Suite: A Month in the Country
A concert work for string orchestra adapted from the film score
First Performance: Ensemble Orchestral Stringendo/Jean Thorel, Annexe de la mairie XIV arrt. Paris, 5 July 2006.
Programme note by Miranda Jackson:
In 1986 Howard Blake was commissioned to write the score for the film ‘A Month in the Country’, directed by Pat O’Connor and produced by Ken Trodd for Euston Films in conjunction with Channel 4. The score won him the British Film Institute’s Anthony Asquith Award for Musical Excellence. The film starred Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh and Miranda Richardson whilst the script was adapted by Simon Gray from the book by J.L.Carr. It is a story of two former soldiers coming to terms with the horrors of the Great War amidst the serenity of the English countryside. One is an archaeologist excavating in a rural churchyard, the other is uncovering a mural as part of the restoration of the church. As sections of the mural gradually re-emerge, so they rediscover themselves and come to terms with the iconoclasm of the first world war.
Note by the composer: Director Pat O’Connor showed me the film in the final stages of editing. Some recordings of classical music had been added- an excerpt from Verdi’s ‘Quattro Pezzi Sacri’ was used during the uncovering of the mediaeval mural and the flashback montage of the First World War which opened the film used an excerpt from Schubert’s Mass in E flat with chorus and orchestra. This worked powerfully and I decided that my score should not compete but contrast with it by being scored ‘purely’ for string orchestra, a medium much-beloved by English composers of that era. It was this music with its sad hints of a lost age which I later adapted into the suite.
Movements
- 1:
- Larghetto 3min 2sec
- 2:
- Alla Marcia 1min 19sec
- 3:
- Adagio 3min 53sec
- 4:
- Scherzando 1min 33sec
- 5:
- Andante Espressivo 3min 6sec
Recordings
