Purchasing information Notice for leaders/bass players
Length: approx. 3 mins. Sounds best if the treble is doubled.
Black Feather is a bright and happy affair in ABBACB form with a 4-bar introduction and a 4-bar interlude between the A and C strains. The B strain which burbles cheerily upwards with all voices having a few bars, is reminiscent of
Scott Joplin's
The Cascades (1904). The whole is in the recorder player's favourite keys of Eb- and Ab-major and is thus very rewarding to master. The cover of the original sheet music shows a bare foot Negro with a worried look on his face with a huge black feather in his hand fleeing from an irate ostrich bent on murder. What all this has to do with the music in hand is hard surmise some 100 years after its composition but Irene Giblin certainly knew as she dedicated this piece to
"The Black Feather Club of St. Louis, Missouri".
Black Feather was published by
The Vinton Music Publishing Co., Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
A tempo of 80 crotchets/min. is suggested.
