Hastings, on the Sussex coast in England, has fascinated me since childhood. I moved to Hastings Old Town in 1967, and apart from an interlude when I moved away but was soon drawn back again, lived there until 1983. I have recently moved back into the area, now known as "1066 Country", and my enthusiasm for Hastings and its history remains. This suite is the result.
1. NORMAN INVADERS William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey in 1066 and marched his army to Hastings. The music borrows the theme from Castle Rising, a movement of my Norfolk Suite, written after research into Norman-French troubadour music of the period. Here it depicts Norman soldiers marching through Hastings and thence inland to defeat King Harold’s forces on Senlac Hill, where the town of Battle now stands.
2. ROCK-NORE-BY MOONLIGHT Rock-a-Nore is the area beneath the cliffs by the iconic fisherman’s harbour. Sketched in 1968, the music was inspired by a midnight walk and the view across the moonlit sea from the end of the promenade.
3. HASTINGS LIFEBOAT MARCH I was living in Hastings in the 1970s when Malcolm Arnold wrote his famous Padstow Lifeboat March. I determined then and there that Hastings Lifeboat should have its own march, and though I sketched it several times in the meantime it took a commission from the 2022 International Composers Festival to bring it to fruition. The march, which celebrates the bravado of the Hastings lifeboatmen, is dedicated to the RNLI, and was duly premiered by the festival orchestra under John Andrews at the De la Warr Pavilion in nearby Bexhill-on-Sea on May 22nd 2022 in the 2022 International Composers Festival.
Strangely, just when the March was being performed for the very first time the Hastings Lifeboat received a callout . . . . . Paul Lewis
Pack includes a full score plus a full set of wind, brass and percussion parts plus strings 4/4/3/4/2.
- ISMN: 9790222323636 (M222323636)