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The Three Dances for Violin and Orchestra are delightful miniatures by Herbert Howells. Written: 1915 Duration: about 14 minutes The pieces were written in relatively carefree student days: World War I was already a year old, but Howells - through ill-health (which nearly killed him in 1917) - was exempted from active service. They were composed for a young fellow-student George Whittaker, a highly gifted violinist who had entered the Royal College of Music aged only eleven. Certainly the music has no hint of the momentous events beginning to take shape and which fundamentally affected one of Howells's closest friends, Ivor Gurney, and killed a number of others. The Dances are extremely sunny pieces, not yet imbued with the pathos which grew to dominate Howells's works. They are therefore as yet uncharacteristic, showing more of his teacher's influence than of his own intuitive nature which was still to mature. The first Dance, quite bit-scale, is almost a gypsy dance with some brilliantly colourful orchestration laid out for large forces. In the manuscript Howells writes at the end that he finished the score in bed. The second Dance has one of the most beguiling tunes of the period. To some extent it is the change in his later music, away from writing tunes to creating long-breathed melismatic phrases, which creates the aural problem for the unsophisticated listener who wants the 'anchorage' of a regular-metre melody. Here, though, there is no problem. Why this Dance alone did not become a classic 'pop' of the period is difficult to understand, though it is probably bound up with Howell's reticence and his youthful impatience to be getting on with the next project. The last Dance is, by contrast, short and furious, providing an exquisite foil to the others. Howells, aged only twenty-three, already showed himself to be a consummately skilled orchestrator, a highly gifted creator of atmosphere (one of the most important features of his mature style), and having a considerable skill with both form and melody. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Three Dances for Violin and Orchestra」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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