Tag: college

Pomp and Circumstance: Congratulations Graduates!

The tune Pomp and Circumstance, by English composer Edward Elgar, is often associated with high school and college graduation ceremonies. Elgar composed six “Pomp and Circumstance Marches” over his lifetime. The first five of these marches were composed between 1901 and 1930. The sixth march was published posthumously in 2005-2006, based on musical sketches.

The trio section of March No. 1, “Land of Hope and Glory”, is well known and often referred to as “Pomp and Circumstance”, or the “Graduation March”, in the United States, Canada and the Philippines.

This summer I attended an outdoor and socially distanced graduation party in August for my niece. The party was delayed due the coronavirus pandemic. My niece was a band student and played trumpet. In attendance at her party were fellow classmates from her school’s marching band and concert band. Ironically, these band students would have typically played at the annual graduation ceremony. Given that there was no in-person graduation ceremony this year, I felt bad for them. Since they have played music at graduation ceremonies for prior graduating classes, now they did not enjoy a traditional gradution ceremony themselves.

So I was inspired to learn this tune and arrange it for guitar. One version is single note melody and guitar chords. The other version is my fingerstyle guitar arrangement.

Congratulations graduates! Best of luck.

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Pomp and Circumstance: Guitar melody, key of G

This tune by English composer Edward Elgar was composed as a march. So it is fitting to have a 2/4 time signature. The two beat measures are to be played at a comfortable walking pace as if you were playing for high school and college graduates to line up in a procession towards receiving their diplomas.

The first 16-bar section begins to repeat again, with a slightly different ending. So the last four measures of the first two 16-bar sections are different. Knowing where there is repetition in the melody and chords can help you to learn and memorize this tune more quickly. The third section is shorter at 8 bars.

Notice that the last phrase of melody is in an octave lower than the rest of the melody. This song is often repeated as necessary to accommodate the number of students graduating. Hence, upon repeat of the melody, the first note is an octave higher than the previous ending note and really stands out! This helps to continue the momentum of this processional tune.

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Pomp and Circumstance: Fingerstyle Guitar, key of G

This tune by English composer Edward Elgar was composed as a march. So it is fitting to have a 2/4 time signature. I first learned the melody and chords for this tune from a simple arrangement for piano.

From there I set about trying to make this work as a guitar instrumental. The bass note pattern is pretty consistent throughout with two quarter notes per measure. You easily imagine taking two steps walking per each measure when you hear the bass notes. So I retained the bass note pattern pretty much as-is on the guitar.

The challenge for this tune are the measures where the melody note is a single half-note. On the guitar the sound of the notes can quickly decay after the note starts to play. On the piano, the notes will resonate louder and longer. When a high school or college band plays this tune, the horns can easily hold each note at the right volume for the full duration. However, on the guitar, during two beats the sound drops off (decays quickly).

Since this is a walking tune and I wanted to keep the momentum going, I did a couple things, one rhythmic and the other melody related. I started each measure by playing a chord on beat one (melody note, bass note and one or two harmony notes). Playing the new chord at beat one established a strong rhythm. The top note of chord is the melody. To keep the momentum going I fingerpicked the chords, primarily with eighth notes (4 eighth notes per measure), The exceptions are where the melody has multiple notes and may also involve some syncopation. In those cases, the bass notes keep things going.

In the fingerpicked chord measures, the second eighth note is a inner harmony note or the chord. The third note is a repeat of the bass note (held as second quarter note bass tone). The fourth eighth note is a repeat of the held melody note. So the result is instead of a half-note melody tone, on the guitar this is dotted-quarter note followed by an eighth note (equalling a half-note duration or two beats). The eighth note at the end of measure is almost like a pickup note leading into the next measure and chord, which gives this arrangement a flowing feel. The result I hope is that you can hear the melody such that the tune is recognized, while the fingerpicked notes, including bass notes, maintain the feeling of a march or procession tune.

PDF: Music notation, tablature and chords
MIDI Audio

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