Notes

Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) was an English composer and conductor. He studied with Charles Villiers Standford and Herbert Howells at the Royal Conservatory of Music after World War I. Later he became a professor of composition there from 1926 until his retirement in 1966. Particularly talented at writing for wind instruments, he composed several pieces for oboe, including the Oboe Quartet and five works for oboe and keyboard. Jacob also published several books on composition, including Orchestral Technique, How to Read a Score, and The Composer and His Art. The piece Seven Bagatelles is a great example of his work. It was written in 1970 and dedicated to Sarah Francis, who gave the first premiere on a BBC Radio broadcast that year. Some of the movements are humorous: for instance, the bright and disrespectful "ministry of silly walks" March and Limerick, where Jacob translates the poetic rhythm of the limerick into music. Others are elegant, such as the Slow Air, which suggests a contrapuntal character, the tipsy Waltz with its irregular leaps, and the Chinese Tune, made up of two pentatonic scales, one with B natural and one with C natural. He also applied many tritones into this piece.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was one of the most significant German composers of his time. He began learning the violin as a child and later studied violin, conducting, and composition at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt. It was not until 1922 at the International Society opf Contemporary Music Festival in Salzburg where Hindemith first gained international attention for his compositionas