Coronach

This poem by Helena Bantock is reproduced by generous permission of Cuillin Bantock, Senior Trustee of the Bantock Estate. It was published in Granville Bantock: a Personal Portrait by Myrrha Bantock: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1972. I believe that I set it to music in 1976, but the manuscript was lost soon afterwards. In 2015 I remembered this when my daughter asked whether I had ever written anything suitable for her to sing. To my surprise I found that I had retained more or less complete recall of the original version, which I duly wrote down again on the same day. The text provided here probably includes some marginal improvements of piano lay-out and texture, but can still be reasonably regarded as the 1976 work of a fledgling, 19-year old composer. Having originally found the poem touching in its private context as a devoted wife's memorial to her illustrious composer husband, I never entertained any thought of integrating it into some disparate sequence of other song settings. Accordingly it remains an isolated fragment, perhaps destined more for intimate domestic use than for recital performance.