Herbert Howells

Three Dances

Violin and Piano reduction of Three Dances Op. 7 for Violin and Orchestra. The Three Dances are delightful miniatures, written in 1915 in relatively carefree student days (relatively, because the Great War was already a year old and Howells, through ill health which nearly killed him in 1917, was exempted from active service). They were composed for a young fellow-student George Whittaker, a highly gifted violinist who had entered the College aged only eleven. Certainly the music has no hint of the momentous events beginning to take shape and which would fundamentally affect one of his closest friends, Ivor Gurney, and kill a number of others.