Many years ago, I wanted to learn some fingerstyle or classical guitar arrangements of some quite haunting and beautiful pieces of music that I was hearing. But the sheet music didn't exist. At the same time, I had arranged the theme from the folk horror film 'Witchfinder General', in a very loose fashion and added a variation to it, and someone who knew Nicky Henson an actor in the film, commented that they had spoken to Henson about the music, who in turn said that Michael Reeves, the cult film director, had told Paul Ferris the composer that he wanted something along the lines of Greensleeves. I realised that Greensleeves worked very well, tagged onto the end of it.
I then discovered the music from the film Gawain and the Green Knight from 1972 by Ron Goodwin, there was no sheet music for that either, and the film itself was deleted. There were similarities between that and Witchfinder, and so I thought I might be able to make a short suite going from Gawain to Witchfinder and then to Greensleeves in the final part.
This set me off on the road to arrange these pieces, and others, in the same vein of haunting and beautiful melancholia, sometimes soft, sometimes powerful such as with Danse Macabre, Night On Bald Mountain or Devil's Dance (by the film composer John Williams), which to my knowledge have never been arranged for solo guitar before, (in the case of Danse, certainly not the full 8 minute score).
I heard the theme from 'A Study In Terror' (1965) by the composer John Scott (who was the first non Beatle to play on a Beatles record) and emailed him for the sheet music, but fair play to him, he looked and couldn't find it, suggesting I have a go at transcribing it myself without the sheet music. I think it worked out really well in the end, it fits in perfectly with the theme of 'Horn Dancing'.
Amongst the others, there are eerie pieces like the theme from 'Blood On Satan's Claw' that I felt would work quite well on solo guitar, and then there is the title track, based on one of the earliest known Morris Dances.
There's 'Summer Is Icumen In' which I first heard from the folk horror film 'The Wicker Man', which is the first recorded (ie in sheet music form) canon, or round, which is held in the British Museum, and dates from the 12 th century. I wanted to arrange it with the round being heard within the arrangement itself, so that there would be two voices within the one guitar, which was quite a challenge. On top of that, I asked John Renbourn for advice on how to arrange it, and he said do it like Eugene Chadbourn, which I discovered meant in quite an avant garde way - so it ended up with this quite strange backing to it, almost like Robert Fripp had been let loose in the middle ages.
And so we have Horn Dancing. An eclectic mix of haunting and beautiful music. The mastering is done, tracks are complete.
To be released in May 2024. All copyright licences acquired.
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