From an Old French Air

I have posted this recording on the exact 80th anniversary of the date given in the score; 16. 5. 45...

Having done this, I discovered that the piece had been around for some time before 1945! The air of the title is based on the French folk melody 'Nos Vieux Pommiers'. This melody was used as the call sign of the wartime Radio-Normandie who transmitted from a base in Fécamp.

Malcolm Riley, Whitlock’s biographer, wrote that in February 1934, Whitlock sent a manuscript copy of the ‘Fécamp Folk Tune’ to Evelyn Peel, sister-in-law of the song-writer Graham Peel. Riley’s earliest ‘traced instance of Whitlock playing this piece (or an earlier version of it) was in February 1935’. Whitlock sketched the opening of the folk song in an autograph book belonging to Arnold Jones on the 27th August, 1943 and labelled it ‘An old French Air’.

(a link to a pdf of this sketch and the air are available for download below)

More details in the youtube video description.