SKU: HL.14034820
ISBN 9781846099199. 8.25x11.75x0.19 inches. English.
Ian Venables' setting of four poems of A.E. Housman originally scored for tenor solo, string quartet and piano, here arranged for tenor and piano. Lyrical pieces of intermediate difficulty, sometimes elegiac, sometimes angry. Written in 2004 but very much in the English song tradition of Finzi, Gurney and Warlock these are therefore ideal recital companions to those composers.
SKU: HL.14002789
This work is in the nature of an orchestral epilogue to the same composer's two sets of songs, the words of which are taken from Mr A.E. Housman's poem, A Shropshire Lad.
SKU: OU.9780193451537
ISBN 9780193451537. 12 x 8 inches.
For high voice and piano. These two short songs are set to texts by A E Housman and Edward Thomas.
SKU: FP.FBM04
ISBN 9790570504077.
The opening movement is a free fantasia, contrasting with the middle movement, a scherzetto, in homage to, and based on the letters of the name of, the composer Douglas Steele, an assistant to Sir Thomas Beecham and a founding father of Chethams School, and which quotes from Steele’s beautiful carol The Snow Falls.Divertimento was first performed by John Turner and Janet Simpson at a concert in aid of the Peter Cunningham Memorial Fund at Mellor Church on 17th January 2005. It uses both treble and descant instruments. The second movement was originally composed for a concert in Manchester Cathedral in memory of Douglas Steele, one of the founding fathers of Chetham's School, and quotes (by kind permission of Forsyth Brothers Ltd.), from his well-known carol The Snow Falls. It has been separately recorded by John Turner and Stephen Hough on Autumn Sequence – the music of Douglas Steele and his Circle (Campion Cameo 2040/41).Martin Bussey was born in London in 1958. He was a Choral Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, during which time he studied composition with Robin Holloway. Following postgraduate singing study at the RNCM he settled in Manchester and held a number of posts, including Head of Academic Music and Director of Choirs at Chetham’s School of Music until 2013. He continues as Musical Director of the Chester Bach Singers, a Vocal Tutor at Manchester University, Chairman of the Finzi Friends and a Director of the Ludlow Song Weekend. Compositions include the highly successful monodrama about Mary I, Mary’s Hand, premiered in 2018; a significant collection of solo songs which includes settings of Housman, Hardy, and Walt Whitman, many recorded on the disc Through a glass; and much choral music, recorded by Sonoro under Neil Ferris in 2019.
SKU: OU.9780193379770
ISBN 9780193379770. 12 x 8 inches.
Hollow Fires is a cycle of four songs, setting texts by Hardy and Housman on the subject of love and loss.
SKU: BT.MUSTH978431
English.
The Banks of Green Willow begins in pastorale mode with the title tune established in the Strings with solo clarinet. The work builds to quite a passionate climax before re-establishing the pastorale mood of the opening. Thesong on which the story is based has a tragic death at its centre, which is reflected in the score.English composer and folksong collector George Butterworth, who lived at the turn of the last century and lost his life in theFirst World War, is known for his settings of selections of A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad and for an Orchestral rhapsody he composed on the same theme. As a Recorder of folksongs, he was successful in noting more thanthreehundred, mainly from Sussex. One of them, The Banks of Green Willow, is the basis for the idyll for Orchestra that has been adapted here for Piano.
