Scarborough Fair/Canticle Duet

[rrayner]

Originally Posted by RRR

This piece is written for Soprano Recorder and Alto Recorder. Some of the pieces in this series are in keys that you might not see a lot in learning pieces. This was intentional to keep the Soprano part in the lower register. Play along with Notation Composer or print the piece for playing with your friend(s). Please feel free to change the instruments and/or keys to suit your personal needs. RRR

This duet is basically a reduction of the hit song by Simon & Garfunkel. I've enjoyed the song for years, but could never quite get into the complexity of the different verses. By entering it into Notation Composer, I've got a good handle on what these differences are. It is a fairly complex piece, with counter-melodies and counter-rhythms. I've made a few changes to suit our purposes -- most of them to keep the piece on two printed pages:

1) dropped the introduction
2) made the final 22 measures into a DC al Fine to conserve space
3) used some of the harmonies from the last 22 measures in the first 22
4) transposed the key from the original E Minor to D Minor to improve Recorder sound
5) in measure 74, changed the note on beat 2 to a D, instead of a low A, which would be below the Soprano's range (originally a B below the staff in E Minor)
6) included the lyrics as a reading cue to help in knowing when to enter
7) reduced the font size

Interestingly, the published music differs in places from the recorded music. In those places where I could pick it out from the recording, I have used that version. There's a lot of the beautiful background accompaniment that couldn't be included for two voices, but I think it plays pretty well.

If you remove the lyrics, you can increase the font size for readability.

We are having a lot of fun playing this piece. I hope you will, also.

Ralph Rayner

I'm teaching a choir this, and this breakdown of parts is really going to help.

I'm having a problem printing out the two parts though. It will only print one page, so the alto section stops after

"a soldier cleans and polishes a gun. be a true love of mine..."

Any idea why it won't print the rest? It seems to think that there is only one page

I'm going to see if there is a section for trouble shooting and post this there as well.

Thanks

[Sherry C]

Hi,

It's most likely a setting for your printer - make sure that you check "Print all pages" or whatever that setting is for your specific printer after hitting File/Print in the software. Sometimes if you've previously printed only a single page from another document, the Windows printer setting "remembers" that setting and applies it to the next document as well.

ttfn,
Sherry