Molly on the Shore is a composition of Percy Aldridge Grainger. It is an arrangement of two contrasting Irish reels

Reel (dance)

The reel is a folk dance type as well as the accompanying dance tune type. In Scottish country dancing, the reel is one of the four traditional dances, the others being the jig, the strathspey and the waltz, and is also the name of a dance figure ....

, "Temple Hill" and "Molly on the Shore" that present the melodies in a variety of textures and orchestrations, giving each section of the band long stretches of thematic and countermelodic material.

"Molly on the Shore" was written in 1907 by Grainger as a birthday gift for his mother.
Originally composed for string quartet

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

 or string orchestra, this piece was arranged in 1920 for wind band by the composer, as well as for orchestra. Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler

Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...

 set it for violin and piano, but Grainger was thoroughly unimpressed, saying that

[It] was a thousand times worse than I had fore-weened ((expected)), & I had not fore-weened anything good.

In a letter to Frederick Fennell

Frederick Fennell

Frederick Fennell was an internationally recognized conductor, and one of the primary figures in promoting the wind ensemble as a performing group. He was also influential as a band pedagogue, and greatly affected the field of music education in the USA and abroad...

 (who would later go on to create the definitive full score edition of Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy

Lincolnshire Posy

Lincolnshire Posy is a piece by Percy Grainger for concert band composed in 1937 for the American Bandmasters Association. Considered Grainger's masterpiece, the work is composed of six movements, each adapted from folk songs that Grainger had collected on a 1905–1906 trip to Lincolnshire,...

), Grainger says that

"in setting Molly on the Shore, I strove to imbue the accompanying parts that made up the harmonic texture with a melodic character not too unlike that of the underlying reel tune. Melody seems to me to provide music with initiative, wheras {sic} rhythm appears to me to exert an enslaving influence. For that reason I have tried to avoid regular rhythmic domination in my music - always excepting irregular rhythms, such as those of Gregorian Chant, which seem to me to make for freedom. Equally with melody, I prize discordant harmony, because of the emotional and compassionate sway it exerts".

"Molly on the Shore" mostly features the woodwind

Woodwind instrument

A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...

 section of the band, especially the clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

s and saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

s. The opening 1st clarinet solo is a common audition excerpt.