Three Pastels
Three Pastels is a set of three pieces for piano solo composed in 1941 by John Ireland. A performance of all three pieces takes about 9 minutes. They are: A pastel is an artwork made using a colouring medium in the form of a stick which consists of powdered pigment and a binder; the stick too is called a pastel. Pastel drawings are often delicate in tone, which may explain Ireland's choice of title for this set of gentle impressionistic pieces. The title "A Grecian Lad" may have been taken from A. E. Housman's poem "Look  not in my eyes, for fear", No. XV in his 1896 collection "A Shropshire Lad". It refers to the Greek legend of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection:"<poem> The jonquil is a species of narcissus, "Narcissus jonquilla". In the Middle Ages, it was a widespread custom to appoint a boy bishop, for example from among cathedral choristers, to parody the actual bishop on some particular church feast day. Puck is a mischievous supernatural creature in Celtic folklore. He is perhaps best known from the character Puck in Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Three