Fand IncWessex Press

Published in Autumn 2004, this is a collection of ten compositions for piano in an album specifically devoted to the left hand.

Nine composers rose to the brief and produced ten completely individual original pieces of differing levels of difficulty, ranging from the radiant simplicity of Roger Eno’s art to a virtuosic number from Francis Pott, who jokingly suggests that a player might give his right arm to be able to play it! A further novelty within a typically novel Fand production is a transcription for left hand by Ronald Stevenson of his daughter Savourna Stevenson’s Lament for a Blind Harper.

All nine composers were thoroughly stimulated by the new discipline of writing for the left hand—many of them considering it like writing for
“a completely different instrument” compared with the two-handed approach. The publisher feels that players will be equally stimulated; and, of course, two-handed players can always cheat in the end, if any piece does prove too taxing for the left hand alone!

The Missing Music Mystery

A Whodunnit!

Where’s it gone? Who’s hidden it?

CHIEF SUSPECTS: the experts, the arts councils, the BBC, the establishment, the academics, the politicians…

Barry Armstrong asks the questions!

Fand Music Press published this zestful monograph to coincide with John Barton Armstrong’s 80th birthday in April 2003.

The Missing Music Mystery is an unusual and provocative enquiry into the present state of British Music. The format of the publication, an open letter to an Arts Council Chairman, echoes the format of Armstrong’s earlier polemical essay, The Riddle of Schoenberg, also available from Fand.