Download W. A. Mozart, K. 407 Quintet, arranged for brass (I)

The cover page - evidence of an early interest in design?

UPDATE: See Part II

Playing chamber music as a career can be like a marriage, goes the popular notion.

Shortly after graduating from Eastman, I gained stable employment in a brass quintet in Houston, Texas.

Yes – in my group we sometimes fought like angry cats in a wet bag but overall, we had a good time and made some great music together.

For the many weekly concerts we played at schools, I wanted an upbeat classical showpiece for the horn demonstration portion of our program. I got busy with pencil and paper and made an arrangement of the Mozart Horn Quintet K. 407 Rondo, using the brass quintet.

Download Part I
It is about 4.5 MB and is in PDF format.

A few notes about this download:

• If you use this free arrangement in any way, all I ask for is the proper credit where it is due. Please don’t be naughty.

• There are no individual parts available. An enterprising Finale or Sibelius programmer might accomplish this (I hope) without a great deal of fuss.

• The E-flat trumpet part – our trumpeter played this on A piccolo. He preferred to have a warm-up piece with piccolo before this arrangement (like the Mouret Rondeau or the Handel Water Music) rather than having to play it cold.

• The combination of flugelhorn and euphonium is meant to mimic the timbre of the original scoring – which has two violas. It ends up sounding quite nice. This (and the piccolo trumpet) also gave our guys the chance to demonstrate and play some other instruments, which is always a big hit with children.

If something looks off, please feel free to add a comment.

Part II of this PDF giveaway -
will be coming later today… with a tiny caveat.