Pentecost - Brass Quintet, Pipe Organ, Choir and Timpani Arrangements
  • Hello everyone,

    We have the budget this year to bring in a strong brass quintet for Pentecost, and I’m looking for recommendations for great arrangements.

    Instrumentation will be trumpet 1, trumpet 2, horn, trombone, and tuba, with pipe organ and timpani also available. Ideally, I’m looking for arrangements that:
    allow space for the choir to have some moments,
    support strong congregational singing throughout,
    and go beyond simply doubling the hymn parts.

    If you have links to favourite arrangements in this style, I’d really appreciate you sharing them. They don’t need to be Pentecost-specific—excellent communion hymn settings or other versatile options would be just as useful.

    For context, I already have the mass parts covered.

    Thanks in advance!
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • francis
    Posts: 11,342
    Gabrielli… did that once… absolutely fantastic. Might be on imslp.
  • Heath
    Posts: 997
    A very talented student of mine arranged this Come, Holy Ghost for my Easter Vigil service last year. He said I could share!
    Come Holy Ghost-Instrumental parts-Carpenter.pdf
    220K
    Come Holy Ghost-Conductor-Carpenter.pdf
    96K
  • CGM
    Posts: 805
    Richard Proulx wrote a nice concertato on Come, Holy Ghost that might suit.
  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 731
    I collect (recordings of) hymns specifically arranged for brass quintet, organ and timpani.

    If you’re looking for great brass quintet arrangements, Sterling Procter is your arranger. He was a professional horn player and a naturally gifted arranger. He arranged a lot of traditional hymn tunes for the brass quintet he played with at a Baptist church. They’re for brass quintet, organ and timpani. Some even include added descants for choirs, but they were arranged to work with most common choral harmonizations.

    They’re also adaptable to fit the liturgical circumstances. For example, as these were written primarily for Baptist services, they have particularly long intros by Catholic standards because they process in to start singing, whereas we sing to process in. The intros are written in such a way that they can be adapted and shortened to fit the need.

    Procter has excellent arrangements of both Lasst Uns Erfreuen and Hyfrydol for brass quintet, timpani, organ and choir. I believe both check all your boxes.

    Lasst Uns Erfreuen works with the Pentecost hymn, “Creator Spirit, by Whose Aid”. It can be done with or without the brass fanfare at the beginning (I’ve heard recordings of both). The fanfare gives it a bit too much of a “20th Century Fox” vibe, IMHO, but without it, it seems a little bland for Pentecost. I personally would shorten it.

    Here are recordings of it here:
    Without Fanfare:
    https://youtu.be/EY6MIo8LlkQ?si=pihdeCobrninWDt1

    With Fanfare:
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/localaudio/06Lasstunserfreuen-FBQ.mp3

    Sample arrangements:
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/pdf/LasstUnsEfruerenD.SampleScore.pdf
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/pdf/LasstUnsErfreuenEb.SampleScore.pdf

    As for Hyfrydol, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” is a hymn about the Holy Spirit. It never crossed my mind before until I saw it listed as a Pentecost hymn. I didn’t believe it, but read the text again and it became very clear and obvious. It’s a hymn about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit coming down from Heaven at baptism. The “temples” it’s referring to are the baptized faithful who are in the state of grace.

    I even checked to make sure I wasn’t seeing something that wasn’t there. St. Thomas Aquinas backs me up in his Summa Theologica. The Holy Spirit is properly named Love because the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity who proceeds from the Father and the Son as their mutual love.

    The only minor issue is the arrangement is for four verses, but LDALE has only three verses in the majority hymnals, so to get maximum brass, you’d have to adjust the arrangement’s verse tacets accordingly, or create a worship aid and add the other verse,:
    2. Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
    Into ev'ry troubled breast;
    Let us all in thee inherit,
    Let us find thy promised rest;
    Take away our love of sinning;
    Alpha and Omega be;
    End of faith as its beginning,
    Set our hearts at liberty.

    https://hymnary.org/text/love_divine_all_love_excelling_joy_of_he



    You can hear a recording of it here set to the Ascension hymn, Alleluia, Sing to Jesus:
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/localaudio/HYFRYDOL.mp3

    Sample Arrangement here:
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/pdf/Hyfrydol.SampleScore.pdf

    Finally, while not specifically Pentecost related or an arrangement for choir, Procter has a particularly lush arrangement of Picardy for Brass quintet which begins with a horn solo.

    There’s also a particularly excellent arrangement of Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence arranged by Andrew Wright put out by GIA publishing. It’s arranged for choir and organ. It has some great “choir moments” and organ moments, but it’s too much organ for a communion hymn, and it’s a bit too short for an offertory hymn. However, the Procter arrangement of Picardy, if modulated the measure before 47, for the Wright arrangement, would work perfectly.

    It would also give people time to rummage through their purses to find their offering without having to juggle flipping through a hymnal at the same time. It also just sounds like its climatic end fits at that part of Mass. It just sounds like it would fit very well at that part of Mass.

    Procter Picardy:
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/pdf/Picardy.SampleScore.pdf
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/localaudio/06PICARDY.mp3

    Wright Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence:

    https://choral.ocp.org/products/let-all-mortal-flesh-keep-silence-255?srsltid=AfmBOoqdWldowN2IEOlssN2-A1UR9EgX7_-mZK1cUFr_lT5wjA4boFoa

    You can order all of Procter’s arrangements from here:
    https://highlandmusicpress.com/music.php?ext=1&screen2=on&viewall=on

    Not sure if this is helpful. Sorry it’s long. I’m a bit detail oriented and I tend to nerd out about this sort of thing.