Household Music: Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes is a 1940 composition by Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was written for string quartet and can be adapted for other instruments. [1]
The final hymn, "Aberystwyth", is played with eight variations. [1] The premier performance of the piece was in an orchestral version at Bournemouth on 25 November 1940. [1] the first performance of the piece as intended was at the Wigmore Hall on 4 October 1941. [1]
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed many other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success. His distinctive compositional style was the product of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. The subsequent inspiration of the English folksong revival of the early 20th century, and the example of such rising modern composers as Maurice Ravel, led Holst to develop and refine an individual style.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.
"On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at" is a folk song from Yorkshire, England. It is sung in the Yorkshire dialect, and is considered the unofficial anthem of Yorkshire. According to Andrew Gant, the words were composed by members of Halifax Church Choir "some 50 years after Clark wrote his melody", on an outing to Ilkley Moor near Ilkley, West Yorkshire. It is classified as numbers 2143 and 19808 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, also known as the Tallis Fantasia, is a one-movement work for string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The theme is by the 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis. The Fantasia was first performed at Gloucester Cathedral as part of the 1910 Three Choirs Festival, and has entered the orchestral repertoire, with frequent concert performances and recordings by conductors and orchestras of various countries.
"The First Noel" ", or "The First Nowell" is a traditional English Christmas carol with Cornish origins, most likely from the early modern period, although possibly earlier. It is listed as number 682 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
Serenade to Music is an orchestral concert work completed in 1938 by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, written as a tribute to conductor Sir Henry Wood. It features an orchestra and 16 vocal soloists, with lyrics adapted from the discussion about music and the music of the spheres from Act V, Scene I from the play The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Vaughan Williams later arranged the piece into versions for chorus and orchestra and solo violin and orchestra.
Sinfonia antartica is the Italian title given by Ralph Vaughan Williams to his seventh symphony, first performed in 1953. It drew on incidental music the composer had written for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic.
Cwm Rhondda is a popular hymn tune written by John Hughes (1873–1932) in 1907. The name is taken from the Welsh name for the Rhondda Valley.
"O Little Town of Bethlehem" is a Christmas carol. Based on an 1868 text written by Phillips Brooks, the carol is popular on both sides of the Atlantic, but to different tunes: in The United States, to "St. Louis" by Brooks' collaborator, Lewis Redner; and in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland to "Forest Green", a tune collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams and first published in the 1906 English Hymnal.
Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 8 in D minor was composed between 1953 and 1955. Sir John Barbirolli, its dedicatee, conducted the Hallé Orchestra in the premiere at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on 2 May 1956. It is the shortest of the composer's nine symphonies, and is mostly buoyant and optimistic in tone.
Hyfrydol is a Welsh hymn tune that appears in a number of Christian hymnals in various arrangements. Composed by Rowland Prichard, it was originally published in the composer's handbook to the children's songbook Cyfaill y Cantorion in 1844. Prichard composed the tune before he was twenty years old.
Hymn to St Cecilia, Op. 27 is a choral piece by Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), a setting of a poem by W. H. Auden written between 1940 and 1942. Auden's original title was "Three Songs for St. Cecilia's Day", and he later published the poem as "Anthem for St. Cecilia’s Day ".
Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus is a work for harp and string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The composition is based on the folk tune "Dives and Lazarus", one of the folk songs quoted in Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite.
Four Hymns, set to music for tenor voice with the accompaniment of pianoforte and viola obbligato, is a liturgical song cycle composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Songs of Praise is a 1925 hymnal compiled by Percy Dearmer, Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The popular English Hymnal of 1906 was considered too 'High church' by many people, and a new book on broader lines was indicated. It was initially to be called Songs of the Spirit but in the end the title was changed to Songs of Praise, from the hymn by J. Montgomery, "Songs of Praise the angels sang". Musically, it deliberately omitted several Victorian hymn tunes and substituted "modal" tunes by Shaw and Gustav Holst and descants by Vaughan Williams and by Martin Shaw's brother Geoffrey Shaw.
The National Youth Orchestra of Wales is the national youth orchestra of Wales, based in Cardiff. Founded in 1945, it is the longest-standing national youth orchestra in the world.
Air and Simple Gifts is a quartet composed and arranged by American composer John Williams for the January 20, 2009, inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. The first public performance of the piece was in Washington, D.C., immediately prior to Obama taking the oath of office, when musicians Anthony McGill (clarinet), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Gabriela Montero (piano) synced their performance to a tape they had recorded two days earlier. It was the first classical quartet to be performed at a presidential inauguration. Obama officially became the 44th President of the United States while the piece was being performed, at noon, as the United States Constitution stipulates.
Rhosymedre is the name of a hymn tune written by the 19th-century Welsh Anglican priest John David Edwards. Edwards named the tune after the village of Rhosymedre in the County Borough of Wrexham, Wales, where he was the vicar from 1843 until his death in 1885. The hymn tune is seven lines long, with a metrical index of 6.6.6.6.8.8.8. It appears in a number of hymnals and is sung to a variety of words.
"Come Down, O Love Divine" is a Christian hymn usually sung for the festival of Pentecost. It makes reference to the descent of the Holy Spirit as an invocation to God to come to into the soul of the believer. It is a popular piece of Anglican church music and is commonly sung to the tune "Down Ampney" by Ralph Vaughan Williams.