The Cornwall Youth Band commissioned the second of Arnold's Little Suites for band, and gave the work its premiere on Easter Sunday of 1967. A delightfully off-kilter tune is given a complex canonic development in the first movement Round. The mood darkens for the central Cavatina, as Arnold combines a slow melody with a dissonant, rhythmically ominous backdrop, a device he has employed often. The lighthearted, syncopated, and lively final movement, titled Galop, has on the other hand rightly been described as "circus music."

The suite received some television attention in 1977, when Marcus Dods arranged part of the Cavatina for use as the theme music for ITV's adaptation, broadcast in October 1977 by Granada Television, of Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times.

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