The Stars and Stripes Forever Duet

[rrayner]

"The Stars and Stripes Forever" was written in 1897 by John Philip Sousa, the "March King". Sousa was the commandant of the U. S. Marine Band at the time.

This is an advanced piece. Some sections are fairly easy, but other are going to require extra work. My apologies for not preparing this earlier in the year so that it could be played for the Fourth of July. Perhaps a realistic practice target would be for Labor Day.

This is a very rangy song through the varying themes, so I had to choose the best key for the entire peice - Concert A Major at measure 1 and Concert D Major at measure 39 (Trio). There is a little bit of fallout from this restriction - relative to the keys I selected, the eighth notes on beat 3 in measures 74 (Concert E5) and 78 (Concert F#5) had to be modified from Sousa's original score. In this arrangement, these notes would be A4 and B4 respectively - below the range of the Soprano Recorder. If you are playing instruments that can play these lower pitches, you can change these notes back to A4 and B4. Additionally, I have intentionally left out the classical "Dog Fight" section, where the piccolos perform high-pitched arpeggios.

If you would like to see the chords, you can use the Composer command qscn to display them.

Ralph R. Rayner

[rrayner]

My apologies to all who have opened/played this file. I have found numerous errors in the Alto part in measures73-89. I have removed the error file and posted a corrected score.

Particular embarrassment comes to me in the fact that my sight-reading is weak enough that I thought I was just playing bad notes (it is a tough play) - but that is no excuse.

Ralph R. Rayner

[rrayner]

I have posted an additional file with this arrangement in Bb (Trio in Eb). My wife Cynthia and I find it easier to play with this change. See the original posting for both versions of the arrangement.

Additionally, I corrected the title in the original - was "Starts and Stripes" .

Ralph R. Rayner