These five short portraits were written for the Solem Quartet to mark the election of composer Joseph Horovitz as Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford. The concert happened to come at the same time as Joseph’s 95th birthday and so these are as much a little birthday card from the college as anything else.

All musical material in the piece derives from speech transcriptions I made of Joseph being interviewed by Royal College of Music Librarian Pamela Thompson and conductor John Wilson about his life and music. Two things Joseph said struck me and so I discerned their melodic and rhythmic content. The first quote sees him discuss his entry to New College in 1943 and the second was the revelation that after Oxford, ‘I paid for my studies with Boulanger with five portraits, which I did’. Clearly, this quote provided more than just musical material… He sold five portraits when he left New College so perhaps I can give him five back! The transcriptions of each piece of speech are below. The first concerning the entry to New College provides the material for portraits one, two and four, and is often used in retrograde. The second, about Boulanger and funnily enough in B major, is the basis of portraits three and five.

Lewis: five portraits, for string quartet

five portraits, for string quartet (live recording)

First performed by Clio Gould and Jonathan Morton as part of the London Sinfonietta's World Premiere Wednesdays

These are duos for any two melody instruments. A Welsh folksong, 'The Pancake Song', recorded in Aberdaron, Caernarvonshire is the inspiration for the first three parts which were premiered together first. I made a detailed transcription of a performance of this song by ‘Williams the Postman’ (b.1899) collected in 1964. At first listen it's a funny little jaunt, a person asking for ingredients for a pancake. But it doesn't take much to sense the humour as darkly comic and illuminating the poverty of the time and place. This resonants with me with the present times of coronavirus. The text is as follows:

Woman of the house and good family,
Please may I have a pancake?
Mother is too poor to buy flour
And Father too lazy to work.
Please may I have a pancake?
My mouth is dry for want of a pancake.
If there is no butter in the house
Put a large spoonful of treacle,
And if there is no treacle in the house
Give a terribly large pancake.
Terribly, terribly.

five portraits, for string quartet (live recording)

Luke Lewis

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