Saturday 11 November 2017

Harold Darke: Orchestral Music

When I was writing my post a few weeks ago about Harold Darke’s Fantasy No.2 in E major, op.39 for string orchestra, I came across several references to other orchestral music written by the composer. Looking at the list of additional manuscripts deposited in the Royal College of Music Library reveals five works in this category. According to the descriptions only the full scores survive: the orchestral parts are not mentioned. At this stage, I guess considerable research would be required to discover if these works were ever performed.
As Harold Darke is recalled typically for his setting of In the Bleak Mid-Winter’, the organ piece Brother James’ Air and the once ubiquitous Communion Setting, Darke in F, it would be great if some enterprising orchestra could recover one of these works.

Scores:
Concert Overture in D minor. Full score in ink. 1907.
Overture ‘Lyonesse’, op 5. Full score in ink. 1908.
Phantasie for piano and orchestra, op 11. Full score in ink. 1910.
Symphony, op 12. Full score in ink. 1910-14.
Overture, op 17. Full score in ink. 1914.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John.
I enjoy reading your music blogs every few days.
Thank you so much.
I have learned so much, and set out to explore composers and performers previously just names to me.
As it happens we recently sang the Darke in F, but I was totally unaware of his orchestral writing.

John France said...

Thanks for that!!

J