Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works)
Composer: Philip Wilby
Commissioned by the Bolsover District Council for the Bolsover Brass Summer School 2015
Set as the Third Section test piece for the 2017 Butlins Mineworkers Brass Band Contest in Skegness. The Lion and The Rose
Diversions for Brass Band
In july 1654, Ben Johnson produced one of his last court masques at Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire. William Cavendish, who owned the castle, spent a lavish £15,909 on its performance, and his principal guests were King Charles l“ and his French Wife Henrietta Maria: It marked the end of an era, since within a few years, Charles would have fought with his own Parliament in the English Civil War and been publicly executed.
The Masque was arranged around the three courses of a banquet, and featured a dance for the tradesmen, or ‘Mechanicals’ using the sound of their anvils to keep the dancers in time, and a romantic dialogue between two cupids. The whole scene was recreated in the ceiling of the castle’s ‘Heaven Room’ Where a group of cherubs hold aloft the various musical parts of Thomas Ravenscroft’s ‘Round of three Country Dances in One’.
My brass band score reuses many of these elements. Royal fanfares abound, alongside stately processions and a pair of characteristic movements positioned between more developed outer movements.
William Cavendish was a fascinating character who Wrote books on swordsmanship and the training of horses. The extensive preparations for his Masque clearly tried the patience of his wife Margaret, who described an atmosphere at Bolsover which is far removed from the tranquillity of
more recent times.
"This disorder causes the Trumpets to Sound, the Drums to Beat, The Soldiers to Arms, and the Women to Weep, and to make it the more Fearful, the Great Bell, which is only rung in times of danger, either is cases of Fire, or War, or Mutinies, or the like, Sounds Dolefully, all of which makes me Tremble Fearfully ! "’.
1. Prelude with Flourishes
2. Fugue
3. Dance for the Mechanicals
(afier the Round of Courtly Dances by Thomas Rm/enscroft)
4. Dialogue for the Cherubs
5. Rondo
6. Royal Fanfare
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