Raymond Head - sheet music

Harpsichord

Harpsichord recordings

All Raymond Head's harpsichord music is available on a Prima Facie ASC Recordings CD PFCD048, together with music by Delius,Holst, H.Howells, Peter Maxwell Davies and Bax.

"It ranges from a Delius work written in 1919 to the ravishing Le Panorama en Rondeau (2013) by Raymond Head. ... It's a lovely CD ..." Alice McVeigh, Music and Vision
 

£7.50 Buy

Le Mystère: Two Pieces

1. Le Mystère; 2. Le Rappel de l'humanité. A tribute to Couperin and Rameau.

ABRSM grade 7. Approximately 6 minutes.

Excellent pieces. Christopher Hogwood.

"Raymond Head, another composer with a wonderful feel for the harpsichord. Le Mystère is atonal, mysterious, with notes randomly disappearing up higher and higher, until the whole coalesces upon an insistence on a single note. In Le rappel de l'humanité an appealingly offbeat cheekiness alternates with a perpetuum mobile feel."   Alice McVeigh, Music and Vision

Ending of Le Mystère:
Le Rappel (complete):
£6.50 Buy

Le Panorama en Rondeau

ABRSM grade 5/6. Approximately 4 minutes.

A solo harpsichord piece dedicated to John Cage which was short listed for a competition organised by the British Harpsichord Society in 2012. Although it is obviously contemporary it has a French inflection and is a very expressive piece. It would work well in any recital of 18th century music. Not difficult.

1st Public Performance 15th April 2014, Christchurch, Woking, Surrey by Penelope Cave.

"This stunning work feels traditional — despite being dedicated to John Cage and in the metre 5:7:3 — yet according to Head it opposes the 'endless desire for change in Western music. Stasis and tranquillity is what I wanted to retrieve; variety is implicit, like ripples on a gentle river'." Alice McVeigh, Music and Vision

£6.50 Buy

Sema Mevlana

ABRSM grade 8. Approximately 4 minutes.

This piece was inspired by witnessing the whirling dervish ceremony with its moments of quiet prayer and whirling in Istanbul.

Commissioned by Penelope Cave. First performance in January 2007 at the Stratford on Avon Festival.

"Sema Mevlana was actually written for Penelope Cave. Inspired by whirling dervishes (although Head stresses that 'within the whirling there is a feeling of inner stability') its minimalist wit is answered by moments of near-harplike repose." Alice McVeigh, Music and Vision