Musicatlas
Music
Foulds’s principal works include (this is a highly selective List):
- Concert Opera ‘The Vision of Dante’, op. 7
- A World Requiem for soli, chorus and orchestra, op. 60
- Concertante works:
- Cello Concerto in G major, op. 17
- Apotheosis for violin and orchestra, op. 18
- Lyra Celtica: Concerto for voice and orchestra, op. 50
- Dynamic Triptych for piano and orchestra, op. 88
- Orchestral works:
- Epithalamium, op. 10
- Mirage, op. 20
- Music-Pictures Group III, op. 33
- Hellas - A Suite of Ancient Greece (double string orchestra, harp & percussion), op. 45
- April-England, op. 48 no. 1
- Peace and War, op. 60b
- Three Mantras for orchestra, op. 61b
- Saint Joan Suite, op. 82
- Pasquinades Symphoniques, op. 97
- A Symphony of East and West, op. 100 (lost)
- Symphonic Studies, op. 101 (string orchestra) (lost)
- Chamber Music:
- Cello Sonata, op. 5
- Aquarelles (Music-Pictures Group II) for string quartet, op. 32
- Quartetto Intimo (String Quartet No. 9), op. 89
- Lento Quieto (from unfinished String Quartet No. 10), op. 98
- Piano Music:
- Variazioni ed Improvvisati su una Thema Originale, op. 4
- April-England, op. 48
- Essays in the Modes, op. 78
Life
The son of a bassoonist in the Halle Orchestra, John Foulds played as a cellist in promenade and theatre bands before himself joining the Halle cellos in 1900. The conductor Hans Richter gave him conducting experience. Although Henry Wood presented some of Foulds’s early orchestral compositions at th Queen’s Hall Proms, he became best-known as a successful composer of light-music, such as the once-famous *Keltic Lament* (1911). He was also a leading composer of theatre scores, especially for his friends Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike (the most famous was Foulds’s music for the original production of George Bernard Shaw’s *Saint Joan*, with Thorndike in the title role). Yret he wrote many orchestral, chamber, instrumental and choral works of very different stamp. Few were printed in his lifetime; a notable exception being the huge *World Requiem* (1919-21), in memory of the Great War dead of all nations. This was performed at the Royal Albert Hall on successive Armistice Nights, 1923-26, by up to 1,200 singers and players under the composer’s direction.
Foulds was a prolific composer from childhood. Though he could turn his hand to almost any style he was an independent-minded explorer of new musical resourceswho experimented with quarter-tones as early as the 1890s and wrote pieces in exotic or non-diatonic modes. Like Gustav Holst, he was fascinated by the mysticism of the East, especially India. Unlike Holst, he made a close study of its music. (He married the violinist and authority on Indian music, Maud McCarthy.) In the late 1930s Foulds became Director of European Music for All-India Radio in Delhi. His ultimate dream was a musical synthesis of East and West, and at the end of his life - he died suddenly of cholera - he was composing pieces for ensembles of traditional Indian instruments. Most of his principal scores remain unpublished, and many manuscripts have been lost.