Williams-"Two "Basic" Etudes and a Palindrome"-SD

A challenging and musical three-movement snare drum solo. The composer David Willians says of the work, "Two Basic Etudes for Snare Drum" were composed for my friend Thomas Shriver. When he forsook the orchestral life for a position with one of the service bands, I wrote these pieces for him to play in the "endless" free time afforded by the military during basic training. The "Palindrome" (a word, or in this case, a piece of music which reads the same way both forward and backward) includes a motif of two pairs of accents followed by three accents which ignores the retrograde and grows more prominent as the etude progresses. You might call it a report motif: 'Airman, Shriver, Thomas, Sir!'"

Number of players: 1
Difficulty: Advanced

Instrumentation: Snare drum