Lincolnshire Posy

Lincolnshire Posy is a piece by Percy Grainger for concert band composed in 1937 for the American Bandmasters Association. Considered Grainger's masterpiece, the 16-minute-long work is composed of six movements, each adapted from folk songs that Grainger had collected on a 1905–1906 trip to Lincolnshire, England. The work debuted with three of the movements on March 7, 1937 by the Milwaukee Symphonic Band, a group composed of members from several bands including the Blatz Brewery and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer factory worker bands in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Unlike other composers that attempted to alter and modernize folk music for band, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Grainger wished to maintain the exact sense of stylizing that he experienced from the singers. Grainger wrote: "Each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its underlying melody... a musical portrait of the singer's personality no less than of his habits of song, his regular or irregular wonts of rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately arabesque delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or delicacy of tone."

Grainger dedicated his "bunch of Wildflowers" to "the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me."

The piece is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn (ad libitum), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon (ad lib.), E-flat clarinet, 3 B-flat clarinets (at least 2 per part), alto clarinet, bass clarinet, 6 saxophones (soprano, 2 altos, tenor, baritone and bass (ad lib.)), 3 cornets or trumpets, 4 horns, 3 trombones, baritone horn, euphonium, tuba, string bass, timpani, xylophone, glockenspiel, handbells, tubular bells (ad lib.), snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals.

...
Wikipedia