Michael Finnissy [1946 - ] - English Country Tunes [1977] I. Unsettled (violent and reckless), "Green Meadows" [0:03] II. Slow and wistful, "Midsummer Morn" [10:59] III. Tranquil, "I'll Give My Love A Garland" [16:26] IV. Gently (no accel.), "May And December" [26:38] V. Forceful and boisterous (but not too hurried), "Lies And Marvels" [33:29] VI. Very rapid and energetic, "The Seeds Of Love" [37:40] VII. Slowly, simply, and peacefully, "My Bonny Boy" [41:42] VIII. Presto, "Come Beat The Drums And Sound The Fifes" [48:39] "English Country-Tunes is an allegory. It has components which are ironic and satirical. It is from the same era (1977) as Punk Rock and Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. Each of its eight sections carries the name of an English folk-song, and I needed to deal with ‘nostalgia’, confront it and not simply disparage it. The structure is intended to gradually reveal and isolate three musical archetypes, and I dramatised my struggle to do that in the music itself – obliterating material, pushing it out of control. What has always drawn me to music is its INHERENT (almost automatic) capacity for connecting the human and the abstract. You might indeed feel different moments ‘rotate’ or are ‘wild’, but nothing rotates here, and everything is (in some shape or form) more-or-less conventionally and carefully written down. In the cold light of reason it is just my choice of pitches and durations, timbres and dynamics, onto which, or out of which, we project something less rational." (http://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/com...) Michael Finnissy, piano