John Barnes Chance was a composer, born in Beaumont, Texas

Beaumont, Texas

Beaumont is a city in and county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 118,296 at the 2010 census. With Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the...

. Chance studied composition with Clifton Williams

Clifton Williams (composer)

James Clifton Williams Jr. was born in Traskwood, Arkansas, United States. He began playing French horn, piano, and mellophone early on and played in the band at Little Rock High School...

 at the University of Texas, Austin, and is best known for his concert band

Concert band

A concert band, also called wind band, symphonic band, symphonic winds, wind orchestra, wind symphony, wind ensemble, or symphonic wind ensemble, is a performing ensemble consisting of several members of the woodwind instrument family, brass instrument family, and percussion instrument family.A...

 works, which include Variations on a Korean Folk Song

Variations on a Korean Folk Song

Variations on a Korean Folk Song is a major musical piece written for concert band by John Barnes Chance in 1965. As the name implies, Variations consists of a set of variations on the Korean folk song Arirang, which the composer heard while in Korea with the U.S. Army in the late 1950s...

, Incantation and Dance, and Blue Lake Overture. Many of his works are written for young musicians, particularly those written between 1960 and 1962, when he was composer-in-residence in the Greensboro

Greensboro, North Carolina

Greensboro is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the third-largest city by population in North Carolina and the largest city in Guilford County and the surrounding Piedmont Triad metropolitan region. According to the 2010 U.S...

, North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 public school system—specifically at Greensboro Senior High School (now Grimsley Senior High School) under the supervision of Herbert Hazelman—as part of the Ford Foundation

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

 Young Composers Project.

Before he became a full-time composer, Chance played timpani

Timpani

Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

 with the Austin Symphony and later was an arranger

Arrangement

The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...

 for the Fourth and Eighth U.S. Army bands. Chance taught at the University of Kentucky

University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...

 from 1966 until his death in 1972. In August 1972, Chance was airing a tent in his garden when a metal pole contacted an electrified fence used to confine his dogs. Chance was accidentally electrocuted

Electric shock

Electric Shock of a body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable....

 and died at 12:40 p.m. at Central Baptist Hospital from cardiac arrest

Cardiac arrest

Cardiac arrest, is the cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively...

. He and his wife Linda had two children.

Works

• Symphony No. 1, orchestra (1956)
• Overture to a Fairy Tale, orchestra (1957)
• Credo, trumpet and piano (1959)
• Incantation and Dance, concert band (1960)
• Fiesta! orchestra (1960)
• Satiric Suite, string orchestra (1961)
• Blessed are They that Mourn, from Biblical text, chorus, horn, strings, and percussion (1961)
• The Noiseless, Patient Spider, text from Walt Whitman
  Walt Whitman
  Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
  
  , female choir and flutes (1961)
• Alleluia, chorus and concert band (1962)
• 3 Songs, text e. e. cummings, soprano, flute, and piano (1962)
• Ballad and March, on American traditional text, chorus and concert band (1962)
• Incantation and Dance wind ensemble (1963)
• Introduction and Capriccio, wind ensemble with piano (1966)
• Variations on a Korean Folk Song
  Variations on a Korean Folk Song
  Variations on a Korean Folk Song is a major musical piece written for concert band by John Barnes Chance in 1965. As the name implies, Variations consists of a set of variations on the Korean folk song Arirang, which the composer heard while in Korea with the U.S. Army in the late 1950s...
  
  , concert band (1967)
• Kyrie and Alleluia, chorus and orchestra (1967)
• Blue Lake Overture, concert band (1971)
• Elegy, concert band (1972)
• Symphony no. 2, wind ensemble (1972)
• Burletta, a chromatic piece
• Overture For A Musical Comedy, concert band (1997) (published after his death)

External links

• .mp3 of Variations on a Korean Folk Song