Output details

The Gleam of Hidden Skies : for tenor, horn and strings

This work was commissioned as a companion piece to Britten’s Serenade. It can be seen in the research context of my past work which has alluded to, or quoted from, the music of others. The particular challenge here, as I saw it, was to acknowledge an iconic work of the 20th century, while at the same time creating my own expressive orbit and distinctive sound-world, especially in the use of the horn.

Expressively my piece is rooted in the dusk and night of the Serenade, but swings back and forth, psychologically-speaking, between dark and light. The poems I set are, like Britten’s, all English; for his Tennyson, my Byron; we both set Blake. But then I come forward into the 20th century with Larkin, cummings and Rosenberg, the English-Jewish poet killed in World War 1 - though this last also refers to Owen in Britten’s War Requiem.

There are no direct quotations from the Britten in my work. But below its surface, there are various degrees of rhythmic and gestural ‘shadows’. Three examples: in my first song, as in Britten’s, there is extended play between 2 and 3 in the string accompaniment. But the difference in tempi, form and poetic urgency keep the songs far apart. In my setting of Blake’s A Poison Tree, the final triplet horn figure which rushes down into the

depths of the instrument is a reference to Britten’s similar gesture in his scherzo Ben Jonson song – but, again, they are worlds apart as to their expressive functions.

As for Britten’s natural horn harmonics, I take them up in my final cummings setting: first in connection with the word ‘tired’, but then in a song of infinity and timelessness - acknowledging their symbolism in Britten, but transmuted into my own.