Quilter ~ Composer ABCs

I had to search hard for a Q composer. I found three but we are just going to look at one of those. The other two were difficult to find anything about. I found one small sampling of the keyboard music of Charles Quarles (see #11 sample on this site for his piece “A Lesson”) and nothing for Guglielmo Quarenghi. So we are going to look at a composer who is best known for his art song setting, a particular favorite writer for him to set pieces from was Shakespeare.

Roger Quilter was an English composer, born in 1877 and he died in 1953. Quilter was educated at Eaton and studied composition at Frankfort. His first successes came with voice and pianoforte settings of Shakespeare. These first success included the text from ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘As You Like It.’ He became well known for his lyrical writing of melody and the harmonizing that was unique and unusual. While Shakespeare was likely his favorite, he chose many other writers to include in his songs, from Elizabethan writers to Tennyson.

In addition to his songs, Quilter wrote some orchestral pieces, though not many. One of these is Three English Dances.

He also wrote some light operas, including his most well known one, Julia. Among his incidental music is ‘Where the Rainbow Ends,’ which was for a fairy play. Here is what Wikipedia says about this storyline:

Where the Rainbow Ends is a children’s play, originally written for Christmas 1911 by Clifford Mills and John Ramsey. The incidental music was composed by Roger Quilter.

Where the Rainbow Ends is a fantasy story which follows the journey of four children, two girls, two boys and a pet lion cub in search of their parents. Travelling on a magic carpet they face various dangers on their way to rescue their parents and are guarded and helped by Saint George. The rainbow story is a symbol of hope with its magic carpet of faith and its noble hero St. George of England in shining armour ready now, as in olden times, to fight and conquer the dragon of evil. Most of the story is set in ‘Rainbow Land’ complete with talking animals, mythical creatures and even a white witch.

Quilter has some interesting music and I found myself really enjoying this piece, Where The Rainbow Ends. It was fun for me to explore a few new composers and one that I am going to be adding to my collection sometime.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Composer ABCs in this series:
A – Leroy Anderson
B – Bernstein, Bizet, Bax
C – Copland
D – Debussy and de Meij
E – Elgar
F – Fauré
G – Grainger and Ginastera
H – Holst
I – Ives
J – Joplin and Janacek
K – Kern
L – Liszt
M – Mussorgsky
N – Nelson
O – Offenbach
P – Palestrina and Prokofiev

Thank you for joining me this week for Composer ABCs. Please visit the hosts to find the linky and other participants.

Desiree @ Our Homeschool Notebook – This week is Q is for quit. 
Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses – This week is Q for Quintessentially Homeschool.

Featured from last week the letter P…

• P is for Park and P is for Pictionary over at Our Homeschool Notebook
• P is for Podcasts  over at Every Bed of Roses
• Letter P Homeschool Tips from Homeschooling Highway
• Discovering the “P” rabbits of the world over at At Home Pets 
• Studies in Philippians and Educating Pet Rabbit Buyers over at A Net in Time.

Tagged: ABC blogging, music