Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Royal Northern College of Music
Farewell for Symphonic Wind Orchestra. Maecenas Music, 2011
The research questions pursued in this work involve testing the limits of wind orchestra genre (a medium traditionally associated with the showy, feel-good and light-hearted) and to explore it as a vehicle for complex and intensely personal expression. A related concern was to break other conventional parameters of the genre by re-considering the ‘wind band’ in terms of its constituent instruments’ characteristics beyond their normal roles within the ensemble. Here the composer treats the conventional wind orchestra as a genuine chamber group, exploiting the many contrasting colours and timbres of individual woodwind, brass and percussion instruments, and pitting them against each other. The ensemble in Farewell is physically split up into two groups of players; more aggressive and volatile material is played on instruments with more strident colours, including clarinets, saxophones, muted brass and un-pitched percussion, led by a rising melody on a solo clarinet. The second group of instruments features the cooler timbres of muted horns, celeste and woodwind soli, with material that is less harmonically abrasive and rhythmically more regular. Each sonic group (on either side of the listener) states its material separately and as the work develops, thematic elements from the groups intermingle. Two notes, C and F sharp are left out, and only appear towards the close in muted horns, where they take over the entire ensemble to form a ‘drone’ over which the solo clarinet and oboe play lamenting phrases far removed from the bombastic endings normally expected in wind ensemble repertoire. Commissioned by The National Youth Wind Ensemble of Wales.
Première: Cardiff University, April 5 2008. Recording: RNCM Wind Orchestra, conductor Timothy Reynish. NMCD154. US premiere: Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music Wind Ensemble, November 30, 2010. Taiwan première: Jiayi City, Singapore Philharmonic Winds, July 5 2011 (World Association for Bands and Ensembles conference, featured work).
