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14 mm. before reh. G - 13 mm. after reh. G
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Skills & Techniques: Dynamic Contrast, Endurance, Rhythms, Slurring Flexibility, Soft Playing
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Horn 1 (D)
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Royal Scottish National Orchestra (1985)
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Royal Ballet Sinfonia (1999)
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Composer & Composition Information
Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916)
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Hamish MacCunn was arguably the brightest shooting star in the first four years of London’s Royal College of Music. Coming from a musical family – his father was amateur cellist and his mother a former piano pupil of Sterndale Bennett – MacCunn entered the RCM on an Open Scholarship on its foundation in 1883 and quickly attracted public as well as institutional notice. An overture, Cior Mhor, first performed by the College Orchestra, was repeated under August Manns at the Crystal Palace on 27 October 1885 and thereafter powerful support was given to the young composer by figures as influential as Manns, Henschel, Grove and Parry (respectively his Director and Composition Professor at the College).
Opening doors and increasing professional opportunities induced what might with hindsight be called over-confidence; in April 1887, against the advice of his professors, MacCunn left the College. As he later wrote, “I held my scholarship at the RCM for four years and then, having already received some encouragement from the public, ‘pushed off’ into the stream ‘on my own'”. He had already joined a wider artistic circle, notably through friendship with the distinguished Scottish painter John Pettie (1839-1893), in whose capacious Hampstead studio he conducted orchestral concerts in 1888; in 1889 he married Pettie’s daughter Alison. The text is reprinted from the Museum of Music History where more information about the composer can be found. The image is reprinted from The Times. |
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The Land of the Mountain and the Flood
Land of the Mountain and the Flood is a tour de force for any composer—for a teenager it is a staggering achievement. The work was completed on 8 November 1886 when MacCunn was only eighteen. Here was a young man stepping out of the shadow of Mendelssohn’s, Bruch’s and Mackenzie’s Scottish works, assaulting London with a brilliant conviction of what it was to be Scottish and European at the same time—but with this major difference: of the four he was the only one whose childhood and musical upbringing at that point had been largely in Scotland.
MacCunn, in this work, overtly claims the status due to him as a representative of the ancient bardic orders. The title tells us so. It is taken from Sir Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto Sixth, and is the reply of the last minstrel to the suggestions at the end of the Fifth Canto
The text is written by & reprinted from Hyperion Records where more information about the composition can be found.
MacCunn, in this work, overtly claims the status due to him as a representative of the ancient bardic orders. The title tells us so. It is taken from Sir Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto Sixth, and is the reply of the last minstrel to the suggestions at the end of the Fifth Canto
The text is written by & reprinted from Hyperion Records where more information about the composition can be found.
Notable Performances/Recordings:
Royal Ballet Sinfonia (1999)
BBC Scottish Symphony (1995)
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (1993)
Royal Ballet Sinfonia (1999)
BBC Scottish Symphony (1995)
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (1993)