Julius Harrison

[jerfilm]

Thanks for the Harrison download.  Interesting piece.  Do you have some information about the composer, please?

Jerry

[eschiss1]

Could be the British composer Julius Al(l)an Greenway Harrison (1885-1963) (see Wikipedia).

[Jim]

Yes, the Wiki link posted by eschiss1 is the same Julius Harrison. Two large-scale works - the Mass in C and the Requiem are still yet to have modern performances and recordings (though a broadcast of the Mass was available on this forum). For Boosey & Hawkes he produced the SATB version of Britten's 'A Ceremony of Carols'.

Here is another article: http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/archive/2001/04/14/Worcestershire+Archive/7764894.Worcestershire_s_other_composer/

As stated in the above link, Harrison could see Bredon Hill from a bedroom window of his home.

I don't agree with John France (though am grateful for his writings on British Music) in his article on Musicweb-international.com that Bredon Hill is more happy than sad. To my ears it is imbued with melancholy, but then I suppose you have to know it in order to receive it. I feel it tug at my heartstrings and have loved it since I first heard this broadcast. France states that the second stanza is the starting point for the piece:

Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.

Yes, but this is a memory of what was. Surely one can hear from the music that this is a bittersweet memory of long lost days. He goes on to say, 'We hear...the bells of Bredon Hill playing in the orchestra before the soloist closes the work with a little phrase in the lower register.' No - we hear the funereal 'one bell only' in the poem's sixth stanza. There is a feeling of real loss, and perhaps this is a reflection of him losing his daughter in 1935 (Joan Harrison 1916-1935). The Mass in C was composed in her memory and took eleven years to complete, so this piece completed in 1941 is right in the middle of that period.

They tolled the one bell only,
Groom there was none to see,
The mourners followed after,
And so to church went she,
And would not wait for me.

Since a father gives away his daughter during a wedding service, this would be a poignant stanza for Harrison.
I would be interested to hear what others make of the piece.

Jim

[JimL]

They tolled the one bell only?

Groom there was none to see?

The mourners followed after?

And so to church went she?

My friends, that's a funeral, not a wedding.

[Jim]

Please read all of my post if you wish to understand my point. Harrison's daughter would have been about 19 when she died. Read the stanza putting yourself in Harrison's shoes. Listen to the piece. Heartbreaking.
Jim