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Repercussions for Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Maecenas Music, 2008

The title of this piece reflects a structural concern that each movement is a consequence of what has happened previously. There is a particular exploration throughout the work of the varied uses of repetitious material. The scoring highlights the sonic extremes of how far the symphonic wind ensemble is capable of being pushed, from the brutish impersonality of the close of the finale where a massed tutti gets swamped by the percussion, to the transparent delicacy and intimate range of colours characterised in the ‘static’ third movement. The obsessiveness of the first movement stems from the repetition of mock Mediaeval fauxbourdon motives that clash against each other, before the shock of a deliberately crude ‘Hollywood’ interruption at bar 268, which is in turn superseded by four tambourines, highlighting a precarious relationship between ‘music’ and ‘noise’. The move to more fragile, contrapuntal chamber textures for the third movement reflects my interest in the wind ensemble as that of many intimate, interweaving timbres, with an emphasis on perspective as personified by the freely rhapsodic off-stage saxophone. This contrasts with so much over-scored two dimensional ‘melody and accompaniment’ scoring that pervades the medium, although I have referred to this particular method of writing in an ironic context for the brutal militaristic close of the work.

World premiere: Kappa Kappa and Tau Sigma Conference, Pikes Peak Center, Colorado Springs, National Intercollegiate Band, July 19 2011. Further performances: University of Colorado, February 7 2012; Virginia State University, February 15 2012; Illinois State University, March 4 2012; Texas Tech University, March 6 2012; National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain, April 7 2012 (UK Premiere); Royal Northern College of Music, June 28 2012; University of Georgia, September 11 2012. Recording: National Intercollegiate Band, Conductor Craig Kirchoff. Mark Custom 9659-MCD.