An occasional blog by a jobbing composer, reflecting on both completed and ongoing projects.
Some happy news as the year draws to a close!
For some months I have been working with a lyricist, setting his words to music. The first of these compositions is a choral work for a Military Wives choir. The work has been selected by one such choir for their 2020 concerts.
This week I completed another audio realisation for the Cecilia Chorus of New York. The new composition is by the Balliett brothers and receives its premiere in Carnegie Hall in May 2019. For more information about the concert, please visit their site: http://ceciliachorusny.org/#/brahms-elgar-brothers-balliett/
Audio realisation is a time-consuming process because you not only replicate the sheet music on the computer, but must then interpret the piece as a performance within the limits of sampled instruments. This means paying meticulous attention to changes in dynamics and tempi, as shown by the automation below.
This work had 5 movements. Each movement had at least Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. Sometimes the parts were divided. For each section of the choir, I produce each movement with their own voice featured, one version with and another without metronome. I also produce full SATB reference tracks, with no voice featured. This project was special because there was a solo voice as well. So I produced some SATB versions without the soloist included, so that the choir could learn their role more thoroughly. There were 52 tracks in total for the Balliett brother’s compositions.
Last night I attended the first Chester PRS meeting, in the company of my non-PRS composing brother, Joe. It was clarifying in some matters. It is always good to know more than you need regarding the business side. It would have been helpful if the panel discussion hadn’t focussed exclusively on songs, assuming that everyone was a live performer. The gentleman behind me scores for children’s TV and the lady behind me places music in Hollywood trailers!
It has been a pleasure to work once again with the Cecilia Chorus of New York in preparation for their March concert. They are performing three complex works and commissioned me to prepare audio versions of the pieces, with each choir section’s part picked out for practice purposes.
Samples from the three works are below.
I wish the choir every success in learning such complex works!
Some seasons I have written words in between compositions. More recently it has been the other way round with my work-in-progress standing at 65,000 words and not yet half way. However, it looks like this winter will include some large scale compositions. I have been engaged to provide the music for a classic dramatisation for Audible, period music for a filmed show with an esteemed theatre actress in her 90s, and soundtrack for a documentary on the original Chester cathedral of St. John’s.
I have been working on my monodic skills for several years now, trying to identify how to write a single line of melody which suggests the right sense of harmony and maintains rhythmic power.
So far in the instrumental part of my monody project, I have composed ten monodic works around the fiddler. (I chose the fiddle because, although it can be placed with other instruments, it is not unusual for it to carry a tune alone. However, I have restrained myself from the more interesting chord effects of the instrument to keep the idea of monody in view.) The Dandee Shanty was the first such piece.
One of the attractions of monody is the clarity and force of statement possible in a single line of tune. If you have an ensemble or an orchestra, you can be vague and ambiguous in your harmony and clutter up the theme with counter-melodies. That may be required in a composition. But it can also be accidental and come about through not really having a strong idea of what the piece of supposed to say and how.
Monody is not so forgiving. It requires precise ideas, executed directly and efficiently.
This has had an effect on my non-monodic compositions because it encourages economy of ideas. I consider the source material (logo sting, branding, video edit, animation, script) and talk to the director. I usually have an immediate musical idea, which I develop vocally. Singing an idea is an excellent way of finding the natural curve of the tune, balancing the flow and keeping harmonic changes marked in the composition of the melody. By singing the idea until it runs smoothly and has grown memorable enough for me not to forget, I approach a compositional commission with the main idea fixed. Then, even if the texture of the piece is layered and polyphonic, built up with synthesisers and a drum track, or washed over with luscious string harmonies, I have a central idea, which I can weave in and out.
Orchestration and arrangement should both be taught, but it is a shame that monody is not, because monody shows that a strong idea can be orchestrated, whereas orchestration teaches us to make a sound, even if we have nothing worthwhile to say.
With the benefit of hindsight, some of my pre-university compositions were often written in this way. I can clearly recall spending a morning in front of a computer, trying to compose dynamic title music depicting a desperate horse ride over wild country in the north of England. I had wasted hours tootling on the keyboard, trying to orchestrate without a theme, and I had produced nothing. But when I was washing up lunch pots and not thinking about music:
Du-du-du.
de-de- Du-du-du.
I had a rhythm. I whistled it through my teeth, for it had no tones. I kept whistling.
Du-du-du.
de-de- Du-du-du.
de-de-Du-du-du-Du-du-du-Du-du-du-Du-du-du ...
So it went on. And as I whistled the rhythm, the appropriate tones fell onto the notes, as a cascading melody, struggling up hill, across rivers, rushing into valleys, darting in and out of trees. I went upstairs with an entire idea. Over the next 2 hours I composed the work with full orchestration and this was the composition:
It was a beautiful experience to be able to compose so efficiently and entirely in one go (I was 18 and happily untaught). It is rarely possible. Feature-scores have to be composed over a month or more and it is a different skill to keep going on a piece over such a time period. But I am more convinced than ever that if we want to write melodies, we must write monodic tunes with the voice. They are unapologetic, focused, dynamic and deliberate. And then - once we have a clear idea - if we want to make it hidden, watery and vague, we can do so because we have an idea to dilute, not because we do not have a clue what to say.
Tonight, I had the pleasure of enjoying Chester Philharmonic Orchestra performing in the stunning setting of Chester Cathedral.
It was an ambitious programme of Beethoven and Brahms, playing to a large and appreciative audience in the heart of the Cathedral.
The concert began powerfully with Beethoven’s Fidelio. Conductor David Chatwin coped admirably with the large reverb of the Cathedral surroundings, allowing the drama of the piece to develop. The strings and timpani were especially dynamic. Fidelio proved to be a good choice to warm the orchestra up for Brahms’ Violin Concerto, with soloist Qian Wu. While not denying her technical facility in the rapid portions of this composition, she seemed to shine brightest in the lilting lyrical passages. The role of the orchestra in supporting a concerto soloist is never one to envy, but they gave a sensitive performance, maintained to the final bar.
After the interval, the last piece of the evening was Beethoven’s Pastoral – Symphony no. 6. This well-known composition has so much exposed writing that it is a good test of an orchestra’s ability. Coming at the end of a busy concert, they might have been tired but it didn’t show. The atmosphere of the concert was friendly and welcoming and a credit to the hard work of the dedicated musicians of Chester Philharmonic Orchestra.
Submitted to the New Cambridge Singers' composition competition, with original text based on an unfinished poem by William Cowper: A Tree Call'd Judith.
In response to the Elysian Singers' call for scores, I have set three Psalms for SATB. They are:
Psalm 53 - Where no fear was
Psalm 56 - For God is for me
Psalm 83 - Do unto them
Each posed unique challenges. Sometimes the challenge is to include every word, as in the extended naming in Psalm 83. Sometimes the challenge is not to descend into a sentimental pattern, as in Psalm 56. The ultimate challenge though is to remember that the Word of God is not like the words of men and must be spoken and sung with reverence. I have tried to maintain that tone and also paid great attention to clarity, that the music will not overwhelm the words.
My completed competition entry of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, from the original text by Robert Browning.
