A Kentish Suite

• A Kentish Suite was composed in 1935, and it premiered in 1936 at the Beckenham School for Boys, where Clifford taught music.
• The suite was inspired by a passage from Sir Arthur Bryant’s book The England of Charles II. Clifford wanted to evoke the region of Kent in the 17^th Century, as King Charles II travels from Dover to London at the close of his exile in 1660.

3. “Pastoral and Folk Song”

• According to Clifford’s preface to his score, this movement evokes “the Kentish countryside, of soft green landscape and dark earth.”
• This movement also quotes a traditional song dating from at least 1611, “I Have House and Land in Kent.”¹

1. Lewis Foreman, liner notes to Clifford/Bainton: Orchestral Works, Volume 2, Paul Whelan, BBC Philharmonic, Martyn Brabbins, Chandos 10019, CD, 2003.