Hill Country Sketches

This work was commissioned by the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts Ltd. with theaid of funds provided by the John S. Cohen Foundation and the PRS Foundation. The firstperformance was given by Rachel Nicholls and Paul Plummer at St. Andrew’s Church Presteigne on 29 August 2005.Composer's NoteGladestry Quatrains is a setting of 12 short poems by Jo Shapcott from her collection of the same title. It originated in a project for the 2003 Presteigne Festival called A Garland for Presteigne in which 10 composers associated with the Festival were asked to write a short song each celebrating the Welsh border country the choice of poetryranged widely and I chose two of Jo Shapcott’s evocative miniatures (still adding up to slightly less than the timing I had been requested to provide!). As I wrote them I started to make sketches for some more settings from the same collection and the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts very kindly commissioned this new larger song-cycle proper for their 2005 Festival. The original pair of poems form the third (Gwaithla Brook) and last (Cefn Hir) of the songs in which the eighth combines two poems Burl Hill and Newchurch. Throughout I have been aware of the sights and sounds of nature the character of the landscape and the sense of history and timelessness of this beautiful part of the world as reflected in Jo Shapcott’s poetry as well as (I hope) the wit and directness of her expression. The whole work though it has eleven songs still lasts only about 20 minutes the concision of the texts and the need to find musical equivalents to this was an important part of the concept of the piece.        John McCabe 2005