Shepherd’s Hey
General Info
Composer: Percy Grainger
Arranger: Chalon Ragsdale
Publisher: Aux Arcs Music
Year of Published: 2019
Duration: 00:03:00
Cost: $60.00
Instrumentation
Player 1: Glockenspiel
Player 2: Xylophone
Player 3: Vibraphone 1
Player 4: Vibraphone 2
Player 5: Marimba 1A
Player 6: Marimba 1B
Player 7: Marimba 2A
Player 8: Marimba 2B
Player 9: Marimba 3A
Player 10: Marimba 3B
Player 11: Marimba 4A
Player 12: Marimba 4B
Player 13: Marimba 5A
Player 14: Marimba 5B
Program Notes
Percy Grainger’s Shepherd’s Hey is an iconic work in the Grainger oeuvre, along with Irish Tune from County Derry, Handel in the Strand, Molly on the Shore, and Country Gardens, establishing Grainger as perhaps the greatest “setter” of British folk song. It was as pianist in the New York Symphony Orchestra performance of Shepherd’s Hey that Grainger made his New York debut in 1914. Characteristically, Grainger re-set the number for a variety of ensembles, mostly between 1908-1913. His earliest setting for 11 instruments included the English baritone concertina, flute, clarinet, 8 strings and horn. His arrangements for band and orchestra date from this period as well. In 1922 Grainger set Shepherd’s Hey for solo piano, and in 1947 for 2 pianos, 4 hands (a medium of which he was a master).
The Grainger scholar and pianist Joseph Smith said, “Grainger’s Shepherd’s Hey is a tricky, ingenious setting of an English Morris dance tune, The Keel Row. Percy adds stylistically authentic contrapuntal (he would have said ‘many-stranded’) lines derived from the melody itself. Percy commented of such early pieces as Shepherd’s Hey that ‘where other composers would have been jolly setting such dance tunes I have been sad or furious. My dance settings are energetic rather than gay.’”
Using Smith’s observations, the attentive conductor will search out, and bring forward, secondary lines, and will establish and maintain an attitude of fierceness among the musicians, a quality Grainger appreciated as much as any in the performance of his works. A clangorous approach to the “all fall down” at the end would be especially appropriate.
Our setting calls for a large mallet ensemble (Grainger called it “tuneful percussion”), with 10 marimbists sharing 5 instruments, 2 vibraphones, xylophone and glockenspiel. Grainger was a “perpendicularist” - where the horizontal and vertical writing is equally important. Choose mallets soft enough to bring out the sonorities of the chord progressions, while also firm enough to render the articulations clearly. Oh, and be sure to have fun!