River Thames
The Water Music composed by George Frideric Handel premiered on 17 July 1717, when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed for King George I on his barge and he is said to have enjoyed it so much that he ordered the 50 exhausted musicians to play the suites three times on the trip.
Der Handschuh (Waterhouse)
Graham Waterhouse composed "Der Handschuh" in 2005, as a kind of melodrama in the tradition of spoken narrative to instrumental accompaniment, such as ballads by Robert Schumann and Richard Strauss, a crucial scene of Weber's opera "Der Freischütz" and 20th century settings by Schoenberg, William Walton, Henze and Poulenc's L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant. It is the composer's first major work for the combination of Sprechstimme (speaking voice) and his instrument, the cello. Until then he had occasionally set texts to music for the unusual scoring. In 1995 he wrote "Vezza", a limerick on whether/weather as a German might pronounce it, recorded in 2002 with the composer speaking and playing. In 2001 he set "Flohlied" (Song of the Flea), the satirical song from Goethe's Faust I, to music, published by Heinrichshofen's Verlag. The final poem of his song cycle "Sechs späteste Lieder" (six latest songs, 2003) after Friedrich Hölderlin for mezzo-soprano and cello is spoken.