Click the quotation text to discover what it refers to!
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.
Note that the price includes the full score and a complete set of parts.
Flower Piece for string orchestra was written in 1979 and first performed at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1981. It is in three movements, the third of which becomes a kind of envoi containing music from all three movements.
The quotation from Shakespeare which heads the score gives the best signpost to the music:
Clifford Bax (1886–1962) was the younger brother of the composer Arnold Bax. After initially studying art, he gave this up quite early on to concentrate on writing. His talents in this area were wide, including that of playwright, poet and author of many books. One of his earlier publications was Twenty Chinese Poems, which was issued in 1910. He describes the verse therein as being ‘paraphrased’ from the original translated texts, but they are fine examples of English lyric poetry in their own right. It is from this book that the lyrics of the first two songs of Pale Shadows are taken. Six years later Bax augmented the volume with five new ‘paraphrases’, one of these being A Vigil (which appears here as April Night).
The first and last poems of Pale Shadows are descriptive pictures of scenes at evening and night respectively, whereas the longer middle song also has a narrative quality to it. The title of the trio is a phrase extracted from April Night.
Parts are available for hire; please enquire.
Apple-Gathering, an Autumn Poem, was composed in, and between, two autumns – those of 2014 and 2015. However, the kernel of the material came much earlier and from a setting of words by Damaris West, Apple-Gathering, a poem originally written in 1976 and set for voice and piano in the summer of 1985.
The orchestral version is an entirely new score, but a quotation from the poem acts as a preface:
Where the afternoon is held imprisoned Like the glow within a jewel’s heart. —Damaris West |
The orchestra is for double woodwind, two horns, one trumpet, percussion, timpani and strings.
Parts are available for hire; please enquire.
Apple-Gathering, an Autumn Poem, was composed in, and between, two autumns – those of 2014 and 2015. However, the kernel of the material came much earlier and from a setting of words by Damaris West, Apple-Gathering, a poem originally written in 1976 and set for voice and piano in the summer of 1985.
The orchestral version is an entirely new score, but a quotation from the poem acts as a preface:
Where the afternoon is held imprisoned Like the glow within a jewel’s heart. —Damaris West |
The orchestra is for double woodwind, two horns, one trumpet, percussion, timpani and strings.
The Piano Sonata is a new work by Peter Thompson, completed in April 2022. It is in three movements, of which the first is the most extensive. Virtuosic at times and spilling over onto three and four staves, the sonata conducts an ‘argument’ through its thematically linked movements and ends in brilliant light.
A. E. Housman (1859–1936) was a classical scholar who is now best known for his volume of verse, A Shropshire Lad, first published in 1896. With their evocation of the English countryside, thwarted love and a yearning for things lost, his poems are probably still as popular today as when they first appeared. Their content and regular metres made them especially appealing to composers for setting to music, and here such prominent figures as Arthur Somervell, Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, John Ireland and E. J. Moeran immediately come to mind.
Because the majority of poems from A Shropshire Lad have been so memorably set to music already, for the present publication I deliberately avoided this Housman source. Following its great success, the poet then went on to publish three further collections of verse, which are not as well known as A Shropshire Lad, and from each I have chosen a single poem for Morningtide. The curious title here reflects that all three songs relate variously to an early morning time of day.
—John Mitchell, August 2022
Thirty years after the publication of the original Hope and Fear for five-part professional choir, Peter Thompson has now produced a brand new reworking of the piece for Baritone solo and String Orchestra (with an arrangement for Baritone solo and Piano also available).
Both new versions are dedicated to Richard G. Hallas, who was instrumental in suggesting that the music might gain by being available to more performers in a different guise (and who, in his rôle as KeyNote, has typeset them).
Thirty years after the publication of the original Hope and Fear for five-part professional choir, Peter Thompson has now produced a brand new reworking of the piece for Baritone solo and String Orchestra. Here, however, we have an arrangement of the new version for the less ambitious forces of Baritone solo and Piano.
Both new versions are dedicated to Richard G. Hallas, who was instrumental in suggesting that the music might gain by being available to more performers in a different guise (and who, in his rôle as KeyNote, has typeset them).
Note that the price includes the full score and a complete set of nine part booklets.
Nonet is scored for woodwind trio, horn and strings. It was written in the early part of 2002 and consists of twelve short movements that are sometimes interconnected.
Three Excursions are for two flutes or for flute and oboe. They are whimsical excursions, jaunts, all marked ‘poco allegro’ and dating from 1992.
Previous announcements may be found in the Fand News Archive.