Since my concert band piece Oracle was written and premiered in late 2010, it has come to my attention that there are several errata present between the Score and the Parts.
The short story is that the score has never been in question, has always appeared to be correct and free from errata. This should help the situation as there shouldn’t be any concern about the score a judge is given having incorrect parts.
The long(er) story is that Oracle was written for two premieres: one at Midwest in 2010 and the other for TMEA 2011 a few months later. The piece was commissioned by Andy Sealy and the Hebron High School Wind Symphony (Carrolton, TX).
There was a rehearsal in Chicago the night before the first premiere. While waiting to get into the rehearsal room, I had a conversation about the piece with Andy and guest conductor, Tom Bennett. They felt that the piece worked well and that the percussion was appropriately difficult for the occasion. The suggestion was made, however, that the percussion parts, while being performed flawlessly by the Hebron Percussion section, were probably “overly” difficult for what you would expect to accompany the level of difficulty of the wind parts. This caused me to do some “watering down” of those parts for the TMEA performance and for the official published edition.
There was also another spot in particular where the balance of the writing didn’t quite work and it seemed that that spot was “overwritten.” Where an ascending octatonic scale is clearly the focus of the piece, the brass were scored in too high of a tessitura to allow the balance to work in the woodwind’s favor. (It’s in measures 55-60, then similarly at 180).
After the performance at Midwest, I made some tweaks to change the orchestration to help the balance. This proved to be a marked improvement over the original edition. The percussion part’s difficulty were also reduced and this made for a little less jumbled score.
The catch was that the publisher, TRN Music, had worked diligently to ensure that the piece would be available at their booth at Midwest. Then I made a number of changes after they had printed the piece and made it available. Somewhere along the way, when I sent the corrected parts not all were included. This is how there have been some errata along the way. (Again, all of the scores I’ve seen have been correct and provide the definitive version of the piece.)
Lately, TRN and I have been working to make sure that what is printed in the next run of Oracle will be 100% accurate.
In the meantime, please feel free to email me at ericrathmusic (at) gmail (dot) com for updated parts or for any questions you may have.
