Description
Horatio Parker (1863–1919) was an American composer and organist. He studied composition with George Chadwick in Boston and later with Josef Rheinberger in Munich. Parker was one of an influential group of composers often referred to as the ‘Second New England School’ (or the ‘Boston Six’), which included his former teacher Chadwick as well as Amy Beach, Edward Macdowell, Arthur Foote, and John Knowles Paine.
He taught at Yale University, where his students included Charles Ives, although Ives disapproved of his teacher’s conservatism and indebtedness to European traditions. Notwithstanding Ive’s views Parker enjoyed considerable success as a composer during his lifetime: his operas Mona and Fairyland both won substantial prizes of $10,000 (the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in today’s money).
Parker wrote his Organ Sonata in E flat Op.65 in 1908 whilst he was serving as honorary president of the American Guild of Organists. He dedicated the piece to his predecessor in the role, Samuel P. Warren, who was also one of the Guild’s founding members. Here, Graham Sheen has arranged the third movement of the sonata for wind quintet.
Graham Sheen is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and became a professor there in 1979. He was principal bassoonist of both the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1983-2017) and, until 2016, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, having completed forty years’ service. He has appeared extensively as soloist with both orchestras and in April 2013 gave the première of a new bassoon concerto by Judith Bingham. He has recorded two solo CDs with Elizabeth Burley for SFZ Music. Graham is also a composer, editor and arranger with over sixty published works. He has written several graded albums and studies for bassoon and bassoon ensemble, including Mr Sheen’s Miscellany, a series of 13 pieces for the Trinity Guildhall Examination Board.
