We Have A Winner! 11 Giant Steps for Mankind (Trumpet Duet)

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5642884133_0696ba732bHere is your challenge!

Congratulations to Josh for his continued research and investigation into the multiple connections of the title of this piece.

Thanks to the others who participated and we will do this again from time to time when I can’t get to sleep and have the uncontrollable urge to generate another puzzle.

A free copy of Besame Mucho has been sent to the winner and we hope more will be participating in out next contest.

Connections-

One small step for man (leap for mankind),. (John Glenn)

The 11 was also a reference to Apollo 11. (John Glenn)

Giant Steps by John Coltrane.

Tone rows normally have 12 different pitches. Mine only had 11. The note missing was the F. If you look at Coltrane s recording of Giant Steps the fourth note in the melody is an F which I left out in my tone row.

Bruce was a member of the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa, School of Music in Cedar Falls from 1969 until his retirement in 1999. He has performed with many well-known entertainers such as Bob Hope, Jim Nabors, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Anita Bryant, Carman Cavalara, Victor Borgie, the Four Freshman, Blackstone the Magician, Bobby Vinton and John Davidson.

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10 thoughts on “We Have A Winner! 11 Giant Steps for Mankind (Trumpet Duet)”

  1. JiCe

    Hi

    Giant Steps : Coltrane
    Step for Mankind : Armstrong
    11 Giants : could come from mythology or Tolkien-like author
    11 Steps : my very exact count of steps at home to get to the first floor
    Giant Mankind : Well obviously, this one is not my opinion as we can see the World and it’s distress because of Mankind….
    Giant for ( four ) : like the Fantasctic Four

    It’s 5am her eand I have to go to sleep….maybe I’ll come back later with more nonsense stuff to post. Anyway, thanks for your contributing to the trumpet fraternity

    • Bruce Chidester

      This is our first entry in our contest and until someone else has more ideas as to the connections to the title, this is the winner.

      Giant Steps by Coltrane is correct.
      One small step for man (leap for mankind) is correct.

      Two points so far.

  2. Josh

    The 11 could be in reference to apollo 11 think… But if you count the steps between notes, it’s 11 steps from the E-C step until you have completed the tone cycle.

    This is also a bit shostakovich-esque, may have a quote from Bruckner 4, and has similarities to the theme of Mahler 5, and moments that resound with Copland 3 (if you use your imagination). I don’t actually think any of this is relevant to the title, but it’s good fun to look into possibilities…

    • Bruce Chidester

      Correct!

      Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first humans, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on the Moon on July 20, 1969

      Rack up one more point.

  3. Josh

    There’s a possibility that the 11 could actually be two 1s- 1 small step for man, 1 giant leap for mankind…?

    • Bruce Chidester

      Nope…..but keep trying.

      the 11 is important when speaking of a tone row…

  4. Josh

    Okay, so after going over and over the fact that it’s a 12 tone row, and not an 11 tone row, I decided to do some research about the tone-rows and schoenberg in particular… And so I’m making one more proposal about the relation of the 11:

    Schoenberg’s 3 piano pieces, op. 11 (1909 I think?) is widely seen as his first truly atonal work. The previous works by him- whilst they did use the 12-tone row, could still be said to resonate with certain pitch centres or less familiar (but already documented) scales.

    I am happy to say that even if Schoenberg’s opus 11 isn’t the key- I’ve still had lots of fun looking into it!!

    • Bruce Chidester

      Now I didn’t even think about that and for that reason you are given an additional point.

      At least we are have fun here. What about you other readers, no guts?

      With all the effort you have put into this project, I declare you the winner!

      Go to this web site and give me the title and I will send your free trumpet arrangement as a PDF file to you

      http://www.trumpetensemblemusic.com

      Now on with the title.

      Most of the connections have been stated and thanks to you, even more than I realized. The remainder are listed below..

      Tone rows normally have 12 different pitches. Mine only had 11. The note missing was the F. If you look at Coltrane s recording of Giant Steps the fourth note in the melody is an F which I left out in my tone row. I can’t believe no one caught that. Or maybe I can.

      Thanks Josh and don’t forget to reply on this site for you free trumpet arrangement.

      Stay well and the best to you and yours.

  5. Josh

    Ah, that makes perfect sense- there is a Db and a C# in the row, but there are still only 11 pitches without the F!

    Thanks Bruce, it is very generous of you to give a prize- I just had fun spending my time trying to descipher the puzzle!! But I have to say, your arrangement of Besame Mucho for trumpet quartet did catch my eye!

    Please do keep the posts coming- it’s interesting stuff!

    Regards,

    • Bruce Chidester

      Great work and your chart will be on its way in a couple minutes.

      Thanks for the comments and the best to you and yours.

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