Music Inspired by Cornwall

View it on this youtube version

 

 

The work was commissioned by the Cornwall Youth Brass Band to mark its 60th Anniversary.

Inside Zennor church is a very strange image carved on the end of a wooden bench that is over 600 years old. It depicts a mermaid with long flowing hair. In one hand she holds a comb and with the other a mirror. She is known as the Mermaid of Zennor.

 

Philip Harper’s composition is inspired by an old Cornish folk-tale set in the village of Zennor. Matthew Trewhella’s singing attracts the attention of a mermaid swimming in Zennor Cove who listened, entranced, for many nights. She decided to go to the church disguised as a human. Contact between merpeople and humans was forbidden so she ran back to the shore with Matthew in pursuit. She turned and told him: “l cannot stay, I belong to the sea,” to which he told her that he would go with her. They vanished beneath the waves, never to be seen again.

The music is in three sections: The Sea and Seafaring, At the Church and Return to the Waves.

The first Public Performance was in 2015 by Cornwall Youth Brass Band conducted by Philip Harper.

 

Used as a contest test piece including:

2016: Regional Championships of Great Britain. (Second Section)

2016: Irish Championships (Senior Section)

2016: Brass at the Guild (Preston) Contest (Second Section)

2017: West of England Bandsmen’s Festival (Class C)

 

 

Philip Harper is a conductor of unrivalled success and a prolific composer with his original works and arrangements played all over the world.