Arcadia II

Arcadia is a work for Violin Soprano Saxophone and Piano inspired by the painting 'Pastoral for E.W.' by John Craxton. As a painter John was sometimes dubbed a 'neo-Romantic' but much preferred the term'Arcadian' - hence the title of the piece. Pastoral for E.W. was painted in 1948 in St John's Wood after one of John's early trips to the island of Crete and is a homage to Peter Watson (co-founder of the magazine 'Horizon' andthe Institute of Contemporary Arts) who was one of John's early mentors.In a letter in 1986 John recounted that: '‘Pastoral for P.W.’: was a celebration of the power of music. My sister (the distinguished oboist JanetCraxton) was learning the oboe on the same floor at the time and the house was full of her scales and exercises coupled with my discovery that goats which seem to be daemonic willful and undisciplined are held in thrall by thesound of a flute - or have I gone a step further and frozen them into my geometry with a paint brush? I suppose the flautist was in origin myself but a very emblematic me!' Ian Collins in his book 'John Craxton' (2011Lund Humphries) says of Pastoral for E.W.: 'A pipe-player and a herd of goats are held in a rugged grid of semi-cubist triangles. While references to Dionysus and Orpheus may be noted it is essentially a fanfare for the ongoinglife light and landscape of Greece'. The music of Arcadia is also Grecian in inspiration. The traditional folk melodies Skaros Epirotikos Vari Pogonisio Ouzak To Tragoudhi Tis Xentias and Pentozalis - Pentozalis arepresent in Arcadia after I researched the type of music that John would have heard in Crete in the late 1940's. In a letter of 3rd May 1984 John said that he was also listening to Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 Movements 'over andover again at the same time when I first started the painting' and aspects of the beginning of the last section of Arcadia (Allegro Moderato) pay homage to the Stravinsky in an attempt to create something of the aural landscape

For this work the Japanese composer Hayato Hirose dug deep into his own imagination to fi nd the right inspiration. It is about a young boy who dreams about reaching paradise (Arcadia) and sets out on a journey to find it. This journey is long and treacherous but despite the many challenges he faces the boy finally does reach his Arcadia. The result is a very dramatic work that will take your audience on a breath-taking journey.

Par ADES THOMAS. Composed in 1994 and now firmly established as part of the contemporary string quartet repertoire, Arcadiana is one of Thomas Adès’s early masterpieces. Six of its seven movements evoke various vanished or vanishing idylls. The odd-numbered movements are all aquatic. I might be the ballad of some lugubrious gondolier; III takes a title and a figuration from a Schubert Lied; in V a ship is seen swirling away to L’Isle Joyeuse; VII is the River of Oblivion. The second and sixth movements inhabit pastoral Arcadias, respectively: Mozart’s ‘Kingdom of Night’, and more local fields. The joker in this pack is the fourth movement, the literal dead centre: Poussin’s tomb bearing the inscription ‘Even in Arcady am I’. / Ensemble Music / Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Clair de Lune is one of the most famous Piano works by Claude Debussy. Strictly speaking it is the third movement of the four-movement 'Suite bergamasque'. Due to its fascinating tonal poetry and its moderate technical demands it soon became one of the most popular and most frequently performed individual pieces by Debussy which is why the Wiener Urtext Edition now publishes a separate edition on the occasion of the composer's 150th birthday. Debussy's music reflects the poem of the same name 'Clair de Lune' by Paul Verlaine which outlines the landscape of the soul of a faraway Arcadia in which reminiscences of the ancient'fêtes galantes' of the 'ancien régime' are combined with the modern sound experiments of the fin de siècle. In this edition Verlaine's poem is printed not only in the original French version but also in German and English translations preceding the musical text.

44 British classic and modern secular part-songs for mixed voices from Purcell to the present day. With this anthology selected and edited by Robert Walker choirs are provided with accessible material of many styles and eras: from arcadian Purcell the classical simplicity of Arne from Sterndale Bennett and Sullivan writing during the golden age of glee clubs through the late-Romantic era of Elgar and Bantock and the early twentieth century British renaissance of Holst and Moeran to contemporary composers like Musgrave Bennett and Kelly.This set of works will be within the scope of all choirs and levels of accomplishment. All vocal ranges are given and rehearsal pianoaccompaniments provided.

The Pretty Girl Waltz is an old Arcadian folk tune. In this arrangement Marvin Gaspard has retained the French text. It is to be sung in two parts using any combination of voices.