First performance: Orchestra of St John's, Smith Square conducted by John Lubbock, Norwich Cathedral, 27 May 1988

Sea-Change for 14 strings

Anthony Brown (alto sax), Leo Nicholson (piano)
First performance - 14 November 2021, Sheffield

The piece was stimulated by my experience of the Neolithic sites created by the people of Orkney around five thousand years ago. The excavations taking place on the Ness of Brodgar are revealing evidence of a highly sophisticated community with astonishingly advanced building technologies and, implicitly, a highly developed social network system to match. The larger edifices include the stone circles at Brodgar and Stenness as well as numerous chambered cairns, the most celebrated of which is Maeshowe. No doubt these artificially created (and mostly sacred) spaces afforded an uncommon acoustic experience for the people of the time, and quite possibly they would have employed resonance and the properties of standing waves in their rituals to create heightened states of mind.

Initially the piano assumes the role of passive resonator, but as time goes on it contributes more and more to the musical argument and stimulates the saxophone to ever greater flights of fancy and passion.

Far Cry

First performance: Philip Edwards (clarinet), David Elwin (piano), 1 October 2022 

Blood Moon took shape around the time of the total lunar eclipse in May 2022. I have always found that natural occurrences taking place on such a scale instil a sense of humility and call for some reflection: these events provide an insight into the immensity of time and space involved in the underlying mechanisms that result in such cosmic phenomena, but the price we pay is the realisation of our own insignificance. These happenings really are awe-inspiring! Something of the wonderment we experience drives the creative process too. We composers continue to take delight in the familiar instruments we have written for again and again and find new possibilities in their essential nature (just as old friends can surprise us with new ideas!).  The three movements of Blood Moon exploit the clarinet and piano in varying relationship to one another, although much of the musical material appears throughout. The clarinet writing wanders into microtonal territory where the piano cannot follow, while the piano – initially only a kind of resonator for the clarinet – asserts itself as an equal partner.

Blood Moon

First performance: University of York Chamber Orchestra conducted by Graham Treacher, Lyons Concert Hall, York University, 24 November 1976

This is my first orchestral piece. Its structure is based on Vico's theory of the development and decline of societies, represented by three stages of progress followed by a period of decay; the cycle then repeats. In Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake' the number or date 1132 signifies the process of rise and fall in Vico's philosophy - 11 being the first term in the second iteration of the decimal system, and 32 the acceleration of a falling body expressed in feet per second per second. The piece encompasses one complete cycle of renewal and decay, developing from the raw material left from an imagined previous cycle. Each of the three main sections of the piece is underpinned by an allusion to or direct quote from pre-existing music (Adam de la Halle, Beethoven and Wagner), suggesting Vico's three stages of societal progress towards a further period of decline and regeneration.

1132

First performance: Moray Welsh (cello), BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Edward Downes, 25 January 1991

Far Cry

George Nicholson 3

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