Guide to the Brass Quintet - "A
collection of Excerpts, Recording, and Other Resources
for Horn Players in Brass Quintets" by James Boldin. A
new site with printable excerpts, audio examples,
bibliography, lists of ensembles, and more. Bravo,
James!
The 2009 International Brass Chamber Music Festival will be held at East Carolina University on October 10-13, 2009. The festival will feature a brass quintet competition, brass ensemble competition and a brass ensemble composition contest for composers.
Brass Quintet Standard Repertoire - Dallas Symphony principal trumpet Ryan Anthony has made a list of what he considers to be the core repertoire for the BQ. He also makes suggestions on Programming a Brass Quintet Concert.
Brass Quintet Interest Group on Yahoo
Dissertations
Boldin, James. "A fully annotated selection of excerpts, historical recordings, and techniques required for the horn in the standard brass quintet repertoire. DMA diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007. ProQuest ID: 1441193961 [see his web site, above]
Jackson, Catharine McClure. “A Study of Brass Quintet Literature Appropriate for the First-Year Undergraduate Quintet.” D.M.A. Essay, University of Iowa, 2004.
Jones, William Lalverse. “The brass quintet: An historical and stylistic survey.” D.M.A. diss., University of Kentucky, 1998. UMI# 9906630.
Sorenson, Randall, “Original Repertoire for the American Brass Quintet, 1962-1987: A Guide for Performers and Composers.” D.A. diss., Ball State University, 1998. UMI# 98-25886.
Tunnell, Michael. “Selected Trumpet Excerpts from Brass Quintets by Ingolf Dahl, Gunther Schuller, Alvin Etler, and Jan Bach; and a Bibliography of Brass Quintets written by American Composers from 1938 to 1980.” D.M.A. diss., University of Southern Mississippi, 1982. UMI# 83-11085.
Brass Quintet Sheet Music
Virtual Sheet Music - free BQ sheet music to download. 24 items listed.
BVD Press - "Your [brass] chamber music specialist." Tidy and attractive site with a lot of content. There are 43 web pages of brass quintet listings. Page 1 lists 51 quintets. You do the math... For lagniappe, BVD also does custom music engraving projects.
Free Music Scores - arrangements and transcriptions of mostly classical composers (there's a Sousa and a Gershwin in there) for BQ
Canadian Brass Collections - collections of BQ music in 5 categories: Beginning, Easy, Intermediate, Advanced, High Level
Canadian Brass - "print music highlights from recent CDs" - everything from and classical transcriptions to rags and hymn tunes.
Canadian Brass - Contemporary BQ Music - classical transcriptions (e.g. Flight of the Bumblebee, Pictures at an Exhibition, Zarathustra Fanfare, etc.) plus modern transcriptions and originals (e.g. Porgy & Bess, Hornsmoke, Lassus Trombone, Golyardes' Grounde, Deep River, etc.).
Empire Brass - a great quintet also offers sheet music that the group has recorded on CD, mostly arrangements and transcriptions.
Brassworks4
Attractive site with a big selection of brass quintets. Lots of transcriptions, arrangements of classical and folk tunes, and holiday music. Works come from a set of small publishing houses, making it an interesting collection. What is unique and wonderful about their offerings is that they provide 1) the names of the individual movements of pieces, 2) links to any reviews (e.g. from The Horn Call) of the sheet music, and (for some, not all) views of the score. Nice touches, all. Well, done, Brassworks4!
Select-a-Press arrangements by Gary Slechta. These arrangements of music by famous composers are all top notch by one of the best arrangers in the business. Try the Kabalevsky Colas Breugnon Overture for some breathless excitement...
Solid Brass offers a terrific selection of brass quintets arranged on many pages alphabetically by title - some 1,700 titles! They also have other categories: BQ with organ, with string orchestra, BQ CDs, Christmas, Easter, Patriotic, Hymns, Wedding. And: there is just about every other brass ensemble combination as well, from mixed duets to large ensemble, plus pieces for each brass instrument alone. A nice touch is that most pieces have brief descriptions, annotations, or a content list. The one thing that is clumsy here is how the (long) listings are broken down into (many) alphabetical listings (e.g. A-E) with no clear or easy way to continue browsing titles. But this is a solid set of offerings from a company that sells only music for brass.
Kendor Music Brass Quintets - provides short descriptions and the difficulty level (Grade 1-6)
Wind Music Sales - gives difficulty level (easy/medium/difficult), a short description, and the first page of the score. Good selection, with various subcategories: Soloist and Quintet, Organ and Quintet, Quintet and Voice, True North Brass Series, Vince Gassi Jazz Series, Foothills Brass Series, Double Quintet.
Manduca Music - not a huge selection, but interesting offerings.
Denver Brass - Brass quintet sheet music
Editions March Reift currently offers 453 brass quintet titles (organized alphabetically by title), both original music and transcriptions/arrangements. What's nice here is that the pieces are graded from difficulty: 1-3 Easy, 4-6 Medium, 7-9 Difficult. Another useful feature is that you can see the first two pages of the score (pdf file) to see if it's what you're looking for.
Ulrich Köbl is another seller who specializes in brass music only. This link takes you to 84 pages of brass quintet compositions. Prices in (ouch) Euros; shipping: from Germany.
Robert Elkjer is an arranger who offers a variety of (most-jazz based) brass quintet arrangements on his web site.
Hickey's has a huge selection of brass quintets: 33 web pages of choices, arranged alphabetically by composer. Page 1 goes from Adam to Arnold...
Wiltshire Music has a nice selection of BQs, a mix of transcriptions and original works.
Onyx Brass - not a huge selection, but high quality arrangements with a couple originals
Dorm40music - Digital music publishing company featuring a variety of transcriptions and arrangements, mostly by composers Craig Garner and Michael Zavoski. Most of the offerings are for brass quintet 9 pages of 10 per page of mostly brass quintets. A bit of information (including difficulty level) is given for each. No shipment of paper; download of pdf files only. Advantage is that lost parts or scores (later) may be reprinted easily. Samples of scores and audio available online. It's a great selection of arrangements of classical composers; a redo of the interface to make it less annoying would make this an excellent and much more usable source of brass quintet arrangements.
Boulder Brass Publications has quite a selection of arrangements for brass quintet. Check out their "(More or Less) Complete Wedding Book" for BQ with arrangements of 30 of the most requested wedding music, such as Water Music, Bridal Chorus, Pachelbel Canon, Mouret Rondeau, Ode to Joy, Clarke Trumpet Tune, and more.
Quintessential Brass Repertoire offers many transcriptions useful for weddings and ceremonies, with genres including classical, religious, jazz/pop, Christmas, and Hannuka
Art of Sound Music's online catalog offers 126 brass quintet compositions, transcriptions, and arrangements. ASM boasts that you can hear and view the scores before you buy, that you can order the parts as a download or have them shipped, and get free lost part replacements and part transpositions. They also offer "The Gig Ready Brass Quintet Library" Vol. 1 (Gr. 5) is "Classics," a pdf download (only), but a bargain at $30 for 25 pieces (633 pages!), including Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette, pieces by Pezel, Handel, Scheidt, Monteverdi, and more. Vol II is "Holiday" (Gr. 4), for $35, with 25 arrangements of Christmas carols, selections from Nutcracker Suite and The Messiah, and others. Vol. III is "Weddings" #1: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Water Music, Air on the G String, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, Mouret Rondeau, Prince of Denmark's March and more; Vol. IV is "Weddings #2": Ave Maria, Bridal Chorus, Amazing Grace, Ode to Joy, Pachelbel Canon, and more. All are pdf downloads only, which means you'll have to print them out and bind them; on the other hand - the price for each is great and you could pick and choose (if you got several) and put together your own "book."
CoopPress - online sales of the compositions and arrangements of Sy Brandon, professor Emeritus from Millersville University. This link takes you to his listings of brass quintet arrangements and transcriptions. Some intriguing titles, including the entire Nutcracker Suite (movements available separately), Handel's Entrance of the Queen of Sheba, and others.
HBC Music offers a varied if modest selection of arrangements by (mostly) well-known composers, from a French Baroque Suite by Lully to Chicken Reel and Teddy Bear's Picnic.
Cimarron Music Press has an extensive selection of arrangements and original compositions for quintet. Unfortunately, quintets are not well separated from the other (350 in all) brass ensemble pieces on this web page. Caveat emptor - check the instrumentation before ordering.
Eighth Note Publications - Considerable listing of BQs, with many arrangements and transcriptions (all on one loooong page). Interesting statement: "The list of contemporary pieces composed for this instrumentation is ever growing but the true excitement for this ensemble is the performing of transcriptions and arrangements of works originally for other instrumentations."
Music for Brass offers a fairly good variety of BQ music (solos, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets and larger), some original, mostly arrangements. All pieces are delivered through downloading only.
Musica Stampata - At last count, 197 brass quintets offered from this Italian music store (site is in both English and Italian - your choice). It has many titles not easily obtainable elsewhere. Interesting choices.
Balquihidder Music is a small, trumpet-oriented music site, but it does have some good brass quintets - check out the early Italian music arranged by Ray Mase.
Free Music for Brass Quintet by Dave Taylor - About two dozen pieces, mostly classical transcriptions, with some originals. The generous Mr. Taylor asks only that you "register for his mailing list and let me know when you perform a work from DTMusicUK" (you may make a donation if you wish).