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Adopted Path for Chamber Orchestra

Nathan Gottschalk Memorial Commission from Greenwood Music Camp, USA. Published by Edition Peters, London: ii + 40 pp. Duration: 8 minutes. Premiere: Greenwood Music Camp, Massachusetts, USA, the Greenwood Orchestra conductor Benjamin Rouse, August 8, 2010. This work grew from research into the relationship between poets Robert Frost and Edward Thomas. The research methodology involved finding a musical analogy for Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, which was not (as is widely thought in America) inspired by the poet’s travels in New England, but rather by walks he took with Thomas in the UK during 1914. (See programme note in score). As a result Adopted Path begins with an introduction that offers a number of ideas for development, of which two, a melodic cello line and a trudging idea in the bassoons, emerge as alternatives. Eventually the bassoon idea provides the impetus for the main body of the piece, but in the brief coda at letter L, a solo violin offers three fragments of alternatives as to how the cello might have developed. Some ideas in Adopted Path were first explored in Elegy for solo cello (Edition Peters, London iv + 7pp. Duration: 9 minutes – see portfolio) such as the march-like material which begins the main body of the work at letter D. In Elegy, inspired by a visit to Edward Thomas’s war grave, this is presented in a ghostly manner that also anticipates Ghosts of Great Violence. Adopted Path was also designed to deal with the challenges of writing a youth orchestra piece in which the strings were stronger than the wind, and which contained a few exceptional violinists. The research behind Adopted Path was presented in two pre-concert talks given to accompany the two performances in the USA