Sarah Fischer (Soprano); Angus Morrison (Pianoforte); Ernest Hall(Trumpet);
Frank Almgill, Arthur Halfpenny (Flutes); S. Kneale Kelley, Ernest Wyatt (Violins); Arthur Blakemore (Viola) ; Philip Ninfosi (Violoncello); George Hatton (Double Bass)
Suite in D, in the ancient style for Trumpet, two Flutes and String Quartet - Vincent d'Indy
One of the greatest influences in modern French music is Cesar Franck, and Vincent d'Indy is his chief disciple.
Franck (1822-90) represents a reaction against the more sensuous influences in French music - the influences which found expression in gay tune, bright rhythms and light-handed orchestral colourings, but did not always express any very deep thought or feeling.
The ancestry and descent of every composer's style can be traced back to some previous composer or composers, and the Franck-d'Indy 'school' in French music owes a great deal to (a) Plainsong, (b) Palestrina and the great writers of the 16th century, (c) Bach, and (d) Beethoven.
It is a school of the highest aims and the most strenuous endeavours. A religious inspiration is to be felt in much of its work.
Vincent d'Indy, who is seventy-six, has written Operas, Symphonic works, songs, chamber music, etc. The work we are to hear, a fairly early composition, contains five Movements - a Prelude, an 'Entry,' a Sarabande, a Minuet and a 'French Rondo.'
Here is some of the oldest of all instrumental music. Four hundred years ago, almost the only cultivated music was for voices. By the sixteenth century composers had begun to write for instruments. Naturally, the style was at first a good deal like that of the vocal music, for the special capabilities of instruments had all to be discovered.
But English composers (who were pioneers in the field) almost at once began to find out how to write effectively for the Keyboard instrument of the day, the Virginals.
In listening to these pieces, imagine the tiny tone of the Virginals, in which the strings (at a tension far less than that of a present-day Piano) were plucked by a quill.
Byrd we now know as one of the very greatest of our Composers, and Bull was one of the most famous virtuosos of his day.
Naturally, the full quality of a man like Byrd, who was at his greatest in choral composition, cannot be expected to appear in small essays in a style of art that was only then beginning to 'find its feet,' so to speak, and that had to be expressed upon an instrument of restricted capacities.
Here are pieces by three musicians of to-day, one of whom, John Ireland, is very well known. William Walton's Overture "Portsmouth Point", after a print by Rowlandson, has been broadcast more than once.
This young Lancashire composer (he is only twenty-five), after studying under Sir Hugh Allen and E.J. Dent, has worked largely by himself for the last few years. His String Quartet was played, as one of the representative modern works from this country, at the Salzburg International Musical Festival in 1923. His Pianoforte Quartet received one of the awards of the Carnegie Trust, which each year pays for the publication of a number of new works.
Constant Lambert is a twenty-one year old composer who studied at the Royal College of Music under Vaughan Williams and R.O. Morris. His Ballet, "Romeo and Juliet", was produced by the Diaghilev Russian Ballet.