Suite of Miniature Dances
NMPL107
for concert band
by Louis Applebaum

Suite of Miniature Dances is drawn from the incidental music for a ballroom scene in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. The premiere performance, held during the inaugural season of the world-renowned Stratford Festival (in Stratford, Ontario) in 1953, was directed by Tyrone Guthrie and starred Alec Guiness and Irene Worth.

That production was set in the late 19th century rather than in the more conventional Elizabethan period, providing more scope for the musical style. A Shakespearean production always generates a dilemma for the composer: how to communicate to a contemporary audience an aural sense of another era, sometimes one for which no musical materials or aural impressions exist.

The scene (Act II, scene iii) was played as a series of short dances, allowing the music to reflect a progression of changes of mood and action. Although the 1953 production used a seven-player pit orchestra of winds and harp, it has been re-orchestrated Dances for full concert band.

It was recorded by the Howard Cable Concert Band on an LP called Music in the Round, and is available in a recording by the University of Calgary Wind Ensemble on a CD entitled from the mountains rising (Unical UC-CD9503)

Approximate Duration 5'0"
Grade 5
Score and parts $72.00
Score only $16.00
Replacement parts $3.00

Composer’s Notes
Instrumentation

Composer’s Notes on Suite of Miniature Dances
Suite of Miniature Dances is drawn from the incidental music for a ballroom scene in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. The première performance, held during the inaugural season of the world-renowned Stratford Festival (in Stratford, Ontario) in 1953, was directed by Tyrone Guthrie and starred Alec Guiness and Irene Worth.

That production was set in the late 19th century rather than in the more conventional Elizabethan period, providing more scope for the musical style. A Shakespearean production always generates a dilemma for the composer: how to communicate to a contemporary audience an aural sense of another era, sometimes one for which no musical materials or aural impressions exist.

The scene (Act II, scene iii) was played as a series of short dances, allowing the music to reflect a progression of changes of mood and action. Although the 1953 production used a seven-player pit orchestra of winds and harp, I have re-orchestrated Dances for full concert band. It was recorded by the Howard Cable Concert Band on an LP called Music in the Round.

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Instrumentation for Suite of Miniature Dances
The quantity of parts provided in complete set is shown in the right-hand column. Extra scores for competition purposes and additional individual instrument parts may be ordered separately.

Notes regarding instrumentation:
1. Either harp or piano may be used, but not both.
2. This work is also very effective when performed by a small wind ensemble; the conductor will easily recognize which parts may be eliminated.

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