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Some Marches on a Ground (1970) is a full orchestral piece anticipating Crosse's opera, The Story of Vasco, which had not yet been staged but had been in progress for many years. Like his earlier opera, The Grace of Todd -- and Wozzeck and Owen Wingrave -- Vasco is anti-war. Crosse sets up a theme of what he calls a 'deliberately fatuous national-anthem character' [listen -- track 11, 1:34-2:12]. But it doesn't work quite like that. Irony is awkward in music and the public enjoys the last movement of Shostakovitch's Fifth Symphony regardless of whether it's a send-up or not. William Bolcom had the same problem when he tried to raise two fingers to the American Bicentennial with lots of quotations in the last movement of his Piano Concerto [Hyperion CDA67170] -- everybody just enjoys it regardless. Crosse's 'fatuous' tune seems to be amiable enough -- it's certainly catchy -- and then it gets thrown around close to the manner of Charles Ives and is just as rumbustious. There's lots of percussion and a kind of battle-symphony in the middle. Towards the end you can hear the 'fatuous' theme struggling to get through on the trumpet [listen -- track 11, 9:42-10:08]. Whatever that tune symbolises Some Marches on a Ground is intriguing on its own terms and makes up a short orchestral piece that could become popular if more regularly played -- there was an earlier recording in the USA with the Louisville Orchestra under Jorge Mestor on First Edition 741.

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