Like Grainger, who was not averse to making choral arrangements of other composers’ music, others in turn have made choral arrangements of his original compositions or completions of existing sketch material.
Good-bye to love is an arrangement by Alan Gibbs of a piano miniature Grainger wrote in 1916 as a wedding-gift to his former Danish lover, Karen Holten, when she announced that she was to wed another. The original sketches for this piece suggest that the thematic material might be used for a love song and Grainger indicates that the rising and falling motif could be suitable for a tenor solo ‘chirping up’. In the preface to his score the arranger adds: ‘Grainger had vocal possibilities in mind, and if there is a certain vulgarity, this was a quality of which the composer was proud rather than the contrary, pointing to Richard Strauss (whose influence is not far to seek) for justification.’ With this in mind the arrangement was made and words were added paraphrasing Grainger’s notes on his manuscript score. The arrangement can be performed ‘elastically’ in true Grainger style, but is recorded here in the full complement of solo tenor, SSATBB chorus, harp and strings. The original piano version gained further life as the theme music for the Merchant-Ivory film
Howards End.
from notes by Barry Peter Ould © 1996
;)
