Fires of London

The Fires of London, founded as the Pierrot Players, was a British

which was active from 1965 to 1987.

The Pierrot Players was founded by

and new works, often with a theatrical element, for a similar scoring (usually with the addition of percussion). The instrumentation proved to be too limited for Birtwistle and he left in 1970. Maxwell Davies took over as sole director, renaming the group the Fires of London. It was disbanded after its 20th anniversary concert in 1987. Maxwell Davies subsequently endorsed a new group Psappha, based in Manchester.

During its existence, the Fires of London was particularly associated with Maxwell Davies' music, and gave first performances of many of his works, including

.

The group collaborated with the

.

Instrumentation and players

Maxwell Davies described the basic instrumentation as flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, keyboards, percussion.[2] Principal players in the formative years included Judith Pearce (flute), Alan Hacker (clarinet), Duncan Druce (violin), Jennifer Ward Clarke (cello) and Stephen Pruslin (piano).

The Fires of London was one of many ensembles created to play Pierrot Lunaire, and the presence of these ensembles led to many new works being written for the same instrumentation. This in turn led to the formation of yet more groups, leading to the establishment of the Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano) as a standard instrumentation in contemporary music.

References

External links

• The Fires of London