Many years ago after one of my high school jazz band class rehearsals, I remember asking a trumpet player friend of mine if he had any interesting studies or exercises from his world as a brass player that I could try playing to help broaden my musical horizons. “Of course” he said, and without hesitation, opened his book bag and proceeded to plunk down a huge tome upon my music stand. I can still see it today, with it’s minimalist looking cover design, and striking RED cover, it was over an inch thick and very heavy. In big white letters on the front, it read “ARBAN“.
“Adeste Fideles” For 2 Guitars
A Classic Christmas Carol, arranged for guitar duet (FREE download for all newsletter subscribers!)
PDF Download, 4 Pages (Standard Notation and TAB)
I was blown away, a new world was opening up to me – I couldn’t believe the amount of music in this book! I immediately imagined reading through study after study, practicing exercise after exercise, my guitar playing and musicianship growing by leaps and bounds with every page of music digested! Well …
A few minutes later, I realized that I had no idea where to begin. This book was over 500 pages thick and my sight reading was not strong enough to enable me to quickly get an idea of how each study would sound. To make matters worse, when I asked my friend to play some of the pages that looked particularly interesting to me, what he played sounded completely different when I tried to read the notes on the page – this was my first introduction to the nature of transposition of music written for non “C” instruments (like the guitar). This book, being for trumpet players, was written for “Bb” instruments.
My friend needed his book back for practice a couple of days later, and there ended my adventures in the trumpet works of Arban…
Until now!
I recently discovered that Arban had written a nice, relatively easy but great sounding arrangement of the Christmas classic “Adeste Fideles” also known as “O Come, All Ye Faithful” as a duet for two trumpets. I love the harmony sound of this duet written in the mid 1800s by Arban, and thought it would sound great on guitar – so I transposed and adapted it to work for two guitars. Take a listen to the duet below, then download the sheet music and play along with me using either of the isolated guitar parts included in the video.
A little more about Arban (via wikipedia):
Joseph Jean-Baptiste Laurent Arban (28 February 1825 – 8 April 1889) was a cornetist, conductor, composer, pedagogue and the first famed virtuoso of the cornet à piston or valved cornet. He was influenced by Niccolò Paganini’s virtuosic technique on the violin and successfully proved that the cornet was a true solo instrument by developing virtuoso technique on the instrument.
Arban’s trumpet method of 1864 is often referred to as the “Trumpeter’s Bible”. It is still studied by modern brass players.
His variations on The Carnival of Venice remains one of the great showpieces for cornet soloists today. “Fantasie Brilliante” also continues to be frequently performed and recorded.
