Judith Bailey: Concerto - In the Style of Haydn for double bass & piano

About the Composition

Concerto in the Style of Haydn was a prize-winning entry in the 2008 Recital Music/BIBF Composition Competition and is based on the two surviving bars of the 'lost' Haydn Double Bass Concerto. The style is melodic and accessible, offering a range of musical and technical challenges throughout the solo range of the double bass. A sonorous and cantabile tone is needed for the legato passages, contrasting a more virtuosic approach in the opening and closing sections of this inventive and enjoyable work.

Judith Bailey writes: "Taking the theme of Haydn which was given, and which was short, I felt that it could naturally develop into a concerto within a style which Haydn might have used. Therefore, the theme has been 'completed' and is used in various forms throughout.

The opening orchestral introductory twelve bars are my own invention, which serve as various bridge passages as well as being used for the final bars. There are no breaks in the concerto but the Allegro first movement leads into an Adagio movement where the theme is stated again in the subdominant key. After a short solo cadenza the music returns to the Allegro version of the theme with some further decoration of the solo part."

This edition includes one piano accompaniment and two solo parts - one for solo tuning (C major) and one for orchestral tuning (D major).

Concerto in the style of Haydn was premiered by David Heyes (Double Bass) with the London Chamber Soloists at Rook Lane Chapel (Frome, Somerset) on 22 November 2008.

The work lasts about 8 minutes and two orchestrations are available: 1) String Orchestra, without double basses, also playable with string quartet 2) Chamber Orchestra - 2 Oboes/2 Horns/ Strings

About the Composer

Judith Bailey (b.1941) was born in Cornwall and studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, specialising in clarinet, piano, conducting and composition. Since 1971 she has worked freelance, conducting Petersfield Orchestra and Southampton Concert Orchestra for around thirty years, and producing a substantial amount of music which is widely performed and published.

In 2001 she returned to live and work in her native Cornwall where she is conductor of Penzance Orchestra Society and Cornwall Chamber Orchestra, and in the same year was awarded the honour of an ARAM from the Royal Academy.

In 2005 she was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth for services to music in Cornwall.