Passacaglia on an Old English Tune
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1941
- Duration
- 4'57''
- Publisher
- G. Schirmer
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About this piece
A powerful, sombre set of variations over a ground bass drawn from the hymn tune 'Veni Creator' attributed to Thomas Tallis, which Clarke took from the 1906 English Hymnal. She wrote it in 1941 while stranded in the United States by the war and gave the premiere herself on the viola in New York that March; it was published in 1943 in the original viola version and in her own cello edition, whose piano part is identical. Liane Curtis calls it Clarke's 'meditation on things British'. It lasts about five minutes.
Technical overview
Sources note the fast tempo and passionate intensity of the cello version, and that the G. Schirmer cello edition's score prints only the viola line while the cello part contains some modifications of its own.