Fidelity March

What with the snow day and the cancellation of rehearsal last week, we are still in the dark about what pieces we'll need to have ready for DYFA and the spring concert.  This works out well for me, because I can fit in a post about this march, one of my favourites of the pieces we're playing this semester.

Old Mapleton Circus Band, by Beige Alert, from Flickr

Mr. McIlwain has told us that this piece has a circus feel.  Composer Karl L. King was working as a circus musician in 1912, when he wrote this march, as his page on Wikipedia tells us.  King is most famous for composing the march Barnum & Bailey's Favorite (here's a link to a frighteningly fast version) and he spent some time as bandmaster of the Barnum & Bailey Circus band.  He was a prolific composer, and one of the first to write specifically for school bands.

This arrangement of Fidelity, by Andrew Glover, is new (2011). There are no performances available yet on YouTube, except for this one created for the publisher by professional musicians.

 
Email readers, please click through to the blog, or click on this link to the video.

When I hear this piece, I imagine a sunny afternoon and a band playing in a town square during a municipal gathering, such as a ribbon-cutting or an apple-pie-eating contest. The mood is festive.  Meanwhile, the sneaky guys from Sneak Attack! are tiptoeing around town, up to some sort of mischief involving the creation of street art or the placing of smart cars in public fountains.  And the band plays on...