Monday 18 June 2018
Today we're happy to post a lovely tune by English folk musician Brian Peters.
I suppose this is the one tune of mine that has made the most impression on people. I've heard it played on the harp, fiddle, Northumbrian pipes and concert grand piano, and every version has brought out something different. I tend to treat it as an air rather than a waltz, playing it once as a single-note melody before bringing in gentle chords without the basses. Written in 1992 in a pub in Coleford, a small and slightly eerie town in the Forest of Dean, where I'd arrived too early for the folk club.
A performance of the piece by Brian Peters himself can be found here.
Thanks to Phil for suggesting this tune!
Sunday 17 June 2018
from “40 Esercizi per Flauto”
Today's piece is the ninth study from 40 Esercizi per Flauto (40 Exercises for Flute), Op. 101, by Italian flutist, composer and arranger Luigi Hugues.
Saturday 16 June 2018
This melody was composed in the 1820s by an Englishman named B. Hime, about whom very little is known. It sets to music the words of an unpublished poem by Bishop Reginald Heber.
I see them on their winding way,
About their ranks the moonbeams play,
Their lofty deed and daring high,
Blend with the notes of victory.
And waving arms and banners bright
Are glancing in the mellow light.
They're lost and gone, the moon is past
The woods dark shade is o'er them cast;
And fainter fainter fainter still,
The march is rising o'er the hill.
The present arrangement for two flutes appeared in Blake's Young Flutist's Magazine, published in 1833.
The first two measures of the melody are reminiscent of the traditional Scottish tune “Bonnie Dundee”.
Friday 15 June 2018
This is the sixth piece from a collection of 17 Capricci for Flauto Traverso by Italian flutist and composer Filippo Ruge. Born in Rome around 1725, Ruge appears to have spent most of his professional life in France, and especially in Paris, where several of his compositions were published, ranging from small-scale chamber music to large-scale symphonic works.
Thursday 14 June 2018
This jig has wide currency in a number of countries, genres and forms, although it appears to be derived from the Scottish “How Can We Abstain from Whisky?”. Dublin publisher Smollet Holden printed it around the year 1805 in his Collection of Quick and Slow Marches, Troops, &c. as “The Bard's Legacy”, a title that suggests lyrics may have once been set to it. Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote a popular romantic song to the tune called “The Legacy”, printed in his second volume of Irish Melodies (1807); it was reported to have been one of Abraham Lincoln's favorites.
When in death I shall calmly recline,
O bear my heart to my mistress dear,
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue, while it linger'd here.
Bid her not shed one tear of sorrow
To sully a heart so brilliant and light;
But balmy drops of the red grape borrow,
To bathe the relic from morn till night.
Wednesday 13 June 2018
from “Progress in Flute Playing”
This étude is the ninth piece from the second book of Italian composer Ernesto Köhler's Progress in Flute Playing, Op. 33. The same work was also published in Germany as Der Fortschritt im Flötenspiel, and in France as Le progrès dans l'art de la flûte.
Tuesday 12 June 2018
from “La dame blanche”, arranged for two fllutes
This chorus is part of the 1825 opera La dame blanche (The White Lady) by François-Adrien Boieldieu, an opera composer who has often been called “the French Mozart”.
The present arrangement for two flutes is taken from Blake's Young Flutist's Magazine, published in 1833.
