Let Us Garlands Bring is a song cycle for baritone and piano composed by Gerald Finzi between 1929 and 1942, and published as his Op. 18. It consists of five settings of songs from plays by William Shakespeare. It was premiered on 12 October 1942 at a National Gallery lunchtime concert in London. That day was the 70th birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the cycle is dedicated to him. Finzi subsequently arranged the work for baritone and string orchestra. [1]
A typical performance lasts about 15 minutes. The songs, with their sources, are: [2]
The title of the cycle is the last line of "Who Is Silvia?".
Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata Dies natalis for solo voice and string orchestra, and his concertos for cello and clarinet.
Ernest Bristow Farrar was an English composer, pianist and organist.
Boris Blacher was a German composer and librettist.
John Maynard La Montaine, also later LaMontaine, was an American pianist and composer, born in Oak Park, Illinois, who won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Piano Concerto No. 1 "In Time of War" (1958), which was premiered by Jorge Bolet.
Robin Humphrey Milford was an English composer and music teacher.
Howard Ferguson was an Irish composer and musicologist from Belfast. He composed instrumental, chamber, orchestral and choral works. While his music is not widely known today, his Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 8 and his Five Bagatelles, Op. 9, for piano are still performed. His works represent some of the most important 20th-century music to emerge from Northern Ireland.
William Brocklesby Wordsworth was an English composer. His works, which number over 100, were tonal and romantic in style in the widest sense and include eight symphonies and six string quartets.
Kenneth Leighton was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.
Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE is a British baritone and composer.
Hermann Reutter was a German composer and pianist who worked as an academic teacher, university administrator, recitalist, and accompanist. He composed several operas, orchestral works, and chamber music, and especially many lieder, setting poems by authors writing in German, Russian, Spanish, Icelandic, English, and ancient Egyptian and Greek, among others.
The orchestral song is a late romantic genre of classical music for solo voices and orchestra.
This is a summary of 1942 in music in the United Kingdom.
Earth and Air and Rain is a song cycle for baritone and piano by Gerald Finzi (1901–56). It was composed between 1928 and 1935, and published in 1936 as his Op. 15. It consists of settings of ten poems by Thomas Hardy (1840–1928).
"An Sylvia", D 891; Op. 106, No. 4, is a Lied for voice and piano composed by Franz Schubert in 1826 and published in 1828. Its text is a German translation by Eduard von Bauernfeld of "Who is Silvia?" from act 4, scene 2, of The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare. "An Sylvia" was composed during a peak in Schubert's career around the time he was writing the Ninth Symphony "Great", two years before his death.
Charles Clement Fussell is an American composer and conductor of contemporary classical music. He has composed six symphonies and three operas. His symphony Wilde for solo baritone and orchestra, based on the life of Oscar Wilde and premiered by the Newton Symphony Orchestra and the baritone Sanford Sylvan in 1990, was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He received a citation and award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1992.
By Footpath and Stile is a song cycle for baritone and string quartet by English composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) set to poems by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Composed between 1921 and 1922, it was first performed in 1923 and published in 1925.
The Carnegie Collection of British Music was founded in 1917 by the Carnegie Trust to encourage the publication of large scale British musical works. Composers were asked to submit their manuscripts to an anonymous panel. On the panel at various times were Hugh Allen, Granville Bantock, Arnold Bax, Dan Godfrey, Henry Hadow and Donald Tovey. Up to six works per year were chosen for an award – publication at the expense of the Trust, in conjunction with music publishers Stainer & Bell. Unfortunately the war delayed things for the earliest prizewinners. The first to be published was the Piano Quartet in A minor by Herbert Howells.. By the end of 1920 some 13 works were available. 30 were out by the end of 1922, and when the scheme finally closed in 1928 some 60 substantial works that might not otherwise have seen the light of day had been issued under the Carnegie Collection of British Music imprint.