CAROLS

Sir David Valentine Willcocks CBE MC (born 30 December 1919) is a British choral conductor, organist, and composer.
He is particularly known for his widely-used choral arrangements of Christmas carols, most of which were originally written for the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's or the Bach Choir's Christmas concerts. They are published in the five Carols for Choirs anthologies (1961–1987), edited by Willcocks with Reginald Jacques and John Rutter. He is currently Music Director Emeritus of King's College Choir, and an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

ELEGY
to the memory of Charles Harrison

Charles Harrison played the horn with the orchestra for many years, and I had several pleasant chats with him over this time. This piece is intended simply as an Elegy to Charles’ memory, and is not an attempt to describe his life or character. There are, however, a few features which pay direct homage to him, one being the number of bars (67) which corresponds to the years of his life, and also the fact that the horn section plays the main theme of the work, often in a four part arrangement.

Every instrument has the opportunity to speak in the piece (to pay its own homage to Charles), so when the second theme appears at Bar 26 it is played firstly on the flutes, then oboes, then after a few bars, by the trumpets, then bassoons, then clarinets, then strings and tuned percussion. The vibraphone is also a significant factor in this music; this is an instrument which is a recent addition to the modern day symphony orchestra. There is also a ‘soundswirl’ in bars 31 and 32, where a note is (if the church’s acoustics allow it) heard to swirl around the orchestra in a sort of ‘Mexican wave’.

The later part of the Elegy is somewhat dark in mood, however this is suddenly interrupted by a sequence of grand fortissimo chords played by the whole orchestra, and as these die away we briefly hear the original Elegy theme revisited on the horns. As the music dies away we are left once again with the horns holding a final, briefly swelling major chord.

Nick Planas