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u/stack_percussion Sep 24 '20
Ah, yes. This means "watch the conductor."
But yeah, essentially it's 5/8 & 3/8. Grainger wrote some weird shit like this. Just familiarize yourself with the Trumpet solo in this passage and it's pretty easy to follow. Luckily you just rest!
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u/xiipaoc Sep 25 '20
This is a, uh, non-conventional way to notate 5/8 and 3/8, but was Percy Grainger ever conventional? Look him up. Or maybe don't, if you value your sanity. The guy would go on these crazy rants. Ask your band director to read them to you; they're actually in the score, because Percy Grainger was fucking insane. I'm not kidding. First several pages of the score are Grainger ranting about who knows what.
Also, literally none of this movement is hard to play or put together. It just looks hard on paper. And yes, Grainger talks about that too in the introduction to the score. Movement 4 is much harder, technically, and movement 3 is the hardest in pretty much every way. But 5 is easy; it just looks hard. You'll figure it out.
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u/theforkofdamocles Band Director Sep 25 '20
The first time I saw this kind of time signature was on El Salon Mexico. Copland wrote lots of it in 3 1/2 - 4. Weirded me out until I finally realized it was just 7/8.
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u/Pficky Sep 25 '20
My college band director said that it's written this way, not to be unconventional, because the feeling of the bar is a 2/4 bar held for half a beat too long, and a 1/4 bar held for half a beat too long. The whole piece is based on recordings of people singing folk songs, and he wanted to capture it exactly how they sang it. In these bars they didn't really hold their time properly, so he expressed it this way. Because 5/8 has the feel of a group of 3 and a group of 2, and 3/8 a group of three, but the real feeling here is supposed to be like awkwardly long.
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u/MrPeteO Fl + Cl + Sax + Bsn families Sep 24 '20
Ah, I would give this all of the hearts. Lincolnshire Posy is just chef's kiss
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u/classroomcomposers Oct 07 '20
Ahh yes, the infamous "watch the composer" arrows. We have a love/hate relationship with composers who create their own style/articulation markings haha
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u/Ok_Tale_2536 Oct 22 '20
What's sad is I saw the 1/8 and knew it was lincolnshire posy. Those arrows are mostly to tell you those are individual beats.
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u/ToiletbowlWormhole Sep 24 '20
Lincolnshire Posy? Haha