Can you identify this?

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Zeitblom

It's Handel. One of the variations from the Harmonious Blacksmith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rS_i0sXcCs

I knew it was ahem English and was only out by ahem 200 years.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by ReinerTorheit

... it could be someone like Percy Grainger? (Elgar wrote little piano music, but maybe it's him?)

Ha!

The Australian-born composer and pianist Percy Grainger based one of his most famous works on this melody. He first wrote his Variations on Handel's ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’ in 1911. Shortly after, he used the first sixteen bars of his set of variations to create one of his most beloved pieces, Handel in the Strand. He wrote that the music “seemed to reflect both Handel and English musical comedy”, hence the title. The composer made various versions of the work, most notably, a piano solo version (1930).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harmonious_Blacksmith

[Zeitblom]

Originally Posted by Philidor

I knew it was ahem English and was only out by ahem 200 years.

Actually Handel wrote it before he came to England. The legend is that he wrote it while sheltering in the doorway of a blacksmith in Edgware - near the Duke of Chandos' estate - during a rainstorm, and reflected the rhyhtm of the smith's hammer on the anvil. Although the half-timbered building that claims to be the smithy is still there (or was when I was growing up a couple of miles down the road), it's all nonsense. The chronology of the piece is all wrong.

Ah. Just seen the wiki entry.

[James Bonn]

The Harmonious Blacksmith variations are the last mov't of Handel's E Major Suite

[Liberty]

Brilliant Zeitblom, and well done. It's very strange because that piece actually comes from my favourite CD, played by Murray Perahia.

[ReinerTorheit]

I realise now that I was thinking of the Berceuse from the Dolly Suite by Faure

I have to say, I can't hear the notated music in the OP in the YouTube clip quoted. Perhaps I'm just getting old?

[frippet2012]

Zeitblom - thank you so much. And thank you to everyone else for your interest and help.

Dad is delighted. He listened throught the phone to the youtube clip and when I told him what it was he said "of course it is".

Wonderful. I'm so pleased to be able to let him know. I'll send the url for this thread to him because he'll be interested to read it

Thanks again.