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The Rites of Spring
Tuesday June 11th, 2024 with Jason Fuerst
Ruffle and Flourish: Wind Ensemble Music

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This week we explore contemporary wind ensemble music.
David R. Gillingham: Ruffle and Flourish
University of Texas at El Paso Symphonic Winds; Ron Hufstader, conductor - The Music of David R. Gillingham, Volume 2: Crest of Honor - Mark Records
Ron Nelson: Rocky Point Holiday
Dallas Wind Symphony; Frederick Fennell, conductor - Dallas Wind Symphony Sampler - Reference Recordings
Kathryn Salfelder: Crossing Parallels
Western University Wind Ensemble; Colleen Richardson, conductor - Explorations - Mark Records Canadian
David Maslanka: A Child's Garden of Dreams
Cincinnati Wind Symphony: Eugene Migliaro Corporon, conductor - Cincinnati Wind Symphony: Emblems - Klavier
The following material is from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung:

A very important case came to me from a man who was himself a psychiatrist. One day he brought me a handwritten booklet he had received as a Christmas present from his ten-year-old daughter. It contained a whole series of dreams she had had when she was eight. They made up the weirdest series of dreams I had ever seen, and I could well understand why her father was more than just puzzled by them. Though childlike, they were uncanny, and contained images whose origin was wholly incomprehensible to the father….

David Maslanka selected five of the twelve dreams as motifs for the movements:

I. There is a desert on the moon where the dreamer sinks so deeply into the ground that she reaches hell.
II. A drunken women falls into the water and comes out renewed and sober.
III. A horde of small animals frightens the dreamer. The animals increase to a tremendous size, and one of them devours the little girl.
IV. A drop of water is seen as it appears when looked at through a microscope. The girl sees that the drop is full of tree branches. This portrays the origin of the world.
V. An ascent into heaven where pagan dances are being celebrated; and a descent into hell where angels are doing good deeds.