Stardust

Hoagland Howard Carmichael was born in Bloomington, Indiana on November 22, 1899. Carmichael attended Indiana University and played piano with school and semi-pro bands, and organized prom dates. Jazz activities no doubt competed with studies, but Hoagy managed to graduate in 1926, and for a short time joined a friend starting a law practice in the booming state of Florida.

Passing thru New York, Hoagy brought the manuscript of a queer thimble folk opera he called Washboard Blues to the attention of publisher Irving Mills. This strange amalgamation of styles, tempos and racial traits so impressed the impresario that he offered the composer a job on the spot to write more of his pseudo-ethnic stuff for Mills Music. Not a big city boy, Hoagy declined, but hearing a Red Nichols recording of the song a few months later, he decided to return to Bloomington and see if he could support himself pursuing the musical career he really loved.

The “Song of the Century” was not an overnight sensation. It started out as a piano piece, presented in later-day ragtime style by its composer, a jazz band groupie recently graduated from the Indiana University law school. This young man had put his legal career on hold while he trailed after the jazzmen he idolized, and offered them songs like Riverboat Shuffle, Washboard Blues, and Star Dust. This last was a little ditty that gave no hint it would later evolve into the most enduring of popular love ballads.

The melody did not conform to any popular song conventions. Quoting Oscar Hammerstein II, it “rambles and roams like a truant schoolboy in a meadow…it’s structure is loose, it’s pattern complex.” Another commentator cited its “alternation of broken chords in bright major modes, but half in minors.” Perfect you might say for a piano romp, and some singers kept the fast tempo when performing with a dance band. By 1929, however, it had been discovered that the song was more effective when slowed to the pace of a sentimental ballad.

The composer reported that the inspiration for Star Dust came at a secluded spot on the campus of his Alma Mater. He had relaxed at the “spooning wall”, but when the melody came to him, he ran to the nearby Book Nook to try it on the piano and jot down a few phrases. Then he took it home and put in a lot more work devising its sixteen bar verse and thirty-two bar chorus. We know from the historic Emil Seidel recording that in October 1927, the melody was just as we hear it today. Generations have enjoyed that “memory of love’s refrain…” so much so that one enthusiastic expert claimed that it appeared on a thousand commercial recordings in the U.S. alone. This was a bit of an exaggeration, but it had been recorded worldwide by 1990.

– Bruce S. Hapanowicz and Arthur Bailey

A live recording of Stardust is available on Mark Custom recordings 51442-MCD. The recording features the Midlothian High School Wind Ensemble, Larry Doran, conductor, with Dallas Symphony Orchestra principal trumpet, Ryan Anthony on flugel horn at the 68th annual MIDWEST CLINIC international band and orchestra conference in Chicago.

Christopher Martin was appointed Principal Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic in 2016 after serving in the same capacity with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Before joining the Atlanta Symphony, Martin was Associate Principal trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has performed as guest Principal Trumpet with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Grand Teton Music Festival and the Saito Kinen Festival.

Martin, a native of Marietta, Georgia, comes from a musical family. His father is a band director for a prestigious Georgia private school, his mother sings in the Atlanta Symphony Chorus and his brother is an alumnus of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and current member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His early teachers were Larry Black and James Thompson, both formerly of the Atlanta Symphony. He received his bachelor’s degree in trumpet performance in 1997 from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where his primary teachers were Charles Geyer and Barbara Butler. Martin can be heard on CSO Resound, Atlanta Symphony recordings on the Telarc label, and as soloist on John Williams’ soundtrack to the 2012 movie “Lincoln”.

Kevin Walczyk’s arrangement of Stardust was composed specifically for Christopher Martin, who performed the work, along with Walczyk’s trumpet concerto, Concerto Gaucho as he was featured on a 2013 tour with the Musashino Academia Musicae Wind Ensemble in Okinawa and Tokyo.

Christopher Martin is a Yamaha Performing Artist.

WIND ENSEMBLE INSTRUMENTATION

Stardust is a grade 4-5 work. It is moderately challenging for most high school wind ensembles and suitable for college-level wind ensembles.

solo flugel horn
flutes 1-2 – 2nd doubles piccolo
oboe
english horn
sopranino clarinet
clarinets 1-3
bass clarinet
contra-alto clarinet
alto saxophones 1-2
tenor saxophone
baritone saxophone
bassoon 1-2
horns 1-4
trumpets 1-4
trombones 1-3 – 3rd is bass
euphonium – B.C. & T.C.
tuba
timpani
percussion 1 – bass drum & xylophone
percussion 2 – marimba
percussion 3 – glockenspiel & small triangle
percussion 4 – suspended cymbal
harp
string bass