Composing is my first love. It has never left me. However, despite committing myself to composition from my later school-age years to those of my period as an undergraduate, I found it, nevertheless, increasingly discouraging to face the musical establishment’s dissatisfaction with works even approximately written within a key (’tonal’ music). My style was broadly tonal, though I began to amalgamate it with atonal elements in my early 20s. The 1970s were a time when it was impossible to evade critical comment for having written even one tonal chord.
In the period through to 1978 I produced several pieces that were performed in public. These, and a number that were unperformed, I methodically gave opus numbers. Among the performed compositions were:
Sinfonietta, Op.7, premiered by the Sheffield Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Douglas Bostock, St. George’s Church, Sheffield, 26 May 1977;
Wind Octet, Op. 6, premiered by an ensemble (2 each of oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoons) comprising music students and professionals, conducted by me, University Drama Studio, Sheffield, 9 Feb. 1978. For the sheet music of this octet, see Downloads.
At the close of the initial period of my activity as a composer, just prior to my return to Sheffield University to commence work on my Ph.D, I wrote a short piece for several voices and mixed ensemble. The ensemble consisted of flute, oboe, bassoon, ’cello and harpsichord. I was asked to compose the piece by a lecturer at the university, but the passage of time is such that, I regret, I no longer remember that gentleman’s name. He suggested that I select a poem from several that he gave me, to set for voices and instruments. I chose ‘Autumn’, a single-stanza poem, by T. E. Hulme.
I was bemused by the request, though honoured by it and even rather flattered. It was no longer my intention by then to persevere with composing, having determined, instead, to put my efforts into musicology. I did not, therefore, give the piece an opus number, and though I still have the information as to when I finished composing it – it was 15 Aug. 1978 – I can only recall, of the first performance, which I myself conducted, that it was at a church (I do not remember which) in Sheffield, in the September (again, I did not record the exact date and do not recall it) of 1978. I do recall feeling particularly flattered that, in the audience at this performance, was our much beloved Senior Lecturer in Music, Dr. Roger Bullivant, who afterwards commented kindly on the piece to me.
There was then an extremely long hiatus. I stopped composing. Something utterly astonishing then happened. The seemingly unassailable prevalence of atonal style began to collapse. It seems that the ascendancy of minimalist works, which by their nature tend towards tonality, by such composers as Philip Glass and John Adams, helped make the edifice melt. Now, in the 21st century, we can write tonal music again.
I returned to composing. Among pieces that I have latterly composed are a Piano Quintet in D minor (of 2003; I now give completion dates rather than opus numbers to my pieces). This was dedicated to the ’cellist David Walser, who was one of my musical theory pupils in London. The first movement of this quintet was premiered by an ensemble based in the midlands, The Attenborough Piano Quintet, in St. Peter’s Church, Nottingham, on 28 Feb. 2009. I have also written for the unusual combination of four pianists on two pianos: for another local ensemble, the Derby Piano Quartet, I wrote a: ‘Threnody: Quartet for Two Pianos’ (2010), whose finale, entitled ‘Redemption’ they premiered at Derby Cathedral on 25 Jun. 2010. The threnody is special to me for two reasons: its very opening is adapted from the start of the last composition I wrote before entering into a long silence (‘Autumn’) and thus represents a tying-together of loose ends in my creative work. But much more importantly it is dedicated to the memory of my brother Joe who, in 2010, passed away to a much better place. The subject-matter of the composition is an elegy for the soldiers who fell in the First World War. The first movement is headed: ‘Lament: The Somme, 1916’ and this passes to a ‘Consolation’ (the second movement) before redemption is represented in the concluding, third movement of the work.
A work in which I have sought to find a particular creative resolution between atonality and tonality is ‘Symphonic Study for Strings: On Christ’s Crucifixion (2010)‘. The composition (my re-arrangement of my String Quartet in C major for a larger string ensemble) juxtaposes movements that depict Christ’s suffering (I, III and V) with ones that symbolise the mocking crowd (II and IV, a pair of scherzos). The prevailing style is atonal – unanchored to any sense of key and also very dissonant – but constantly aiming to return to a tonal style. That is, various passages intercede that do hold, briefly, a feel of a sustaining framework of key. The underlying meaning of the piece comes to the surface at its very close, for here tonality fully reasserts itself. In the closing measures of the Finale, as Christ approaches his physical demise, a section in the style of a hymn appears, bringing the re-establishment of key, namely C major. In the very final seconds of the piece, an exultation arises in the music, for Christ’s soul ascends and His task of redeeming mankind progresses. Atonality here represented a chaos that would have prevailed, but for the intercession of tonality as musical harbinger of hope. The primordial gives way to hope.
My piano composition ‘The Oak in Winter [2013]’ has been arranged for organ by Nigel Gotteri, and in that arrangement has been premiered by him, in a recital at the Parish Church, Chesterfield, St. Mary and All Saints (Chesterfield S40 1XJ) on 4 Oct. 2018. Nigel also performed his arrangement of the piece at his organ recitals at Leeds Minster (Leeds LS2 7DJ) on 9 Nov., and St. John The Baptist’s Church, Dronfield (S18 1QB) on 5 Dec., 2018.
‘Interlude for Strings [2018]’ was given its first public performance by The Helix Ensemble, Musical Director Fiona Love, at the Church of St. Mary The Virgin, Bottesford (NG13 0DA) on 14 Sept. 2019. I composed it in the centenary of the end of the First World War, and unconsciously evoked, with a mixture of modal and chromatic inflexions, the vocabulary of early twentieth-century English music. It turned out to be a piece very much in the ‘English style’. I dedicated the composition (see the Dedicatory Note in: Downloads) in the midst of the September 2019 prorogation crisis, to Mr. Speaker John Bercow. My single-movement Viola Sonata in F major [2010, revised 2019] was premiered by Pete Johnston, viola, and Abigail Johnson, piano, at St. John the Evangelist Church, Derby (DE1 3HZ) on 14 June 2022, as part of the concert programme of Derby Music Club.
In this sonata I have cast the viola in the role, as it were, of a pilgrim walking across a dystopian landscape, whose thoughts sadly engage with each broken feature of that environment. The piano draws the landscape, the viola reacts. The musical language balances atonality with glimpses of tonality. The sonata’s overall key, F major, just peeps through at its ending, like a glimmer of hope. A video of the premiere performance of the sonata can be accessed in Downloads.
A work that I composed for strings in 2021, named after the poet William Blake’s famous extolling of ‘England’s Mountains Green’ is now available in Downloads.
My hope is to continue both in musicology and in composition, in both of which fields I feel I have much yet to complete.