First Suite in E-flat for Military Band

Officially premiered in 1920 at the Royal Military School of Music, the manuscript was originally completed in 1909.

No serious music had yet been composed specifically for the "military band" medium, there being no standardized instrumentation.

Of course many composers wrote specifically for winds in various combinations throughout history, Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks being a notable example.

Frederick Fennell, in Time and the Winds, observes that Holst's scoring for the work is so well conceived and organised for the band medium, that he must have had some previous experiences with groups of this kind.

Indeed, Holst was himself a formidable trombonist, having already performed several seasons with the Scottish Orchestra prior to the composition of the suite.

The First Suite was a catalysing force that convinced many other prominent composers that serious music could be written specifically for the combination of woodwinds, percussion and brass.

The piece was later arranged for brass band by Sydney Herbert, and this arrangement has been used as a contest set test piece on numerous occasions, including for the British regional brass band championships in 1970, 1983 and 2019.

The complete composition is based upon an eight-bar melody reminiscent of English folk song; however, the tune is original to Holst.

Immediately following this is a famous low brass excerpt where they play a quaver line based again on the notes of the theme.

Two of the repetitions, the tenth and eleventh, are an inversion of the theme: Here the mood changes drastically with a funeral march like feel with the dynamics exceptionally soft.

The bass drum and tuba emphasise a hemiola rhythm while a solo euphonium plays the inversion in a minor key.

The final repetition, stated in the trombones and low trumpets/cornets (an unusual combination for its day) is transposed up a fifth, chromatically altered, and extended.

The exploitation of wind band tone colour combinations flavour this movement.

The last few bars are very powerful (marked ffff) and have one of the most famous trombone soli in the band repertoire.

With developments in instrumentation in the United States during the two decades following the original published version, there were calls for a newer, more accessible edition.

With more and more bands employing these larger forces, the original version of the First Suite could not be performed as written.

To facilitate this, a new full score based on the original published parts was produced by Boosey & Hawkes.

As a result, the only full score available of the First Suite was from 1948 edition, and many conductors struggled with the peculiarities contained therein.

Frederick Fennell, in a reprint of his 1975 article discussing the suite, states: Shortly after this initial piece in our Basic Band Repertory series was published, the manuscript of the Suite in E♭ for Military Band surfaced for the first time.

The full score always existed and it could have answered all the questions which were raised in my initial study and in the minds of other conductors whose pursuits of definite answers in this has been an equal frustration.Among the questions raised were those concerning the scoring discrepancies associated with the alto clarinet and baritone saxophone.

In light of these realisations, a new, revised score was subsequently prepared by English composer Colin Matthews, with the assistance of Imogen Holst and Frederick Fennell.

Matthews knew that a complete return to the scoring of the manuscript would once again limit the accessibility of the work, particularly in the United States, where American bands are still to this day typically larger than their British counterparts.