The Passing of W. Francis McBeth

The band world lost a giant yesterday - W. Francis McBeth.

I don't have much to say, really. Unfortunately, I didn't know him. I am a young band director, and never had the chance to.

I am also, however, a very nerdy band director. I do a lot of research....

As a product of the 5A band system, I can't recall ever getting to play his music. I occasionally, but rarely, heard about him in my college studies. But in my student teaching, as I dug around the music library of my assignment and dug around online looking for band history, and influential band figures, it didn't take long to learn about him and his incredible music, and of course, his groundbreaking pedagogy (I knew of the pyramid of sound, of course, but didn't know until then that he was responsible for it).

I didn't want to write about him, per say. You can find plenty of biographical information on these pages:

Southern Music Company's McBeth Bio

Sigma Alpha Iota's McBeth Page

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture

The closest thing I can say about him, regretfully, is that I have read his book, "Effective Performance of Band Music-Solutions to Specific Problems in the Performance of 20th Century Band Music". I've read as many books as I could get my hands on in the last few years. His was the most concise, while also being vastly more helpful and practical. I just found out he wrote another book, and I plan to read that, too. If I can find it.

I'm a band guy. And this is a band blog. It's not much, but I wanted to do something in memory of this hugely important figure. Normally that would be a post with some of his music, but I already did one of those pages after I read the aforementioned book: The Music of W. Francis McBeth.

So in lieu of that, I decided to use my modest photoshop abilities to make a memorial button. After I post this page I'm going to make it my facebook profile picture for a couple of days, and I'll leave it on the blog for a while I think. Anyway, please feel free to use it. You can save the image above, or right click it and "copy url".

Please keep his family in your thoughts in the coming days and weeks. Mr. McBeth - the band world thanks you.

Musically yours,
Chris Cooper

The Music of W. Francis McBeth

Greetings!

Considering that I've been reading and rereading W. Francis McBeth's book, "Effective Performance of Band Music", I figured I couldn't move on from talking about it without bringing some of his music to this blog. I mean, the man came up with the Pyramid of Sound schema, after all!

In looking around for music to feature on this blog, I discovered that he wrote "Daniel in the Lion's Den", a tuba solo with band accompaniment written for Daniel Perantoni and featured on Perantoni's solo album, "Daniel in the Lion's Den". This is a cool thing to me, because as I've mentioned before, Daniel Perantoni's was the first truly incredible tuba sound I ever heard, and it was a constant inspiration to me as a tubist, especially in high school. It was one of, if not my favorite track on the album. What a cool way to have been impacted by McBeth!

A Survey of Authorities on Articulation (Composers and Conductors)

Greetings!

A few weeks ago I published a blog outlining my schema (or model) for teaching basic articulations to beginners based on their prior knowledge (dynamics and note length). One of the comments that showed up from my friend John at Music Dreams was that, of course, there are many ways to interpret articulations and that this will vary from one composer and situation to the next.

And of course, he's right. I admitted that this schema was for the basics, and the handout I attached says that this is simply a default, and the conductor may ask for something different on a given piece.

But as I was helping to organize a music library a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled onto a jewel - W. Francis McBeth's "Effective Performance of Band Music". Published in 1972 by Southwestern Music Company, it contains some of the best and most straight forward information I have yet to find regarding techniques for improving the band.

It also has an entire section devoted to the interpretation of articulation markings. In it, McBeth surveyed the premier wind band composers and conductors of the day as to their understanding of the five most common articulation markings. If you can find this book, you need to buy it. It should be cheap, and the information from those conductors and composers is worth it alone (although the in depth discussion on achieving the pyramid of sound really seals it, considering this book was the source of that schema).

So for your pleasure and edification, here is a summary of their comments. The conductors and composers who responded include: John Barnes Chance, Frank Erickson, Howard Hanson, Martin Mailman, Vaclav Nelhybel, Vincent Persichetti, Richard Willis, Harold Arnoldi, Frederick Fennell, Joe Barry Mullins, James Neilson, John Paynter, William D. Revelli and Clarence Sawhill. Enjoy!