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de Cabezón/Grainger: "Tiento del Segundo Tono (Prelude in the Dorian Mode)"


Antonio de Cabezón

Prelude in the Dorian Mode (Tiento del Segundo Tono)

Antonio de Cabezón

Born: March 30, 1510, Castrillo Mota de Judíos, Spain

Died: March 26, 1566, Madrid, Spain

Original Instrumentation: Organ

Composed: c. 1550

Arranged: Percy Grainger, 1937-1941

Duration: 4:30

University of Maryland Wind Orchestra

Saturday, November 5, 2016, 8:00 pm

Elsie & Marvin Dekelboum Concert Hall

Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

The University of Maryland at College Park

Program notes from the published score:

Antonio de Cabezón (Spanish 1510-1566) was one of the 16th Century's greatest keyboard performers and composers. Blind from infancy, born of noble parents, he became composer and organist to the court of Charles and Isabella. He later served Philip II, with whom he travelled throughout Europe.

de Cabezón's music is richly polyphonic. Although he composed primarily for keyboard instruments, his music also possesses a haunting vocal quality. His tientos, such as the Prelude in the Dorian Mode, are instrumental fantasies built upon the opening motive. These compositions make masterful use of fugal counterpoint, creating tensions between the motive and imitative secondary lines. The Dorian mode is a scale beginning on the second tone. In this Prelude in the Dorian Mode, the opening motive repeats at irregular intervals throughout the main body of the work, forming a basis for the four-part polyphony which evolves around it.

When Grainger's band setting was created, Leopold Stokowski's orchestral Bach transcriptions were much in vogue. Unlike Stokowski's gleaming, modern sounding Bach, Grainger skillfully recalls the darker historical quality of the tiento and its vocal counterpart, the motet. The music is de Cabezon, the expressive concept and colors are entirely Grainger's. His modern wind-band setting is beautifully evocative of de Cabezon's Renaissance world.

Percy Grainger's wind-band setting of the Prelude in the Dorian Mode was created from 1937-1941, while he was teaching at the Interlochen Music Camp in Michigan. Later, a saxophone choir version was written, also at Interlochen, in 1943. Finally in 1952-1953, Grainger made a few minor revisions in the band arrangement. This first published score combines all of these sources.

- Program Note by Keith Brion.

Additional Resources:

Antonio de Cabezon, Prelude in the Dorian Mode (Tiento del Segundo Tono), arr. Percy Grainger

Drake University Wind Symphony, Robert Meunier, conductor

Antonio de Cabezon, Tiento del Segundo Tono

Nicola Reniero, organ

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