In the early 20th Century, British composers like Vaughn Williams, Butterworth, and Holst worked to develop a distinctly British style and sound different from the German and French traditions that had so dominated 19th Century romanticism. They turned to the modalities of English folk song and sought inspiration in the works of the great composers of the English renaissance. These earlier composers often worked in a form called a fantasy, or phantasy. These pieces were most often for groups of viols

The music of Dmitri Shostakovich, like that of most composers, touches on the full gamut of human emotions, and this should not be surprising. But for those of us who lived a good portion of our lives during the cold war, pieces like his Festive Overture, with its bright enthusiasm, and his musical comedy Cheryomushki, which lampoons life in a soviet apartment block, may not be what we expect form an Eastern Block composer. There is another side to his output