Cyril Scott

Sonata for Flute

Cyril Scott was an English composer, writer, and poet. He was essentially a late romantic composer, whose style was at the same time strongly influenced by impressionism. His harmony was notably exotic. Scott wrote around four hundred works, which include two mature symphonies, three operas, three Piano concertos, concertos for Violin, Cello, Oboe and Harpsichord, several overtures, four oratorios, as well as a mass of chamber music.

While less appreciated during his lifetime, it is Scott's late works (written between 1950 and his death) that are the most individual, with their ever-shifting harmonic colours and wayward inflections of phrase and mood, capturing perfectly the way the mind shifts, backwards and forwards, between reminiscence, regrets, and self-assertion.

Composed in 1961 for Flute and Piano and premiered by William Bennett and Margaret Norman on November 9 of that year, Sonata For Flute is perfect example of the genius of Scott's late works.