• 2(pic:afl)22(Ebcl:bcl)2/2200/timp.perc/pf/str
  • 13 min

Programme Note

GREEN AND PLEASANT

GREEN AND PLEASANT was jointly awarded the first prize in the BBC West competition held in 1973 to celebrate 1,000 years of English monarchy at Bath. The first performance subsequently televised and broadcast, took place in Bath on 18 September 1973 and was given by the Academy of the BBC, conducted by Norman Del Mar.

GREEN AND PLEASANT was conceived in purely abstract musical terms and not intended as a descriptive or programmatic piece. However, as the title suggests, it does have tenuous, if personal, nostalgic associations with Blake and with Parry's "Jerusalem", the idea for
the piece occurring to me while finishing a setting of sections from Blake's "Auguries of Innocence".

The music is in a single continuous movement, the string section of the orchestra sustaining, virtually throughout, a long series of very slow chorale-like phrases. The wind, percussion, timpani and piano form themselves into various concertante groups to interrupt, decorate and
parody the string material and the whole orchestra only really coalesces at the climax, two thirds of the way through the piece.

GREEN AND PLEASANT is dedicated to Eileen Palmer.