Muhamad Yusri

Alfred Reed first developed his compositional skill during World War II when he served as Radio Production Director and Associate Conductor of the 529th Army Air Corps Band, producing over 150 weekly broadcasts and composing and arranging nearly 100 works for band. Following the war, Reed studied composition with Vittorio Giannini at the Juilliard School. He later received his BM and MM degrees from Baylor University. For years, he taught composition and conducting at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. In his lifetime, Reed composed over 250 published works for wind band, chorus, orchestra, chamber ensemble, and solo instrument.

El Camino Real (“The Royal Road” or “The King’s Highway”) is a fantasia based on the harmonic movement of traditional Spanish folk dances often performed by flamenco guitarists. Reed considered the harmonic motion and resulting key relationships to be “the true Spanish idiom.” He commented, “Together with the folk melodies they [Spanish guitarists] have underscored, in part derived by a procedure known to musicians as the ‘melodizing of harmony,’ they have created a vast body of what most people would consider authentic Spanish music.”

El Camino Real begins with a spirited setting of the Jota, a traditional Spanish dance form commonly danced with castanets and accompanied by guitar. The slow middle section is loosely based on the Fandango, but is a much more tranquil derivation of the dance, incorporating tempo and metric alterations that differ significantly from the dance’s more traditional style characteristics. Rather than utilizing the common triple meter generally associated with the Fandango, Reed sets the dance in slow 7/8 (3+2+2), 8/8 (3+2+3) and 5/8 (3+2) meters. This practice of altering the traditional style and meter of folk songs and dances is not new to composer Reed. A decade earlier in Armenian Dances, Reed set the folk song “Hoy, Nazan Eem” in 5/8 time (alternating 2+3 and 3+2 division of the pulse), a drastically different rhythmic setting from the original folk song that remains in 6/8 meter throughout its entirety. The fantasy returns to the opening material and drives forward to a fiery conclusion. El Camino Real was commissioned by and dedicated to the 581st Air Force Band and Commander Lt. Col. Ray E. Toler. The work was premiered by the band in April 1985 in Sarasota, Florida.

https://www.potsdam.edu/sites/default/files/CB-SB%20ProgNote-F16-01.pdf