The Merry Love to Dance was written specially for, and is dedicated to, the seven-piece brass ensemble Septura. The title is taken from a poem by WB Yates called ‘The Fiddler of Dooney’:

And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance.

It seemed to me that nothing better personifies the joy of the dance than a group of brass players letting their hair down! Thus the work was born. It is scored for 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and tuba, and cast as a Suite of Dances in five movements: Toccata, Sarabande, Minuet, Gigue, and Toccata reprise, using Baroque-style dances as its unifying element. These various Dances are mainly arrangements of pieces which were originally written for piano.

The opening Toccata is a fast dance, with a more lyrical middle section, whilst the slow and stately Sarabande features the flugel horn as the main solo instrument. The Minuet follows the usual pattern of a tripartite structure with a Trio section in folk style, whilst the Gigue is a virtuosoic swirling dance in 6/8 time, the ideas being passed to and fro between the instruments. It leads without a break into a brief reprise of the opening Toccata, ending the work triumphantly.

The Merry Love to Dance is the latest in a series of works that I have written for symphonic brass ensembles, ranging from various fanfares for special occasions, two brass quintets and Three Dance Episodes for brass octet, to the larger scale Music of the Angels and Symphony in two movements. All of these works have been commercially recorded by London Brass and Halle Brass.