ABSTRACT
Musical life in Britain, and particularly London, experienced a significant upheaval in the early 1960s. The Four Logue Songs for contralto, clarinet, violin and cello, were composed between autumn 1959 and spring 1961, using texts from Christopher Logue's collection of love poems Wand and Quadrant. The Op. 4 String Quartet, written in the first half of 1962, was Wood's first BBC commission. The Three Piano Pieces of 1960–63, written for Wood's wife Susan McGaw, was premiered at Cheltenham, the year after the first performance of the String Quartet Op. 4. William Glock commissioned Scenes from Comus for the BBC: its 25 August 1965 performance was the first of a number of Wood's works to be premiered at the annual Promenade concerts. One of the significant melodic differences between Comus and the works that preceded it is the greater sense of direction to be found in the melodic and harmonic material, contributing to the dynamism of the work as a whole.
