Ivor Novello was born David Ivor Davies, the son of David Davies and Clara Novello Davies in Cardiff in 1893. His father worked for the rent-collecting department of Cardiff City Council, while his mo...
Of all of Ivor Novello's hugely-successful musicals, "Perchance to Dream" received the longest run of performances, 1020 in all, at the London Hippodrome, starting in April 1945. The smash hit was "We...
The subject of these musings, 'Hine e Hine', is a simple but tender lullaby written in New Zealand by Fanny Rose Howie, 1868-1916. Renaming herself Princess Te Rangi Pai after her Maori mother, she en...
Three musical postcards from the city of love, culture and expensive shops. 1. Moonlight in Montmartre: Montmartre, a village within a city - artists, singers of chanson, cafes and the bells of Sacre...
This piece was originally designed to be the equivalent of the Interlude in Britten's Ceremony of Carols in a similar type work which was later abandoned, leaving it artistically stranded. So it now s...
Scintillate the tintinnabulator' my maths master used to say when it was time to ring the school bell, adding his own take to Edgar Alan Poe's beautiful word 'tintinnabulations', devised to describe t...
These pieces are evocations of 16th and 17th century dance forms by a composer long fascinated by the period. The melodies are new and no genuine anticke (old English for antique) tunes are used. MONS...
Lament for a King (in memoriam Richard III, slain 1485) Lament for a Castle (in memoriam Cathcart Castle, demolished 1980) In September 2014 I discovered that Cathcart Castle in Scotland, which I had...
Lullaby and Music Box Waltz were commissioned by Graham and Jenny Pay as a gift for their daughter, harpist Camilla Pay, upon the birth of her first child, Rosanna Chloe Knight, on September 23rd, 201...
Two pieces with the flavour of New York for harp solo - Streets and Avenues; A Walk in the Park. Edited for harp by Danielle Perrett, these are two of the 'Three Little Bites at the Big Apple', a set...