical music arrangements, marches, jazz, symphonies, overtures. A collection from bands that I have played in throughout hi
Hello and welcome! "Symphonic Band Performances" is a compilation of recordings from several high school and college bands that I played in including the TMEA (Texas) All State Band, the TMEA Region X All Region Band, the Interlochen Arts Academy National Music Camp, the Cal Poly Tech Band, San Luis Obispo, the USAF Golden West Band, and recordings from my h.s. band, Beaumont H.S. and a few band recordings that were passed down to me. Also included are various All State groups and college and university bands. I participated and played in the large majority of these recordings. There are no professional recordings here and every recording is Public Domain. Most are available for free download. Each song has been converted from the original analog or digital source and edited with Audacity or Dak software. In the majority of these recordings, I play the tenor sax or alto sax, b flat or e flat clarinet, or directing. I was drum major for 2 years in high school, I have a BA from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where I studied music ed, composition and theory. I had about 500 more recordings I was planning to digitize and upload, but this past Nov. 20th, my home was completely destroyed by fire, and all the contents, including all my music and instruments. So, this is it. Please feel free to post a comment here or on my member page. If you like, please become a fan by clicking "I'm a fan" below.
Song Info
Genre
Classical • Contemporary
Peak in subgenre #40
Author
Karel Husa - 1975
Rights
public domain
Uploaded
December 02, 2009
Track Files
MP3
MP3 14.6 MB • 224 kbps • 9:05
Story behind the song
This is performed by the Baylor University Wind Ensemble, conducted by Michael L. Haithcock, in 1987. Baylor is the oldest institution of higher learning in Texas, and the world's largest Baptist educational institution. Karel Husa (born August 7, 1921 in Prague) is a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and 1993 Grawemeyer Award in Music. In 1954 he came to the United States and became American citizen in 1959. Husa learned to play the violin and the piano in early childhood and, after passing his final examination at high school, he enrolled in the Prague Conservatory in 1941. He is probably best known for his Music for Prague 1968, a work in memory of the 1968 Soviet bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia. His String Quartet No. 3 won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. Husa is the 1993 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition presented by the University of Louisville for his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. From 1954 until 1992 he was a professor at Cornell University and lecturer at Ithaca College from 1967 to 1986. Husa now resides in Apex, North Carolina. Karel Husa will refer to the serious messages his music emits and to his motivation and programmatic intentions only very rarely indeed. He usually gives his audiences a good deal of freedom and space for fantasy. The three compositions written during his latest period are more or less exceptions to this rule: Music for Prague 1968, whose motivation is implied in its very title and whose symbolism has been spelled out in the author's introduction to the opus (the ancient Husite chorale, the ringing bells reminiscent of "the city of one hundred spires" or bird singing as a symbol of freedom etc.); the ballet, The Trojan Women, in which the fallen Troy provides an allegory, evoking recollections of the Nazi occupation of the composer's home country during World War II and the destruction of a Czech village by the Nazis during that war; and finally, Apotheosis of This Earth, whose three movements (Apotheosis, Tragedy of Destruction and Postscript) succinctly sum up the warning memento which may be heard so urgently in other compositions by Karel Husa. According to the composer himself this particular work "was motivated by the present desperate stage of mankind and its immense problems with everyday killings, war, hunger, extermination of fauna, huge forest fires, and critical contamination of the whole environment". Seen in this light, Apotheosis of This Earth comes across as the most topical expression of Karel Husa's conviction that the paramount duty of the contemporary artist is to express his opinions on the circumstances and events endangering life on our planet.
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