| Category Wind Ensemble |
Date © 2020 by Gary Steele Publishing |
Appalachian Suite Nr.1 for Wind Ensemble: in four movements, 11:33. The Appalachian Suite is a tone poem based upon the daily life of a rural Mennonite farming community. The time period of a summer morning’s harvest and storage of a wheat crop, from sun rise to the resting at noon. Movement one begins with the fanfare to a bursting morning’s sun rise and the start of the long day. The second movement describes children jumping on the gathered stalks of wheat to remove the grain. The movement is titled “Foot Stomp Dance”, the foot stomping and shuffling is not a dance, but does look like a folk dance called clogging. The cutting and gathering of the stems of wheat presents the picture of the standing shocks of wheat as it dries in the sun. The final movement is the noon time rest period and the hymn before the dinner break.