Ballad was composed following a charity promises auction event at my local pub, for which I offered to write ‘an original piece for a special occasion’. The pub’s landlady and landlord won the bid and asked me to write the music for their wedding.
Their initials and those of their daughter (‘A’, ‘G’ and ‘D’), are used throughout the piece, most frequently as a recurring motif linking one phrase to the next. However, sadly the wedding was cancelled; the music was not performed until over a decade later.
The music’s title reflects some of the many definitions of ballad such as ‘a slow romantic or sentimental song’ (Miriam-Webster online), and a ‘narrative set to music’ (Wikipedia).