<<  -- 6 --  Wilfrid Mellers    

McCabe's discreetly sensitive playing extracts from the piano much of the subtle intimacy of the clavichord, occasionally producing an illusion of the gradation of tone on a single note of which the old instrument, unlike the new, is capable. The quasi-polyphonic textures within the symmetries of formal dances sound mysteriously elusive, as though the dancers are ghosts, as in a sense they are. Similarly, the modal textures evoke a relatively distant past whilst emerging fresh as daisies (or the Day's Eye). Moreover, the 'personal' flavour of the music is enhanced by the associations we make between each piece and its dedicatee -- at least if the listener is old enough to recognise the 'presence' behind 'Fellowes's Delight', 'Sargent's Fantastic Sprite', 'Foss's Dump', 'Sir Hugh's Galliard', 'Sir Richard's Toye'. For me, the plum of the collection is 'De la Mare's Pavane', which bears an almost visionary aura, yet adheres closely to the stylistic conventions and even clichés of the Elizabethan and Jacobean keyboard composers. De la Mare was Howells's favourite poet, and also the poet who first wakened my aesthetic consciousness. Settings of De La Mare feature among Howells's songs, from the first childhood of the Peacock Pie verses to that profound song of King David, in which an old man enters a renewing second childhood.

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