Description
Live Wires Rag by Adaline Shepherd, arranged by Paul Burnell for Recorder Duet
Download comprises both score and parts
Duration 2:55
Alto Recorder
Tenor Recorder
This arrangement may suitable for other instruments in C reading the treble clef.
Programme note:
Adaline Shepherd (1883 – 1950) was an American composer of piano pieces. In her twenties, she composed three ragtime pieces: Pickles and Peppers (1906), Wireless Rag (1909), and Live Wires Rag (1909). She married Frederick Sherman Olson in 1910, and thereafter used his last name as her own. After her marriage, she retired from composition, and her compositions were unknown to her remaining family by the 1970s until reporters contacted them.
The dedication in the original piano composition reads: "Dedicated to the real Live Wire Maurice A. Richmond".
The metaphorical use of 'live wire' likely emerged around the year 1900, and applied the words used in electrical circuitry to describe an energetic and unpredictable person.