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Dear friends,

Welcome to my early summer newsletter!

Twenty years ago, Oxford University Press published the first book in the Pianoworks series, written jointly by my wife Jan and myself. We’re still very proud of that original book, and are delighted that OUP have just published the tenth book in the series – Pianoworks Meditations. Music for calm and peace, music to relax, inspired by the natural world, beautiful places, thoughts, and ideas, ranging from approx. Grade 1 to Grade 3 level. Here’s a link to a playlist of some of the pieces, and here’s a link to the publisher’s website.

OUP have also recently published two collections for smaller choirs who prefer to sing in unison, with the occasional optional second part. Called Voices as One, there are two books at the moment and I have one piece in each: Scots Nativity in the Christmas collection, and Song to the Moon in the Choral Songs collection. Song to the Moon was commissioned and first performed by the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas in 2019:  Scots Nativity, which I wrote nearly 25 years ago, is probably my most performed carol, and there are versions for almost every vocal combination, and with piano, small orchestra, or brass quintet accompaniment.  And my Epiphany carol, Star of the East, is included (as Stern aus dem Osten), alongside my straightforward harmonisation of Away in a Manger (Da draußen im Stalle) in the new OUP German-language publication Weihnachts Carols for Choirs. Details here.

Talking of carols (and if you are a choral director, you may well be thinking about them now) here are some fairly recent ones:

Sweet babe, sang she (sung last Christmas by The Sixteen at London’s Cadogan Hall, and recorded last year by St. Martins Voices) is an unaccompanied cradle-song for soprano solo and SATB. Details and recordings here.

Another unaccompanied SATB carol, which has recently been issued as a digital download from OUP (via Sheet Music Plus), is A Light for Today, a setting of a text by Longfellow. Details and recording here. This calm and reflective carol is a movement from the cantata ‘A Light in the Stable’, also published by OUP.

Great Joy, Glad Joy! comes in two versions, SA or SATB, both with keyboard. This is an original setting of a translation of an old German text welcoming Jesus’ birth and its meaning for us over the centuries. Details and recording here.

Little Jesus, Sweetly Sleep is an arrangement for SATB and keyboard of the traditional Czech ‘Rocking Carol’ which has recently been selected as a JW Pepper ‘Editor’s Choice’ in the USA. I directed its first performance at a little village church in 2024, and it was written with small parish church choirs in mind. More details and recording here

Another carol, written for the same small church choir the year before, is O Little One Sweet. This one has an original melody which is later combined with the traditional setting, attributed to JS Bach. It is for three-part voices, SABar, with keyboard. More details and recording here.

There are plenty more carols on the way, which I’ll tell you about another time!

The Joy of Song
I’m looking forward to another performance of Endless Song, by the original commissioners, the Waltham Singers (director Andrew Fardell). This cantata celebrates the joy of singing, and includes settings of texts by Walt Whitman, James Weldon Johnson, and Rabindranath Tagore – like the first performance, this is in Great Waltham Church, Essex, and it is on 20 June – this time with piano accompaniment rather than strings. Here’s a link to the first performance.

Mersey Reflections
My most recent instrumental piece, Mersey Reflections, written for recorder player John Turner, gets its first performance at a lunchtime concert at St. John’s Church in Sale, Greater Manchester on 18 June at 12.30,  played by John Turner (recorder), Richard Simpson (oboe) and Janet Simpson (piano). I wrote this portrait of the various Peak District rivers (which join together to become the River Mersey in Stockport) just last month, and a recording is planned soon of the version for recorder, oboe, and string quartet.

Recent performances

There have been at least four performances of Wondrous Cross during Holy Week including one in the Netherlands.

Two other shorter choral pieces, The Windhover, and Spring Morning were sung by the Elysian Singers, conductor Sam Laughton on 6 June at the Unitarian Chapel in York . The Elysians have performed a number of my pieces over the years and I was sorry that I was unable to get there this time.

One of my earliest pieces, Six Miniatures was recently recorded for YouTube by harpsichordist Sean Crego – listen here. I wrote these pieces for clavichord in 1975 – they’ve never been published but revisiting them makes me think they might be enjoyed by others so I will typeset them from the original manuscript and make them available soon, as a digital download.

Upcoming publications from GIA Music (USA)
Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee – an arrangement of Beethoven’s Hymn to Joy from the Ninth Symphony, with words by Henry van Dyke, for SABar and organ/piano
God is here on earth – an arrangement of the traditional Austrian melody Still, Still, Still, with words by me, for SABar and organ/piano
Now the holly bears a berry – an arrangement of the traditional ‘Sans Day Carol, from Cornwall, for SABar and organ/piano
These are at proof stage, so should be published in the next month or two – the digital download of ‘Joyful, Joyful’ is already available here

Musical Journeys
Some readers may have noticed that I have paused posting a ‘Piece of the Week’ on my website and on Facebook.  The reason is simply that I am very busy with new projects. And although ‘Piece of the Week’ may not appear regularly for the time being, I have started posting the occasional video blog called Musical Journeys. In them I talk about musical developments in the last century and how they affected and influenced me (and others). There are only two so far, but you can find them here.

Thank you for reading!

Alan

Musicologist Arnold Whittall died last month, at the age of ninety. Nearly sixty years ago, he was my tutor at Nottingham University.

I was only in contact with him during one year at Nottingham (1968-9), and afterwards I met him just a couple of times at conferences, so I can’t say that I really got to know him outside the pupil-teacher situation. I found him a friendly, if rather austere man, but with flashes of humour – and I was a young and not very worldly-wise student; so our encounters across the seminar table were quite formal, although I did once visit his neat house in Beeston for some kind of party and also once had a drink with him and his wife Mary in a city centre pub. He had a challenging way of teaching – making us analyse in detail, think for ourselves and come to decisions – and for that I am very grateful.

Nottingham was his first university post (I think he began his teaching career at a Cambridge technical college), and he then went on to University College Cardiff for a few years and then, until his retirement, Kings College London where he became Professor of Music Theory and Analysis.  Meanwhile, he became one of the best-known writers on music of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his trenchant and detailed studies of composers as widely ranging as Wagner, Finnissy, Britten, Schoenberg and Maxwell Davies, became a staple diet for all those interested in musical history and analysis.

In 1968 I was in my final undergraduate year at London’s Royal College of Music. It was without doubt a good place to be, but I felt I needed to know more about what was happening in my own century – so when I saw a little advertisement in the Musical Times for a course leading to the ‘MA in Contemporary Musical Analysis’ at Nottingham University, I applied and was accepted. The course turned out to be the brain-child of Arnold Whittall (always ‘Dr. Whittall’ to me) – he interviewed me, and was responsible for all the teaching on the course, though he did invite a few visiting composers such as Alexander Goehr and Alun Hoddinott. There were just three students on the course that year, the other two being Andrew Massey who became Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra and remained in the USA all his life, and Trevor Wishart, the York-based composer of sonic art and digital audio.

In the weekly seminar sessions Arnold Whittall would introduce us to a wide spread of recent works – a lot of background study was required – and at the same time introducing a whole range of analytical and compositional techniques. We also had the opportunity to formally present our own research projects to each other, which further widened the range of music studied.

His teaching method was often focussed on the ‘compare and contrast / similarities and differences’ approach, which could sometimes bring unlikely composers into line and focus, and he carefully showed me how to draw together the strange mixture of works that I had chosen for my MA dissertation, Britten and Shostakovich, Dallapiccola, Boulez and Nono, guiding and developing both my analytical skills and also my use of English.

His picture is taken from the dust-jacket of the first edition of his book ‘Music Since the First World War’ (now renamed ‘Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century’) published in 1977. This was his second book (the first was the BBC Music Guide on Schoenberg) and it confirmed his reputation as a writer who could discuss and explain complex topics in a reader-friendly way, bringing together a wide range of music and putting it side-by-side. For Whittall, musicology was always about music first and foremost, though rigorous analysis had its part to play.

There is a personal tribute by Ian Pace here in the current Gramophone magazine, to which Arnold Whittall contributed for many years.

Musicology has of course developed enormously since I knew Arnold in the 1960s, and he not only followed its developments but was responsible for many of them.  I am proud that, for a relatively brief moment in my life, I studied with him.

Alan talks about three melodies, and the musical journeys that they make from start to finish. Follow this link: Musical Journeys Episode 2

Musical Journeys Episode 1

 

A very belated Happy New Year to all who read this! Some readers may have noticed that not only have I not written a newsletter for some time, I’ve also paused posting a ‘Piece of the Week’ on my website and on Facebook.

So I just wanted to reassure you that I am well, and busy with several projects for different publishers – but because publishers like secrets, and I’m not always very good at keeping them, I’ll just button my lips and say now that ‘plans are afoot’ and I will tell you more later.

A Christmas highlight for me was the performance of my carol Sweet babe, sang she by The Sixteen, director Harry Christophers. It was a lovely performance: they did it in two concerts at London’s Cadogan Hall, and then repeated it in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge. The concert was also recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 just before Christmas.

The Sixteen have performed several of my Christmas carols now, and it is always a delight to hear their eloquent and colourful singing, both live and on recordings.

The same piece, (Sweet babe, sang she) was also recorded on CD by St. Martin’s Voices, director Andrew Earis, and I was delighted to go to the launch party and hear them sing it live as well.

Some sad news was the recent death of two people who were associated with my music in different ways – John Wallace and Zélie Jopling.

Zélie, who lived in a lovely farmhouse on the marshes near Colchester, was a keen musician, active promoter of musical events for young and old, and was the founder and director of the Roman River Festival (now part of Wild Arts) which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and continues to bring many world-class performers to venues around North East Essex, and latterly further afield, as well as initiating many educational projects.

John Wallace needs no introduction, principal trumpet of the Philharmonia Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta, founder of the ‘Wallace Collection’ brass ensemble, and later returning to his Scottish roots as the director of The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

I was able to remember these two musicians in quite a personal way this February, as my suite for wind band Heritage, whose first performance in Leeds in 1993 was conducted by John Wallace, was recently performed by the London Youth Wind Band, conducted by my son Sam Bullard – and it was lovely to hear the vibrant playing of a group of enthusiastic young people.  And, a week earlier, my String Quartet no. 2, which was originally commissioned by Zélie Jopling for the Roman River Festival in 2006, was performed by a Scottish string quartet, Afton Strings, in a concert promoted by Colchester New Music to a large and enthusiastic audience in a church in Chelmsford. So it was fitting that both these pieces were resurrected, re-igniting memories of musicians who inspired them.

For various reasons I have been occupied recently with rather more non-musical issues than usual – so there is rather less news than sometimes – but my desk is stacked with manuscript paper, both full and empty, (yes, I still write by hand before transferring it to the computer!) and I plan to have more to report in a few months time.

And although ‘Piece of the Week’ may not appear regularly for the time being, I do plan to write the occasional blog on some musical developments in the last century and how they affected and influenced me (and others). These will appear on my website, in spoken form on YouTube, and with links from here: https://www.facebook.com/ComposerBullard

Thank you for reading!

Alan

Advent and Christmas greetings!

Choral
Over the years I’ve written a great deal of music for Christmas, so it’s not surprising that this time is the busiest for performances of my pieces, and it is really gratifying to know of so many singers learning my music and hopefully enjoying the process and the performance.  I’ve been combing the internet for details of performances this month and I’ve found each of my three Christmas cantatas, and also many individual carols: here’s the cantatas:

A Feast for Christmas – performances in Weybridge (Walton Voices) and Buxton (Buxton Musical Society)

O Come, Emmanuel – performances in Virginia Beach, USA, Stockholm, Sweden, and Hitchin, UK

A Light in the Stable – performances in Andover (Andover Choral Society), Wakefield (Yorkshire Philharmonic Choir), and Faringdon (Faringdon Singers)

And in terms of individual carols, my Sweet babe, sang she is getting some good outings this year, including a recording and performance by St Martin’s Voices (director Andrew Earis) and performances by The Sixteen (director Harry Christophers) at London’s Cadogan Hall and Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge – also to be broadcast on BBC R3 on 23^rd December.

Piano
Jan and I have been working together on a series of short piano pieces for relaxation and meditation – more about that next year.

As well, we are continuing to add pieces to the Janet and Alan Bullard Piano Series, and also I’ve been adding pieces to the Piano Prayer and Praise series – the newest one is Eventide (Abide with me), and Noel Nouvelet, which I did last year, is particularly appropriate for the Christmas season.

Organ
Editing The Oxford Hymn Settings volumes 8 and 9 (see Newsletter 17) gave me the taste for writing more organ preludes; and newly released are

Hyfrydol (Church Organ World) in Sortie Sorted vol. 2
Two Preludes on Veni Creator Spiritus (first performed at Chelmsford Cathedral) YouTube here
Pavane and Galliard for chamber organ (for Carson Cooman) details here

Just a reminder, too, about my two sets of organ preludes published by Banks Music Publications, for Christmas, and Lent/Easter. There are recordings of all of these (as well as of those published by Church Organ World and a few published by OUP) on YouTube, performed by the indefatigable Steven Maxson.

Six Dances
I was delighted to give a recital with my saxophonist son, Sam, at Lion Walk Church in the centre of Colchester in the autumn.  It included the first performance of my Six Dances for alto saxophone and piano – a reworking of my Six Dances for Four Hands (piano duet). This version, together with separate ones for tenor sax and for clarinet, are all on sale from Colne Edition.  Here’s a recording of the performance.

Details of all the pieces mentioned here are on my website.

We all have our own ways of celebrating Christmas, of course, and for me, church services help to remind me what it’s all about – I’m taking part in two Lessons and Carols Services – singing in in a city centre church, and directing a ‘once-a-year’ choir in a small village church. Two very different services in different environments – but the same Christmas message, of joy and peace.

Very best wishes to you all from me and my family to all readers: may Christmas bring you joy, and the New Year peace and happiness!

A few years ago I wrote a set of piano duets for a publisher who has now gone out of business – so I reclaimed the copyright and published them myself as Six Dances for Four Hands: and they proved quite popular both in the piano duet version and also in an orchestral arrangement, Six Dances for Small Orchestra, that I also made.

Earlier in the year I got the opportunity to play the piano duet version myself for the first time, at a lunchtime concert in Aldeburgh with Nadia Lasserson, which was a lot of fun.

They are short, light-hearted, accessible pieces and I thought that other players might enjoy them, so when my son Sam, a professional saxophonist, asked me to accompany him for a recital he was giving at our church in Colchester, I decided to arrange them for saxophone (and for clarinet as well, while I was at it). These versions are all now published in Colne Edition.

The six movements of Six Dances for Saxophone and Piano cover a range of moods and styles. The first movement ‘Three-quarter time’ is a fast waltz with a sense of interplay between soloist and accompanist, and this contrasts with the second movement, ‘Serenade’: also in three-four time, this movement is otherwise very different, with a sensitive and expressive flowing melody which is later presented as a canon between the two players. The mood wakes up for the third movement, ‘Energy’, which is in a kind of upbeat mambo style. From there, the next movement takes us, perhaps, to France – ‘Valse melancolique’ suggests the piano-accordion and Parisian street scenes. Then in the fifth movement, ‘Smooth and Silky’, we move a little bit further south, the music suggesting the Spanish habanera dance – and finally, ‘Celebration’ brings the set to a joyful close.

Here are videos of two movements from the concert:  Three-Quarter Time, and Energy, and here’s the complete performance with a scrolling score.

As well as the Alto Sax version, there’s also a version for Tenor Sax – details of both are here.
For the Clarinet and Piano version, please go here.
Orchestral version here
Piano Duet version here

Hope you enjoy them! All versions are published by Colne Edition and are available as digital downloads from Sheet Music Direct or Sheet Music Plus (printed copies are available to special order from me)

When I was a teenager I was given a lovely book – a Christmas present I think – and I have treasured it all my life. Beautifully bound, with a lute and a flute embossed on the cover, and a sumptuously designed dust-jacket – well worn now – this book, ‘An Elizabethan Song Book’ is a treasure trove of songs for voice and lute from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The lute parts are arranged for piano – but instead of filling them out and making them ‘pianistic’, as many such editions did, these piano parts seem to be a straightforward transcription of the lute parts, with their characteristic use of counterpoint and imitation, but only as far as the technique of the lute would allow.

Published by Faber and Faber in 1957 – before the days of ‘Faber Music’, but foreshadowing some of the same excellent design features, the music was edited by Noah Greenberg (1919-66) an influential musician in the early music movement and the founder of the New York Pro Musica Antiqua – and the words were edited by Chester Kallman (1921-75) – poet and librettist for Stravinsky’s ‘Rake’s Progress’ and Henze’s ‘Elegy for Young Lovers’ – and his one-time partner, W. H. Auden (1907-73), who needs no introduction.

So it was these renowned creatives who brought to my attention (and to many others) the wonderful flowering of creative work in Britain at the turn of the seventeenth century – songs by Campian, Dowland, Morley, and many more – which have lived with me for many years.  And the very first piece in the book has stuck in my mind – ‘Sweet was the Song’ by John Attey, published in 1622, and I’ve twice found myself setting these words to my own music, using the slightly different version to be found in William Ballet’s Lute Book of the same period:
Sweet was the song the Virgin sang, When she to Bethlem Judah came;
And was delivered of a son That blessed Jesus had to name.

I first set them as a round, in The Oxford Book of Flexible Carols, and then, more recently, as a carol for mixed voice choir, with the title ‘Sweet babe, sang she’ to avoid confusion.

‘Sweet babe, sang she’ came about during the Covid lockdown, and, as often at that time, with no particular performance in mind. But I made a recording of it with some friends, each recording their own part individually, and this then came to the attention of The Houston Chamber Choir (director Robert Simpson), who sung it and recorded it at one of their Christmas concerts. It was then subsequently performed, last Christmas, by the Phoenix Consort (director Adam Whitmore), and this Christmas performances are scheduled with St. Martin’s Voices (director Andrew Earis – St Martins-in-the-Fields, 11 December, lunchtime) and with The Sixteen (director Harry Christophers – Cadogan Hall, 17 and 18 December).  St. Martin’s Voices have also recorded it on their new CD, ‘A babe is born’. It’s always lovely when a piece gets performances by different groups and it’s fascinating to compare the different approaches and angles taken by each choir.

My approach to the music is to imagine Mary singing as she rocks the baby Jesus to sleep, and a soprano solo is supported by a background of lullabies from the choir. In between the verses the choir sings gentle ‘alleluias’, and the piece ends as it began, with the gently rocking lullabies. The metre of the music changes frequently, but there is always a sense of flow and shape.

Here are some different performances:

St Martin’s Voices CD ‘A Babe is born’

Houston Chamber Choir (with scrolling score)

Houston Chamber choir (with images)

Phoenix Consort (live performance)

Please visit this page to read more and to obtain the music

When I was a student at the Royal College of Music, I purchased a paperback reprint of the late nineteenth century edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book edited by Fuller Maitland and Barclay Squire – two fat volumes of keyboard music by Byrd, Bull, Gibbons, and a host of other composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (‘Virginal’ is an old name for ‘keyboard’, and the original manuscript is housed in the Fitzwilliam Museums in Cambridge).

My appetite had been whetted for this music when as a schoolboy I acquired a collection of music of the same period called Early Keyboard Music, edited by Louis Osterle, which was heavily ‘edited’, with extra notes, expression marks and phrasing, in a possibly misguided attempt to make this music suitable for the modern piano. I loved this book and played from it nonstop as a 12-year old, and still do use it occasionally, despite its inauthentic qualities. It is quite instructive to compare these two editions, published within five years of each other!

At the time I was at the RCM the concept of the ‘English Musical Renaissance’ was heavily entrenched in the thoughts of some of the older professors, who were born around the time that great discoveries of early English music were being found and documented, and it’s not surprising that my composition teacher, Herbert Howells, wrote much music for the organ and the clavichord which was clearly inspired by these late Renaissance models. So I suppose, although I maybe didn’t really acknowledge it, something of that influence trickled down into my own musical language too.

So it was an interesting reminder of those days when the American composer and concert organist, Carson Cooman, asked me to contribute to a project in which he was asking around 150 composers to each write a pavane and a galliard, interpreting the traditional dances in their own way.

In his ‘Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke’ (1597) composer Thomas Morley described the pavane as ‘a kind of staide musicke’ and the galliard as ‘lighter and more stirring’. And traditionally the two dances were paired, the steady two-in-a-bar pavane being followed by the livelier three-in-a-bar galliard – and they often shared the same musical ideas, as well.

So in my contribution to Carson Cooman’s project I wrote a pair of dances which shared the same musical material, which was a twelve-note phrase based on the commissioners name, produced by using the simple device of continuing up the scale as the alphabet continues – so H is A, I is B, J is C, and so on (transposing down an octave or two to keep the notes on the treble stave.). Thus CARSON becomes CADEAG and COOMAN becomes CAAFAG. In the Pavane the music is quite free flowing and decorated, and later the twelve-note phrase becomes the basis of the harmonies rather than the melody. The dancingly rhythmic melody of the Galliard uses the same notes, repeated several times with intervening episodes and gradually introducing more decoration. And in keeping with the late-renaissance feel, the music is written for a chamber organ with just one manual, two stops, and no pedals – the kind of instrument that the wealthy might have had in their house at the time, and which would also have been used as a continuo instrument. And for today’s keyboardists, this means that it could also be played on a harpsichord, clavichord – or even a piano.

You can hear Carson Cooman’s scintillating performance on YouTube here, and if you are interested in buying the music please visit this page on my website. And thank you to Carson for giving these ancient dances a new lease of life!

Just over twenty years ago, Oxford University Press published a collection of new Latin motets – maybe a bit of a niche market, but one which gave many composers the opportunity to respond to the long tradition of sacred music in Latin in their own contemporary musical style – composers like Kerry Andrew, Michael Finnissy, Tarik O’Regan, Francis Pott, Gabriel Jackson, as well as Bob Chilcott and John Rutter.  And many more, including me!

The collection (which is still in print, and the pieces are also available separately as digital downloads) is called ‘Cantica Nova’. All the Latin texts are religious, ranging from verses from the Bible to hymns from the Middle Ages and later, and I chose Ave maris stella (Hail, star of the sea) an 8^th-9^th century hymn to the Virgin Mary.

In my setting I took the opening verse:

Ave maris stella, Dei mater alma,
atque semper virgo, felix caeli porta.

and made this into a chorus, which is repeated four times, each time with a fuller texture. Between this the remaining three verses appear, in a predominantly chordal texture, and again building to a climax for the last verse. Finally the music subsides for an extra statement of the opening phrase. So, for me, that gave the music a structure, and, perhaps, an air of ‘meditative celebration’ which would have shape and interest even though the words might not be readily understood.

I’m writing about this piece now because recently I heard a fine performance of it by the Erasmus Chamber Choir, directed by Julian Merson, in a programme which placed a number of new settings of Marian texts alongside the Missa Sancta et Immaculata of the sixteenth-century Spanish composer Francisco Guerro.

Here’s a link to my Ave Maris Stella (with scrolling score)

A link to the entire concert may become available in the future.

The score is obtainable from www.oup.com/sheetmusic and the text is below:

Ave maris stella, Dei mater alma,
atque semper virgo, felix caeli porta.
Solve vincla reis, profer lumen caecis,
mala nostra pelle, bona cuncta posce.
Vitam praesta puram, iter para tutum,
ut videntes Jesum, semper collaetemur.
Sit laus Deo Patri, summo Christo decus,
Spiritui Sancto, tribus honor unos.

English translation:
Hail, star of the sea, kindly mother of God
and ever virgin, blessed gate of the sky.
Undo the chains of the guilty, bring light to the blind,
drive away our ills, ask for all good things.
Bestow a pure life upon us, prepare a safe way,
that, beholding Jesus, we may alway rejoice.
Praise be to God the Father, glory to Christ on high,
to the Holy Spirit, one honour to the three.