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Pricing
Printed Score Only: $35
Printed Score + Printed Parts: $129.99
Printed Score + Digital PDF Parts: $129.99
Details
Grade 3.5 – Wind Band
Year of Composition: 2025-26
Length: 6:00
Instrumentation (parts may be doubled)
Flute 1, 2
Oboe 1, 2
Bassoon
Clarinet 1, 2, 3
Bass Clarinet in Bb
Contra Bass Clarinet in Bb**
Alto saxophone in Eb 1, 2
Tenor Saxophone in Bb
Baritone Saxophone in Eb
Trumpet in Bb 1, 2
Horn in F 1, 2
Trombone 1, 2
Euphonium
Tuba
String Bass**
Timpani
Percussion Parts
Glockenspiel
Bowed Crotales^
Marimba + Chimes
Vibraphone 1
Vibraphone 2 (separate instrument)
Triangle + Bass Drum
Suspended Cymbal
Piano
^Crotales – most notes are written in the upper octave. A few notes are written in the lower octave, but these pitches can be played 8va if only the upper octave of crotales is available.
**Optional but encouraged
Program Note
Pictures of Memory was commissioned in 2026 by Graham-Kapowsin High School and Frontier Middle School in Graham, Washington. The piece is dedicated to Ben, a French horn player who lost his life while a student in high school. Ben loved lyrical music, and so it was my goal to compose a heartfelt lyrical work in his memory, with a couple of solo French horn moments to honor him.
Sometimes when we recall a memory, it’s a little hazy at first as our mind tries to fill in the details. That’s the feeling I was trying to emulate at the beginning of the piece, as simple musical lines ring and overlap each other. The sounds get clearer, but the music still has a reflective and somber quality. Much of the piece is derived from the melody that is first stated by the solo French horn. Just as our mind plays through various scenes and pictures of someone we’ve lost, the music progresses through multiple iterations and developments of that main theme.
The title Pictures of Memory is drawn from a beautiful poem of the same name by the 19th century American poet Alice Cary.
Pictures of Memory by Alice Cary (1820-1871)
Among the beautiful pictures
That hang on Memory’s wall.
Is one of a dim old forest,
That seemeth best of all:
Not for its gnarled oaks olden.
Dark with the mistletoe;
Not for the violets golden
That sprinkle the vale below.
Not for the milk-white lilies
That lean from the fragrant hedge.
Coquetting all day with the sunbeams,
And stealing their shining edge;
Not for the vines on the upland
Where the bright red berries be.
Nor the pinks, nor the pale, sweet cowslip,
It seemeth the best to me.
I once had a little brother,
With eyes that were dark and deep—
In the lap of that old dim forest
He lieth in peace asleep:
Light as the down of the thistle.
Free as the winds that blow.
We roved there the beautiful summers.
The summers of long ago;
But his feet on the hills grew weary,
And, one of the autumn eves,
I made for my little brother
A bed of the yellow leaves.
Sweetly his pale arms folded
My neck in a meek embrace,
As the light of immortal beauty
Silently covered his face:
And when the arrows of sunset
Lodged in the tree-tops bright,
He fell, in his saint-like beauty,
Asleep by the gates of light.
Therefore, of all the pictures
That hang on Memory's wall,
The one of the old dim forest
Seemeth the best of all.
Grade 3.5
A 6-minute lyrical work for wind band written in memory of Ben, a high school horn player.