|
English Country-Tunes (1977) |
solo piano - 52'
eight movements: 'Green Meadows'; 'Midsummer Morn'; 'I'll give my love a garland'; 'May and December'; 'Lies and marvels'; 'The seeds of love'; 'My bonny boy'; 'Come beat the drums and sound the fifes'
English Country-Tunes is, most simply, a totentanz - a dance of death, a Lament, a wake - celebrating arcadia, the product of a long fantasy tradition of 'rural innocence' (maybe stemming from the Garden of Eden). The melodic ('tune') element, clearly enough derived from the modalities of English folk-song, predominates in the second and seventh sections - the fife-and-drum band of the actual totentanz is isolated in the final (eighth) section. The remainder is made up of a series of responses to, meditations and variations upon, the 'issue' of folk-music, and how one integrates it now (with meaning and vitality) into 'art-music'.
© Michael Finnissy