Instrumentation

picc.2.2.ca.2(II=Ebcl).bcl.2.cbsn - 4.3.2.btrbn.1 - timp - perc(3): BD/tam-t/3 shaker/4 tom-t/crot(with bow)/2 conga/2 susp.cym/mar/guiro/vibraslap/3 wdbl/glsp - harp - strings

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Programme Notes

AFRICA JUST AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR 
In her early twenties, after teacher-training in London and Portsmouth, the composer’s mother, A.S.R., decided to volunteer to work overseas to support education somewhere in the world where children had less opportunity than at home in Britain.
 
She began to learn Swahili in London from a handsome and charismatic Tanganyikan visual artist who later became a celebrated exponent of the emerging New African art movement. 
Sam J. Ntiro returned to Africa and later served as a minister of Arts and Education during the early Tanzanian government under the country’s first President Julius K. Nyerere.  
 
John Hardy had the privilege of meeting him only once, when he stayed at the Hardy family smallholding for a few days around Christmas 1977. He was an indefatigable explosion of positive energy, always encouraging, and dedicated to his work and his art. He painted two artworks during those days, one of which he gave to John, his godson.
  
In return John dedicated his first symphonic work, Symphony for Candlemas-eve to Sam. A few years later, Sam’s two sons came to the UK to finish their education, and came to live at the Hardy family home on the border between Wales and England when they were not at school and university.
 
Soon after she arrived at her working base, the small settlement at Liuli, it was decided that A.S.R. would have to take responsibility for assessing educational need and the condition of existing school sites, and providing primary level education to all the younger children across an area of West Tanganyika roughly the same size as Iceland.  
 
Although she expected this to be her life’s work, already weakened by rationing throughout the recent war and the financial difficulties that followed, she became seriously ill after less than two years of walking around the country with a quartet of young Tanganyikan men, and had to return to Britain. A spell in hospital was inconclusive - it’s possible that the underlying problem was malnutrition.  
 
A.S.R. met the composer’s father after her return to Britain, married, and brought up six children, as well as welcoming numerous friends and guests from Africa. She continued to correspond in Swahili to African contacts all through her life. She died in the late 1990s aged seventy-two.  
 
Godfather Sam J. Ntiro died in Africa in 1993 aged sixty-nine, after a long and distinguished life as an artist, educator, ambassador and public servant. He remains a major source of encouragement and inspiration to the composer, and presumably to countless others. This work is full of his spirit. 
 
Tanganyika 
Tanganyika was renamed Tanzania in 1961 after independence from Germany & Britain. 
 
Blue letters  
Nearly a hundred letters from A.S.R. to her family have survived. Some are handwritten, some typed with a small portable Remington. Most are on AIRMAIL letters, a pale-blue pre-printed format normally with postage pre-paid. The longer letters are on thin paper inside AIRMAIL envelopes. 
 
Go to www.johnhardycomposer.co.uk to read extracts from the letters and to see photos of Lake Nyasa in the 1950s. Fetails from artworks by S.J.Ntiro, and other archive items. 
 
I. Arrival at the lake
In 1953 A.S.R. travelled with her friend Kathleen from Britain to East Africa by the cheapest means possible - on a slow cargo ship. They were sponsored by an educational charity, and expected to be working to support primary education in Tanganyika for their lifetime, on a salary of thirty pounds a year. After a startlingly complicated series of encounters and journeys, towards Lake Nyasa (AKA Lake Malawi) in the south-west of the vast country, they found themselves on a lorry, crossing varied stunning landscapes. 
 
After dark an entire village interrupted their wedding celebrations to come out to help dig them out of a ditch. Much later they tried to cross a small bridge over a river, swollen with recent heavy rain, full of crocodiles and too full to try to swim. Their driver was worried about the bridge, and told the two European women to get out and cross over in case something went wrong. He was right - the bridge collapsed under the weight of the vehicle, and the pair had no choice but to walk the last twenty miles without their luggage, through snake and lion country, singing the psalms and antiphons of the Anglican office of Compline to give them courage. 
‘Keep me as the apple of an eye; hide me under the shadow of thy wings.
Preserve us O Lord while waking; and guard us while sleeping.
That awake we may watch with Christ; and asleep we may rest in peace.’
(Ref: Blue Letter 9, 30th May 1953)
 
Lake Nyasa / Lake Malawi
Nestled in the Great Rift Valley system of East Africa, it is Africa's third largest lake, supposed to be the home of more fish species than any other body of freshwater on Earth, and also the eighth largest lake in the world.
 
II. Travel on the lake
All the community schools across a vast area had to be surveyed, numbers of children in each village assessed for age and educational need, and then reports about each school typed up and submitted to the USPG (a large charity). 
 
There were two ways to reach the hundreds of settlements under review - on foot, or up and down the lake, by water. 
 
Canoes were paddled from a standing position. Of the many dangers, the worst were storms, and hippos, either of which could swamp a boat, and tip the occupants into the water, where huge crocodiles were always waiting to pull their victims under. 
 
But the lake and its surrounding mountains are very beautiful, and when conditions were good, the boatmen sang, and everyone always appeared to be cheerful.
 
(Ref: Blue Letter 30, 19th October 1953)
 
III. Twilight on the lake
Near the Equator, the sun goes down rather suddenly, at about 6pm, and then there are 12 hours of darkness, all year round.
 
Apart from the sounds of insects, dogs, and sometimes the drumming from the villages, it is relatively quiet at night. 
 
Quiet enough to hear far off lions roaring, and the voices of fishermen out on the water, using lanterns, and hitting the sides of the canoes, to attract the fish.
 
(Ref: Blue Letter 23, 26th August 1953)
 
IV. On safari
When going on a journey, it was necessary to wake long before dawn, and to set off as soon as it became light, because in the middle part of the day, the heat, and the glare of the sun on the lake, are unbearable. A.S.R. always travelled with Absolom, her tour manager, and about three other young African men.
 
On foot, their journeys were hard, long and hot. If they became ill, there was nothing they could do but continue to find shelter. They were always made welcome by people they met on the way, and the landscapes they passed through were truly spectacular.
 
They passed through mountains and foothills, and over plains and marshes, all on the eastern edge of the Great Rift Valley. They saw monkeys, giraffes, elephants, hippos, herds of buffalo, and lots of crocodiles, as well as many smaller animals, birds, snakes and insects. They often heard lions, but never saw them.
 
(Ref: Blue Letter 18, 29th July 1953)
 
Although it sounds wonderful, it was also very tough. A.S.R. had a tiny salary, and almost no operating budget to spend. Within two years she became seriously ill, and eventually returned home to the UK. It is possible that malnutrition was a contributory cause.
 
She continued to send and receive airmail letters, in Swahili, to friends and colleagues in East Africa, till her death in the late 1990s.
 
Her Swahili teacher, S.J.Ntiro, became the godfather of her first child (J.H.), and one of the great creative inspirations of the composer’s professional life.

 

Reviews

'A kind of symphonic poem, inspired by descriptions of the African landscape.... Hardy projects descriptions of the African landscape contained in his mother's letters onto a sonic landscape... the rhythmically charged, open and immediately engaging music is bright and colourful while still managing to evoke the African landscape through subtle use of pentatonic patterns and interlocking rhythms... the serene, static and most obviously filmic third movement, 'Twilight on the Lake', provides effective contrast and relief, evoking as it does the 'little noises of the lake, the trees, and all the thousands of little creatures.'
Gramophone Magazine (Pwyll Ap Siôn)
 
'Four colourful, finely crafted movements that will appeal to a wide age range.'
Classical Music Magazine (Phil Sommerich)
 
'Colorful, filmic, and open to pleasurable listening at a single sitting.'
Music & Vision (Howard Smith)