The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Kyle Wernke (2012, rev. 2021)
for orchestra with optional narrator

Orchestra instrumentation: 3.3.3.3/4.3.3.1/timp.3 perc/hp/str

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow will always have a special place in my heart as the first major orchestral work I ever had performed. At the time of its commissioning and composition I had intended to pursue film music as a career. The piece was meant to be a tour-de-force to earn my acceptance into one of the major film scoring programs. Shortly after the premiere of the piece, under my own baton in October of 2012, I realized that the world of film music was not where I belonged and I chose to pursue my doctorate in composition and a career in "concert" music. Conducting this piece with an orchestra made up of some of my best friends is still one of my most cherished musical memories. I hope future audiences will get the chance to visit Sleepy Hollow through my music and enjoy a little fright.

Notes on the 2021 Revision:
I've always been a little upset that this piece never went on to have performances beyond the premiere. As I got older I realized that the piece, while pretty good, was a little too "fat" and needed trimming. The lockdown in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic afforded me the time to begin revising the piece and a performance by the New England Film Orchestra in October, 2022 gave me the kick I needed to finish the revision. The result is a piece that is five minutes shorter with tighter orchestration (the original version called for six percussionists, this one calls for four) and a refinement of some of the musical gestures. This piece is where many of the techniques that make up my mature "voice" first showed up. In some instances I chose to embrace them in their primordial form, in others I chose to update them to better reflect who I am as a composer today. Other sections of the original version amounted to little more than theft from the composers I was interested in at the time (notably a direct lift from The Rite of Spring in the fourth movement), these sections have been removed and in the places where new music was required I inserted an allusion to the composer rather than an outright quotation. Furthermore, much of the narration has been excised or updated so as not to cloud the music.

Orchestral performance parts are available via rental.