Gabriel Faure was a French romantic-era composer who hung around with musicians like Ravel, Debussy, and Widor. He was known as a master of the flowing melody line, but he was no slouch writing harmony either. He was a church organist and therefore wrote much more church music than the other well-known French romantics.

The flowing triplet of the accompaniment is suggested in a few places by the horn part, but otherwise the vocal parts and bass part are the only ones represented in this arrangement.

This setting is for a brass quintet consisting of two trumpets, F horn, trombone, and tuba. Substitute parts include Eb horn to cover the F horn part, Bb trombone TC, Eb tuba, and Bb tuba TC-- so all parts could be covered using "brass band" players.

MP3 sound sample: entire piece (synthesizer/midi).




CANTIQUE DE JEAN RACINE by Gabriel Faure, arranged by Tom Kirkland for brass quintet consisting of two trumpets, F horn (or Eb horn) trombone, and tuba, comes in a pdf file of 274K, with a four-page score, two two-page parts, seven one-page parts, and a license page, sixteen pages in all. Performance time should be about 3:10.