The recent extreme changes in weather – cold and bitterly windy, warm and wet, sunny and sparkly, brought into my mind the changing moods of the North Sea and its coastal communities such as Harwich, which was very severely flooded in the ‘great tides’ of 1953.
Harwich is a town on the Essex coast – today it is a large container port, but the picturesque riverside streets and alleys in the old town are evidence of its long maritime history – and much more recently it has been home to the regular Harwich Festival of the Arts.
My short orchestral overture, Harwich Hornpipe, was commissioned in 2004 by Essex Music Services for the Essex Youth Orchestra (conductor Robin Browning) to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the granting of the town’s Royal Charter in 1604.
I based the piece on a seven-note motif derived from the letters H-A-R-W-I-C-H: this appears in many ways throughout the piece as the music takes us through various aspects of sea-faring activity – blasts on the fife and drum, a stirring march, a vision of the stormy high seas, then a becalmed ship, momentum regained, and finally the earlier ideas re-appearing, combined with a somewhat distorted ‘Sailors Hornpipe’. I had a lot of fun with all of this, and the whole thing is over quickly – in less than four minutes!
I hope you enjoy it – the EYO gave it an exciting performance – here’s a link to a scrolling score.
And the image is of Harwich quay in the past…