Welcome to my end-of-November Newsletter!
Meet the Composer
Last Saturday I had a most unusual and enjoyable experience – the opportunity to hear performances of almost twenty of my own compositions confidently played by a succession of (mostly) young pupils to an enthusiastic audience! I was at the Maidstone Music Festival, in Kent, to adjudicate the ‘Meet the Composer’ class, in which a composer is invited to write comments on (though, thankfully, not to award marks) on performances of their own music.
I have written a great deal of what might be called ‘educational’ music over the years, and I find this a fascinating area of composition which, for me, is really no different from any other type, and which has the enjoyment of creating music which will say what it has to say in a short space of time and without requiring any unnecessary technical challenges. At this event the pupils played mostly my piano music, but there were also performances of pieces for saxophone, trumpet, and electronic keyboard. Most of the pieces were short, at beginner level or for after a year or two of study, and they all had titles to help suggest the mood that the performer could aim to create, to which many of the players responded really well in their playing.
After they had all played, and I had said something to them about each performance, I told them that I started writing music when I was about 8 or 9 years old and asked them if they had written pieces (or ‘made up tunes’) themselves. Very few of them had, which was rather disappointing, so I tried to encourage them. I told them that it seems to me that when you write your own piece, and try to create a musical picture, you are starting to realise what it is like to get inside the composer’s mind – and in turn that this will help you, when playing pieces by other composers, to understand where they were coming from and to recreate the mood that they were aiming to create in their piece. Even if a piece of music has a rather dull title, I said, it is still helpful to imagine what picture the composer had in their mind.
I concluded by playing a piece of mine with a rather dull title – Prelude no. 9 – which is in the current Grade 7 ABRSM piano syllabus, and asked them to suggest a title that I could have given it. All the suggestions made very good sense – I won’t list them here, because you might like to listen to the piece yourself and see what picture it paints for you.
My experience of Maidstone Music Festival was that it was a very friendly event, aiming to give positive feedback to all performers. It was a wonderful idea to hold this particular class, which they have done for several years now with a wide range of composers – and if nothing else, it shows young people that composers are just people like any other, who happen to enjoy writing music – and that not all composers are just dusty old portraits or serious-looking busts on top of the piano!
Scrolling Scores
I am finding that the ‘scrolling score’ – a video in which the music scrolls by on-screen while the piece is played or sung – is becoming a very useful way of demonstrating music to possible performers and listeners. After quite a lot of practice, I am getting much quicker at making them, too! Recent ones include:
Cyprus Dances (for piano duet) and Cyprus Dances (for string orchestra): four movements based on traditional songs and dances from Cyprus
Calm and Deep Peace (choir and piano) a song which combines an original setting of words by Tennyson with the traditional American Shaker Song, Simple Gifts.
Blessed Assurance and Amazing Grace – two arrangements of popular hymns of the past and present for choir and organ, suitable for small church choirs
For all thy saints – an anthem for choir and organ suitable for All Saint’s Day.
Palace Dances – five movements inspired by Alexandra Palace and its vicinity, for flexibly scored woodwind ensemble. This was originally written for the Palace Band, who rehearse near Alexandra Palace in North London.
Princess Alexandra’s Minuet (clarinet quartet), Princess Alexandra’s Minuet (saxophone quartet), and Princess Alexandra’s Minuet (string quartet). This is a movement from Palace Dances in three differently scored arrangements. Alexandra Palace was named after Princess Alexandra, who later became Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII.
And not a scrolling score, but in this video I am talking about the last two volumes of the Oxford Hymn Settings for Organists, which I co-edited.
Some forthcoming Christmas Performances
Performances of my Christmas Cantatas:
‘O Come Emmanuel ‘- Great Missenden Choral Society, (7 December), and Kenilworth Union Church, Illinois, (8 December),
‘A Light in the Stable’ – Oratorio and Knox Bell Choirs (Barking Ridge, New Jersey, 8 December), and Central Virginia Masterworks Chorale (Richmond, Virginia, December 13th and Ashland, Virginia, December 15th), South Chiltern Choral Society (14 December).
Performances of my individual carols include ‘Love came down at Christmas’ in a version for upper voices and harp, (Woldingham School Choir, Westminster Cathedral, 9 December) ‘Lie Still and Slumber’ (first performance, Vivamus Choir, St. Clement Danes Church, London, 12 December), ‘Glory to the Christ-Child’ (Lion Walk URC, Colchester, 15 December) ‘Sweet babe sang she’ (Phoenix Consort, St. James Sussex Gardens, London, 18 December).
New Colne Edition publications include:
Palace Dances for flexibly scored woodwind ensemble
Princess Alexandra’s Minuet three versions: Clarinet Quartet, Saxophone Quartet, String Quartet
Spring is Sprung (SATB version)
Blessed Assurance, and Amazing Grace (two easy arrangements for SA(T)B and keyboard in the Colne Prayer and Praise for Choirs series)
Cyprus Dances for piano duet (four hands at one piano) and for string orchestra
Also recently published is an organ postlude based on ‘Praise my soul’ in the collection ‘Sortie Sorted, volume 1’ (Church Organ World) and an arrangement of ‘Infant Holy’ for three-part mixed choir and organ/piano (GIA Publications). A collection of my organ preludes for Lent and Easter will be published by Banks Music Publications early next year.
Finally as we move into Advent, here is a link to one of my Advent anthems, Creator of the Stars of Night. I’m hoping to send out a short letter just before Christmas but if it gets delayed, then may I send you now my best wishes for the festive season!