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Re: A Downland Suite


Ireland's "A Downland Suite"



from sleeve notes:

John Ireland was born in Cheshire in 1879 and died in Sussex in 1962. He
wrote over eighty songs, many of real distinction such as The Holy Boy here
recorded in the transcription by David Cameron. It epitomises Ireland=E2=80=
=99s craft
in using small-scale but memorable musical ideas to great effect.
Particularly attractive aspects of Ireland=E2=80=99s personal style are the
lucid
economy of his writing and his well-respected abilities as an orchestrator.A=

Downland Suite was composed in 1932. Its style is simple and direct, showing=

both a sympathy for the medium and the composer=E2=80=99s remarkable underst=
anding of
musical form. The Prelude=E2=80=99s contrasting solo and tutti passages and
strong
rhythms are appropriately followed by a tender and expressive Elegy whose
long-stranded melody is tellingly harmonised and idiomatically scored. The
succeeding Minuet has much of the grace and flowing counterpoint of its
classical models and is written with such art as to bring a smile unbidden t=
o
the listener=E2=80=99s lips. Attractive and bright, the concluding Rondo end=
s this
delightful suite with a flourish, following a penultimate passage of broad
and apt sentiment.





and from the site noted at the end:



John Ireland was born in Bowden, near Manchester, England, in 1879. His
parents were literary people and knew many writers of the day, including
Emerson. Ireland entered the newly-established Royal College of Music in
London at the age of thirteen, lost both his parents shortly after, and had
to make his own way as an orphaned teenager, studying piano, organ and
composition. The last was under Sir Charles Stanford who with his colleague
Sir Hubert Parry taught many of the English composers who emerged at the end=

of the nineteenth century =E2=80=93 Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Fr=
ank
Bridge (who was born the same year as Ireland), Eugene Goossens, Arthur
Bliss, Herbert Howells, George Butterworth and many others. Ireland destroye=
d
almost all of his student works and juvenilia (the beautiful Sextet for
clarinet, horn and string quartet being one of the few works which he
permitted to be published, and then only towards the end of his life) and
emerged as a celebrated composer towards the end of World War I when his
Second Violin Sonata brought him overnight fame. From then until his death i=
n
1962 he led an outwardly uneventful life combining composition, teaching at
the Royal College (where his pupils included Benjamin Britten and E J
Moeran), and his position as organist and choirmaster at St Luke=E2=80=99s C=
hurch in
Chelsea, London. Ireland=E2=80=99s music belongs to the school of =E2=80=98E=
nglish
Impressionism=E2=80=99. Having been brought up on the German classics, notab=
ly
Brahms, he was strongly influenced in his twenties and thirties by the music=

of Debussy, Ravel, and the early works of Stravinsky and Bart=C3=B3k. While
many
of his contemporaries such as Vaughan Williams and Holst developed a languag=
e
strongly characteristic of English folksong, Ireland evolved a complex
harmonic language closer to French and Russian models. Like Faur=C3=A9 he
preferred the intimate forms of chamber music, song and piano music to the
larger orchestral and choral canvasses. He wrote neither symphony (unlike hi=
s
friend Arnold Bax who wrote seven) nor opera, and only one oratorio, These
things shall be, but his Piano Concerto is one of the best, if not the best,=

to have been wrtten by an Englishman and is a work of intense emotion and
nostalgic feeling. Ireland was strongly influenced by poetry. His settings o=
f
such poets as A E Housman, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, John Masefield
and Rupert Brooke are among the best known of his works. He was also highly
susceptible to the spirit of place. He lived for many years in London=E2=80=
=99s
Chelsea (Chelsea Reach is a depiction in the form of a barcarolle of that
great sweep of the Thames as it passes along the Embankment to the west of
the Houses of Parliament). He was also devoted to the Channel Islands of
Guernsey and Jersey. Their location between England and France must have
seemed appropriate to his musical orientation, but more importantly he found=

there traces of prehistoric pagan ritual to which he had originally been
drawn through the writings of the Welsh writer Arthur Machen. But perhaps hi=
s
greatest love was for the English county of Sussex, a landscape of rolling
downs and (in Ireland=E2=80=99s day) isolated villages, including Amberley w=
ho =E2=80=98Wild
Brooks=E2=80=99 =E2=80=93 streams coursing through fields =E2=80=93 gave him=
 the inspiration for
perhaps the most brilliant of his piano pieces. Ireland eventually retired t=
o
Sussex in 1953 when he bought a converted windmill underneath the Downs.
Ireland=E2=80=99s music is intensely personal in style and has always attrac=
ted a
devoted following among discerning music lovers. As well as his Piano
Concerto, previously mentioned, works that continue to be frequently
performed and recorded are A Downland Suite, Concertino Pastorale, Fantasy
Sonata, The Holy Boy, A London Overture, Sea Fever, and his beautiful motet
Greater love hath no man, to name but a few. His hymn tune =E2=80=98My Song
is Love
Unknown=E2=80=99 is sung in churches throughout the English-speaking world.
Some
years after his death the John Ireland Trust was formed to promote awareness=

of Ireland=E2=80=99s music through recordings, performances and publications=
. Further
information is available from The John Ireland Trust, 35 St Mary=E2=80=99s M=
ansions,
St Mary=E2=80=99s Terrace, London W2 1SQ, England. Communications by email s=
hould be
sent to <A HREF=3D"mailto:info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";>info@hyperion-records=
.co.uk</A>.

Hope this helps

Best wishes

Tim Thirst
MD
Stalham Brass Band
Norfolk
England
www.geocities.com/stalhamband










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