Day 31: The Very Best of English Song!

Day 31: The Very Best of English Song!

Picture coming soon!

The selection I listened to included:

Tom Bowling; Home Sweet Home; Come into the Garden, Maud; The Foggy Foggy Dew; The Plough Boy and Popular Song.

You’ll know the first two as these are regularly played at the Last Night of the Proms (and I’ve heard a few of those lately, courtesy of Hathern Band). The third, Come into the Garden, Maud, was a piece I first heard when I was in my early teens. It haunted me for years and years, and it wasn’t until I was about 40 that I finally found a copy of the sheet music, and was then able to track down a recording of it. I don’t know why, but the closest I kept coming to was In a Monastery Garden – but I’ve no idea why! Absolutely fantastic piece, and one I can actually play on the piano (as long as I miss out the octave stretches!) Robert Tear is the singer on all the above.

Popular Song is taken from Walton’s Façade Suite and is beautifully performed on this recording by Michael Flanders, as in Flanders andSwann fame.

Fabulous stuff!

Day 3: Facade

Day 3: 22 April 2012, Facade Suite

The Facade Suite by William Walton, a musical accompaniment to poems by Edith Sitwell, is quite simply a masterpiece! I think I first heard extracts from it when it was played as the title music to a television programme aired in the early-70s called "Face the music". This has to have been the best quiz show on earth! The inimitable Joseph Cooper playing his dummy keyboards, Robin Ray sitting there looking, well, quite frankly, gorgeous, Joyce Grenfell being sooo Joyce Grenfell, and various other guests including the newsreader Richard Baker and David Attenborough!

Anyway, back to the music. I didn't realise at the time that the theme tune was taken from Facade, but I think it was another one of those pieces I studied for A level music. The piece is made up of musical accompaniments - the ensemble being a flute/piccolo, a clarinet/bass clarinet, a trumpet, a cello and alto-sax - to poems written by Edith Sitwell. At the time it was premiered, as you can imagine, there were a variety of reactions!

The influences in the music seem to come from all over the musical sphere, but there's a fairly recognisable jazz-type element to it. All in all it's a really fun piece to listen to. My only word of advice if you are going to listen to this piece is, if possible to make sure you will like the narrators! I loved my original vinyl copy, but was less happy with the version I picked up in Abergavenny Music - absolutely not their fault, they are a fab little music shop - but despite uhming and ahing about buying it, as I had a feeling I wouldn't be keen on the narrators, I still did!