Like many composers, I’ve always been happy to write ‘useful’ music, and, by usually saying ‘yes’ to any request, my composing career has led me down many byways. Too many to list, but they have included music for film, drama and dance, numerous sight-reading exercises (including some in music braille), one-off pieces for special events, weddings, christenings, funerals, and numerous pieces for learners of various instruments – in fact at the moment I am writing some very easy piano pieces for beginners (only four notes and two note lengths allowed!) for a major publisher. And I’ve always found that whatever I’m writing, be it a piece for a professional choir or orchestra, for an amateur chorus, a school chamber ensemble, or a junior choir, the technical range of the likely performers serve as a starting point for the music and gets my ideas flowing, helping me to shape and craft the piece.
Some years ago I was asked to run some workshops in the most easterly part of Essex, funded by the Clacton and Harwich Educational Action Zone. They involved working with primary school students in both singing and playing instruments, writing their own tunes to play, and performing these in a concert alongside a piece that I wrote specially for them. Clacton and Harwich are the main towns in what is known as the Tendring Peninsula, which is surrounded by the sea on three sides – so we chose ‘the sea’ as the subject matter for all the pieces. In the final concert we had a great range of pieces by the young people in the schools involved, including a special school, and then my piece involved them all.
This piece – Seascape – was designed for young voices and piano, with lots of optional instruments, and I actually wrote it while on a family holiday a little further up the east coast, in Suffolk, in a rented house in Aldeburgh with a balcony overlooking the sea.
I wrote the words myself, and each verse (to the same tune), describes a different aspect of the seaside: sunrise, morning, raindrops, storm-clouds, sunset. The melody has a range of only an octave, and, while not perhaps completely predictable, is easy to learn. Between each verse is an optional instrumental interlude which helps to cement the changing moods: the intention being that all the instrumentalists also sing the tune, and then play the interlude on whatever instruments they have.
Nothing more to say, really. It’s now been performed by quite a lot of childrens’ choirs, including the junior choir of the National Youth Choir of Scotland, and whenever I hear of a performance I am delighted to think of the enjoyment that singing can bring to young people.
You can hear a performance, together with a scrolling score, here, and you can see details of how to obtain copies here – and if your school has just no music budget at all, contact me and we can sort something out.
[PS – I’ve also, confusingly, written another piece called ‘Seascape’ for solo flute and flute choir. It is very different…]