Allelujah!
Laudamus Te
Alfred REED (b.1921)
Alleluia! Laudamus Te, commissioned by Malone College, Canton, Ohio, was written for and dedicated to the collegefs concert band director, Richard S. Mountford, on the occasion of its Third Annual Band Festival. The first performance took place there on 24 February 1973, at the concluding concert of the festival, by the Malone College Concert Band under the direction of the composer. The work is actually a canticle of praise without words; the concert band is treated largely both as a single massive choir and, at times, broken down into individual sections. Each functioning as a separate sub-choir or semi-chorus. The music is based on three main themes, the first being a massive chorale in the brass, the second a long flowing line in the horns and woodwind, and the third a quasi-fanfare figure first heard in the trumpets and then spreading throughout the other sections of the band as it is developed. These three themes form an arch-like, five-part design: the first two themes followed by the rhythmical third theme, which builds to a broad re-statement of the second theme (at this point joined by the organ), and this brings the music back to the first theme, which is capped by a short coda of almost overwhelming power and sonority, to round off the work in joyous triumph.