DSD

All Things Con­sid­ered, the daily after­noon news pro­gram on National Pub­lic Radio, has a well-known musi­cal theme; when played after the news, it’s called a “trixie:”

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The theme started out in 1976 as elec­tronic music, was set for brass orches­tra in 1983, and was later rein­ter­preted and recorded for NPR by jazz musi­cian Wycliffe Gor­don in 1995. Mean­while, lots of musi­cians have writ­ten and per­formed vari­a­tions, some of which get played on air. The most “well-known” ver­sion (accord­ing to NPR) was per­formed and arranged by the Wash­ing­ton Sax­o­phone Quar­tet.

Quire Cleve­land record­ing a trixie. (That’s me on the left of the chorus.)

In the theme’s his­tory, brass set­tings are the norm. How­ever, my Dad recently got invited to com­pose some trix­ies in an early music style. He came up with some fun stuff and recorded it with Quire Cleve­land, and some fel­low fac­ulty at CWRU. You can hear them all at the Quire Cleve­land web­site — or just lis­ten to All Things Con­sid­ered!

Here are a cou­ple of my favorites:

Vivaldi

Case Early Music fac­ulty (and one stu­dent): Julie Andri­jeski (baroque vio­lin), Jimin Shin (baroque vio­lin), René Schif­fer (baroque cello), Peter Ben­nett (harpsichord)

Based on a Vivaldi trio sonata tex­ture. The melody is traded between the two vio­lins first time through, then car­ried in the cello for the sec­ond time, with the last part highly orna­mented. The last part is then repeated as a tag with an iconic Vivaldi end­ing in the vio­lins.^[1]

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Quire

Quire Cleve­land, directed by Peter Bennett

Based on the tex­ture of the late-Renaissance madrigal/motet reper­toire. In this case, the ATC melody is placed in the top voice. The sec­ond time through presents the text, “All Things Con­sid­ered from National Pub­lic Radio.”

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1. Also, that is one crazy-hard cello part. [↩]