We have a 'composer of the fatherland' (currently
Calliope Tsoupaki). In Great Britain people have known the institute of the 'Master of the King's (Queen's) Music' for a long time. Nowadays it is Judith Weir, who relieved Peter Maxwell Davies in 2014. There are stories behind Judith Weir's music. Socially sensitive stories about women and extra-European cultures, without it becoming political.
Nuits d'Afrique, for instance, is based on French-language poetry by African women. Except in Berceuse's chorus, in which the mother tongue (in this case Sinhalese) is of course more obvious. O Virdissima is a piano trio, after the hymn of Hildegard von Bingen. The Bagpiper's string trio regrets the fate of James Reid. He was the peaceful bagpiper of the army, just as Jan Klaassen was the trumpeter in the army of the prince. Nevertheless, James Reid was sentenced to death as a prisoner of war because the judge considered his bagpipe to be a weapon in battle. Airs From Another Planet is a fantasy about a group of pioneers, preparing for generations on a lonely Scottish island for the colonization of Mars. (HJ)more
