You Can Can-Can Too (2009)

from Orpheus in the Underworld (Offenbach)

For a middle school or high school percussion ensemble, You Can Can-Can Too is accessible to both young students and audiences, exposes students to well-regarded classical music, and can be a setting for an instructor to teach new musical concepts. The piece is an arrangement of the familiar tune The Galop from Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, also borrowing from Saint-Saëns' usage of the theme in The Carnival of the Animals. Notable features include a player-to-player two against three polyrhythm in the first portion of the piece, changing melody and accompaniment roles (including a legato, rolled timpani melody), a modulation from Bb to Eb, and an exciting finish. The marimba parts are playable on a single 4.3 octave instrument, and all mallet parts can easily be doubled on different instruments as needed.

Instrumentation
Bells

Xylophone

Vibraphone

Marimba 1 (4-octave)

Marimba 2 (4.3-octave)

Timpani (4 drums)

Percussion 1 (Crash Cymbals, Tambourine)

Percussion 2 (Triangle, Bass Drum)

Percussive Notes Review

This arrangement combines the familiar “Galop” from Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” with Saint-Saens’ “The Carnival of the Animals.” All of the keyboard percussion parts are written for two-mallet technique. There are many double-stops for each as well as occasional rolls. Slur or articulation markings are furnished in the vibraphone part. The tunes are familiar and the parts will require accurate scale and mallet control for the double-stops. The arrangement has many dynamic changes, and there is one tempo change when the eighth note of a triplet becomes the new quarter note.

This arrangement is suitable for a middle school to advanced percussion group. It would even serve well as an encore for a college ensemble event.

—George Frock
Percussive Notes
Vol. 51, No. 4, July 2013

Percussion Ensemble 8 | Grade 1+ | 2'45"