Pastoral

In the composer’s own words:
“Beethoven was ahead of his time, Bach behind them.”

Ruth “Wid” Gipps was an early 20th century musical pioneer who was a successful British oboist, concert pianist, conductor, and composer. She was a student of Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams and her compositions follow the English Pastoral style. As was common at the time, Ruth was often dubbed a “difficult woman”. Ruth said that she relied on her persistent personality in order to negotiate the all male fields of composition and conducting.

In the composer’s own words:
“Ruth Gipps, the girl on the poster who played at concerts, must be prettily dressed for the platform; this I accepted, but the real me, the girl at home, scorned anything so feminine as interest in clothes.”

In the composer’s own words:
“Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.”