DUDLEY STUART WHITE (Baritone)
THE WIRELESS MILITARY BAND
Conducted by CHARLES LEGGETT
SIR FREDERIC COWEN never had any doubt, even from his earliest years that music and nothing but music was to be his career. At the age of eight, he produced an operetta with the title Garibaldi, to a libretto by a relative of equally tender years. Sir Frederic relates that the piece ran successfully for two nights in the home theatre. Since then, his busy life has been spent in conducting and composing, and much of his best-known work is eloquently descriptive of England and English ways.
All the Dances in this Suite are conceived in the olden style. The first is a stately dance which has nevertheless its moments of robust vigour, alternating with its dignified movement. The second is a swift-footed rustic dance, the tune tripping along for the most part merrily on the woodwinds; the third is a graceful dance, with something of the stately formality of No. 1, and the final number is a country dance, again with something of the rustic character which its name implies. It used to be supposed that the name owed its origin to the French 1 'contre-danse,' but it now seems to be clear that the name means exactly what it says, and that the dance was introduced into polite society from the farms and villages long before the French dance made its way over here.