Four Sketches

Four Sketches was written for Gordon Jacob's son, David. He began learning the bassoon at King's School, Canterbury with Ida Miller in February 1976, and made such rapid progress that she suggested he should ask his father to write him some pieces during the Easter holidays. David returned in the summer term with Four Sketches.

Gordon Jacob wrote his first orchestral pieces at Dulwich College in London where he was educated and developed his composing skills as a prisoner during the First World War when he organized a small orchestra in his prison camp and wrote or arranged its entire repertoire. This practical approach to music was to become a hallmark of his composing style and the very playable music it produced. After the war he entered the Royal College of Music in London to study composition with Stanford, Howells and Vaughan Williams and conducting with Adrian Boult.

Jacob's first published work for military band, in 1923, was followed by a succession of compositions for almost every conceivable combination of instruments but includes concertos written for such celebrated performers as Dennis Brain (horn), Leon Goossens & Evelyn Rothwell (oboe), Archie Camden & William Waterhouse (bassoon), Frederick Thurston (clarinet), Carl Dolmetsch (recorder) and Denis Wick (trombone).