The Coeur d’Alene Suite is a condensed chronological musical history of North Idaho by Gary A. Edwards born in Spokane, Washington in 1941, reared in Coeur d’Alene, attended all 12 grades in Coeur d’Alene Public School District 271. The Coeur d’Alene Suite consists of nine pieces intended to be performed as a group or individually.
The sound cliips that follow were recorded by the Coeur d'Alene High School Chamber orchestra in April 2005 by Steve Sibulsky Productions and the world premiere performance of this piece was by the Coeur d'Alene High School Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jim Phillips Music Teacher at the Coeur d'Alene High School auditorium in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on May 24, 2005.
During the May 24th, 2005 performance 250 PowerPoint slides were shown representing scenes and events being portrayed by the music. Please contact Edwards Music Publishing.com if you aren interested in using these very effective PowerPoint Presentation Graphic pictures.
The Dawn of Time 3:57. This first piece is intended to convey the dawn of creation, starting with The Void, a fanfare round representing nothingness, leading into the Chaos of the formation of the Earth’s crust and the formation of terra firma with it’s constant upheavals of building up and destruction of the Earth’s surfaces. The Sun Coming over the mountains movement is a reference to the English translation of the Native-American word Idaho. The Missoula Flood refers to the ice-age melting leading to the sudden burst of waters flowing over this region, changing and re-creating the topography from Montana, through Northern Idaho to the coastal areas off of Seattle. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
The People 3:07. The people who settled in North Idaho became known as The Coeur d’Alene Tribe. Coeur d’Alene is a French phrase meaning "heart of an awl", referring to the local natives reputation for being sharp traders. This piece is designed to convey the spirit of the native peoples by depicting their Native Prayer, starting with plaintiff solos by the Viola, Cello and ending with a rare solo by the double bass player. Dancing was composed using a fugue-like counter-point technique and finally the Change in the Wind which utilizes a melodic theme, added to with harmonic intervals of thirds, conveys the Native people’s predictions of the coming of black-coated peoples and their new spiritual messages. These predictions resulted in the initial friendly reception by local natives to the missionaries depicted in a later section. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
The Traders 5:09. Among the first European descendants to come to North Idaho were the trappers and Traders who followed closely in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. Attracted by the prospect of lucrative trade in beaver pelts and other economic attractions this section depicts the hardships encountered by these hardy pioneers in the Winter Hike Over The Mountains movement, conveyed musically by sixteenth notes representing the blowing wind and snow, followed by the slow trudge as the snow piles deeper, represented in the adagio movement of Deep Snow. This is followed by a depiction of the annual celebration at gatherings in the Spring Potlatch where traders, trappers and natives met, exchanged goods, danced and engaged in games and races of all kinds and celebrated together the final end of the relenting winter. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
The Missionaries 3:53. The first missionaries to arrive were the priests of the Catholic Church represented in The Cataldo Mission movement, written in a Gregorian Chant style with elements of counter-point including the use of rounds. The next group of missionaries to arrive is represented by the Presbyterian hymn-like movement titled The Whitman Mission. The friendly reception by the Natives was shattered somewhat with native resentment of mistreatment and broken treaties by some of the Anglo Settlers which resulted in The Whitman Massacre of November 29, 1847. The music for this movement was created by the composer using mental images during composition, which lead to the frenetic rhythmic and chaotic melodic development ending this section. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
The Miners 4:03. The next group of immigrants to North Idaho were the miners represented in a slow movement representing the tedium of Prospecting, which involves long hours, weeks and months of tedious, back-breaking work with little immediate reward. Finally, Noah Kellogg’s Mule Strikes Silver is represented by a joyous, celebratory dance. However, the prosperous times followed by the discovery of silver, gold, lead and zinc in North Idaho was punctuated by dangerous times including the Miners going On Strike, introduced by a syncopatic rhythm, which depicts strike culminating in the blowing up of the Bunker Hill mine by miner’s commandeering a train, filling it with dynamite and demolishing the Bunker Hill mine in 1899. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
The Settlers 2:58. Most of the pioneers who came in the next wave were pioneer farmers. This piece starts with the loping rhythmic trudge of covered wagons represented by the slogan Eastward Ho because a large part of the settlers in North Idaho came from the Eastern coast including the Portland and Seattle areas. Pioneer life, once the settlers settled down is represented by a lively section called The Barn Dance, a fall ritual where residents for miles around would come to a grange hall, local musicians including the composer’s grandfather would play their fiddles and basses and, while the babies slept in cribs warmed by hay and the old-timers watched from rough-hewn wooden benches, the younger couples and kids would engage in exhausting rounds of square dances, Schottisches, polkas, Virginia Reels and similar folk dances, some of which are depicted in this movement, dancing all night until parting at dawn to go home to chores including milking cows and collecting eggs. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
The Cowboys 2:44. Cowboys in North Idaho are represented in this musical story depicting a fictitious posse of local concerned citizens deputized by the sheriff Galloping Over The Hills in a mythical rendition of the search for the Henry Plummer Gang, a notorious group of murderous bandits who frequently robbed stages and killed passengers and crew along the highway now known as Highway 95, from the Coeur d’Alene to the Boise areas. When the posse catches up with the Plummer Gang In January, 1863 there is a Shoot out with Outlaws represented by a chaotic rhythm of syncopation and an almost modern melody, intended to represent the confusion and clamor of the shootout. The members of the gang are killed and the piece ends with the good guys Galloping Home. The dominant rhythm of the beginning and ending movements is the clip-clopping of the horse’s hooves.
The Cowboys was the first piece of this suite composed, in 1994, inspired by lyrics by Duke Lenhart and performed as a chamber orchestra arrangement by the Ensamble Rosario, in Rosario, Argentina by a chamber orchestra and performed as a band arrangement by the North Idaho College Symphony in May 14, 2000, conducted by Terry Jones. The piece was always intended to be a smaller part of a larger piece which turned out to be the Coeur d’Alene Suite, primarily written in the last two months of 2004. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
The Logger 3:47. This section represents a time spent with the composer’s dad experiencing the life of a logger which starts by Waking Up Before Dawn, about 3:30 a.m., having breakfast and heading out to the woods for a day of Chopping Trees, in a steady, monotonous rhythm. The music in this movement represents slumber and confusion upon waking up tired so early. Occasionally, in the summertime there were logging festival days where loggers would compete in Feats of Strength including contests to see which person could chop down a tree faster, or saw up a tree trunk the quickest, maybe two loggers would jump on a log in a pond and try to tip the other logger into the water first as the log rolled. Loggers, as did many of the hard-working members of North Idaho’s earlier society tended to get worn out by Playing Too Hard. The composer’s father’s courtship of his mother is represented in the waltz tune in the movement titled Logger In love. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
Sunset 3:37. This piece brings to a close the history of North Idaho to this point beginning with a movement depicting a typical North Idaho Thunderstorm with it’s peaceful beginning, building up to rain, thunder and lightning and ending by the composer’s technique of a reversal of the buildup down to a peaceful Purple Sunset movement. The Sunset movement was composed with a technique borrowed from the style of Brahms basing sequences of chords on the third interval of the previous chord. View sheet music sample Listen to MP3
