​Chanson de l'Eternel II

for Melody Instrument* & Piano
(*Alto Recorder, Flute, Oboe or Violin)

​Level:  Intermediate
​Duration: 2'00"​
​To purchase the C score:
please send a message via the Contact Page
Price: £6.50 (@US$8.40)

​Bb score - coming soon!

This short postminimalist recital/encore piece can be paired with 
​The Church at Errislannan to form 'Two Miniatures' (total duration: 4 mins)
Instagram Reel: Rehearsing with Rachel Becker, Oboe

To purchase the score, pls. send a message via the Contact Page.
Chanson de l'Eternel II  began life in 2015/16 as a beginner pedagogical Recorder piece called Jump: an accompanied half-holing exercise in G major, using common practice tonality.  After its premiere at the Southend Musical Festival, I was dissatisfied with it.  In 2018 I recast it as a longer modal piece, designed to familiarise pupils with the principles of minimalism, whilst practising half-holing.  This version features in the videos below, wherein the children play extended passages in which the left thumb constantly changes position.  In order to make this bearable, I created the most interesting and beautiful piano part that I could, to undergird the repetitions. 

This new pedagogical piece became Chanson de l'Eternel, composed in D minor for Alto Recorder & E minor for Descant. Both scores are available from me (please send a message via the Contact Page).

When American oboist Rachel Becker informed me that she planned to visit Cambridge in May 2023, there was neither enough time for me to compose something new for her to play, nor for her to practise it, before flying to Europe.  Therefore I re-cast Chanson de l'Eternel as a miniature recital piece, by reallocating some of the piano part to the melody line.  This increased the complexity of the solo part to a level acceptable to professionals who might want either to use the piece as an encore - or to pair it with The Church at Errislannan  for a change in musical aesthetic, in a recital.
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​This new version of the piece is called Chanson de l'Eternel II, and can be watched on the Home Page : or purchased via the Contact Page.
Based in London, England, international prizewinning musician Althea Talbot-Howard is a classical composer who began her professional career in 1992 as a soloist and orchestral guest principal. In 2005, Gramophone Magazine called her “a superb oboist”.  A graduate of Girton College, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music; she won Third Prize in the Paris-Ville d'Avray International Oboe Competition in 2007; and was one of twelve equal prizewinners in the Ora Singers Christmas Gift Composition Competition in 2019. 
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Of Afro-British ancestry, she is a 12th-generation direct descendant of King Charles II, who formalized Britain’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade; and therefore a 14th-generation descendant of King James I & VI, who commissioned the Authorized Version of the Bible.  Both anti-slavery and Christian themes feature strongly in her compositional output.