First Rhapsody (John Ireland)

First Rhapsody is a piece for piano solo by the English composer John Ireland.

A performance takes about 12 minutes.[1]

The John Ireland Trust records the year of composition as 1905 and the key as C-sharp minor.[2] Allmusic (a derivative source), says 1905–06 and C-sharp major.[1] The premiere recording (Mark Bebbington, 2010) says 1906 and C-sharp major.[3][4][Note 1]

According to Andrew Achenbach, writing in Gramophone Awards Issue 2010, the work had "languished undiscovered in the papers of Bruce Phillips (chairman of the John Ireland Trust). The engraver’s markings on the manuscript suggest that this ripely romantic outpouring was at one stage intended for publication, but the self-critical composer evidently had second thoughts". Mark Kennedy, writing in the Sunday Telegraph (August 2010), remarked, "why Ireland withheld it for so long isn’t evident from the quality of the music".[3]

Footnotes

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  1. ^ The work may have been begun in 1905 and finished in 1906. The work may be bitonal, in C-sharp major/minor. In the absence of conclusive evidence, Bebbington's information has been adopted for the purpose of Wikipedia categorisation.

References

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  1. ^ a b John Ireland: First Rhapsody, for piano in C sharp major at AllMusic. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  2. ^ "List of works – E to F". The John Ireland Trust. Archived from the original on 27 July 2012. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  3. ^ a b "John Ireland – the solo piano music Volume 3". Mark Bebbington. Archived from the original on 10 January 2015. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  4. ^ "First Rhapsody in C#, for piano". Classical Archives. Retrieved 1 May 2015.