Back almost 20 years ago I wrote an arrangement of the Hallelujah Chorus, from G.F. Handel’s Messiah. I happened across it a couple of weeks ago and as I had just gotten a new microphone I decided to record myself playing all four parts, figuring I could post it as a holiday greeting. Here’s the recording.
And here’s the sheet music for it.
You might want to listen to it before you bother downloading it. I’m not sure why I wrote the 1st trombone part so high, maybe I was hoping to show off? I got it to sound passable in the recording by isolating that phrase and playing it a few times until I got it to sound OK, but I wouldn’t want to try that in a live performance. You can probably fix that by just playing trombone 1 down an octave there, but that puts it in unison with another part and I guess I wanted it to be in octaves like Handel’s original. Try it out and let me know how it goes.
The bass trombone part is a little rough in the recording, partly because I’m playing it on a tenor trombone and partly because I hadn’t played that horn for months (I’d mostly been playing my King 2B and staying out of the trigger range, but this was a positive kick in the seat to brush the dust off that horn and start working on my low register again).
