William Walton was asked to write the music to accompany the 1944 Olivier film of Shakespeare´s Henry V. These two pieces, which are scored for strings only, were included in both the Concert Suites put together by Sir Malcom Sargent and Muir Mathieson, but have achieved a position of their own as a pair of delicate string works.
The first is a Passacaglia and represents Falstaff´s death - ingeniously it is entitled "Passacaglia - The Death of Falstaff" - and the second entitled "Touch her soft lips and part" accompanies the scene where the soldiers are departing for France and bidding farewell to their lady-loves. This edition has been re-typeset but otherwise is not changed from the original edition published by Oxford University Press (now out of print). It has not been simplified and is not an arrangement.
