Composer and conductor Peter Maxwell Davies often bases his works on preexisting music, either English medieval and Renaissance themes or folk melodies. In 1970 he moved to Hoy Island in the Orkneys, off the northern coast of Scotland, gleaning much of his musical material from the islands’ indigenous music.

Davies composed An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise in 1984 for the Boston Pops Orchestra as a commission for its centenary. According to the composer, it is a musical postcard record of an actual wedding he attended on Hoy.

The piece is unashamed program music, portraying the boozy wedding scene, making it clear that Hoy’s inhabitants know how to “make merrie.” Davies describes the work: “At the outset, we hear the guests arriving, out of extremely bad weather, at the hall. This is followed by the processional, where the guests are solemnly received by the bride and bridegroom, and presented with their first glass of whisky. The band tunes up, and we get on with the dancing proper. This becomes ever wilder, as all concerned feel the results of the whisky, until the lead fiddle can hardly hold the band together any more. We leave the hall into the cold night, with echoes of the processional music in our ears, and as we walk home across the island, the sun rises, over Caithness, to a glorious dawn. The sun is represented by the highland bagpipes, in full traditional splendour.”

The piper is required to play the pipes in the key of A, the common key of earlier folk pipes, instead of the B-flat of most modern pipes, which were changed to fit in with the B-flat clarinets in marching bands.

Maxwell Davies served for ten years as Conductor/Composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and was Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He guest-conducted orchestras both in Europe and in the United States. He was knighted in 1987.