William Henry Squire - Compositions

Compositions

By the late 1890s, when Squire was employed by the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, he was already busy publishing a great deal of cello and piano music. He preferred to write small-scale works for one or two performers most likely written for cello students or for his own performances at London concert halls. He is not known to have written any large scale works such as symphonies, operas, cantatas, or ballets. His pieces for cello and piano can almost entirely be characterized as light, short "character pieces".

One of Squire's legacies to us today is a collection of student-level works for cello and piano which appear in string teaching syllabuses all over the world including those of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, the Internet Cello Society and the Suzuki method of string instrument teaching (cello books 5 and 6).

Squire's compositions fall into four categories: orchestral pieces (including a cello concerto and two unpublished operettas), smaller pieces for solo instruments and piano, music for songs and arrangements of the music of other composers. Several of his pieces were premiered at London's Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, in some cases with Squire himself performing the solo cello part.