Output details

Nocturnal and Diversions

The work is a set of five new movements of music for guitar and string orchestra designed to be interspersed between some of the movements of Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal for Solo Guitar. Compositional features of the Britten and John Downland’s ‘Come, heavy sleep’ (which is arranged by Britten at the end of the Nocturnal) generate the new music, which responds to Britten’s inverted variation form by starting with references to the two composers’ models and gradually moving musically away from them. The second and third new movements are microcosms of the overall variation from, using the source material of the Britten and Dowland respectively, as catalysts for new music. The fourth and fifth movements are more idiosyncratic. The former explores a modal vocabulary (again inspired by the Dowland song) and the final movement, split into two distinct sections, replaces Britten’s culminating Passacaglia with a formulaic guitar part set against more freely-composed string material. The work involved close collaboration with the choreographer Cameron McMillan, and discussions had a number of direct effects on the evolution of the score; these particularly affected the structure of the piece, as McMillan’s working method meant devising the dance after the score was finished, but then changing the position of movements and adding more movements of the Britten work than had original been planned, necessitating further revisions to maintain coherence.

Commissioned by Aldeburgh Music and The Royal Ballet Flanders. Première: 30 May 2013, Theater ‘t Ellandje Antwerpen: Chambre Orchestra Vlaanderen, Tom McKinney, guitar, Ben Pope, conductor. UK première: 20 June 2013, Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh: The Britten Sinfonia, Tom McKinney, guitar, Ben Pope, conductor. Subsequent performances, 31 May–2 June 2013 & 13–15June 2013 (five performances): Theater ‘t Ellandje Antwerpen, Belgium. 7–9 June 2013 (three performances), Vlaamse Opera, Gent. 21 June 2013, Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh.