Alas, Child A has come down with Covid...and while we seem to have escaped it ourselves, the dreaded man flu has instead caught up with me. Still - some of the most productive sessions happen when you're stuck with a laptop while wrapped up in bed or on the sofa. No coffins to carry this week (I also work part-time for an undertaker) has meant that I've made progress on For the Fallen, which will be premiered on Remembrance Sunday at St Michael's Church, linking up the Mayor and Rector to organise the Mayor's Christmas Carol Service, putting together a presentation for one of our local councils to apply for funding for Music at St Michael's and working on another for my Masters work on Ralph Vaughan Williams for a module on Space, Place and People.
RVW was, of course, one of the most prolific collectors of folk songs in history, with a folk song being defined as a piece that has emerged from among the common people. Specifically, I'll be looking at his 1923 Folk Songs Suite that he scribed for military band and was commissioned by the then Band of the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall, Twickenham - a place where I myself had the priviliege to train as a bandman from 2005-6!
The Folk Songs Suite contains folk songs collected from Norfolk and Somerset, including: Seventeen Come Sunday, Pretty Caroline, Dives and Lazarus, My Bonny Boy, Green Bushes, Blow Away the Morning Dew, High Germany and The Tree So High.
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