As this is the week of Harwich Festival 2017, I thought it would be appropriate to feature my Harwich Hornpipe. I wrote this short orchestral piece in 2003, and it was commissioned by Essex Music Services for the Essex Youth Orchestra (conductor Robin Browning) and first performed in a previous Harwich Festival.
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 this overture was written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the granting of the town’s Royal Charter.
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 in less than four minutes! I hope you enjoy it – just follow this link.
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