MAKING IT BETTER
BRITISH WIND MUSIC
1981-2008
A personal look at twenty-seven
years of repertoire development by
TIMOTHY REYNISH
… the more we encourage composers to
use the wind ensemble, the better it's
going to be, particularly with the generation
of wind players that’s out there now
Sir
Simon Rattle
President of BASBWE
All we can do is to make it better for
the next generations.
H Robert Reynolds
Professor Emeritus, University
of Michigan
More information about
commissions, publications and articles
available on
www.timreynish.com
..I am sure that our English
masters in Musick (either for Vocal or
Instrumental Musick) are not in Skill
and Judgement inferiour to any Foreigners
whatsoever...
John Playford
Introduction to Choice
Ayres & Songs, 1681
It was to be another
300 years before CBDNA, led by Frank Battisti
and Bill Johnson, organized the first
International Conference for Symphonic
Bands & Wind Ensembles in Manchester
at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Tim Reynish investigates the proud boast
of John Playford and its relevance to
today's international wind music scene.
WORLD WIND MUSIC
Every couple of years,
the Swiss conductor and pedagogue, Felix
Hauswirth, brings out his 1000 Selected
Works for Wind Orchestra and Wind Ensembles,
(published Ruh Music AG contact@ruh.ch)
a list which is personal but which gives
a splendid bird’s-eye view of international
repertoire from 1560 to the present day.
In the chronological list, there are no
British works apart from arrangements
of Byrd or Purcell in the first two pages,
which cover 1560-1906, a mere two hundred
pieces. The third page covers the period
1906 to 1935, and a massive 22% are British;
as the late Frederick Fennell pointed
out, it is on the works of Holst and Vaughan
Williams, premiered by the Royal Military
School of Music, Kneller Hall, between
1920 and 1924 that the developments of
the next seventy years of American repertoire
are based. It is easy to overlook The
Pageant of London (1911, da Capo),
Percy Fletcher’s great romantic overture
Vanity Fair, now in a fine new
edition from Boosey and Hawkes, and to
forget works such as Three Humoresques
(Boosey & Hawkes) by Walton O’Donnell.
For O’Donnell’s Wireless Military Band
the outstanding work was Holst’s Hammersmith
(Boosey & Hawkes), still a challenge
for conductor, players and audience. But
between 1935 and 1981, only a handful
of works, mainly by Gordon Jacob, appeared.
Welsh Airs and Dances (1975, Dennis
Wick) by Alun Hoddinott and Scottish
Dance Suite (1959, Chester) by Thea
Musgrave are unjustly neglected. Rodney
Bashford in Scotland and Harry Legge in
England commissioned a number of works
for the youth wind bands, some such as
the Variations on The wee Cooper of
Fife by Cedric Thorpe Davie, and
the Sinfonietta by Derek Bourgeois,
well worth exploring, but in 1943
the BBC sacked the Wireless Military Band,
and already the professional military
bands had long since turned their attention
back to ceremonial and entertainment.
2007 was of course the
centenary of the birth of Dame Elizabeth
Maconchy whose Music for Wind and Brass
(Music Sales) is one of the outstanding
works in the international repertoire,
and it also saw the 90th birthday
of John Gardner, whose English Dance
Suite (OUP) is a wonderful piece,
sadly neglected. This was written for
the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller
Hall, and the School celebrated the 150th
anniversary of its founding in 2007, with
a commission from Nigel Clarke, Fanfares
and Celebrations (2007, Studio).
BRITISH RENAISSANCE
After 1981, British wind
music begins to vie with American, and
the direct cause of this renaissance can
be found in Manchester. 1981 was the year
when the American organisation, the College
Band Directors National Association, led
by Frank Battisti and Bill Johnson, chose
the RNCM in Manchester for the first ever
International Conference of Symphonic
Bands and Wind Ensembles for Conductors,
Composers and Publishers. The range of
music and the standard of performance
of the American groups were inspiring
and led directly to the formation of BASBWE,
the British Association of Symphonic Bands
and Wind Ensembles, and its worldwide
big brother, WASBE. In the next decade
a new stimulus was provided by BASBWE,
through its annual Conferences, through
its Journal, which later became WINDS,
and through the Annual Boosey & Hawkes
Festival with which BASBWE has been closely
involved since its inception in 1985.
1981 CONFERENCE MUSIC
- BRITISH REPERTOIRE
For the 1981 Conference,
the RNCM commissioned Derek Bourgeois'
first major wind work, Symphony of
Winds (1980, HaFaBra), unjustly neglected
because of its alleged technical difficulties,
and a work which now is well worth restoring
to the repertoire, as standards of playing
continue to rise. The British Youth Wind
Orchestra, playing several of their commissions,
and the Surrey County Wind Orchestra,
represented the UK. The soloist in Stephen
Dodgson’s brilliant Capriccio Concertante
(Denis Wick) for solo clarinet and band
was the young virtuoso, Michael Collins.
DEREK BOURGEOIS
In Derek Bourgeois’ Symphony
of Winds, the scoring is brilliantly
effective, but it has been suggested by
American colleagues that the difficulties
for players are not equalled by the intellectual
demands. Bourgeois often views the Wind
Band almost as an extension of the brass
band, with massive doublings and a luxuriant
palette, brilliant virtuoso writing alternating
with romantic even sentimental passages.
His language is deliberately traditional,
though the relative naivety of some of
his music is seasoned with the unexpected
harmonic or rhythmic twist. Perhaps his
best known and most popular piece so far,
and easily the most economical, is the
little Serenade (1982, R Smith)
in 11/8, sometimes 13/8, an audience pleaser
that is a metric teaser for players and
conductors. A more recent work in this
genre has a typically punning title Metro
Gnome (HaFaBra 1999).
The influences in his
music include Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Ravel,
Walton, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Britten,
all assimilated into an extraordinarily
fluent technical language which has consciously
stepped away from attempting to vie with
the contemporary trends of the seventies
and eighties into a far more popular lingua
franca which owes much to the world of
the brass band. Here virtuosity and sentiment
go hand in had, and I find in some of
the later works that this juxtaposition,
which works for brass bands, jars when
transcribed for wind orchestra. The great
trombonist Christian Lindberg writes of
Derek: Bourgeois has not worried about
the historical necessities and rules,
which dictate the novelty of style regarded
as so important by some compositional
schools; he keeps instead to traditional
musical patterns.
Among his other works
is the traditional and rather sentimental
Bridge over the River Cam (1989,
G&M Brand), the very energetic Diversions
(1987, Vanderbeek & Imrie) an attractive
work, which is sadly neglected. Less inventive
are a Concerto for Brass Sextet
(1994, HaFaBra), and wind arrangements
of the Trombone Concerto (1989,
R Smith) and the Percussion Concerto,
(1997, G & M Brand), written for Evelyn
Glennie. In 1998 he contributed a moving
Northern Lament (G&M Brand)
to my birthday commissions for school
band, just a little too hard for most
schools perhaps, but again a work that
could be very useful for a more experienced
band.
In 1981 his Blitz
was the Test Piece for the National Brass
Band Finals, and this marked the beginnings
of a new wave of brass band composition,
embracing contemporary techniques and
introducing the conservative brass band
aficionados to more progressive music.
Many of these works have been transcribed
for wind orchestra, and these include
Wind Blitz (HaFaBra), virtuosic
and aggressive in style. In complete contrast
are the salon works such as Molesworth’s
Melody (2001, HaFaBra), while recently
he has written or rescored several epic
works, the 77 minute Symphony no 8, the
Mountains of Mallorca, (2002, HaFaBra),
the ravishing impressionistic Cotswold
Symphony, and three works written
in 2003, the Concerto for Alto Saxophone,
the Double Concerto for Trumpet and
Bass Trombone, and Mallorca: Symphonic
Fantasy on Traditional Mallorquin Songs.
One of his recent works, Symphony for
William, was written in six days in
July 2004 as part of my personal commissioning
project, and the following Autumn saw
yet another major celebratory work, Fribourg
– the old City. After a time as Director
of the National Youth Orchestra of Great
Britain, Bourgeois was for some years
Director of Music at St. Paul's School
for Girls, holding Holst's old post. Retirement
in Mallorca has renewed his enthusiasm
for the wind orchestra; all of his music
is published by Ha-Fa-Bra and his very
informative website is www.tramuntana.infoarta.com
His most recent work
is Band Land, a Young Person’s
Guide to the Wind Orchestra with a
text available in 10 languages. If you
investigate his file in Sibelius, you
will find that he has completed his 41st
Symphony for Orchestra, surpassing Mozart
he claims, since one of Mozart’s Symphonies
was written by someone else! His very
successful earlier Wine Symphony has
now been arranged for wind orchestra,
and like all of his current music is published
by HaFaBra.
BASBWE REVOLUTION
The two decades since
1981 have seen a revolution in wind music
in the UK. Old works have been restored
to the repertoire, new works have been
published and recorded, and the selective
survey of British wind orchestra and ensemble
literature compiled by Jonathan Good in
1997 and updated recently lists over 600
works currently available. In general
it was the initiative of BASBWE and the
Royal Northern College of Music, which
has created a new repertoire, no longer
based on suites of dances or folk songs,
nor dependant on arrangements and orchestral
transcriptions. These new works are largely
by composers with little or no wind band
background, who created new sounds and
sonorities. Nearly all of the works commissioned
by BASBWE and the RNCM have been published,
and many are now well established in the
international wind orchestra repertoire.
EDWARD GREGSON
Also played at the 1981
Conference was Edward Gregson'’s Metamorphoses
(1979, Novello) written for Goldsmiths
College where he was for many years a
professor. This remains one of his most
experimental works, making fine use of
simple aleatoric and electronic techniques
which challenge performers and intrigue
audiences, a first-rate introduction to
contemporary music. The Tuba Concerto
(1984, Novello) was originally written
for brass band, but is now firmly in the
international repertoire for tuba players
in orchestral, wind and brass band versions.
Festivo (1985, Novello) is a very
successful light overture, which combines
traditional band formulae with a Stravinsky-like
energy. His choral work Missa Brevis
Pacem (1988, Novello) for SSA choir,
treble and baritone soli and wind orchestra,
is a simple yet deeply felt and moving
setting of the mass, and the beautiful
Benedictus, with its treble solo,
deserves to be "top of the pops";
all these pieces are in a more populist
vein but none the less very effective.
Two significant works,
based on his music for Stratford-on-Avon
productions of the Wars of the Roses,
emerged in the nineties; The Sword
and the Crown (1991, Studio) is powerful,
as is its sequel The Kings go Forth
(1996, Studio), with its brilliant rock
parody of Sumer is a-cumin in.
Like Metamorphoses, Celebration
(1991, Maecenas), a tour de force,
was written for orchestral wind, commissioned
by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Gregson is currently
principal of the Royal Northern College
of Music, Manchester, due to retire in
2008; unfortunately, professorial duties,
or perhaps a lack of enthusiasm for the
"band" medium, have curtailed
Gregson’s involvement in the development
of the repertoire, and his only other
work so far is the unashamedly romantic
Piano Concerto, Homages, (1995,
Maecenas).
PHILIP SPARKE
Like Gregson, many composers,
among them Philip Wilby and Derek Bourgeois,
write for wind band in tandem with the
more commercial field of the brass band
with its great traditions of competition
and entertainment. The most successful
British composer in the two genres is
without doubt Philip Sparke, whose earlier
works for brass band such as Gaudium
(1973/1976 Boosey) and A Concert Prelude
(1979/85 G&M Brand) were later transcribed
successfully for wind orchestra. In an
interview which I undertook for WINDS,
Philip described himself modestly as "a
music-writer" rather than a composer,
but at his best, in works such as Orient
Express (1992, Studio) or the Sudler
Prize-winning Dance Movements (1995
Studio), his music has an infectious energy
which unfortunately for me lapses into
sentimentality in slower music, like so
much brass band repertoire. However, a
piece such as The Year of the Dragon
(1985, Studio) has proved a challenge
for wind and brass bands equally, Lindisfarne
Rhapsody (1999, Studio) is a rhapsodic
concerto for solo flute, a lyrical work
that avoids the sentimental, and other
works popular with school and amateur
bands include Concert Prelude (1979,
G&M Brand), Festival Overture
(1992, Studio), Land of the Long White
Cloud (1987 G&M Brand), two Sinfoniettas
(1990 & 1992, Studio), White Rose
Overture (1996, Studio), and Four
Norfolk Dances, designed as a tribute
to Malcolm Arnold and very much in the
spirit of his sets of dances. His Music
of the Spheres (2005) won the prestigious
NBA Revelli Competition in 2006. He is
now self-publishing with Anglo Music Press.
GUY
WOOLFENDEN
Two Manchester Conferences
followed, with first commissions in 1983
from Guy Woolfenden and Philip Wilby,
premiered by the RNCM Wind Orchestra.
Guy Woolfenden, composer, conductor, broadcaster
and formerly a hornplayer with Sadlers
Wells Opera, is perhaps the most successful
BASBWE commissioned composer, bringing
his experience of theatre to the medium;
he was for many years head of music at
the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon,
with scores for every Shakespeare play
to his credit. Two early BASBWE commissions,
Gallimaufry (1983) and Illyrian Dances
(1986) both draw on music he has written
for the Shakespeare canon; the language
is a pastiche of late English renaissance,
looking back to both 16th century and
the early 20th century, but with twists
in the metrical structure and a harmonic
piquancy which avoid the obvious.
More direct are Deo
Gracias (1985 G&M Brand) and S.P.Q.R.
(1988). For the 1991 International
Conference, he wrote a fine set of variations,
Mockbeggar Variations (1981). Other
pieces include Curtain Call (1997),
commissioned for performance at the 1997
WASBE Conference in Austria, French
Impressions (1998) written for the
Metropolitan Wind Symphony of Boston,
and Rondo Variations (1999) a movement
for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble. Most recent
pieces are Birthday Treat (1998),
Firedance, (2002), Celebration
(2003, Ariel) and Bohemian Dances,
which received its first performance in
St Paul, Minnesota on 6th May 2005. For
the WASBE Conference in Killarney in 2007,
he wrote a Divertimento, in three
movements, a wonderful addition to the
repertoire. Like Gregson, he has recorded
most of the works on professional disc
with the Royal Northern College of Music
Wind Orchestra; his wife under the name
Ariel publishes most of his music.
The works of Guy Woolfenden
are perhaps typical of this new wave of
music for wind orchestra, demonstrating
both charm and wit. I believe that it
is ignorance of the medium, which leads
to this repertoire being largely ignored.
Robert Maycock wrote of Woolfenden's Gallimaufry
in The Independent:
In so far as music criticism
deals seriously with radio at all, it
tends to concentrate on Radio 3, such
are the cultural blinkers most critics
wear. At the least, this means that good
things on the other networks get missed
- such as the Royal Northern College of
Music Wind Orchestra playing Guy Woolfenden
last Friday, again on Radio 2. If you're
in the new-music business and smirking,
ask yourself if typecasting someone as
a theatre composer isn't another case
of cultural blinkers ...... A piece like
Gallimaufry, with its witty ingenuities,
expert layout, and a tune that stays with
you as long as Carousel's, has
helped thousands of players to cut their
musical teeth and stirred thousands more
with the adventure of living music. Yet
how many "contemporary" specialists have
heard a note of it?
PHILIP WILBY
Philip Wilby also had
practical professional playing experience,
as a violinist at Covent Garden and in
the CBSO, followed by many years lecturing
at the University of Leeds. He brings
a more advanced harmonic language and
the occasional use of aleatoric techniques
to the medium. In Firestar (1983,
Chester/Music Sales), a virtuoso Scherzo
for orchestra, these elements are carefully
controlled. In the more ambitious Symphonia
Sacra, (1986, Chester), two groups
of percussion and brass typify the forces
of evil, with a fine disregard for the
conductor and the wind and horns, who
play Messiaen-like chords which eventually
overwhelm brass and percussion, finally
breaking up into folk tunes, before a
lone off-stage trumpeter is silenced by
the swish of waves from 6 suspended cymbals,
and the quiet breathing of the orchestra.
The music was chosen, played by musicians
from Kneller Hall, as the basis for a
moving television programme on Iona, one
of the main sources of its inspiration.
Easier is his imaginative
Catcher of Shadows (1989, Chester),
a superb piece for school band, bringing
alive the early days of photography; this
again introduces simple aleatoric elements.
For the 1993 Uster Festival in Switzerland,
he wrote Laudibus in Sanctis (1993,
Chester), specifically for amateur players.
Like Gregson in his Plantagenet music,
in these last three works he makes dramatic
use of players moving around the auditorium,
and this is carried further forward with
his most ambitious work, the Passion
for Our Times (1997, Maecenas), in
which players, singers, dancers and audience
ideally move from West to East, re-enacting
the drama.
Premiered on Easter Saturday
in Liverpool Cathedral, he describes it
as a Miracle Play for wind orchestra,
choir, narrator and dancers, providing
an extraordinary musical and religious
experience, combining the narrative of
the Passion with elements of the Eucharist.
His is an individual voice of great importance
in the brass and wind orchestra worlds.
Other works are Dawn
Flight, the Concertino Pastorale
for solo flute and wind ensemble (2001,
Maecenas), commissioned by James Croft
at Florida State University, and A
New World Dancing, commissioned for
a Millennium Festival BBC Prom in 2000,
a setting of a text by Archbishop Tutu,
performed by the National Youth Choir
and the National Youth Wind Orchestra.
Like Bourgeois, he is adept at transcribing
brass band idiom to wind orchestra, and
his works include a fine Euphonium
Concerto (1996 Studio), a trumpet
concerto entitled Concerto 1945
and a Percussion Concerto.
JOSEPH HOROVITZ
The Woolfenden and Wilby
BASBWE premières were followed
by Joseph Horovitz with Bacchus on
Blue Ridge (1983, Molenaar). Horovitz
brings to the wind band a keen ear for
sonorities, a central European charm and
wit, and an elegance of phrase, which
makes his music sometimes elusive in performance.
He is on record as longing for a definitive
performance of Wind Harp (1989,
Molenaar), like Ad Astra (1992,
Smith) a wonderfully restrained piece;
two other works pay homage to the world
of the rococo dance, Fête Galante
(R Smith) and Dance Suite (1992,
Molenaar). Conductors must bring to all
five major works a sensitive feel for
balance and restraint, a Viennese light
touch and a great sense of fun. For the
1999 BASBWE Conference he completed a
long-awaited wind orchestra version of
his Euphonium Concerto (Novello)
and there is now a version of his Tuba
Concerto.
BASBWE CONFERENCES
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING
NEW
The third BASBWE commission
was Arthur Butterworth's evocative tribute
to Sibelius, Tundra (1984, Vanderbeek).
Its restrained tones have led to undeserved
neglect, a fate also befalling his very
beautiful Wintermusic (1983, Molenaar),
and both works need to be re-assessed
and played.
One feature of BASBWE
Conferences has always been platform concerts
for both new and old works, which then
may be taken up and published. One such
work was by the late Buxton Orr, who conducted
an early Delegates Orchestra in his very
successful pastiche of 18th century popular
songs, John Gay Suite (1977, Novello),
resulting in publication nearly ten years
after composition. A work neglected for
even longer was, Holst’s Marching Song
(1930, Novello), known only in Eric Leidzen’s
inflated and transposed arrangement. Holst’s
original scoring was played in a performance
at the Manchester 1984 Conference and
soon afterwards was published by Novello.
DAVID BEDFORD AND THE
TINGLE FACTOR
In 1985, Conference moved
to Bristol; the BASBWE Commission was
David Bedford's Sea and Sky and Golden
Hill (1985, Novello/Music Sales),
with its evocative use of tuned wine glasses.
His scores show a fascination for unusual
soloists, piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet,
baritone saxophone; he was writing minimalist
scores before it was fashionable, and
his love of "the tingle-factor",
often caused by sharply contrasted overlapping
common chords piled into huge masses,
abruptly switching to ppp or to silence,
makes his work very dramatic, albeit needing
a large acoustic for full effect.
Bedford had been something
of an enfant terrible, but experiences
as associate visiting composer at Gordonstoun
School and as an arranger in the 1970’s
rock scene have tempered his early training
with Luigi Nono and the electronic studios
in Milan, and in Ronde for Isolde
(1985, Novello) and the Symphony No.
2 (1995, Novello) he has created two
fine works for schools to stand alongside
the best pieces by Connor, Ellerby, Sparke,
Woolfenden and Wilby. Praeludium
(1990, Novello) makes use of four antiphonal
groups drawn from the main band, which
remains on stage, while the BASBWE Trust
commission for the Leeds Festival is a
piano concertante work, Susato Variations
(1993, Novello) with orchestral wind accompaniment.
The most successful work internationally
is still Sun Paints Rainbows on the
Vast Waves (1982, Novello) written
for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music
Festival.
Thus within five years,
a small but significant original repertoire
was created largely on the initiative
of the RNCM and BASBWE, from composers
who were to continue writing for the next
decade. Alongside these continued the
work of proven writers in the educational
field such as Philip Sparke, Bruce Fraser
and Stuart Johnson, whose well-crafted
works, published by R. Smith (G &
M Brand) and Studio, fill a need in repertoire
for schools and amateur groups.
MICHAEL
BALL
For the 1987 WASBE Conference
in Boston, two British works were commissioned,
Richard Rodney Bennett's Morning Music
(1987. Novello) and Michael Ball's virtuoso
tribute to Italy, Omaggio (1987.
Novello). In the event, Michael Ball’s
piece was judged to be too hard by one
of the US top military band due to play
it and the world premiere was given at
the BASBWE Conference that Autumn in Manchester,
with the UK premiere of the Bennett in
a concert also featuring John Harle as
soloist in the Ingolf Dahl Saxophone
Concerto. Michael Ball has written
three less difficult works aimed at the
good school band, Chaucer’s Tunes
(1993, Novello), commissioned for Stockport
Grammar School, Introduction, Chaconne
and Chorale (1995, Maecenas) commissioned
by Hugh Craig and the Surrey County Youth
Wind Orchestras, and the very fine Saxophone
Concerto (1994, Maecenas) commissioned
for the Huddersfield BASBWE Conference
in 1994.
Another outstanding work,
unfortunately seldom performed, is his
brilliant Pageant (1995, Novello)
scored as a companion piece for the Stravinsky
Mass for choir, double reeds and
brass. His Three Processionals
(1998, Studio) is one of those rare works,
a successful, musical work at Grade 3
level, and more recently he has transcribed
his Cambrian Suite also for school
band, while his Euphonium Concerto
(2003), originally also for brass band,
was premiered in the wind version at the
Cheltenham International Festival in 2004.
WIND
ENSEMBLE CONCEPT
Many of the earliest
BASBWE-inspired works were scored with
large-scale forces in mind, the Symphonic
Wind Band, with its doubling of players
in flutes, clarinets and brass. However,
in 1952, the late Frederick Fennell had
founded his Eastman Wind Ensemble, in
which the concept of one player to a part
gave composers control at last over the
sonorities for which they were writing,
and in general the most significant repertoire
of the past forty years has been written
with solo players in mind.
The Wind Ensemble concept
of any ensemble up to about 45 solo players,
one to a part, can be adopted for most
wind works, and the clarity given even
to opaque and dense textures is welcome.
The scoring is in fact derived from an
enlarged symphony orchestra wind section
and is generally for Piccolo and two Flutes,
two Oboes and Cor Anglais, Eb Clarinet,
3 Bb Clarinets, Bass Clarinet, two Bassoons
and Contra Bassoon and a Saxophone quartet
of two Altos, Tenor and Baritone with
possible doublings on Percy Grainger's
beloved Soprano, in the brass, four Horns,
three or more Trumpets or Cornets, three
Trombones, one or two Tubas, with Timpani,
Percussion, Double Bass, Harp and Piano.
This rich palette of
colours has been superbly tapped by Richard
Rodney Bennett in his Morning Music
(1987, Novello), Four Seasons (1991,
Novello) and Trumpet Concerto (1993,
Novello).
SIR RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT
THE STYLISTIC MIDDLE
GROUND
These three works by
Bennett represent the composer at the
height of his powers and are in my opinion
amongst the most significant works for
wind ensemble of the end of the last century.
Bennett studied at the Royal Academy under
Lennox Berkeley and Howard Ferguson, and
in Paris with Pierre Boulez. His works
include symphonies, concertos, a vast
amount of chamber and vocal music, opera,
ballet and film and television scores,
ranging from the award winning Murder
on the Orient Express to the more
recent Four Weddings and a Funeral.
He has a naturally affinity for wind,
brass and percussion, an extraordinary
ear for sonorities allied with a lyricism
lacking in so many composers for the medium.
To be analytical, all three works are
in what Bennett refers to as ""more-or-less""
serial texture; all three have note series
which are tonal, based on closely related
intervals and harmonies
Susan Bradshaw writes:
No other composer has done more to
develop the stylistic middle ground of
20th Century music - an area widely ignored
throughout the 1950s and 1960s - or, incidentally,
to encourage its listeners.
The row which launches
Morning Music can be easily sung
by audience and ensemble with its diatonic
patterning of 4ths and 3rds, while the
row which is boldly stated as an introductory
cadenza in the Trumpet Concerto
turns out to be much the same tune as
Miles Davis' Maid of Cadiz; this
slow movement is a heartfelt Elegy
for Davis, the perfect cross-over
work, a bridge between Schoenberg and
contemporary jazz. Bennett's most recent
work for wind is Reflections on a Sixteenth
Century Tune (Novello, 1999); originally
scored for string orchestra, the composer
has transcribed it effortlessly for a
double wind quintet.
THE SECOND DECADE 1991
– 2001
CONSOLIDATION
& PUBLISHING INITIATIVES
By 1991 a new repertoire
of British wind music had been established
by BASBWE. At a College interview, a would-be
student responded in answer to a question
about the sort of music his school wind
orchestra played "Oh, we play the
usual classics, Holst and Woolfenden."
Happily for the movement, despite the
problems inherent in printing music, many
publishers responded to the new needs
of bands, and more recently new computer
technology has helped composers considerably.
With the introduction
of computerised music programmes like
Finale and Sibelius, publishing has undergone
a revolution, but even before these innovations,
new initiatives were launched by R. Smith,
(now G. and M. Brand), Studio Music and
Novello (now Music Sales); other series
from Chester and Schirmer were less successful,
and wind orchestra publishing by traditional
firms such as OUP and Boosey & Hawkes
continued fitfully, mainly in the USA,
since the UK market is limited. As with
brass bands, wind orchestras prefer to
purchase music rather than hiring, and
luckily not only were most of the new
commissions put on sale, but Studio Music
launched the old Chappell Journal as a
reprint series. More recently still, other
firms have come into the market, such
as Maecenas, Faber, Samuel King, Da Capo,
Bandleader, CMA and Denis Wick.
The last few years have
also seen an increase in self-publishing,
with composers such as the late Adrian
Cruft, Stephen Dodgson, Peter Graham,
Keith Amos and Bruce Fraser, building
considerable repertoire lists under their
own imprint. A number of commissions,
self-published in the seventies and eighties,
merit a more regular place in the repertoire.
Adrian Cruft was assiduous in his support
of the symphonic wind band, as is Stephen
Dodgson, formerly chairman of the National
Youth Wind Orchestra, whose The Eagle
(1976) and a very successful work for
solo clarinet and wind, Capriccio Concertante
(1984) are perhaps his most substantial
works. Many of his works are now published
by Denis Wick, who has also entered the
field with works by Alun Hoddinott and
a series of his own fine arrangements
of standard orchestral repertoire. Michael
Short, published by Bandleader, is another
composer, whose works such as Estonia
and Our Fighting Ships should reach
wider circulation.
WASBE/BASBWE CONFERENCE
1991
BASBWE’s first decade
culminated in the 1991 joint WASBE/BASBWE
Conference. Marred by the outbreak of
the Gulf War, which frightened off many
of the American bands, groups still came
from Europe, Japan, Australia and Texas,
and the repertoire of over 140 works ranged
through four centuries, from Gabrieli
and Schütz to world premieres. Berkshire
commissioned a sparkling new non-Shakespearean
work from Guy Woolfenden, Mockbeggar
Variations (1991, Ariel) and also
premiered an excellent Trumpet Concerto
(1991, Stormworld) by the Hungarian composer,
Istvan Lendvay.
Of other works commissioned
in connection with the 1991 Conference,
Canyons (1991, Novello) by John
McCabe, commissioned jointly by Eastman
and London’s Guildhall, is a striking
evocation of the Grand Canyon, certainly
accessible to a good youth band, while
Patterson’s The Mighty Voice, (1991,
Studio Music) written for Youth Bands,
should become equally successful now it
is revised. Bennett contributed The
Four Seasons (1991, Novello), premiered
at the Cheltenham Festival, and two large-scale
ensemble works received workshop performances.
Nicholas Maw’s American
Games (1991 Faber) was premiered the
following week at the BBC Proms, and won
the 1991 Sudler Award in Chicago. It is
an energetic virtuoso romp through American
life, with the razzmatazz of the marching
bands contrasted with the simple piety
of traditional American values. Equally
appealing was the new CBDNA Consortium
commission by Robin Holloway, Entrance;
Carousing; Embarcation (1991 Boosey
and Hawkes), presented in a workshop by
Jerry Junkin and the University of Texas
at Austin Wind Ensemble. This is a sprawling
Mahlerian epic, scored for a fairly normal
wind ensemble except for the clarinets,
of which 8 Bb are required, together with
2 bass, contra alto and contra bass.
TRENDS IN BRITISH MUSIC
Perhaps two strands can
be perceived in the "symphonic"
repertoire. On the one hand there are
works cast in a more populist mould, equally
suited to performance either with solo
players or by a larger, perhaps less experienced,
Symphonic Band. Some of these are pastiche,
Malcolm Binney’s Charivari (1981,
Maecenas), Martin Dalby’s A Plain Man’s
Hammer (1984, Novello), Joseph Horovitz’
Bacchus on Blue Ridge and Fête
Galante, Orr’s John Gay Suite,
Woolfenden’s Gallimaufry and Illyrian
Dances, Muldowney’s 1984 (ms)
and Dance Suite (1996, Ariel) generally
following European rather than American
models. On the other hand, composers developed
traditional forms and language, Dodgson’s
Concertante Capriccioso, Cruft’s
Overture Tamburlaine (1962, Joad
Press), Gregson’s Tuba Concerto
and Festivo, Iain Hamilton’s witty
Overture 1912 (1958, Presser),
and Patterson’s The Mighty Voice
(1991, Studio) but, it might be chauvinistically
claimed, often with a refreshing vigour
and spontaneity not always present in
some of the formulaic music of their American
contemporaries.
Meanwhile a new generation
of composers, emerged, writing Gebrauchsmusik
suitable for either the wind ensemble
concept or the symphonic, which, like
so much earlier British music, entertains
the audience while challenging the player,
whether conservatoire or professional,
student or amateur. Paul Hart has three
works full of brio and gusto in Journey
and Celebration (1989, R Smith), Cartoon
(1990, R Smith), and Circus Ring
(1995, G & M Brand). Nigel Hess has
responded to commissions from the National
Youth Wind Orchestra and others with five
works including East Coast Pictures
(1985, Faber), Global Variations
(1990, Faber) and Stephenson’s Rocket
(1992, Faber).
HUDDERSFIELD CONSORTIA
Typical of the emerging
younger group is Martin Ellerby, whose
Paris Sketches (1994, Maecenas),
a four-movement homage to Parisian composers
such as Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev,
Satie and Berlioz, was commissioned by
a consortium of schools put together by
Richard Jones for the 1994 Huddersfield
Conference, wonderfully scored filmic
music, premiered by the first, and last,
BASBWE Honours Band conducted by Clark
Rundell.
The other Huddersfield
commission was Gary Carpenter’s slightly
over scored rock-based Flying God Suite
(1994, Camden) published by another publishing
newcomer, Camden Music. Carpenter’s earlier
commission by the NYWOGB, Theatre Fountains,
(1991, Camden) is more successful and
should be revived; his Eine Kleine
Snookerspiel (Camden) is a brilliant
Harmonie spoof for wind octet. His most
recent work was written for the Sunderland
Festival of 1997, Sunderland Lasses,
Wearside Lads, again perhaps a little
heavy handed in its treatment of the material.
MARTIN ELLERBY
Ellerby’s earliest essay
for wind was the evocative Tuba Concerto
(1988, Maecenas). It was followed by Paris
Sketches, still his most popular work,
and Dona Nobis Pacem (1995, Maecenas)
a heartfelt elegy for the heroes of the
Second World War, premiered at Symphony
Hall, Birmingham. More ambitious is the
Symphony (1997, Studio), commissioned
for the 1997 BASBWE Conference, and a
wind version of his Euphonium Concerto
(1996, Studio), while his Venetian
Spells (1997 Studio) recalls the pastiche
qualities of Paris Sketches, evoking
the music of Gabrieli, Vivaldi and other
Italian masters with telling use of both
harp and harpsichord. New World Dances
(1998, Studio) is a transcription of a
brass band original, designed for a youth
band tour of USA and readily accessible.
More recently there seems to have been
a divergence between his more serious
works, Meditations and Via Crucis,
and the lighter side, which includes the
Clarinet Concerto and the educational
piece The Big Easy Suite. In 2005
he received a commission from Her Majesty’s
Band of the Coldstream Guards for a work
entitled The Cries of London. He
is now editor for Studio Music.
ADAM GORB
His former colleague
at London College of Music was Adam Gorb,
whose first wind ensemble work was the
exciting and exacting Metropolis
(1993, Maecenas), written for the Royal
Academy of Music Wind Orchestra; it won
the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize in 1984.
Since then he has written Bermuda Triangle
(1995, Maecenas), a Euphonium Concerto
(1997, Maecenas) and a brilliant "post-Bernstein"
Overture, Awayday, (1996, Maecenas).
His Yiddish Dances, (1998 Maecenas)
is a marvellous five-movement work based
on the Klezmer tradition, about Grade
4 but requiring an expert Eb player; his
most substantial work to date is a concerto
for percussion, written for Evelyn Glennie,
The Elements (1998, Maecenas),
premiered at the Bridgewater Hall Manchester
on 6th April 1998. Two more elusive works
tap a gentler sound-world, Ascent,
commissioned by Felix Hauswirth for the
lamented Uster Festival, and Towards
Nirvana, which begins as a hedonistic
whirl, reminiscent of the language of
Metropolis, but ends in a Buddhist trance
of chanting, recorders, repetitive motifs,
dying away to nothing. "Too long
and too quiet" was the criticism
levelled by one eminent wind orchestra
aficionado! Despite that, it won the award
from the British Academy of Composers
and Songwriters for the best wind work
of 2004.
He is an essentially
practical composer, and his works for
school band have a spontaneity and sensitivity
rare at this level. I especially enjoy
Bridgewater Breeze (Maecenas),
five good tunes with teasing quirks of
phrasing, orchestration and metre, and
Candelight Procession (G&M
Brand), both at about Grade 3 level.
He is now Head of Composition
and Contemporary Performance at the Royal
Northern College of Music, but wears his
learning lightly as demonstrated by a
number of charming pieces at Grade 2/3
level. Gorb has often nailed his colours
to the mast over "light" music.
The hilarious trombone concerto, Downtown
Diversions (2001, Maecenas) demonstrates
the ease with which he skates near the
thin edge of popular cliché without
ever falling into that easiest of ruts.
In his most recent work he returns to
the populist mode of Yiddish Dances;
Dances from Crete, (2003, Maecenas)
is a four movement rumbustious suite of
dances in which vulgar high-spirits and
virtuosity are juxtaposed with deeply
felt tragic lyricism. His most recent
works are the virtuoso Adrenaline City
(2007, Studio) written for a consortium
of American army bands, and the much simpler
Safari and Sunrise (2007, Maecenas)
written for the biennial band contest
in Singapore, together with a work for
singers, brass and organ, Scribblings
on a Blank Wall.
MALCOLM BINNEY &
MAECENAS
A number of other composers
are writing for Maecenas, notably Malcolm
Binney, its publisher and a conductor.
Brilliantly scored, full of wit and vigour,
works such as Charivari (1981,
Maecenas), Four Character Studies
(1988, Maecenas) and Saturnalia
(1992, Maecenas) are fun to play and to
listen to. Emerald Breeze (1994,
Maecenas) is a miniature Straussian tone-poem
of some power, Brasser (1997) a
rumbustious Overture and Civitas
(1997) is a more serious three movement
work, reflecting the vigour, courage and
rewards of northern life in the Industrial
Revolution.
The inspiration behind
the Maecenas catalogue was Giles Easterbrook,
who was responsible also for the development
of the Novello Wind Series in the 80’s.
The Series includes established masterpieces
by Respighi and Saint-Saens, virtuoso
works such as Roger Marsh’s Heathcote’s
Inferno (1996) and Judith Bingham’s
Three American Icons (1997), with
movements dedicated to Marilyn Monroe,
Lee Harvey Oswald and others. Other contributing
composers are Gareth Wood and Geoffrey
Poole, both vastly experienced.
Many Maecenas composers
have had a specific brief to write easy
music in a contemporary idiom which gives
players a musical challenge while providing
them and their audiences with an emotional
experience similar to that derived by
their colleagues from playing standard
orchestral repertoire. Such a work is
Bill Connor’s Tails aus dem Voods Viennoise
(1992, Maecenas) a masterpiece for Grade
3-4 players, Mahlerian in its sweep and
impact. Adam Gorb’s Bridgewater Breeze
(1997) is a re-scoring of his Suite
for Wind, five very attractive tuneful
movements at Grade 3 level. Gareth Wood
is another composer with a flair for the
good tune and attractive scoring, shown
in Three Mexican Pictures (1992
Maecenas), A Wiltshire Symphony
(1997 Maecenas) or recently in The
Cauldron (2003, Maecenas). Malcolm
Binney’s latest initiative is to invite
Adam Gorb, Fergal Carroll and Gareth Woods
to write works at about Grade 2 level,
with carefully selected parameters of
ranges, keys and difficulty, published
as the Genesis Series.
TODAY’S DILEMMA - WE
CAN’T UNPICK THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
For the more "serious"
composers who have responded to commissions,
Robin Holloway perhaps sums up the present
state of a great deal of British music
of today when he writes:
I am trying to write
music, which, though conversant with most
of the revolutionary technical innovations
of the last 80 years or so, and by no
means turning its back on them, nonetheless
keeps a continuity of language and expressive
intention with the classics and romantics
of the past.
Composer, Diana Burrell,
spoke of her perception of the job of
a composer:
Try and find a language
which doesn’t disregard everything which
has happened in the twentieth century,
that does acknowledge Stravinsky and Schoenberg
and Boulez, while being simple enough
to work for the concert hall, or church,
or for young people - the wider community
in some way, but which acknowledges that
this is where we are - we can’t go back.
We can’t unpick the twentieth century.
IMPORTANT STATEMENTS
The commissioning programme
of the last ten years of the 20th
century deliberately encouraged leading
British composers who might subscribe
to this creed to write for wind. One of
the strongest works was a commission for
Glasgow from the Scottish composer, James
Macmillan, whose Sowetan Spring
(1990, Boosey) has been recorded professionally
by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
but has received relatively few performances.
Similar neglect has befallen other more
"serious" works, such as John
Casken’s Distant Variations for Saxophone
Quartet and Wind (1997, Schott, Anthony
Gilbert’s Dream Carousels (1989,
Schott), Edward Harper’s Double Variations
for oboe, bassoon and ensemble (1989,
OUP) and Thea Musgrave’s Journey through
a Japanese Landscape (1993/Novello).
a Marimba Concerto, dedicated to Evelyn
Glennie. Almost more exciting, in the
struggle to legitimise the medium, is
the involvement of professional orchestras
in commissioning composers for their wind,
brass and percussion section. Orchestras
such as the Liverpool Philharmonic with
Gregson’s Celebration (1991, Maecenas),
The London Symphony and Michael Tilson
Thomas with Quatrain (1989, Faber)
by Colin Matthews, and the BBC Symphony
with Birtwistle’s Panic (1995,
Booseys) have all added major works to
the professional repertoire. Two other
works rarely performed are Robin Holloway’s
Entrance; Carousing; Embarcation
(1997, Boosey) and Michael Tippett's Triumph
(Schott), both commissioned by American
Universities. Together with Sallinen’s
Palace Rhapsody (1997), the
three works by Richard Rodney Bennett
and Irwin Bazelon’s Midnight Music
(1991, Novello), these represent a body
of music for wind ensemble, which can
be considered an important statement by
leading British publishers and composers.
SIR
MICHAEL TIPPETT
2 January 1905 – 8 January
1998
TRIUMPH
It was typical of Michael
Tippett, the doyen of British composers,
to have responded enthusiastically at
the age of eighty-seven to a wind ensemble
commission from an American Consortium
led by Frank Battisti. Triumph,
(1992, Schott), based on Part II of his
great choral work, The Mask of Time,
was described by his close colleague
and collaborator Merion Bowen, as a Paraphrase
after the manner of Liszt. Tippett
also sanctioned use of the first movement
of his Concerto for Orchestra to
be played as a separate wind ensemble
piece, entitled Mosaic (1963, Schott),
a virtuosic showpiece for the fine wind
ensemble.
THE PROFESSIONAL SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA & WIND ENSEMBLE
Despite the energy in
commissioning and the virtuosity of performance
of our major wind ensembles and orchestras,
the movement is essentially amateur. A
new work will receive multiple performances
if, to echo Sir Simon Rattle, it does
not "frighten the horses". Despite
the pressures of box-office, the professional
symphony orchestras are far more imaginative
in their treatment of a new work. For
the Millennium, the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra celebrated with a commission
from Magnus Lindberg. Gran Duo
(2000, Boosey & Hawkes) has had before
2005 over forty performances from Symphony
Orchestras worldwide, though very few
wind ensembles essayed it. When Sir Simon
took over as musical director of the Berlin
Philharmonic, he programmed Gran Duo
in the first season, together with another
Rattle commission, Heiner Goebbel’s extraordinary
Aus einem Tagebuch (From a Diary),
for wind, brass, percussion, double basses
and sampler, and he then toured it across
the USA.
PROFESSIONAL RECORDINGS
A further crucial element
in the development of wind music in UK
and elsewhere has been the enormous growth
of availability of professionally produced
compact discs. Geoffrey Brand and Stan
Kitchen have both made recordings of their
publications using professional players
from the London free-lance scene and bands
from the military, while the Royal Northern
College of Music has recorded wind works
of Richard Rodney Bennett, David Bedford,
Edward Gregson and Guy Woolfenden for
Doyen, works by Ellerby, Gorb, Poole and
Clarke for Serendipity, now transferred
to Klavier. Their two Grainger discs in
the Chandos complete Grainger series met
with critical acclaim, and have led to
recordings of the works of Holst and Vaughan
Williams, of German, French, Russian and
Nordic classics, and most recently of
concert dance music.
CBDNA COMMISSIONING CONSORTIA
The setting up of international
and national commissioning consortia is
a welcome development at university, professional
and at school level; here perhaps WASBE
has a growing role to play. A collaboration
between BASBWE, the RNCM and CBDNA resulted
in a commission from the distinguished
Finnish composer, Aulis Sallinen (born
1930) for the 1997 Cheltenham International
festival, The Palace Rhapsody,
(1997, Novello/Music Sales), and first
performances were given in USA, Finland,
Sweden and Norway. This is an elusive
work, based on the composer’s opera The
Palace, itself drawn from a book about
Haille Selassie with elements of Die
Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, often simple
and heart rending, frequently ironic and
teasing. A recording is now available
on 5600 – MCD while a professional CD
is imminent in a Sallinen series from
Ondine. A welcome move towards international
commissioning consortia at school level
began in Yorkshire with Richard Jones,
who set up commissions from Adam Gorb,
his Euphonium Concerto, and from
New Zealander Christopher Marshall, Aue,
with funding from and premières
in high schools and colleges in UK, USA,
Australia and Canada.
BASBWE EDUCATIONAL TRUST
A vital component in
the development of commissioning is the
work of the BASBWE Educational Trust under
Charles Hine; in 1993 he set up the first
Commissioning Consortium with the Trust
partnered by British conservatoires and
universities. The work was the marimba
concerto Journey through a Japanese
Landscape (1994, Novello) from Thea
Musgrave, and other works have followed
from Robert Saxton whose Ring, Time
(1994, Chester) is partially inspired
by the music of Tippett, and Dominic Muldowney,
with Dance Suite (1996, Ariel).
More recent works have been written by
John Woolrich, Elena Firsova and Ilona
Sekacs. Help has also been given to the
Leeds Festival for commissions from David
Bedford Susato Variations (1993,
Novello) and Alan Bullard’s Heritage
(1993, Colne).
Angus Duke, writing in
the British Music Society Journal, reckoned
that his first BASBWE Conference was a
revelation. There are still composers
who are conserving and rejuvenating the
music of uplifting melody, springing rhythms,
strength and joy.
The 1996 Conference gave
a survey of fourteen years of BASBWE Commissioning
policy. As Angus Duke reports that there
were inevitably some "duds", longueurs
and "heavy" pieces, but most of the items
performed, I at least want to hear again.
It seems as if the medium itself induces
a spring in the step, and a sense of robust
appreciation of life such as we have seldom
heard since the VW and Holst wind band
suites.
It is imperative that
as many bands and orchestras as possible
commission works at all levels on a regular
basis, and play them regularly. For the
1997 BASBWE Conference at Canterbury,
Brendon le Page encouraged this with a
series of high-profile premieres. Perhaps
the outstanding premiere was A Lindisfarne
Rhapsody (1997, Studio) for Flute
and Wind Orchestra, commissioned by Kenneth
Bell, principal flute of the Central Band
of the RAF in memory and celebration of
his parents. The RAF programme also included
two striking new pieces, David Bedford's
Canons and Cadenzas (1997, G &
M Brand) commissioned by Frederick Fennell
for the Kosei Orchestra, and a commission
from Philip Sparke by the United States
Air Force Band, Dance Movements
(1996, Studio), which later in the year
won the Sudler Award in Chicago.
Other works premiered
at Canterbury include Gaudeamus
(1997, Bandleader) by Michael Short, Symphony
for Winds (1997, Studio) by Martin
Ellerby, Abigail’s Video Diary
(1997) by Robert Godman and Prayer
and Eastern Dance (1997) by Duncan
Stubbs, written with the intention of
being playable by the average community/school
band while providing interesting rhythmic
demands for more advanced players.
In 1998 I commissioned
for the Manchester BASBWE Conference a
series of easier works at Grade 3 &
4 from Michael Ball, Martin Ellerby, Tim
Ewers, Edward Gregson, Adam Gorb, Philip
Wilby, Guy Woolfenden and others; this
is the real challenge for composers, to
write works which do not patronise school
bands or less gifted amateurs, and which
are musically interesting and technically
not too difficult. With less money available
from the Arts Council and regional associations,
we have turned increasingly in recent
years towards the idea of consortia, with
the exciting development that a work can
then be assured of more than one premiere.
EDWIN ROXBURGH
Geoffrey Reed and the
Sefton Music Service commissioned one
such splendid work in Edwin Roxburgh's
Time's Harvest (2001 Maecenas)
a work written for the technical requirements
of High School Band, but with the musical
demands of a commission for the London
Sinfonietta. Roxburgh’s work is included
in volume 3 of my international Repertoire
series, unfortunately now withdrawn, along
with important works by Sallinen, Casken
and Holloway mentioned above, and Judith
Bingham’s heartfelt Bright Spirit
(2002 Maecenas). The young Edwin Roxburgh
was described by Nadia Boulanger as the
new Stravinsky, but I think that a career
as a composer was too narrow for him,
he is a fine professional oboist, was
a teacher at the Royal College of Music
where he for many years conducted the
contemporary group, and he brings these
skills to his composition. He has recently
written two works as part of my commissioning
series. An Elegy for Ur (2006,
Maecenas) is a heartfelt plea for sanity
in the Middle East, scored for solo oboe
and orchestral wind and brass ; Ur of
the Chaldees is the 6000 year old cradle
of civilisation, now despoiled by the
invading forces and the home of a Burger
King and a Pizza Hut. It was awarded 1st
Prize in the British Composers Awards
in November 2007. Aeolian Carillons
is a brilliant short work of a more optimistic
character, premiered at BASBWE in Glasgow
in 2007.
JUDITH BINGHAM
One of the first of my
commissions in the current series in memory
of our third son was Bright Spirit.
This is an elegy without the sentimentality
that often clouds such pieces, premiered
and co-commissioned by Baylor University
in Texas Her first work for wind ensemble
was Three American Icons 1997,
Maecenas), a kind of French Suite with
a Rondeau for Marilyn Monroe, and
graphic depiction of the murder of Lee
Harvey Oswald and of the infamous Grassy
Knoll.
THE NEW MILLENNIUM -
BASBWE/RNCM INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS
In 2001, my connection
with the RNCM was severed, and my colleague
Clark Rundell took over the artistic direction
of the annual International Festival and
BASBWE Conference. To chart the development
of British wind music of the past four
years, it is convenient to trace the programming
under Clark. In 2002, in his first message
to the delegates, Clark encouraged everyone
to look out for new works by Tom Moss,
Steve McNeff, Cecilia McDowell, Robert
Hinchliffe, Kit Turnbull, Paul Hart, Darrol
Barry, Bruce Fraser, Tim Garland, Torstein
Aagaard-Nilsen, Jukka-Pekka Lehto, Fergal
Carroll, Andy Scott, David Bedford, Stephen
Montague, Joseph Horovitz, Mark Slater,
Jonathan Booty, Ken Hesketh, Martin Ellerby,
Nigel Clarke, John Reeman, Derek Bourgeois,
Gareth Wood and Dave Smith, an extraordinary
range of twenty-five new works. However,
with the absence of recordings, it is
difficult to get an idea of the quality
of any of the music not published.
Luckily, Brendon Le Page
reviewed the conference for WINDS and
found it a mixed experience. He enthused
about Sallinen’s brooding Chorali
(though I much prefer the irony and crazy
mix of styles of the same composer’s Palace
Rhapsody), he enjoyed Jack Stamp’s
Copland-esque Four Maryland Songs,
Wilby’s Catcher of Shadows, Paul
Hart’s "dreamy, meandering"
Sunrise for solo horn, McNeff’s
Ghosts (which he felt needed pictures
to make its full impact) and Wasteland
Wind Music II as well as the wind
version of Derek Bourgeois’ Blitz
and Fergal Carroll’s Winter Dances,
with its "Riverdance" style
finale, attractive and sufficiently new-sounding
to be given more performances. From the
RAF Central Band he enjoyed the virtuosity
of Martin Ellerby’s Euphonium Concerto
and he thought that Kenneth Hesketh’s
A Festive Overture and Philip Sparke’s
Four Norfolk Dances deserved further
hearings.
KENNETH HESKETH &
STEPHEN MCNEFF
Two composers with distinctive
voices have emerged in the past few years
and both are making waves in the world
of "real" music. Currently (2008)
Stephen McNeff is composer in residence
with the Bournemouth Symphony, Kenneth
Hesketh with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Orchestra. Kenneth Hesketh at first wrote
under a pseudonym, preferring to keep
his wind music and his "serious" music
separate. His Masque (2001 Faber)
is an energetic overture, full of good
tunes and exciting scoring, while an earlier
work, Danseries, (2000 Faber) is
a four-movement work derived from Playford's
Dancing Masters Tunes of the 17th century.
Diaghilev Dances (2003 Faber) is
a wonderful homage to the impressionistic
ballets of the early 20th century, early
Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel, marvellously
scored with great solo parts especially
for subsidiary woodwind instruments. His
Clouds of Unknowing (2004, Schotts)
was premiered by the Royal College of
Music in 2005; it is a marvellously scored
work, with demanding parts for tuned percussion,
piano, celesta and harp, a rich soundworld
unique in the wind ensemble medium. Three
other works emerged during 2004, all published
by Faber; Internal Ride was commissioned
by the University of St. Thomas, Whirligigg
and a Flute Concerto; his most
recent work is Vranjanka which
was premiered by the Guildhall School
of Music and Drama at the RNCM 2005 Conference.
A brooding incisive introduction leads
into an exciting Balkan Dance mainly in
7/8, with rewarding parts for everyone,
as in all of his music.
Stephen McNeff comes
to the wind band from a predominantly
theatrical background, and has written
three works for the RNCM, Wasteland
Music I (2000), Wasteland Music
II (2001) and Ghosts (2001),
all published by Maecenas, and all quirky,
fun to play and to listen to. Ghosts
is a kind of Enigma Variations
for wind ensemble, in that it is a set
of variations each with a ghost story
as a title.
Ghosts 2001
Wasteland Wind
Music 1 2000
Wasteland Wind
Music 11 2001
Bucintoro 2003
Moving Parts 2003
Venice, the Winged
Lion 2004
Clarinet Concerto 2005
Image in Stone
2007
Published by Maecenas
|
The added advantage is
that you can play as many or as few of
the movements as you like. There are also
two shorter, one movement works, Rant
and Moving Parts, and The
Winged Lion, a Venice fantasy which
- far from being a travelogue - plays
on the darker side of the watery city
in its five movements with titles like
Carnevale and Bocca di
Leone. In 2005 he wrote a
Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Orchestra
(commissioned by a consortium of bands
for Linda Merrick) which was premiered
in London, Warrington and Finland. He
is currently composer in association with
the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; his
most recent wind work is a song cycle
for mezzo soprano and wind, Image in
Stone, which was premiered by the
Irish Youth Wind Ensemble in summer 2007,
a four movement song-cycle for of touching
simplicity and poignancy.
COMMUNITY WIND PROGRAMMES
AT THEIR BEST
It is satisfying to find
RNCM alumni from the last two decades
now out there influencing programming
in school and community bands. Tim Redmond
has programmed Bennett’s Morning Music
in a couple of symphony orchestra concerts,
while in 2003, two other influential conductors
brought interesting programmes to conference.
Keiron Anderson’s Yorkshire Wind Orchestra
gave a programme of which any community
orchestra would be proud, Phil Littlemore’s
extremely effective version of Jonathan
Dove’s Ringing Isle (Faber), Philip
Wilby’s Dawn Flight (G&M Brand),
Judith Bingham’s tricky Three American
Icons (Maecenas) and Nigel Clarke’s
clarinet concerto Battles and Chants
(Studio). Mark Heron’s programme with
Lancashire Symphonic Wind Orchestra was
perhaps more international and even more
intriguing, starting
with the two little pieces by Scarlatti
arranged Shostakovich (Sikorski), ending
with the Martinů Cello
Concerto, with an extraordinarily
evocative work in the middle, Magnum
Ignotum by Kancheli, a montage of
bells and Russian Orthodox chant with
wind ensemble. In 2003 also, Birmingham
Conservatoire under Guy Woolfenden and
Eric Hinton brought a fascinating programme
of British music; Guy’s own Celebration
opened energetically and cheerfully,
and introduced Martin Ellerby’s Meditation,
a more introspective serious work than
we are used to hearing from this composer.
Based on The Seven Last Words,
Ellerby creates some dramatic effects
and singing lines, as ever beautifully
scored. Philip Wilby’s Trumpet Concerto
is more acerbic in its wit and brilliance,
a very useful addition to the repertoire
for this instrument.
PANIC SCANDAL
The 2003 Conference RNCM
Concert conducted by Clark Rundell and
Frank Battisti was more international,
with two works commissioned by the BBC
for its own Symphony Orchestra, one commissioned
by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, one
by the San Francisco Symphony and one
to celebrate Frank Battisti’s 70th birthday.
The concert began with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s
A Quick Blast, (Schott) an acerbic
exciting commission for the Cheltenham
Festival of 2000, it ended with the scandalous
commission for the 1995 Last Night of
the Proms, Panic by Harrison Birtwistle
(Boosey & Hawkes) for solo saxophone
and kit percussion, receiving here a performance
marked with much greater clarity than
its premiere in that cavernous Royal Albert
Hall. One work new for UK audiences was
the award-winning Towards Nirvana
(Maecenas) of Adam Gorb which won the
British Composers’ Award in 2005.
Perhaps the 2004 BASBWE
Conference did not have quite the excitement
of some past occasions, not too many special
commissions or major world premieres.
However, there were a few sound works
by old and new composers. It was good
to hear Michael Ball’s voice again in
A Cambrian Suite (Studio), an arrangement
of a slightly old-fashioned brass band
fantasy on Welsh tunes, and also good
to hear a couple of movements from Ernest
Tomlinson’s Suite of English Dances,
(Novello/Studio) arranged by the composer
from the orchestral version, six thumping
good settings of great tunes from the
17th century. There were a number of new
works from experienced pens or computers;
among these were Peter Graham’s Call
of the Cossacks (Gramercy), Nigel
Clarke’s Mata Hari (Studio) and
his tour de force for Euphonium City
in the Sea, (Studio) while Philip
Sparke has added a Clarinet Concerto
(Anglo) to his sensitive Flute Concerto,
Lindisfarne Rhapsody.
Among the newer voices,
the Irish composer Fergal Carroll, whose
Winter Dances (2002, Maecenas)
had been very successful as an amateur
band commission, achieved in his sensitive
Song of Lir (2004, Maecenas) what
is really difficult, a major extended
7 minute tone poem for Grade 3 band. Unfortunately
another major work for school band by
David Smith could not be performed, but
his Fractures (2002, Maecenas)
was a very useful addition to the school
band repertoire. Stephen McNeff was represented
by Venice, the Winged Lion, (2004,
Maecenas), another fine tone poem by this
exciting composer. A major work for schools
work by an under-rated European composer,
Marco Pütz, received its UK premiere
at the Conference; Dance Sequence
(2003, Maecenas) was commissioned by a
WASBE consortium set up by Richard Jones
of Yorkshire and Marc Crompton of Vancouver.
The extraordinary growth of repertoire
at all levels in United Kingdom in the
past two decades is due only partly to
the lead taken by the Royal Northern College
of Music and BASBWE. As in Europe, America
and the Far East, many conductors are
actively engaged in commissioning music
of integrity, but such is the profession
that news of such works gets easily buried,
unless the work is clearly commercial
- we need to correspond through newsletters
and the internet. One major work was premiered
in March 2004, Rainland, by Joseph
Phibbs; a work of 30 minutes involving
over 1,600 students, it received not a
mention in any press, while his 10-minute
orchestral piece for the BBC Proms in
September 2004 met with critical acclaim.
BEWARE THE ARMED MAN
It was unfortunate that
a performance of Gorb’s hilarious latest
work, Dances from Crete, was cancelled,
but another of my commissions for WASBE,
L’Homme Armé, was played.
Both works are potentially major additions
to the repertoire, since both are packed
with emotion, variety, drama, humour,
contrast, with great parts for everyone,
good for audience and players .
L’Homme Armé
(Maecenas) by New Zealander Christopher
Marshall is a set of variations on the
old mediaeval tune, loosely patterned
on the Symphonic Variations of
Dvořák.
With a Maori war song, a funeral march,
a Mahlerian Ländler, jazz and pop influences
and a brief prologue and epilogue of sirens,
penned under the shadow of the Iraq war,
the work has enormous strength and integrity.
Marshall’s first wind work was
the beautiful but elusive Aue,
(2002, Maecenas) an Ivesian miniature
based on the songs and sounds of Samoa,
aimed at school bands but demanding the
control and confidence of more mature
groups, well worth exploring if you are
seeking a short restrained tone-poem.
In 2006, Chris Marshall responded to another
commission with the very beautiful Resonance
(2006 Maecenas), a montage of forest sounds,
culminating in a missionary hymn tune
with variations which dissolves into birdsong,
as the whole wind orchestra gently whistles.
In 2005 he responded
to a commission for a choral work from
AMIS, Association for Music in International
Schools; U Trau, a work for choir
and a double wind orchestra of moderate
ability, is described as a romantic
setting of a simple text contemplating
an ideal future world. The text is
secular and international in character.
It is in Niuspi, a language with a vocabulary
derived mainly from Indo-European languages
and with a grammar which in some aspects
resembles Chinese. He also comments: Spatial
separation of bands desirable but not
essential. Only moderate difficulty for
all concerned. His most recent work
is Renascence, a large scale romantic
piano concerto with wind ensemble accompaniment.
All we can do is to make
it better for the next generations.
H Robert Reynolds
Since 2000 the pace in
the UK of commissioning has slowed somewhat,
and there has been a certain air of "dumbing
down" as the charge of elitism raised
its head yet again in the BASBWE Journal
and in the WASBE minutes. I wrote ironically
about my own feelings on "elitism"
in an issue of Winds in early 2003:
It was good to see that
the old BASBWE rows have still not subsided,
and that the critics of "elitist"
music are still writing. I am not repentant
in the slightest – some of the scores
I have commissioned could well be called
elitist, Judith Bingham’s Three American
Icons (1997, Maecenas), John Casken’s
Distant Variations (1997, Schotts),
Tony Gilbert’s Dream Carousels
(1989, Schotts), many are aimed at students
and amateurs. Mozart was accused of writing
too many notes, but he seems to have outlasted
his less fecund colleagues!
MUSIC FOR SCHOOL AND
AMATEUR BANDS
I wonder, too, whether
band directors complaining about elitism
have ever looked at Adam Gorb’s Bridgewater
Breeze (2003, Maecenas), five stunning
little movements at about Grade 3, with
a Merry-go-round and a Hoe Down,
fun for all, or have they explored Michael
Ball’s Three Processionals, Derek
Bourgeois’ Northern Lament, Malcolm
Binney’s Timpanaglia or Guy Woolfenden’s
Birthday Treat, all at about Grade
¾, written for school and community bands
to celebrate my 60th birthday.
Have they tried through Stephen McNeff’s
Ghosts, (2002, Maecenas) a piece
almost 20 minutes long, but with licence
for the conductor to choose which movements
(s) he wants to play, dependant on the
difficulty and the calibre of the ensemble.
Then there is Philip Wilby’s powerful
Passion for our Time, (1997, Maecenas)
written for school band with choir and
dancers and narrator. Or have they given
their Grade 4 students the extraordinary
Mahlerian experience of playing Bill Connor’s
Tales aus dem Voods Viennoise (Maecenas)?
PINK PANTHER MEETS THE
WIZARD OF OZ
Paul Patterson’s great
setting of Roald Dahl’s Little Red
Riding Hood for narrator and band
is harder to play, but certainly not elitist,
nor is Gorb’s Yiddish Dances or
Awayday. If being non-elitist means
conducting endless performances of Pink
Panther meets the Wizard of Oz or
Phantom of the Opera, then give
me elitism any day, as long as it entertains,
it packs an emotional punch, it makes
me laugh or weep, scared, whatever! David
Bedford once wrote in WINDS of the "tingle
factor," the hairs standing up on
your spine in a Hitchcock thriller, a
Spielberg horror, the entry of the Commendatore
in the last act of Don Giovanni,
the production of the head of John the
Baptist in Salome, the climax of
a Mahler Symphony, those fortissimo chords
in David’s Sun Paints Rainbows over
the Vast Waves which dissolve onto
a molto pianissimo, an effect for
which you need the Royal Albert Hall or
a similar vast acoustic. Really that’s
is what BASBWE, its big brother WASBE,
and the commissions should be all about,
creating a repertoire at all levels of
great music, music which gives performers
and audience an emotional experience.
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
The heady excitement
of the eighties and nineties and the creation
of good and sometimes great music at all
levels has given way to a cut back of
interest in conference and in new repertoire,
probably much to do with the changing
attitudes now prevalent in our schools
towards out of school activities, and
the cuts in budgets for creative music.
The Conference of 2005 will be the last
for a time at the Royal Northern College
of Music, and although musically strong,
it was poorly attended; the only new piece
was Kenneth Hesketh’s Vranjanka, though
John Harle and Rob Buckland were soloists
with Chethams School in Andy Scott’s Concerto
for Two Saxophones, Dark Rain, a
striking and energetic work which
was to win the British Composers’ Award
later that year. 2006 saw the first regional
conferences, held in London hosted by
the Guildhall and Birmingham, hosted by
the Birmingham Conservatoire, and no new
music emerged.
2007 was something of
a vintage year after the relative drought;
a return to Glasgow for BASBWE resulted
in a number of fine performances of new
works, some of which were repeated a week
later in Killarney at the WASBE Conference,
while British music was strongly featured
in the WASBE Germany Conference held in
Stuttgart in March.
IRISH YOUTH WIND ENSEMBLE
AT BASBWE & WASBE
Inspired by the work
of BASBWE in the early eighties, James
Cavanagh founded the IYWE in 1985 with
Colonel Fred O’Callaghan, and has been
conductor for the last twenty two years,
with a clear vision of developing programmes
of the best possible music. For his final
concerts, Cavanagh shared the conducting
once again with me, and the programmes
were typically challenging. Both summer
programmes featured trumpet soloists,
John Wallace in Glasgow with the world
public premiere of the Pütz Trumpet
Concerto, and Mark O’Keefe in Killarney
with the Lendvay Concerto, premiered at
WASBE in Manchester 1991. Both concerts
began with an amusing Irish traditional
piece, Potter’s Finnegan’s Wake
and ended with Nigel Clarke’s Samurai,
and both concerts included
Vranjanka and the world premieres
of Prelude and Toccata by John
Kinsella and the song cycle Image in
Stone by Stephen McNeff. The Easter
course also paid homage to the Anglo-Irish
composer, Elizabeth Maconchy with her
Music for Wind and Brass as well
as including Gorb’s Dances from Crete.
COMPOSERS IN RESIDENCE
In Glasgow, BASBWE recaptured
much of the excitement of earlier times;
Philip Sparke, Guy Woolfenden, James MacMillan,
Rory Boyle, Eddie McGuire, Raymond Head,
Stephen McNeff, Martin Ellerby, Christopher
Noble, Oliver Searle and Emily Howard
were all present, and there were two composers
featured "in residence", Marco
Pütz and Edwin Roxburgh. There were
several new works from Pütz, and
from Edwin Roxburgh his brilliant Aeolian
Carillons. Especially exciting was
the world premiere of a quintet by James
MacMillan, conducted by the composer.
WASBE IN IRELAND
Three groups from UK
played in WASBE, each bringing relatively
new pieces. Chethams School Wind Ensemble
gave a startlingly exciting account of
Andy Scott’s Concerto Dark Rain,
and joined with local choirs for a moving
performance of Joseph Phibb’s Rain
Land, a choral work on a large scale,
conceived for the Albert Hall. Joseph
Phibbs was also featured by the National
Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain in
an extraordinarily ambitious programme
of British works, carried off completely
professionally by an orchestra with average
age of 17. Hesketh’s elusive impressionistic
Diaghilev Dances were a warm up
for Philip Grange’s clarinet concerto
Sheng Sheng Bu Shi, an avant garde
work played here brilliantly. The second
half ended with Omaggio of Michael
Ball and included the world premiere of
Joseph Phibb’s The Spiralling Night.
What a programme to show of British
players and composers. We were also lucky
enough to hear Ball’s Pageant in
Killarney Cathedral in an extra concert.
After Chethams and the
NYWEGB with their carefully chosen programmes
each of four works, the Birmingham Symphonic
Winds took us back to the wind band as
entertainment with twelve pieces including
works by Jonathan Dove, Kit Turnbull,
Fergall Carroll, Kenneth Hesketh and Martin
Ellerby. I came away with the strong feeling
that the two most substantial works were
by Guy Woolfenden, a first-rate performance
of Gallimaufry which he premiered
at BASBWE in 1983, and the world premiere
of his latest work, Divertimento for
Band, a three movement work which
breaks new ground in the first movement
with some tonal acerbities unusual in
his music, which has a truly beautiful
slow movement and a finale well up to
his best music, an excellent addition
to the repertoire.
WOOLFENDEN
IN WACO
H Robert Reynolds said
to me back in 1982 when I visited Ann
Arbor on a Churchill Fellowship: All
we can do is to make it better for the
next generation. The job is only partially
done, and I hope that the commissioning
will continue, introducing new composers
to the medium, and hence to new audiences.
It has certainly been a great experience
in recent years to have the opportunity
to conduct works, which I helped to create,
Bennett in Boston, Casken in Croatia,
L’Homme Armé in Louisville,
Marshall in Manchester, Sallinen in South
Kensington, Samurai in Singapore, Woolfenden
and Wilby in Waco.
The glory of the wind
band/wind ensemble is its breadth and
variety; the repertoire covers educational
music for school students, Gebrauchsmusik
for ceremonial and entertainment, for
amateur and professional wind bands, and
also so-called art or serious
music. Much of the band repertoire
which is regularly performed is essentially
commercial, and is promoted with all the
skills of commerce; it is not necessarily
the worse for that, but a great deal of
the significant music of our time does
not "sell" commercially. Let
us not confuse the "business"
of music with the "art" of music.
Frederick Fennell once
underlined our personal responsibility
in selecting repertoire and teaching our
players:
We must learn to teach
music - not band, not orchestra, not chorus,
but music itself ... Choosing music is
the single most important thing a band
director can do, and is the only thing
a band director can do alone, made more
important because of the sub-standard
repertoire continuously being published.
So many publishers in the business today
are printers who don't care about quality,
but only about what will sell. We must
not allow them to give the band a bad
reputation nor to make our decisions for
us, since the music we choose today can
affect students for ever.
Frederick Fennell
SWEETNESS AND PURITY
OF LULLABIES
In a great edition of
the WASBE Journal edited by David Whitwell,
Warren Benson wrote
… I wish I could hear
more wind conductors and instrumental
teachers using better and larger vocabularies
that relate to beauty, aesthetics, to
charm, to gentleness, strength and power
without rancour or anger, to useful tonal
vibrance, live sound, to grace of movement,
to stillness, to fervour, to the depth
of great age the exultation of great happiness,
the feel of millennia, the sweetness and
purity of lullabies, the precision of
fine watches, the reach into time-space
of great love and respect, the care of
phrasing, the delicacy of balance, the
ease of warmth, the resonance of history,
the susurrus of kind weight of togetherness
and the rising spirit of creating something,
bringing something to life from cold print,
living music, moving music.
Percy Grainger wrote:
Possibilities of the
Concert Wind Band from the Standpoint
of a Modern Composer 1918
No doubt there are
many phases of musical emotion that the
wind band is not so fitted to portray
as is the symphony orchestra, but on the
other hand it is quite evident that in
certain realms of musical expressiveness
the wind band has no rival.
Gunther Schuller in 1981
in a famous address to the Conference
of College Band Directors National Association,
urged the delegates to look outside academe
to commission composers:
There are too many fine
and/or famous composers that have eluded
your grasp thus far. You need more of
that kind of international world calibre
amongst the composers in your repertory
before that world will begin to take you
seriously, before a critic from the New
York Times or The New Yorker will look
in on what you’re doing and look in on
festivals such as this. And you must more
aggressively pursue that establishment
world, with its critics and taste-makers,
its foundations and other benefactors,
its managers, and its musical leaders.
You must reach out now beyond your own
seemingly large but actually small world.
For they will not come to you; you must
go to them. Mostly they don’t know you
exist.
The medium has a number
of problems inherent in the fact that
we are for the most part bound up with
amateur music or educational, whether
at primary, secondary or tertiary levels.
We rarely attract serious critical attention,
we tend to play safe in our choice of
repertoire, our placing of commissions,
and we tend to compromise in our programming.
There is no need to do this any more,
since there is now a huge range of good
music, sometimes great, for our players.
CREATING A REPERTOIRE
RNCM COMMISSIONS &
PREMIERES
1983 - 2002
Back in 1981 at the first
International Conference, Donald Hunsberger,
then Conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble,
gave an important paper on repertoire,
covering about seventy seminal works of
the repertoire, with a top twenty, essential
for any library and sequence of concerts.
At the Royal Northern College of Music,
we performed every one of his recommended
list, and then set out to create out own
national repertoire by seeking out neglected
works and by commissioning composers new
to the medium. Between 1983 and 2002,
over sixty works new works were created,
either commissioned for the wind orchestra
of the Royal Northern College of Music,
premiered by the orchestra, or commissioned
as part of a consortium, which included
the College. Most have been published,
many recorded, and this pioneer work has
been continued in the series commissioned
by my wife and myself in memory of our
third son, William. These are listed in
a second appendix.
APPENDIX 1
Ball, Michael
|
Omaggio
|
Novello
|
1987
|
17.00
|
Ball, Michael
|
Saxophone Concerto
|
Maecenas
|
1984
|
18.00
|
Ball, Michael
|
Three Processionals
|
Studio
|
1998
|
5.00
|
Bazelon, Irwin
|
Midnight Music
|
Novello
|
1991
|
20.00
|
Bedford, David
|
Praeludium
|
Novello
|
1990
|
6.00
|
Bennett, Richard Rodney
|
Morning Music
|
Novello
|
1987
|
17.00
|
Bennett, Richard Rodney
|
The Four Seasons
|
Novello
|
1991
|
19.00
|
Bennett, Richard Rodney
|
Trumpet Concerto
|
Novello
|
1993
|
20.00
|
Bingham, Judith
|
Three American Icons
|
Maecenas
|
1997
|
18.00
|
Bingham, Judith
|
Bright Spirit
|
Maecenas
|
2002
|
7.00
|
Binney, Malcolm
|
Timpanaglia
|
Maecenas
|
1998
|
12.00
|
Bourgeois, Derek
|
Symphony of Winds
|
G&M Brand
|
1981
|
14.00
|
Bourgeois, Derek
|
Northern Lament
|
G&M Brand
|
1998
|
4.00
|
Bourgeois, Derek
|
Overture Green Dragon
|
Hafabra
|
arr 2001
|
6.00
|
Butler, Martin
|
Still Breathing
|
OUP
|
1992
|
12.00
|
Butterworth, Arthur
|
Tundra
|
Vanderbeek
|
1984
|
19.00
|
Carpenter, Gary
|
Sunderland Lasses, Wearside Lads
|
Camden
|
1997
|
12.00
|
Casken, John
|
Distant Variations
|
Schott
|
1997
|
12.00
|
Clarke, Nigel
|
Samurai
|
Maecenas
|
1995
|
14.00
|
Colgrass, Michael
|
Dream Dancing
|
AMP
|
2001
|
18.00
|
Ellerby, Martin
|
New World Dances
|
Studio
|
1998
|
8.00
|
Ellerby, Martin
|
Venetian Spells
|
Studio
|
1997
|
12.00
|
Ellis, David
|
Dance Rhapsody
|
Mss
|
1997
|
8.00
|
Ellis, David
|
Fantasia
|
Mss
|
1996
|
15.00
|
Ewers, Timothy
|
Concerto Grosso
|
Maecenas
|
1998
|
10.00
|
Firsova, Elena
|
Captivity
|
Mss
|
1999
|
8.00
|
Gilbert, Anthony
|
Dream Carousels
|
Schott
|
1988
|
15.00
|
Gilbert, Anthony
|
Up-Rising
|
York Uni
|
2002
|
12.00
|
Glasser, Stanley
|
Lament for a Princess
|
Woza
|
1997
|
8.00
|
Gorb, Adam
|
Awayday
|
Maecenas
|
1996
|
6.00
|
Gorb, Adam
|
Bridgewater Breeze
|
Maecenas
|
1998
|
10.00
|
Gorb, Adam
|
Elements (Perc concerto)
|
Maecenas
|
1997
|
27.30
|
Gorb, Adam
|
Yiddish Dances
|
Maecenas
|
1998
|
12.00
|
Gorb, Adam
|
Candlelight Procession
|
G&M Brand
|
2001
|
4.00
|
Gorb, Adam
|
Symphony no 1 in C
|
Maecenas
|
2001
|
17.00
|
Harper, Edward
|
Double Variations
|
OUP
|
1989
|
14.00
|
Hayden, Sam
|
After the Event
|
Mss
|
1996
|
26.00
|
Hesketh, Kenneth
|
Danceries
|
Faber
|
2000
|
12.00
|
Holloway, Robin
|
Entrance; Carousing & Embarcation
|
Boosey
|
1991
|
25.00
|
Johnson, Julian
|
Breathing Space
|
Maecenas
|
1995
|
8.00
|
Longstaff, Edward
|
Changing Scenes
|
Novello
|
1998
|
6.00
|
Marsh, Roger
|
Heathcote’s Inferno
|
Maecenas
|
1996
|
17.00
|
Marshall, Christopher
|
Aue
|
Maecenas
|
2001
|
7.00
|
Matthews, Colin
|
Toccata Meccanica
|
Faber
|
1984/92
|
10.00
|
Maw, Nicholas
|
American Games
|
Faber
|
1991
|
23.00
|
McNeff, Stephen
|
Ghosts
|
Maecenas
|
2001
|
20.00
|
McNeff, Stephen
|
Wasteland Music
|
Maecenas
|
2000
|
15.00
|
McNeff, Stephen
|
Wasteland Music 2
|
Maecenas
|
2001
|
12.00
|
Muldowney, Dominic
|
Dance Movements
|
Ariel
|
1996
|
17.00
|
Musgrave, Thea
|
Journey through a Japanese Landscape
|
Novello
|
1994
|
23.00
|
Patterson, Paul
|
Little Red Riding Hood
|
Weinberger
|
2001
|
25.00
|
Poole, Geoffrey
|
Sailing with Archangels
|
Maecenas
|
1992
|
17.00
|
Poole, Geoffrey
|
Tides Turning
|
Maecenas
|
1992
|
5.00
|
Sallinen, Aulis
|
A Palace Rhapsody
|
Novello
|
1997
|
16.00
|
Taylor, Matthew
|
Blasket Dances
|
Maecenas
|
1992
|
12.00
|
Tippett, Michael
|
Triumph
|
Schott
|
1992
|
15.00
|
Tower, Joan
|
Fascinatin’ Ribbons
|
AMP
|
2001
|
8.00
|
Wilby, Philip
|
Firestar
|
Chester
|
1983
|
12.00
|
Wilby, Philip
|
Laudibus in Sanctis
|
Chester
|
1993
|
8.00
|
Wilby, Philip
|
A Passion for our Time
|
Maecenas
|
1997
|
25.00
|
Wilby, Philip
|
And I look around the Cross
|
Chester
|
1985
|
10.00
|
Woolfenden, Guy
|
Gallimaufry
|
Ariel
|
1983
|
12.00
|
Woolfenden, Guy
|
Illyrian Dances
|
Ariel
|
1986
|
10.00
|
Woolfenden, Guy
|
Mockbeggar Variations
|
Ariel
|
1991
|
10.00
|
Woolfenden, Guy
|
Birthday Treat
|
Ariel
|
1998
|
3.00
|
APPENDIX 2
COMPOSER
|
WORK
|
DATE
|
PREMIERE
|
PUBLISHER
|
TIME
|
Berkeley, Michael
|
Slow Dawn
|
2005
|
Guildhall SMD
|
OUP
|
10.16
|
Bingham, Judith
|
Bright Spirit
|
2002
|
Baylor University
|
Maecenas
|
7.21
|
Bourgeois, Derek
|
Symphony for William
|
2004
|
Tennessee Tech
|
HaFaBra
|
18.44
|
Carroll, Fergal
|
Song of Lir
|
2004
|
Royal Marines
|
Maecenas
|
6.06
|
Carroll, Fergal
|
Blackwater
|
2006
|
Ithaca College
|
Maecenas
|
7.18
|
Gorb, Adam
|
Dances from Crete
|
2003
|
RCM
|
Maecenas
|
10.05
|
Hesketh, Kenneth
|
The Cloud of Unknowing
|
2004
|
RCM
|
Schott
|
13.55
|
Hesketh, Kenneth
|
Vranjanka
|
2005
|
Guildhall SMD
|
Faber
|
8.16
|
Horne, David
|
Waves and Refrains
|
2005
|
RNCM
|
Boosey
|
15.28
|
Jackson, Timothy
|
Passacaglia
|
2006
|
BASBWE 2007
|
Maecenas
|
|
Marshall, Christopher
|
Resonance
|
2006
|
Ithaca College
|
Maecenas
|
12.58
|
Marshall, Christopher
|
L’Homme Armé
|
2007
|
Guildhall SMD
|
Maecenas
|
17.11
|
McNeff, Stephen
|
Image in Stone
|
2007
|
Irish Youth Wind
|
Maecenas
|
|
Painter, Christopher
|
The Broken Sea
|
2006
|
Tba
|
Maecenas
|
|
Poole, Geoffrey
|
Unfinished Symphony
|
2004
|
Tba
|
Maecenas
|
|
Pütz, Marco
|
Trumpet Concerto
|
2007
|
Luxembourg Military
|
Bronsheim
|
18.49
|
Roxburgh, Edwin
|
Elegy for Ur
|
2006
|
RNCM
|
Maecenas
|
13.57
|
Roxburgh, Edwin
|
Aeolian Carillons
|
2007
|
BASBWE 2007
|
Maecenas
|
|
Taylor, Matthew
|
Blasket Dances
|
2002
|
RNCM
|
Maecenas
|
14.01
|
|