(2008, 6', Tnr & pno) First performed by Gareth Lloyd and David Seaman in the Music Theatre Wales 'Make and Aria' project with Judith Weir, Michael McCarthy and Michael Rafferty at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff on 9 September 2008.
Recording details: as above.
Programme note: Written for the Music Theatre Wales 'Make an Aria' project in which six composer-writer teams each produced an aria for a character taken from Michael Berkely and Ian McEwans' opera For You. The character we picked, Robin, is the secretary to celebrated composer and conductor Charles Frieth. A frustrated and untalented composer, Robin is unhappy in his job and resentful of the way Charles treats him. In this operatic moment he reflects on his treatment, his dreams, his reality.
Grateful thanks to Music Theatre Wales.
(2008, 6', Ms; ob; vln; vc; hp) First performed by Alison Wells, Julian West, Jackie Shave, Robert Irvine and Gabriella Dall'olio as part of St Magnus Festival at King Street Halls, Kirkwall, Orkney on 25 June 2008.
Recording details: as above.
Programme note: Mark Strand's poem Snowfall drifts naturally from page to music. The text seems to seep musical colours which blend together to form a thick blanket of softness; a setting of quiet and weight.
(2008, 6', SATB choir & pno)
Lakes is a gentle re-imagination of the traditional folk song 'Lakes of Pontchartrain'. In addition to transformations of the original melody, two new complimentary elements of bell-sounds and sudden, sharp shocks are developed through the piece.
(2008, 15', Ms; Bar; afl; bcl; hn; perc; hp; 2 vln; vla; vc; db) First performed by Martha McLorinan, Tom Coltman, Lucy Beveridge, Tom Jackson, Geraldine Charles, Mike Rose, Lowri Morgan, Jessica Bray, Vieda Mercer, Rachel Stacy, Jimmy Ottley, Dave Guy, cond. Ed Scolding at RWCMD, Cardiff on 6 May 2008.
Recording details: as above.
Programme note: Visions through translucent time sets two poems; The Prediction by Mark Strand followed by This is a Photograph of Me by Margaret Atwood. In each poem a speaker describes a vision; one in the past, the second in the future. In both, something clouds our sight so that only the storyteller can see their own vision clearly.
Whilst the style or personality of the voice in each poem is different, they are linked by a sense of detachment. They describe their vision without seeming to become involved, though in each vision a sharp twist brings the voice into focus.
The detail in the text is supported by evolving music that builds atmosphere and direction. Much of the material is developed from one of my first musical ideas for the text; the melody for the lines at the end of the second poem beginning ‘the effect of water on light is a distortion…’ This melody is transformed in different ways throughout the piece, as a unifying key for the tone of the whole work.
A recurring theme introduced at the very start of the piece is a single pitch, often played by rhythmically shifting, seething strings. The sound slowly works out both up and down from the single pitch, bleeding into the surrounding pitches to create a discordant smudge of sound.
This theme returns in modified forms at many points, and is developed into a separate idea used during the second poem. The smudged patch of sound is thinned out and moves up or down through different notes at changing speeds. Further smudged pitches might split from this and make their own journeys. The constant fluid travel of lines removes stability from the music, leaving a sense of forward motion to an unknown destination.
Flurries of movement emerge and sink from the still surroundings of the drifting moon, rain, milky water and blue trees of the first poem, set for baritone. Much of the music here is without pulse, floating outside time. The voice glides over patches and points of sound collected and matched in different patterns.
An instrumental interlude introduces a strong pulse and builds momentum from the first poem into a passage of fast angular rhythms as the mezzo-soprano singer describes the photograph of the second poem. As we reach the climax of the piece, material from the start returns, now coloured and filled out.
The music crystallises to a single rising arpeggio figure in the harp. This figure repeats and develops, gradually gaining momentum and colourings from other instruments.
A return to the pulse-less still and pitch smudging of the first poem marks the final passage, which unwinds, fading to calm.
(2007, 4', vln & pno) A sketch experimenting with ideas for violin and piano, performed in a workshop at RWCMD by Daragh Morgan and Mary Dullea
Recording details: as above.
Programme note: Based around a sequence of notes moving by step, the piece explores different colour possibilities for the instruments.
Written for a workshop, the score acts as an experiemental palette for further development.First performed by
(2007, 6', tenor hn & cl) First performaned by Lee Drew and Graham Jones at National Museum Cardiff on 18 October 2007
Recording details: as above.
Programme note: Blue and Gold is inspired by Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne: Blue and Gold, St Mark's, Venice’ (left). The piece was written for a concert held at National Museum Cardiff to celebrate the new exhibition ‘Industry to Impression’. Pieces inspired by paintings in the exhibition were composed by students and performed beside the chosen painting.
I was drawn by the darkness and mystery of Whistler’s painting. Coming into the exhibition from the sun, the eyes take several minutes to make out anything in the painting. As details gradually emerge a contrast strengthens between the blue of the night sky, represented by clarinet, and gold of the arches, represented by tenor horn.
The two elements represented by the instruments begin mixed, then separate just as the perception of the painting clarifies. The elements then gradually work back together, feeding and following each other as the painting develops into a cohesive whole. The coda returns to material from the start, stepping back from the stubbornly shadowed painting.
(2007, 6', SATB choir; organ/pno) First performed by Chantelle Clelland, Heather Ferguson, Sion Owen, Tom Coltman at RWCMD, 15 May 2007.
Recording details: performers as above.
Programme note: Winner of Barry Choral Society Composition Competition 2007, this reflective work for choir and organ takes as its foundation the evocative night-time poem "The Falling Star", by (then) seven-year-old Oneeb bin Nauman. Mixing this poem with texts exploring ideas of sin and redemption by the apostle Peter and Renaissance poet John Donne, the piece combines open harmonies with echoes of plainchant to create a warm, optimistic approach to the ideas of mistakes and forgiveness.
(2007, 13', S; A; SATB choir; strings [2.2.2.1]) First performed by Rosie Havel, Martha Maclorinan, Gemma Coleman, Llio Evans, Rhian Evans, Katey Treherne, Sally Martin, Heather Ferguson, Jorge Navarro-Colorado, Lucasz Biela, Lial Sharland, Jenna Thorp, Alison Donnelly, Adam Winskill, James Sandalls, Aled Jones, Rachel Stacy, Jimmy Ottley, Clara Pascall, Ashley John Long at RWCMD on 10 December 2007.
Recording details: as above.
Programme note: This piece uses the text from Dannie Abse's poem Two Voices, which explores a marriage from the wife's point of view. The poem is split between the two different 'voices' of the married woman, one speaking from the wife to the husband, the other from the woman to the man. In the music, the former of these characters is represented by the alto voice, the latter by the soprano.
(2006, 9', 1+pic.2.2.2/4.3.2.1.1/timp.2perc/hp/cel/str) Performed in a workshop by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at BBC Wales, Cardiff in 2006.
Programme note: This piece is inspired by the structure of a tree, with groups of instruments playing related melodic lines
evoking the growing roots, fibres in the trunk (from a third of the way into the piece) and branches.
As the tree grows out of the ground, from trunk to twigs and leaves, lines pass up through higher instrument groups to end.
(2006, 6', piano) First performed by Bethan James at RWCMD on 15 March 2007.
Recording details: performer as above.
Programme note: Glacial source is a place where melted ice from a glacier that becomes the source of a river. This piece imagines this water at different stages in sections of music; the glacier knawing at rock; ice melting; water trickling.
A couple of patterns link the contrasting sections. A rhythmic pattern of five repeated notes, a pause then three more repetitions is used in a number of guises; squashed, stretched out or buried in a texture. The harmonic structure is based around a five-note mode which is repeatedly transposed up to form the basis of most sections.
Inspired by the variety of characters water can take, the piece aims to generate a number of colours using only the ‘normal’ keyboard and pedals; without using special techniques that can become musical novelties.
(2006, 3', piano & tape) First performed by Rachel Starritt at Wales Millenium 2 November 2006
Recording details: Ed Scolding (pno)
Programme note: As part of a project mentored by pianist Thaila Myers, Pixel Ballet was written for performance by a student of the Junior Music department at RWCMD. A pixel is a tiny piece of colour on a computer screen; This piece imagines them dancing in delicate movements.
(2005, 9', cello) Performed by Kate Price in a workshop at RWCMD.
Recording details: performer as above.
Programme note: The piece is based on binary form with a key theme (first heard at the start of the piece) and direct developments of this theme. These developments are divided by contrasting sections that link to each other harmonically. Different developments use the cello as a source of a diverse range of sounds, such as double stopping with harmonics, quartertones, scratch tones and four-string pizzicato chords.
(2005' 4' 2(pic,afl).2.2.2/4.2.2.1/2perc(mba)/str) Performed in a workshop by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at BBC Wales, Cardiff.
Programme note: The initial inspiration for Dark-room Shavings came from Don Davis’ soundtrack to The Matrix film. I wrote an orchestral piece that included contrasting yet cohesive sections that were in turn atmospheric, exciting and epic. A key aim of this project was also to explore a wide range of orchestral tones and colours, since the opportunity of having the piece played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales would provide an excellent occasion to hear these experiments. The piece falls into five sections, where the bleak final section is a development of the first. The second section introduces the main harmonic background whilst the rhythmically irregular third section builds to the climactic fourth.
(2005', 3', SATB choir) First performed by students at RWCMD in November 2005.
Recording details: as above.
Programme note: Winner of Barry Choral Society Composition Competition 2006, In Viam Pacis is a setting of a short extract from Benedictus, in Latin. The piece is influenced by Gregorian plainchant.