Arthur Bird : Auf Dem Lande

Arthur Bird (1856-1920) is a composer I'd know from a single hearing of a piece for wind ensemble about thirty years ago.   It made enough of an impression on me that I'd periodically looked for sheet music of his work and had looked up the scant information available on his life.   Thanks to YouTube you can now hear more of his work.   Bird was an expert contrapuntal composer of high romantic music with a distinctive voice.   One of the reasons he's available on YouTube is that he was one of a small number of composers who wrote serious art music for the harmonium.   Here is a piece played by Artis Wodehouse on the exact model of Mason and Hamlin he wrote it for.  

You can read the music for this piece and several others I will be posting here.