Brass Quintet (information)

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!

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, Catherine 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.

Brass Ensemble CD - ROM. A ton of (public domain) stuff. Print out what you want. Order on eBay.

Atlanta Brass Society Brass - offers several series: the Altanta Symphony Brass Quintet Commission Series, the Atlanta Brass Quintet Series (arrangements), the Quintessinal Brass Series (arrangements by Bill Bjornes, Jr.), the Atlanta Brassworks Series (arrangements by Phillip Elkins), and the Tom Izzo Brass Quintet Series (arr. by Tom Izzo).

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.

Cimarron Music - currently lists 301 brass quintets. They’re mostly arrangements, but there are a number of interesting original works as well, such as “Aspects” by Barbara York.

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

TBQ Press - arrangements for brass quintet (classics, jazz), plus a “Quintet Minus One Series” - i.e. quartets with alternate parts which permit performance by any four members of the quintet. “Great when someone’s late for rehearsal or misses the gig.”

Editions March Reift currently offers 312 brass quintet (well, “5-part ensemble”) 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: 46 web pages of choices, arranged alphabetically by composer. Page 1 goes from Abreu to Anonymous...

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 - lots of arrangements for brass quintet

Stephenson Music - Some compositions for BQ, but more arrangements. Haven’t tried them, but they look interesting (e.g. Copland Suites 1 & 2).

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 293 brass quintet compositions, transcriptions, and arrangements. AoSM 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. Vol. V offers more Christmas music and Vol. VI has 25 Patriotic works (great for 4th of July or Memorial Day). 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). Wedding Gig Book arr. by David Marlatt for both horn and piano and brass quintet 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." Oh?

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.

The Subito Store - frustratingly organized - all brass music is together - but lots of interesting stuff that’s hard to find elsewhere, e.g. Seesaw Music publications.

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

Free Brass Sheet Music - courtesy of Jay Lichtman: Brass quartets, brass quintets, brass ensemble pieces - pdf downloads. Thanks, Jay!

Victor Ewald’s Quintet #1 is available from the IMSLP for free download.