Output details

Short Stories

Written for the Sheffield University Wind Orchestra.

This work was requested by Anthony Houghton for the Sheffield University Wind Orchestra (SUWO). The symphonic wind orchestra or wind band constitutes a rich instrumental resource for composers, although its close association with community music making in the United States has tended to inhibit the creation of innovative work for the medium, and – despite notable exceptions by Schoenberg and Hindemith – the general repertoire has not really developed far beyond suites of short, light movements and arrangements of popular lightweight material. Short Stories was an attempt to write a substantial contemporary work for wind orchestra of symphonic dimensions, taking into account the nature of the ensemble as a social institution, and in particular that of SUWO itself as a body of student performers, many of them not full-time music specialists.

The work concentrates primarily on the exploitation of instrumental colour and texture, with the orchestra approached as a community of interlocking ensembles. The instrumentation is specific about the precise number of players required (i.e. one per part), unlike many scores for the medium where the size of each section of the band may be unlimited. Each of the five movements of the work is progressively longer and musically more searching. The title refers to a technique used by the composer in the process of sketching out the work. This is related to the use of a storyboard in envisaging the appearance of a scene in a film before it is produced and shot. In a similar fashion sketches of entire movements as well as of instants ('stills') within them were used as a means of clarifying and defining the music as it was being worked upon. But the title is also useful as a way of indicating an approach the listener can adopt in the face of this music.