BEOWULF & GRENDEL
for Orchestra

by W. Brent Sawyer

composed 1988/revised and orchestrated 2020
approx. length: 14:25 minutes

In 1987, I was a senior in High School, At Booker T Washington High School of the Performing and Visual Arts. When we studied Beowulf, our English teacher, Mrs. Arnold had each of us present a project on Beowulf using our own art form (Music, Dance, Theater, Visual Arts.) So, I wrote an epic musical project - only scored on a 2 staff piano score. I borrowed a DX7 synth from our midi lab at school and since it was way before we all had amazing home studios, I used two tape players to multi track different parts. This process meant I recorded a track then played that tape while playing a new part on the second tape, Then keep repeating the process until I got different sounds and voices I wanted. After about 4 or 5 tape overs the sound quality starts getting very bad as you can imagine. But that's how we did it "old School" with crappy equipment. But I was very proud of my first epic musical work. Anyway, cut to 33 years later, I took out the original score which no one has seen or heard since 1987 and decided to give it the Big Full Orchestration that I always heard in my head of how it should sound.

The piece is in 10 major sections: