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Work

Village fair : a ballet for orchestra

by Miriam Hyde (1943)

Score Sample

View a sample of the score of this work

Audio Sample

Performance by Sydney Symphony, Dobbs Franks from the CD Australian composers, Vol.1.

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Australian composers, Vol.1.

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CD

Australian composers, Vol.1.

Library shelf no. CD 263 [Available for loan]

Display all products featuring this work (4 more)  

Work Overview

This work was originally composed as a ballet, which was to be part of a show for the Red Cross in wartime Adelaide. The commission fee did not, however, eventuate, and the ballet was never choreographed.

Miriam Hyde wrote to her husband Marcus Edwards on 24 January 1943 (he was then a POW in Germany): 'I've done quite a bit of work on my ballet this week, and now have about 9 minutes' worth of piano score, the characters of pie-man, flower-girl, gypsy, and hurdy-gurdy man being interspersed with variations on 'O dear what can the matter be'. It will be nice to score, as the ideas have come to me in non-pianistic idiom, for a start. I'd like one or two more characters, and wish you could suggest some, darling. My friends suggest coconut shy, world's biggest man, etc., but such concepts would ruin my composition as a piece of independent music, which I hope it may be!'

Although a recording on CD was made by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1979, it was not until 29 March 1995 that Miriam Hyde heard her first live performance of 'Village Fair', while attending a rehearsal of it by the Strathfield Symphony Orchestra conducted by Solomon Bard. For the programme notes of the subsequent concert, she wrote that 'Memories of attending a Fair with a friend in Witney, Oxfordshire, came to my aid in conjuring-up this music.'

Work Details

Year: 1943

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion, strings.

Duration: 14 min.

Difficulty: Medium

Performances of this work

25 Nov 2012: at An Afternoon of Australian Music (The Farrall Centre). Featuring Derwent Symphony Orchestra.

25 Jun 46: featuring Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Percy Code.

30 Mar 44: featuring Percy Code.

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