Nicola LeFanu- Prelude after Grinling Gibbons (2018) LIVE

Описание: Nicola LeFanu
- Prelude after Grinling Gibbons (2018)

Dedicated to Peter Sheppard Skaerved - Violin

St Mary’s Iffley 28th September 2025
Recording Courtesy of Jonathan Tyack
With thanks to Penny Tyack
Recorded at the Iffley Music Society

www.peter-sheppard-skaerved

IV XMMXXV

The starting point Nicola LeFanu’s ‘Prelude after Grinling Gibbons’ is the ‘King David’ wood carving made by the young by Gibbons man in York, before he went to London and became Master Carver to King Charles II. Gibbons based his panel on a painting by Peter Candid, Performance of a motet by Orlando di Lassus. It depicts dancing cherubs, angels playing instruments (as in Psalm 150) David singing and playing the harp, and St Cecilia playing a small organ, giving wise rise to the three strands in the music: dancing cherubs, David‘s chant and the music of Lassus’s Psalm 150. David’s music is in four verses, descending in register and heralded and surrounded by the cherubs. The Lassus, glimpsed at first, gradually comes to the fore, until the piece concludes with St Cecilia, and we hear – in terms of the violin – the whole of the little motet which Lassus composed especially for Candid’s picture, and which is transcribed from Sadeler‘s print of it.

The composer writes:

Prelude after Grinling Gibbons for solo violin. (2018) EP 73300
Programme note:
The starting point for my Prelude is the ‘King David’ wood carving by
Grinling Gibbons, made as a young man in York, before going to London
and becoming Master Carver to King Charles II. Gibbons based his carving
on a picture by Peter Candid, Performance of a motet by Orlando di Lassus. It
depicts dancing cherubs, angels playing instruments (as in Psalm 150)
David singing and playing the harp, and St Cecilia playing a small organ.
David, very soulful, is in the foreground; St Cecilia, above, is leading the
music making.
This gives rise to three strands in my music: the dancing cherubs, David‘s
chant and the music of Lassus. David’s music is in four verses, descending in
register and heralded and surrounded by the cherubs. The Lassus, glimpsed
at first, gradually comes to the fore, until the piece concludes with St Cecilia,
and we hear – in terms of the violin – the whole of the little motet which
Lassus composed especially for Candid’s picture, and which is transcribed
from Sadeler‘s print of it. My Prelude lasts about 8 minutes.
I am grateful to Professor John Bryan for his scholarly advice on Lassus, and
his transcription of Laudent Deum.
Gibbon’s panel is in Fairfax House, York, where the first performance of
the Prelude was given on October 30th 2018 by its dedicatee, Peter
Sheppard Skaerved.