A Burns Sequence
For Harry McNab of Glasgow, fifty years a friend
Though of peasant origin, Burns was a highly cultured man: vastly well-read and with a knowledge of foreign languages, mathematics and music. He cut a striking figure amongst the cognoscenti of Edinburgh society.
This Sequence contains poems to do with some of the many varied activities which exercised his fancy during his short life. His religious conviction (in the hymns which begin and end the work); his penchant for writing new words to traditional Scottish melodies; his delight in both romantic love (in numbers III and IV) and philandering (in number IV); and his not infrequent use of High English rather than the Lallans with which he is usually associated (in number II).
He made two versions of Ca' the yowes (number VI), being later dissatisfied with his first attempt to match this wonderful tune. Nevertheless I have used his earlier version which, though less `literary' and less `romantic' than its successor, has, I feel, more passion. This is the only traditional melody I have used, apart from an altered version of the Slow March McPherson's Lament in number VII, which sets a poem telling the stirring tale of the freebooter who played the fiddle at his public execution in the marketplace of Banff in 1700.
© John Gardner,
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Oboe Sonata No.2
John Gardner’s Oboe Sonata No.2 was commissioned by and dedicated to George Caird, who first performed it on Radio 3 in 1987. Since then it has become an acknowledged classic of the modern oboe repertoire, appearing frequently in the programmes of Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake.
The piece is in four movements. The second makes reference to phrases from Thomas Bidgood’s military march Sons of the Brave – a favourite piece of Gardner’s from his own bandmastering days – whilst chord progressions used at the end of the third movement pay tribute to one of Bill Evans’s Alone tracks which haunted Gardner while composing the sonata in 1986.
© Oxford University Press
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