Blue - Grade 3 - Concert Band - Printed Version

Program notes for Blue

When I was originally coming up with the concept for Blue, I was planning to write: “What if Debussy had written Blue Shades?” or “What if Frank Ticheli had been listening exclusively to Debussy when he wrote Blue Shades?” might have been a more accurate title. But I thought the idea of using the jazz idiom to tell my story of blue would have been a little too “on the nose” or a little too obvious. Plus, I didn’t want to rewrite “Blue Shades” in the style of Claude Debussy (though I would love to hear Ticheli do it some day).

I continued my work on Blue and eventually came up with the opening clarinet section and then it finally started moving forward. At the time of writing the original sketch, I was playing Alfred Reed’s adaptation of “Come Sweet Death” by Johann Sebastian Bach with my high school band and it heavily influenced the development of my first attempt at the piece.

Blue didn’t end up getting performed when Yellow made its premier, so it started collecting dust. I have always been a huge fan of Charles Ives, and with my second draft of Blue, I thought I would try my hand at polytonality to help get across what eventually became my concept for Blue.

Sometimes, you just want to be sad.

And sometimes the feelings that come along with sadness don’t make sense together. Any teenager can attest to that. When you are in the sort of mood where staying sad feels right, all kinds of things happen to try to get you out of that stupor. Sometimes it is your friends. Sometimes it is a random occurrence that puts a smile on your face. (before you remember that you made a decision to be sad, and by jove, you’re gonna stay that way!)
Sometimes it is your own mind taking you to a happier place.

Somehow when you feel that happiness, it further accentuates the melancholic feeling you were striving for in the beginning. (What put me in this mood anyway? I don’t remember) Beethoven was a king of using the juxtaposition of happy and sad themes to make the happy moments happier, and the sad moments utterly heart-breaking.

Over the course of Blue, there are a few opportunities to follow our feelings and memories out of our sadness. In some cases, it would be by following the happy thoughts I mentioned before. Other times, it would mean following thoughts of anger that may have been the reason we were sad in the first place.
I have found that often times, sadness is accompanied by that need to question why you feel this way, what happened to put you in this position. This might make you feel the need to scream. WHY!?

In Blue I could have ventured farther down the paths towards happiness or anger but I decided against it. Happiness and Anger aren’t what Blue was supposed to be about. They get their time in the spotlight in Yellow and Red.

I started Blue originally at the same time as Yellow and Red in the spring of 2008. I did the “Ivesian” revisions somewhere around 2010 or 2011 if I recall correctly. In the fall of 2017 decided it was time to finally close the book on Primary Colors and began
(what I hope to be) the final rework of each movement, starting with Blue.

-Drew Morris
September 20, 2017