Three Sonnets and Two Fantasias

Three sonnets, the first and last to words by Shakespeare and the one in between by Robert Frost, were composed in the summer of last year; the first to mark the marriage of Susan Rankin and David Ganz: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,” the last, my part of an
affectionate exchange of songs with Hugh Wood, leaving Cambridge University at the same time as myself: “Why is my verse so barren of new pride?” and the Frost for Frank Kermode’s eightieth birthday, setting a favourite of his which he had originally sent me at the time he was putting together the text of Sing, Ariel.

Later, in February of this year, I added two five-part fantasias, the one to follow the Frost setting and the other to preceed the last Shakespeare, both making use of motifs from the respective sonnets.

To write new music for ancient instruments poses the particular problem of appropriate tuning. I suppose it is possible simply to ignore this and leave the players to fend for themselves as best they can. But, I suspect, the particular colouring of the viol-consort must depend as much on its harmony as on the instruments themselves. At the outset, I did my best to understand the tuning systems, but when it came to the point of actual composing, I had to go for it intuitively. As a result I found myself, to some extent, composing with no clear idea of the resulting sounds: rather like doing electronic music. But then all composing is going from the known to the unknown.

Alexander Goehr