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No full textFor piano & string quartet, duration 2 minutes.
This piece was first performed on 5 October 2000 by the Sundial Piano Quartet, at the Wigmore Hall, London
Sistina
No full textFor organ, duration 6 minutes. This piece was first performed on 17 May 1999 by Nicholas O’Neil, at Hinde Street Church, London
Prussian blue
No full textQuintet for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass, duration 11 minutes. This piece was commissioned by IMS Prussia Cove for the 40th anniversary of Open Chamber Music, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
It was first performed on 1 October 2017 at St John's Church, Truro
Hibiki
No full textFor two solo voices, children's chorus and orchestra, duration 50 minutes. The texts used are The Love Suicides at Sonezaki by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite; Hashitte Iru by So Sakon, translated by Leith Morton; and Kira Kira Hikaru, translated by Mutsuko Erskine. This work was commissioned by Suntory Hall in Tokyo for its 30th anniversary and was premiered there on 12 November 2016 by Michaela Kaune and Mihoko Fujimura (soloists) with the Little Singers of Tokyo and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazushi Ono. An extract from this performance (from YouTube) is available on the video tab below.
The European premiere of Hibiki was given at the BBC Proms on 14 August 2017 by soloists Sally Matthews and Mihoko Fujimura, the Finchley Children's Music Group and New London Children's Choir, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazushi Ono
Il cane sordo
No full textFor soprano, piano, and flute-alto flute. This piece was premiered on 5 June 2021 in Genova with Duo Alterno and Sara Minelli
Lyra
No full textFor cello and orchestra, duration c.20 minutes.
Lyra was commissioned by the BBC as part of the composer’s residency at the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The composition of Lyra was supported by a residency at the Visby International Centre for Composers, Sweden. The first performance was given by Oliver Coates and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Jean-Michaël Lavoie at Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff on 8 September 2011 as part of the Vale of Glamorgan Festival.
The title Lyra refers to a constellation of stars, a bass viol from the seventeenth century and a class of Russian nuclear-powered submarines. It is also the name of the wild protagonist — a young girl who becomes caught up in a cosmic war — in His Dark Materials, a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman. These different elements influenced the music in various ways. There are three main types of material juxtaposed and intertwined throughout the whole work creating a single movement structure. The first type of material reflects the luminosity of stars and is characterised by high, rapid writing for upper woodwinds, strings and bright metallic percussion. The second type of material is song-like and was created using sonorities drawn from the particular tunings employed in lyra viol practice from the seventeenth century, whilst the third type of material is fast, sometimes violent and often low in register. Even though Lyra is cast in a single movement it is still possible to detect three broad sections plus a coda in the work. The first section opens with a fast, high and bright texture featuring the soloist, high woodwinds, percussion and divisi strings. The second section begins with a piccolo duet over a murmuring harp and string chord and leads into various melodic passages featuring the soloist, cor anglais and bassoon. A cadenza-like passage for the soloist and orchestral cellos follows. The third section begins with a brief, transformed return of the very opening material before launching into a pair of energetic orchestral tuttis. The coda features an extreme example of scordatura for the soloist who is required to de-tune the C-string down almost a full octave, as if crushed by the force of the material that has gone before.
A recording of this work is available on NMC here: https://nmc-recordings.myshopify.com/products/mark-bowden-sudden-ligh
Performing social relationships: the materialism of collective music-making
Get PDFThe great music sociologist, Christoper Small, coined the now ubiquitous neologism ‘musicking’ to describe ‘taking part, in any capacity, in a musical performance’, going on to propose that ‘The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies.’ (It is not hard to imagine extrapolating this to other arenas of performance – theatrical or ceremonial, for example). But what if those acts happened hundreds of years ago, and are only discernible today in the form of opaque images, fragmentary literary descriptions, or the occasional displaced domestic object? This paper takes examples of representations of informal collective music-making drawn from relatively marginal genres of evidence such as novels, friendship albums, emblem catalogues, frontispieces, and household objects. Taking up Christopher Small’s dictum always to begin by asking ‘What’s really going on here?' I attempt to read them both as records of musical practices (and thus what they might tell us about the materiality of early modern musicking) and also as metaphors that may refer to the deeper social meanings of the relationships they celebrate
Gore Point
No full textFor mezzo voice, Bb clarinet, and violin. Text by John North. Premiered by Suzie Purkis (mezzo), Jack McNeill (clarinet) and David Le Page (violin) as part of the Stranger Sounds concert series
Letters
No full textFor cello and piano. Premiered by Ella Rundle (cello) and Richard Uttley (piano) at the Stratford upon Avon Music Festival 2013