Dance Suite

After completing his studies with Zoltan Kodaly, the Hungarian composer Máthiás Seiber (1905-1960) first worked as a musician in a dance orchestra on an ocean liner which gave him the opportunity to listen to jazz music in New York. From 1928 he taught the first jazz class worldwide at Dr. Koch's Conservatoire in Frankfurt. In the winter term of 1928/29, 19 students had registered with whom he gave a public concert on 3 March 1929 which was broadcast by Radio Frankfurt. After the Nazis had seized power, the jazz class was dissolved, Seiber lost his job and emigrated to London. In 1932 he wrote his piano cycle 'Leichte Tänze' (Easy Dances), one of the early examples of the adoption of jazz forms and styles in so-called serious music. The present arrangement for orchestra is easily playable and is aimed at youth and amateur orchestras. Instrumentation: 2 flutes, clarinet, oboe (ad lib.), alto saxophone, trumpet, bassoon and strings. Movements: Cake Walk - Novelty Foxtrot - Gipsy Tango - Waltz - Walzer - Blues - Charleston.