Piano Trio of the National Anthem

A friend recently asked if I could write an arrangement for piano trio of the national anthem. A local doctor/surgeon will assume the presidency of a national medical organization. She is a well known and well respected doctor in her field, but what her colleagues don’t know is that she considered being a concert pianist before choosing to become a surgeon. Her boys studied violin and cello in our Suzuki School. This Dr. Mom was their accompanist as they were learning and growing up. She wanted to surprise her colleagues at the opening of the convention by playing the national anthem with her sons. Here is the arrangement I came up with for violin, cello and piano.

I assumed that the convention will be in a typical convention hall. Highly carpeted, acoustically set up for speeches and dinners and is not conducive for live music. Room designers set up these rooms so that sound won’t carry well. This works will for the majority of their use, but when it comes to music, amplification is necessary. While I don’t know the specific room, I wanted to give the musicians every possible advantage in however the space was set up. So I set arrangement in the Key of D. This is a bright and ringing key for strings. While not a good key to sing the anthem in, it will carry well on the string instruments since all of the open strings will be ringing. This also means that both the violin and cello will use the upper octave and are in the upper positions. 

Description

The piano gives a short 4 measure introduction imitating a timpani roll that also includes a sixteenth note run leading into some fanfare chords. Then the violin and cello enter with the piano also doubling the melody for the first phrase. After the first phrase the piano transitions into an accompaniment and doesn’t double the melody line. The arrangement goes through the anthem just one time. And there are no cadenzas or holds that are not written out. But it does use two fermatas. One at the end of the introduction and one the final chord. Other portions of the anthem where musicians are free or take liberty with the meter, the notes held are written out rhythmically. Hopefully this helps with clarity for both rehearsal and performance.

If you are in need a piano trio of the national anthem, check this one out and let me know how it works for you.