Description
John Cheshire Annie Laurie
Arrangement for harp of an old Scottish tune attributed to Lady john Scott
Compositions by the English harpist John Cheshire’s are strewn through all the historical, personally bound collections of sheet music from the 19th to the early20th centuries kept in my archives. Nonetheless, because his music was on the lighter side, it seems that these pieces were ignored and never included in the teaching repertoire. This accidental neglect has now been remedied. I wish to share with you the pleasures of those little gems that ooze charm and showcase all the enchanting techniques harpists relied upon during la belle époque. Each piece brings a different character into play. All of them would be well received by the public in various performance situations. They were published either in England (around 1902), or posthumously in the United States in 1912.
Annie Laurie
Cheshire’s arrangement of the famous Scottish song Annie Laurie, published by Oliver Ditson Company in 1912, features an interesting alternation of hands, while syncopations (Scotch snap) and off-beat entrances abound. On page 3, the writing turns into a “three-handed technique” pattern that is mostly contained below the melody delineated by the right thumb. In this technique, the tune surges from the flowing arpeggios, as if another invisible hand picked the melody notes.
The same song about unrequited love has also been republished by Harpiana in another piece. An easy version for voice & harp exists, in an arrangement made by Julia Fowle. This version was originally published much earlier, by John F. Browne in New York in 1857. That edition presents further historical and linguistic explanations.
