April 11, 2023
Eclipses
electronic fixed media (stereo)

Eclipses

The composition and performance of this piece was made possible thanks to generous financial support from the Vaughan Williams Foundation (https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/funding/postgraduate-bursaries/).

Performed by Ark Ensemble (conducted by Rob Buckland). Recorded at Royal Northern College of Music, 1st December 2023.

This piece attempts to suggest the weirdly specific erotic energy that outsizes the purpose and traditional function of a DIY store. As is the case with some of my other music, this piece is more generally an exploration of the relationship between people, environments and objects, and the way in which people can use environments and objects to make sense of themselves and each other.

A customer idly daydreams about screwdrivers, power drills and allen keys; concurrently, the shop itself attempts to dream a landscape outside itself that it has never seen, and tries (and fails) to imagine a role for itself beyond utility.

Hand Tools, for Ess

Made using my voice, a beat that sounds a bit like rain on a tin roof, and some sea sounds and crackles. 

The poem featured is Sea Fever by John Masefield, recorded from the British Library listening archives. There's a whole range of poetry and sounds you can listen to at these little booths there, a great place to find some inspiration. 

Hope you enjoy the tune!

Suns Yellow Fades Shine

A floaty ambient song named after The Wave Organ, a wave activated acoustic installation on a jetty in the San Francisco Bay. These guys Peter Richards and George Gonzalez made a sculpture from 25 organ pipes that makes different sounds when waves crash into them, and when water runs through. I went for a walk with a friend on the beach nearby and you could hear the pipes in the distance.

Wave Organ

As part of mjf hothouse 2023/24 Ben Cottrell participated in a number of 'flings'; short-lived collaborations with various musicians of different disciplines/genres. I was very excited when Ben asked me to work on a fling with him. 

We both work at Leeds Conservatoire; one afternoon we set up some microphones in practice room 303, and made sounds with everything we could find. Plant pots, chairs, windows, bins... we recorded everything except for the musical instruments, which were left untouched. 

This is my fling, and it is a piece about how I hated practising scales and arpeggios when I was a student. In writing the piece, the number 303 became important; it is 3:03 long and 303 beats per minute. If you listen to it 303 times, I will be very happy! 

Using the same recordings, Ben has made his own fling.

303 Flings (For Beginners)

For Baritone, Orchestra, Chorus, and semi-chorus. Commissioned by the Manchester International Festival. First performed July 4th, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 2015. Juanjo Mena conductor, Mark Stone Baritone, Manchester Chamber choir, EXAUDI 

The Immortal (Extract)

This recording demonstrates what any obsessive knows: how many memories can be held within a single moment on one track from one record, and how much influence that can have on one’s own musical identity. The piece acts as a meta-text, revealing various layers to the act of listening.  

Graham and I met aged 18, in the first few days of us both beginning a music degree at the University of Manchester. There’s a chance we were both even geekier then than we are now. We haven’t really stopped talking about music since. It turns out that I’m quite rude when I’m excitable - sorry to interrupt you so much, mate.

Duration of full piece: 12 mins 30 seconds.

"We are listening to two guys talking about something that they love as they listen to it, and we therefore become rapidly complicit in their act of listening. We are simultaneously listening to them, and listening at one remove to what they are listening to. But of course our entire listening experience is also framed by the fact that this is a piece, a work. We are sitting in a performance space listening to a piece of soundscape, sonic art, electroacoustic composition, documentary—which of these is as yet unclear. There’s a sense in which, initially, we are simultaneously in the place of the performance, yet unsure of where we are, or of the status or mode of our listening, without this being in any sense uncomfortable or disorientating. Compositionally then, the piece is already addressing the different ways in which we habitually listen."

Simon Waters (2015) 'Tullis Rennie's Muscle Memory: Listening to the Act of Listening', Contemporary Music Review, 34:1, 22-32.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2015.1077563

Muscle Memory

Muscle Memory with Graham South (trumpet) *excerpt*

Premiere performance
Scottish Chamber Orchestra | Joseph Swensen (cond.)
Ayr Town Hall
22nd November 2017

This recording
Scottish Chamber Orchestra | Joseph Swensen (cond.)
Glasgow City Halls
24th November 2017

Harrold’s writing is precise and clean-textured, yet he imbues the work with a dazzling warmth and emotive density." Ken Walton, The Scotsman

"To the Light may turn out to be a very significant piece in spreading his reputation. Responding with discipline to the chamber orchestra challenge, he has produced a work that makes maximum use of the more limited instrumental palette..." Keith Bruce, The Herald

"The strong, angular central section seemed to lay bare something dark in the soul...Harrold’s piece was striking and memorable, and he’s definitely a voice that I’d like to hear again." Seen and Heard International

To the Light is, in its most basic of forms, a movement from darkness to light which surges through an arch-form structure. The music exists as one continuous movement, but can be divided into three distinct sections: a quiet, restrained opening within which a baleful, wistful solo cello wails above dark string chords; a potent, insistent middle where the brass vie for supremacy against the strings; and a return to the yearning material found in the opening, but only this time the music has in many ways been distilled, or damaged, by the energised middle section that preceded it. 

The descending trio of chords heard at the opening of To the Light underpin the entire body of harmonic material found within the piece. This harmonic sound-world, which infects the whole work, was created by utilising rotations and extensions of these chords. These various iterations also led to the construction of the melodic material, which is dominated by minor sixths and thirds. The energised middle section is essentially a collage of musical moments which are hung together by these chordal progressions and melodic ideas. These series of moments lead breathlessly to the climax of the piece: a cleansing arrival into Db minor which quickly dissipates. 

To the Light was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with funding from the PRS for Music Foundation, Cruden Foundation, and RVW Trust. It is dedicated to my grandfather, Alexander Scott, who died in 2016.

TO THE LIGHT, for chamber orchestra | Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Joseph Swensen | 2017

Hymn To Hermes, composed by Joseph Davies.
Commissioned by Tŷ Cerdd for its premiere performance by Hermes Experiment at St David's Hall, 13th February 2018.
Recorded on 17th September 2018 at Tŷ Cerdd Studios. Engineered and produced by James Clarke.

Heloise Werner, soprano
Anne Denholm, harp
Oliver Pashley, clarinet
Marianne Schofield, double bass

Joseph Davies - Hymn To Hermes (performed by Hermes Experiment)

This work was created as part of Sound and Music’s Next Wave 2 programme. It was recorded and premiered in collaboration with Sage Gateshead and NMC Recordings. Next Wave 2 was funded by Arts Council England, PRS for Music Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust and The Angus Allnatt Charitable Foundation

Released on NMC Recordings on the 26th of January 2018, and premiered live at Sage Gateshead on the 27th of January.
Recorded by NMC Recordings November 2017. 
Performers: members of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Quinta (violin, viola, saw)
Conductor: Jack Sheen

303 Flings (For Beginners)

Ben Gaunt