Elliot Del Borgo (1938-2013) was an American composer and music educator. He was born in Port Chester, NY, and studied music at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, where he would return as a professor of composition from 1966-1995. The Potsdam chapters of his life bookended a brief but meaningful stay in Philadelphia, where he received additional degrees from Temple University and the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music (Vincent Persichetti was among his teachers there) and taught in the Philadelphia public schools. Among his more than 600 compositions were hundreds of works for bands at all levels and the opening ceremony music for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. He is profiled in detail at his website (still maintained by his family), Wikipedia, GIA Publications, Hebu Musikverlag, and Cummings Funeral Service.
Del Borgo wrote Chester Variations in 1995 for the Essential Elements Band Series. It is a purpose-built Grade 2 piece, designed to match with book 2, page 15 of the Essential Elements method book series. While it obviously owes a great debt to William Schuman’s Chester from 1956, Chester Variations also takes the “Chester” hymn tune on new adventures unique to Del Borgo’s treatment. It begins similarly, with a chorale leading to a percussive first variation. From there, it develops in different directions, dissecting fragments of the melody and taking harmonic backroads to a percussion-fueled ending. Here is a complete performance:
The hymn tune “Chester” was written by William Billings and first appeared in 1770. (Read more about it in my piece about William Schuman’s Chester.) Here it is with some appropriate Revolutionary War imagery:
Chester Variations appears at J. W. Pepper and Hal Leonard.