Malcolm Arnold wrote this little fantasy in the early 1960s as a present for his children Katharine and Robert to play together. Even as a miniature it has many of the hallmarks of the Arnold style: the evocative melodic writing together with the occasional dark dissonance. It was written at a time when Arnold was deeply into film music; indeed in the famous film 'Whistle Down the Wind' the main theme is also for flute/piccolo and is not entirely dissimilar to that found in this fantasy.

Work for Flute and Guitar commissioned by Clive Conway and Gerald Garcia.Anthony Payne: 'As a passionate Elgarian for most of my musical life I was fascinated by the prospect of writing something which reflected or somehowincorporated his Memorial Chimes written for the Loughborough Carillon a piece moreover which I did not know although I pride myself on an intimate acquaintance with the greater part of his output. My own style is a far cryfrom that of the English late-romantics which I so love but I have recently discovered how to relate to their music in more than just spiritual and emotional particulars and in Spring's Shining Wake I produced a gloss of Delius'In a Summer Garden finding equivalents in my vocabulary for each of that work's procedures somethings approaching the original closely and sometimes shadowing it from afar.p>When I saw the Elgar I immediately realised that thiskind of approach was out of the question. For one thing it is quite a short piece and frankly it is not one of the master's great inspirations. It does however possess one characteristically haunting phrase and I saw how Icould draw it within my own harmonic and textural orbit not the sort of idea to base a work on but a happy little discovery such as one often makes during the course of composing a work.I accordingly set out to write a shorttone poem which somehow draws together the sonorous 'objets trouvés' which float into the mind during intense contemplation of a still landscape memories of the past (the Elgar) intimations of magic in the wind sudden intenseperceptions of the cosmic forces of which we form such an insignificant part ominous vibrations borne on the air from some other existence.