Nothing But the Blood Theme and Variations for Unaccompanied Trumpet Solo

Description

Nothing but the Blood of Jesus

Theme and Variations
for Unaccompanied Trumpet Solo
arr. Eddie Lewis

This is a simple piece of music that I wrote just for fun. I had this idea to write a hymn arrangement in the style of a turn of the century (previous century) theme and variations. I was shooting for something like you might see at the end of the “The Art of Phrasing” section of the Arban book. Numbers 144 through 150 are simple, unaccompanied theme and variations (these would be on pages 238 through 245 in some copies of the Arban book).

I only wrote two variations because I wrote the piece to be performed during offering at our church. It didn’t need to be very long.

The arrangement begins with a double-tongued introduction, then the hymn is stated (the “theme”). The first variation is what I call “home base intervals”. This is when the melody moves but the bottom note of the interval stays constant. The last variation is a double tongue variation. The double tongue stuff is fairly simple, mostly just scales.

Skill Level

The skill level on this piece is intermediate. On our seven level system, Nothing but the Blood of Jesus is at the fifth level. We all that the Trumpet Pro skill level.