Y Deryn Du (The Blackbird)

David Matthews's Y Deryn Du (The Blackbird) for Piano Quartet.

The Blackbird, for piano quartet, was written in 1998, and is based on the Welsh folksong Y Deryn Du. In the song the blackbird gives advice to a young man in search of a wife. After rejecting the first three of the bird's suggestions, he willingly accepts the fourth, the bailiff's daughter. So in this instrumental setting the tune appears, appropriately, four times: on the viola, then the cello, then the violin and piano in canon. - David Matthews

Commission made possible by Mrs Elizabeth Salmon.