Recorded by Intriplicate, 2007

The Cloud Hill Drummer Boy 
On the summit of Cloud Hill is a stone outcrop known as the drummer's knob. It was here during a Jacobite rebellion in 1745, that an English sniper killed a young Jacobite drummer boy. He is said to haunt the area with his ghostly drumming.

The military drumming and piper’s tune of the Jacobite army can be heard in the distance over the hill. With a rumble of thunder the battle ensues amid driving rain and gales. The struggled ascent of the Drummer Boy to the hill’s summit can be heard in all instruments with a 6/8 military rhythm. As the battle heightens canons are let off (a musical cannon between the flute and oboe) until eventually the Drummer Boy receives a blow. The musical battle suddenly stops as the Drummer Boy sees his life flashing before him. Here the English army can be heard mocking him (the oboe plays fragments of God Save the King) and the gunshots follow (the percussive effects with the piano pedals) until his life fades. The last section of the movement portrays the haunting drumming of the Drummer Boy’s ghost.


05 Cheshire Phantasies (Cloud Hill Drummer Boy)

The Mermaid of Rostherne Mere
So deep are the meres in Cheshire that people used to believe they were all linked by subterranean rivers leading to the Irish Sea. The story tells that while a bell was being installed in the church on the edge of the Mere, it was dropped and tumbled down the bank into the depths of the water. Once a year, on Easter Sunday, the Mermaid would swim underground from the sea and appear in Rostherne Mere and toil the submerged bell. She would rise up, serenading the villagers with her mystical singing and combing her beautiful hair.



The music paints a misty Easter day-break on the bank of Rostherne Mere with a dawn chorus of Tits and Finches. Deep notes in the piano sound the sunken church bell prompting the villagers to gather round hoping for a glimpse of the Mermaid. They can be heard singing the ancient Easter plainchant, Victimae Paschalis, before the rustling wind and rippling water intensify to add to the expectant atmosphere. Stillness then settles over the mere as the Mermaid surfaces emanating her mystical music (this is portrayed through the lyrical oboe melody). After capturing the imagination of all around the mere, the Mermaid then retreats leaving the villagers and birds to sing in wonderment of what they have just seen.

Recorded by Intriplicate, 2007

04 Cheshire Phantasies (Mermaid of Rostherne Mere)

Nyctaphonia Part 3

Nyctaphonia Part 1

Nyctaphonia Part 2

Recorded by Intriplicate, 2007

The Phantom Funeral of Lyme Park 
Lyme Park is haunted by a phantom funeral procession with a weeping white clad woman who walks some distance behind. The re-enacted funeral is said to be that of Sir Piers Legh who was killed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1422. His mistress, a woman called Blanche, was not allowed to go to the funeral and followed some distance behind, she is said to have died of grief some weeks later.

The music captures the painful sense of grief and forbidden love felt by Blanche. The opening sees the ghosts of Sir Piers Legh (oboe) and Blanche (flute) exchanging calls before the funeral procession begins. Here the flute follows behind the oboe, playing only ‘white’ notes to personify Blanche. The slow walking bass line and the repeated funereal ‘reciting notes’ in the piano give the procession a sombre and noble atmosphere while the rich shifting harmony adds opulence. A brake in the procession gives Legh and Blanche another chance to call out to each other, this time more sobbing in character. Their cries bring them closer and closer until the music climaxes at a point when their souls are reunited (flute and oboe play the melody together) in a brief moment of suspended rapture. The movement dies away leaving their souls together in peace.

06 Cheshire Phantasies (Phantom Funeral of Lyme Park)

Recorded live at St James Piccadilly, 2003

Phyvasyde

Recorded by Intriplicate, 2007

The Knutsford Nutcracker
An elderly lady was buried in the Old Churchyard at Knutsford, with the unusual stipulation that a small sack of hazel nuts in their shells be placed beneath her head. This was duly done - but the nuts proved uncomfortable, so she turned in her coffin. The other side was no better, so she arose from her grave one moonlight night, and proceeded to crack and eat the hazel nuts, seated on her own tombstone. She then folded the sack for a pillow, retired to her coffin and troubled the mortal sublunary world no more.

The movement portrays the old women’s ghost as a rather mad and deranged character. The dissonant chords, jagged rhythms and flitting time-signatures at the beginning show the discomfort of the corpse tossing and turning in her grave. She then rises from the dead and rather than seated on her tombstone as the myth describes, the music pictures her dancing wildly around the graveyard shelling the hazelnuts in a demonic midnight romp. As the old women finally deposes of her vexatious hazelnuts the musical fervour dies away and she crawls back into her grave, slowly shutting her coffin.


07 Cheshire Phantasies (Knutsford Nutcracker)

recorded by Aquilon at BBC Studios in Salford in November 2012

David Lloyd-Mostyn

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