The Ides Of October: A Song History

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"The Ides Of October" is the ninth of the twelve pieces in Ellen Pratt's Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 2, a book she publishes herself, and it is set there as a trio, with three dulcimer parts in DAD tuning.[1] The table of contents pictured on the DulcimerDownloads listing places it in 4/4 time on pages 37 to 39; the only composer that page names is Bach, beside the Minuet in D minor, and it gives no composer for "The Ides Of October."[1] On her own website Pratt describes the volume as a mix of original and traditional arrangements in several parts, and the sources consulted here do not say which of the two this piece is.[2]

Hand-colored engraving of a large urn of mixed flowers with numbered flower names printed beneath

Henry Fletcher, Twelve Months of Flowers: October, engraving, hand-colored, 1730. Shown for its October flowers; it has no connection to the piece.

In a first-person passage of her DulcimerDownloads biography, Pratt dates her first compositions, for a dulcimer with four evenly spaced strings, to about 2004; membership in a dulcimer orchestra in northeastern Connecticut is what led her to write and arrange for ensembles, and the biography credits her with ten volumes of ensemble tablature.[3] None of the sources consulted here explains the title or mentions a recording of the piece.[1][2][3]

Our book that contains the song "The Ides Of October"

Sources

  1. Ellen Pratt: "Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 2".
  2. Ellen S. Pratt: "Ensemble Arrangements for Mountain Dulcimer Volume 2".
  3. DulcimerDownloads: "Ellen Pratt".
  4. Image: Henry Fletcher, Twelve Months of Flowers: October, engraving, hand-colored, 1730. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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