A Reverie
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1888
- Publisher
- Fountayne Editions (FE196, modern edition, 2025); first published 1888
Purchase or download
About this piece
A short Andante tranquillo for cello and piano, first published in 1888, when Ellicott was making her name at the Three Choirs Festival. The only surviving source is a printed score in the British Library whose separate cello part is lost, so Fountayne Editions' 2025 edition reproduces that score with light editorial corrections and some added dynamics. The cello sings a long-breathed tune in the tenor range over steady repeated-chord accompaniment, with chromatic turns that lead into tenor-clef writing. Joseph Spooner and Michael Jones made its first recording (Dutton Epoch, Romantics in England, 2009).
Technical overview
The cello carries a sustained, slurred cantabile line that climbs out of first position to about E–F above middle C and moves into tenor clef by bar 16, with chromatic inflections and some hairpin shaping. Only the first page (bars 1–16) was seen; the later bars may go higher.
Technical focus
- Legato
- Sustain
- Shifting
- Accidentals
- Hairpin Dynamics