elegy for RH 827 – a lost viscount

The 16-year-old Surendran Reddy composed this work for bassoon and piano in 1979 in response to a passenger plane, an Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount RH 827 being shot down in his country of birth, Zimbabwe, by the Zimbabwean People’s Revolutionary Army, killing all 58 people on board. Reddy was in his 1st year of Bachelor of Music studies at the Royal College of Music, London, at the time. The 4-page elegy is in free atonal style with some elements of serialism and constantly changing meters. The score is a facsimile of the original manuscript.