Jericho: Concert Band Conductor Score

Gould's approach to band scoring remains instructional without sounding didactic. The piece demands musical maturity from your ensemble while rewarding every section with melodic responsibility and genuine narrative arc, making it the kind of concert work that energizes both players and audiences.

The music evokes both the ancient grandeur and human drama of the biblical narrative without resorting to sentimentality. Gould crafts moments of soaring lyricism alongside energetic, propulsive sections that capture the scale and urgency of the subject matter, leaving performers and listeners with a sense of witnessing something monumental.

This work suits advanced high school bands, college ensembles, and competitive concert groups ready for a substantial 20th-century American standard. Directors programming festival repertoire or building a concert around canonical band works will find this score both musically fulfilling and pedagogically rich.

• Balance the narrative voice across the full ensemble. Gould passes his thematic material through different choirs of instruments, so track where the "story" lives in each section and adjust dynamic shaping accordingly.
• Attend to the rhythmic precision of the battle sequences. The momentum depends on crisp articulation and locked ensemble playing; use the conductor's analysis as a road map for where rhythmic drive matters most.
• Shape the contrasting lyrical passages with warm, singing tone. The piece gains power through its dynamic range, so find moments of genuine quiet and restraint before building into the climactic material.

Program Jericho as the centerpiece of a concert exploring American band classics or narrative works in concert music. Its eleven-minute span and substantial difficulty make it an ideal anchor piece that justifies a full program around thematically related shorter works, or a natural climax for a concert showcasing your ensemble's maturity.

• Leading and following thematic material across multiple instrumental choirs
• Sustaining musical narrative across an extended single-movement form
• Balancing dynamic contrast and maintaining clear ensemble blend in densely scored passages
• Executing rhythmic precision in sectional writing while maintaining lyrical phrasing in solos
• Reading and interpreting programmatic content through musical gesture and orchestration