- Gipps wrote this chamber work for clarinet and string quartet in 1942.1
- 1942 was a successful year for Gipps: she won a prize at the RCM for her First Symphony, and her tone poem Knight in Armour was performed at the last night of the Proms.2
- Listen for: themes evoking the English Renaissance amid a Romantic musical language. Jill Halstead, in her book Ruth Gipps: Anti-Modernism, Nationalism and Difference in English Music compares this piece’s mix of old and new English sounds to Vaughan Williams, especially The Lark Ascending.3
- In 1965, this piece was broadcast in a BBC program called a “Composer’s Portrait” dedicated to Ruth Gipps. However, Gipps was frustrated by the parameters of the opportunity: she was restricted to offering chamber music only in the broadcast. She actually ended her commentary in the broadcast saying that she felt her best works were orchestral.4
Sources
- Jill Halstead, Lewis Foreman, and J.N.F. Laurie-Beckett, “Gipps, Ruth,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 25, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000011199.
- Ibid.
- Jill Halstead, Ruth Gipps: Anti-Modernism, Nationalism and Difference in English Music (UK: Ashgate, 2006), 104.
- Ibid., 104-5.
Cut IDs
24513