Negro Spirituals
for two pianos
Negro Spirituals is a cycle of four transcriptions of popular Black American religious songs. Numbering among them are: ‘Listen to the Lambs’, ‘Deep River’, ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’ and ‘I Want to be Ready’. An arrangement for two pianos opens up great possibilities both to the composer and to the performers, e.g. by simultaneously juxtaposing different sound planes and disparate types of accompaniment, as well as utilizing the entire range of the keyboard (high and low registers). Maciejewski makes full use of these solutions, proving that he has at his disposal a great feel for piano texture (an example of which could be ‘Deep River’, where the sounds of different registers appear, and the theme moves from voice to voice, sometimes with octave doubling, other times as a single melodic line). A strong point of these compositions is, on the one hand, respect for the original character of the songs (leading role of the melody, free jazz harmony); on the other, creation of stand-alone piano miniatures thanks to the original arrangement.
- Editor: Bartłomiej Kominek, Tamara Granat
- ISMN 979-0-2740-0873-4
- Language of edition: eng, pol
- Number of pages: 40+36
- Cover: softcover
- No. of edition: 1
- Published: 2013
Table of contents:
| Deep River | |
| I Want to be Ready | |
| Listen to the Lambs | |
| Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child |
