Typical Del Borgo, and in many ways completely indistinguishable from any of his other pieces. D Dorian / D Minor Tonality a-la many of Holst's pieces for young string players. A crowd pleaser and a motivator, but fairly status quo for the "school music" genre.

AISI Level - 9.5/10

AQ Level - 4/10

Interest Allocation - All parts receive interesting material

Key area: D Dorian / D Minor (completely diatonic, except for a major V chord at the end)

LH:
~ Necessary familiarity with Bb's
~ 1st Pos. Throughout (no shifting) Except DB (briefly into 3rd Pos.)
~ Dexterity required within key area (fast passages)
~ Many leaps of various intervals (all parts)

Intonation and Balance:
~ Tendencies of natural and flat keys (low 1's, low 2's, etc.)
~ Unison passages at beginning as well as a few other key passages leave intonation exposed
~ The texture being, at times, contrapuntal will require independence and work on perception of foreground, middleground, background, etc.
~ Mostly fast, so work will have to be done to slow students' minds down enough to focus on the intonation of each note, despite the fact that it may pass quickly.

RH:
~ SLURS
~ Fast Slur-2's
~ Slurs across strings
~ Slurs with large leaps
~ Détaché
~ Wide range of dynamic control (both arco and pizz)
~ Sautillé (at the end)

Tone and Expressivity:
~ While there's room to work on tone and expressivity in any piece, the aesthetic quality of the work does not give much to be expressive about. Probably not a piece to work on expressivity.

Rhythm & Texture:
~ Both homophonic and polyphonic sections

Meter: Solid 4/4

Tempo: With Vigor, q=132

Road Map: None.