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Okay, polka nerds, looking for some recommendations:

I recently joined up in a brass ensemble (about 8 players). Instrumentation is fairly flexible as a few of us are doublers. This holiday season we've been getting quite a few gigs at municipal events, breweries, etc. playing Christmas music.

We'd like to expand our repertoire, especially having made some contacts at these breweries, in anticipation of next year's Oktoberfest season.

I am a complete noob to this type of music, but I love listening to it. I know the typical Oktoberfest group has accordion, etc. but my questions are:

Are there any good brass-only Oktoberfest arrangements out there that you'd recommend?

What are the classics that are must-listens/must-plays?

I'm a decent arranger, so I can whip something up if there's not any prearranged material out there, but I figured this crowd has some knowledge of where to start.

The key term for an Internet search is blasmusik. There are a lot of ensembles in Europe that are doing folk stuff, including polkas, with just brass. You might be able to connect with a European publisher.

I would also really encourage using Musescore. They have a ton of stuff already arranged for brass that can be downloaded. But they also have Octoberfest-ish stuff for wider instrumentation. If you sign up (it's pretty cheap), you can adjust instrumentation with a few fey strokes--literally. Example: copy the accordion melody line, add horn in F, paste the copied melody line onto the horn staff, delete the accordion, and done. Key transpositions are done automatically. You can browse their downloaded library free, and see what they have.

You could always search for music by Ernst Mosch & Egerländer Musikanten
They don't have an accordion but clarinets.


Ernst Hütter, the succesor to Ernst Mosch

You can order the music here
https://www.bognermusik.de/jubilaeumsausgabe.html
https://www.bognermusik.de/noten/blasmu ... sch/polka/

Have a good christmastime

Almost all my polka parts look like this, for every member of the group…