Description
Old Mother Hubbard is a playful work by the South African-born, British composer Victor Hely-Hutchinson (1901-1947). Hely-Hutchinson was a musical polymath: pianist, orchestrator, conductor, composer, academic, reviewer, and administrator. Amongst his numerous compositions, however, few are still performed. He is best known for the Carol Symphony (arranged for wind quintet and wind quintet & piano) and for humorous song-settings of a number of children’s poems and nursery rhymes, including Old Mother Hubbard:
Old Mother Hubbard
She went to the cupboard,
To give her poor dog a bone;
But when she got there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.
Hely-Hutchinson’s voice and piano arrangement ‘in the manner of Handel’ is a brilliant tongue-in-cheek parody on the Handelian operatic style. And, given he was only 11 at the time he wrote it at his prep school in Berkshire, it is truly remarkable!
