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Tenebrae

Tenebrae was commissioned by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Sweden, premièred by them in 2010 and recorded in the days following the première and issued in 2013 by BIS Records on its second all-Pickard orchestral disc (BIS CD-1873). The work received its UK première in Cardiff in January 2013, by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in a performance broadcast on BBC Radio Three. The work has been shortlisted in the Orchestral category of the British Composer Awards (December, 2013)

In writing for an orchestra that had already performed three works of mine and recorded them all for CD, one research problem for Tenebrae was how best to create an extended work that highlighted the musical strengths of this particular group of players. I had observed the outstanding quality of the lower sections of the Norrköping orchestra, so resolved to ‘rebalance’ the traditional symphony orchestra, towards the lower register. This was achieved through the addition of low-pitched instruments to the normal line-up – alto flute, bass oboe, contrabass clarinet, two contrabassoons, two tubas – and by placing much of the material in lower instrumental registers (even for the higher-pitched instruments).

A second research question concerned how to sustain across a twenty-five minute span a different kind of musical discourse from that of my previous orchestral works, where developing the notion of ‘symphonic momentum’, derived from Beethoven/Nielsen/Simpson, had been a central preoccupation. Here, the point of musical departure is a fragment from a Gesualdo motet, whose ever-descending sequential harmonic movement – explored at every level, from detailed part-writing to over-arching structure – effectively precludes traditional symphonic ‘development’.