| Interesting | ||
| — Double Reed News |
Click the quotation text to discover what it refers to!
Fand IncWessex Press is a publisher of high quality sheet music, CDs and books, all focussing on accessible 20th Century and contemporary composers and concentrating mainly on first editions. Please use the tabs at the top of the page to explore the catalogue. Further details, such as information about ordering, can be found on the Contact/Info page.
Symphony no 5, ‘The Sonnet’ is so named as it reflects the sonnet form. Thus, movement 1 is the volta, movement 2 is a development and exploration of the ‘theme’, and in movement 3 the issue seeks resolution in a short rhyming couplet.
This is a brief but pithy symphony which was sketched and orchestrated between February 2023 and March 2024 and is scored for traditional symphony orchestra.
Parts are available on request; please enquire.
Labyrinth was completed in February 2021 and is a single movement work for full orchestra. Its ‘labyrinthine way’ might be suggested by the weaving, developing and return, often slightly alarmingly, of different musical material. This creates a gradual building of tension, but there is release in the final bars, perhaps into spacious skies and seas…
Parts are available on request; please enquire.
Labyrinth was completed in February 2021 and is a single movement work for full orchestra. Its ‘labyrinthine way’ might be suggested by the weaving, developing and return, often slightly alarmingly, of different musical material. This creates a gradual building of tension, but there is release in the final bars, perhaps into spacious skies and seas…
Carey Blyton had a rare talent for melodic invention. Girl Friday was originally commissioned by Boosey & Hawkes, and was originally scored for piano and string orchestra in 1974. The original version can be heard on the Carey Blyton – Film & Television Music (1/4) CD, available from Fand.
However, the chic melodic charm and captivating immediacy of Girl Friday – with her slightly South American flavour – seemed to call out for a solo piano arrangement, particularly one playable by the Grade 4–5 pianist. Hence this special Fand edition of the work, arranged by John Mitchell and Peter Thompson.
For those interested, John Mitchell has also created a more ambitiously laid out arrangement for the Grade 6+ pianist within Mood Music Medley, which is also available from Fand.
With words from a roundel by A. C. Swinburne written in 1883, after he had retired to The Pines, Putney, the poem explores a ‘living memory’ of over 20 years before, when Swinburne had visited Italy and Ventimiglia:
This new setting is dedicated to Lorna Windsor (Web site), who in 1981 premiered Peter Thompson’s Four Swinburne Pictures.
POSTAGE COSTS £8.00 ON THIS ITEM.
JOURNEYS and EXCURSIONS is P. F. Owen’s collected short stories, here published for the first time by Fand. The tales tell of departures from innocence and experience, some more far-reaching than others: journeys and excursions.
The writer Mary Webb was very much ‘A Shropshire Lass’, having been born in that county in 1881. She developed a great love of the countryside there, and it was where she spent most of her life. Something of a literary late-starter, her most significant work dates from her mid-thirties. To some extent her few novels – the most remembered today probably being Gone to Earth and Precious Bane – have overshadowed her verse. Having suffered from ongoing ill health, she died at the early age of 46 in 1927, and it was only in the following year that her collected poems were published.
Much of Mary Webb’s verse focuses on a detailed observation of the rural landscape in her beloved Shropshire, with some notable descriptions of nature. The five poems selected for Secret Joys are all in this category. The first song records how the hawthorn in bud appeared to her as “green rain” suspended in mid-air, whilst songs two and three relate to the poet’s fascination with the red berries and hips of the hawthorn and rose. The fourth song is about the micro-observation of nature where “…We follow a secret highway/Hardly a traveller knows”, including a reference to the “blue profound” of a small but exquisite speedwell petal. The final song tells of how a bleak winter transforms into a welcome spring, concluding how “…life does not forget”.
Apart from the opening Green Rain, the other four songs have the poems retitled, all being linked by a reference to a colour. The group title, Secret Joys, alludes to the original title of the fourth set poem: The Secret Joy.
—John Mitchell, October 2023
I wrote these pieces for my son, Eugene, when he was about 10 years old; he enjoyed them very much and now, finally, they are in print.
—Adrian Williams
Parts are available on request; please enquire.
Commuter Special was originally entitled Rush Hour and has three dates at the end of the manuscript: 1955/1960/1973. Thus it was originally conceived when Carey Blyton was 23, but for what forces and in what guise is, as yet, unclear.
The scoring is for double woodwind (mainly), brass, piano, percussion and strings, and it portrays a genial picture of optimistic movement.
A recording of this work may be found on the CD, Carey Blyton – Film & Television Music (1/4).
Parts are available on request; please enquire.
Commuter Special was originally entitled Rush Hour and has three dates at the end of the manuscript: 1955/1960/1973. Thus it was originally conceived when Carey Blyton was 23, but for what forces and in what guise is, as yet, unclear.
The scoring is for double woodwind (mainly), brass, piano, percussion and strings, and it portrays a genial picture of optimistic movement.
A recording of this work may be found on the CD, Carey Blyton – Film & Television Music (1/4).
Previous announcements may be found in the Fand News Archive.
