JOHN THORNE (Baritone)
THE WIRELESS STRING ORCHESTRA
Conducted by JOHN ANSELL

Bourree, Andante, Menuett and Rondo
Max Brauer

The Carman's Whistle (William Byrd (1542-1623, arr. Granville Bantock)

The name of our great old English composer, William Byrd, has appeared most often on wireless programmes of part songs, Glees, and Madrigals. Vocal music formed a very large part of his output, although he left instrumental music too, particularly collections for the Virginal, one of the little ancestors of the pianoforte. But he was keenly interested in singing, and anxious that singing should be cultivated for its own sake. In the preface to one of his best-known collections of part songs, published, as the title page shows, 'For the recreation of all such as delight in Musicke,' he gives eight 'reasons briefly set downe by th'auctor to perswade euery one to learne to singe.' These included such thoroughly wholesome sentiments as: 'The exercise of singing is delightfull to Nature, and good to preserue the health of Man.'
'There is not any Musicke of Instruments whatsoeuer, comparable to that which is made of the voyces of Men, where the voyces are good, and the same well sorted and ordered.'
'The better the voyce is, the meeter it is to honour and serue God there-with: and the voyce of man is chiefely to be imployed to that ende. Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learne to singe.'.

His old tune, known as The Carman's Whistle, has been deftly arranged for strings in five parts by Professor Granville Bantock. It is an eminently simple little tune, obviously English, and closely akin to many of the folk songs and folk dance tunes which listeners have heard. In this arrangement it is presented with several changes of mood, but with the tune running distinctly through each.
THIS is not by any means the first occasion on which listeners have had a chance of hearing the chamber music of Alfred M. Wall. He has also taken part himself in chamber music programmes, as violinist. A distinguished student of the Royal College of Music in London, he has been a Professor at the Newcastle Conservatoire of Music for a good many years, and baa done notable work in that city too as a director of its chamber concerts.

Marco Enrico Bossi is an organist of world-wide reputation, and one of the most important figures in the Italian music of the present day. He was one of the first Italian composers to desert the old tradition of Opera for the realm of symphony and concert music.

(Solo Violin, S. Kneale Kelley)