Folksongs for clarinet and piano

Date: 

1995

Instrumentation: 

  • Instrumental Solos/Duos
  • Woodwind/Brass

Forces: 

Clarinet and Piano

The Manchester Angel was an inn in the Market Place, adjoining Market Sted Lane in Manchester, a recruiting point for the regiment raised to support the doomed cause of Prince Charles Edward in 1745.

I know my love by his way of walkin’, I know my love by his way of talkin’ . . .The intriguing flowing tune is included in the collection of Irish Country Songs by Herbert Hughes.   In Galway and Clare it was sung with alternate Irish and English verses.

Green Sleeves originated as ‘a new Northern Dittie of the Lady Green Sleeves’ in a 1580 entry in Stationers’ Hall.  This version of the tune derives from an 1838 manuscript of dancing tunes (Playford had already included it in the seventh edition of The Dancing Master of 1686).

I know where I’m going, and I know who’s going with me…  Another from the Hughes Irish song and dance collection.

Come to me, my love.  A Hungarian matchmaking song with a bold refrain Ej, huj, rózsám, gyere velem . . . Heigh ho my love, come to me; I plough the ground and plant pearls; I bend the branches and pick flowers . . .

My hair was pledged before it grew, I sprang as a one-year seedling… A Tcheremiss song recorded by a young woman,  Olga Stefanova, in the village of Yelassy in the Kosmodemiansk district of Kazan. 

In The Broomhill field a bold girl bewitches her lover into a deep sleep.  Cecil Sharp found more than a dozen versions of this song throughout England and Scotland, one even finding its way into a popular mid-19th century American songbook.