11/12/2025
Please enjoy a note on arranging music and the journey it has been for our own Phil Winkless. You'll be delighted by his arrangements featured in ALL our upcoming Christmas concerts!
My undergraduate degree was obtained from the University of Wales, after studying at the University College of Soth Wales and Monmouthshire, now known as Cardiff University. The B.Mus. degree was all about composition. We learned how to write Mass movements in the style of Palestrina, chorale preludes and fugues in the style of Bach, and how to orchestrate music in various styles, from Early Baroque to Modern. More importantly, we learned to compose in our own style, as one of the requirements for graduation was to produce an original composition for orchestra that lasted at least twenty minutes.
After graduating, I took the one-year post-graduate teacher training course, at University College Aberystwyth (one of the other constituent colleges of the University of Wales, the
others being at Bangor and Swansea)) before teaching for one year in a secondary school and then one year teaching at the grade 5 level in a primary school. In 1968, having
decided to try teaching abroad, my late wife and I were head-hunted by the Manitoba Department of Education and were placed in the school at Grand Rapids, where we stayed
for six years.
After that and a year’s sabbatical during which i obtained my M.Ed., we went to Gillam where I taught LA and French and its fledgling band. One year that far north was enough,
and we moved to Melita! There, I taught band from Grade 5 to grade 12 as well as grade 7 and 9 LA. It was during these early years that I started arranging, usually at that time
creating parts for instruments to cover sections that had no player: for example, using extra alto saxes to replace French horns and extra tenor saxes to replace or double
trombones.
After Melita, a few years teaching the same range of students in Flin Flon, and creating a variety of exercised to help students improve their dexterity, and then to Reston, where I spent the rest of my teaching career, teaching Band grade 5 – 15 and whatever was assigned to me, mostly LA. It was in these last years that I did a lot more arranging, creating an assortment of pieces for intermediate band: one of them Advent and Beyond, I
later re-arranged for the Winnipeg Pops Orchestra.
I’ve been asked “why do you arrange music” and I must admit that, usually it comes down to feeling a need to fill a gap, or in one or two cases being challenged to do something.
Years ago, when I was playing with the Chamber orchestra at St. John’s College, the current conductor, the late Blakeman Welch, produced his own orchestration of Bartok’s Romanian Dances. I was not impressed and told him so; he challenged me to do better,and about three weeks later I presented him with the score and parts – and we played it in a concert a few months later. Sherry Bonness seemed impressed and asked If I could do an
arrangement of a solo she had for oboe and piano; I did do, we played it, and later I re-arranged it for The Pops: the piece is Piazzolla's Oblivion.
Recently, my arrangements have been mostly for the Pops. I thought we needed more Christmas music than just the usual American commercial numbers, so set about finding Christmas Carols not normally heard, not just traditional English carols, but those from other lands too. So, Christmas Songs from Czechia, Christmas Carols Bach Knew, Noel Noel Noel! and God Jul came into being.
How do I set about an arrangement? First, I decide WHAT to arrange. For Christmas music, I have the Oxford Book of Carols (of which the composer Vaughan Williams was one
of the editors) and the three volumes of Carols for Choirs published by the Oxford University Press. Having decided which carols to use, I then devise a modulation sequence, so not everything is in the same key (and thus, in my opinion, boring). Then it is a matter of deciding how to set the carols, which combination of instruments, sections or full orchestra to use at any given time. After that, at which register should instruments
play, particularly wind and brass, and what particular sounds do I want from them at a given point? How much percussion should I use, and which instruments? My prof for orchestration, the Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott used to say, “When it comes to
percussion, sometimes less is more”. I like that idea, but with the Pops, and the need for everyone to play in almost everything, I tend to use more rather than less. And then there is
the problem of tying all these tunes together, so I try to create a transition that works, and may be related to a prior melody. In Christmas Carols Bach Knew, I had an idea for the
introduction and decided that the same thing could be used in each transition, as a unifying element. In Noel Noel Noel, at the very end, I use a hint of the first carol, just to tie everything up. In God Jul, just before the end, the first four of bars of the second carol (Jul, Jul. Stralende Jul) are reprised before returning to Joulupukki.
In conclusion, I must answer the last question: why. I arrange music (and write original compositions) because I enjoy doing it: it is fun and challenging, and if the end result pleases an audience, so much the better.
