involute (Noteperformer digital version)

Cloudburst (2015)

Performed by Holly Holt, Nick Smith and Dominic Martens to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2018.

Recorded in Clare Chapel

Shoes (2018)

A short piece for sackbuts and cornetts, based on Monteverdi's motet Lasciatemi morire. Premiered by the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble at the finals of the National Centre for Early Music Young Composers' Award 2018.

Fanfare for a funeral (2018)

A little song I wrote in December 2018. With thanks to Barry Shelton for recording so well at the last minute!

Baby Steps (2018)

'hurricane/black', for mezzo and synthesizer, is the first song in the cycle The Last Kingdom, with words by Jennifer Foerster and music by Harry Castle. Grateful to Jen Beattie and Adam Marks for this performance in the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Yale University. (November 2018)

hurricane/black (2018)

'beatz' is scored for flute, clarinet and cello, and was written for the Da Capo Chamber Players in January 2019. The piece explores the concept of beats, both in terms of groove and in terms of the beating resonance that you can feel when two notes are very close to each other in pitch. 'beatz' was first performed in the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Yale University on Februrary 28th 2019.

beatz (2019)

A short choral setting of the 'oculi omnium' text as recited at Clare College, Cambridge. Performed here by members of the Yale Schola Cantorum.
Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine:
Tu das iis escam eorum in tempore opportuno.
Aperis tu manum tuam:
Et imples omne animal benedictione tua.
Sanctifica nos, quaesumus, Domine,
per verbum et orationem,
istisque tuis donis, quae de tua bonitate sumus accepturi, benedicito
per Christum Dominum nostrum,
Amen

oculi omnium (2019)

Performed by Margaret Lancaster (flute), Jennifer Beattie (mezzo) and Harry Castle (electronics).

champagne/acidic (2019)

A demo of my setting of The Blue Bird by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. Written for AATTBarB -- I'm singing all of them here!

Text:
The lake lay blue below the hill.
O'er it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.

The sky above was blue at last,
The sky beneath me blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed,
It caught his image as he flew.

blue (2019)

banshee was commissioned by the Marea Duo as part of their Fall 2020 virtual concert series, Marea & Friends. The duo, Amelia Brynne Merriman and Eleni Katz, is fairly unique in that not only do they play the oboe and bassoon incredibly well, but they are also accomplished vocalists, at home in a wide variety of styles. To this end, it was important for me to write them a piece that really captured the essence of their unusual strengths as an ensemble.

The work centres on the legend of the banshee, a Gaelic spirit who appears in order to mourn the passing of a person, and to warn others of impending death. The text and vocal melody are taken from a folk tune called MacCrimmon’s Lament, a haunting air which tells the story of a piper lost at the battle of Culloden during the Jacobite Rebellion. The performers switch between roles as the narrator and the banshee, and use techniques such as pitch bending and multiphonics to bring the scene to life. banshee uses live looping techniques, layering the performers’ voices on top of each other to create a gestalt ambiance that would not be achievable otherwise. Combined with live processing and a small amount of fixed media, these electronics turn the performance space into a 3D surround-sound experience, where the audience members are totally engulfed by the aural mist of the tale depicted in the poem. I also took an interesting approach to meter in this piece: although the score is notated in a time signature, there is no need for the parts to stay "in time" at all. The lines should always feel somewhat improvisatory, and the points where it is important for the parts to line up with each other are shown with dotted lines between the parts. I found this really interesting to explore in conjunction with the looping techniques, since loop pedals are usually used in very regularly repeating music, and rarely in free music like this.

The electronics are simple to control through Ableton Live – everything is pre-loaded into the software such that the piece is performable with a simple footswitch. This piece should be experienced wearing headphones or with a good surround-sound system.

banshee (2020)

Harry is a composer, tenor, and musical director from Sheffield, UK. A graduate of Clare College, University of Cambridge, and Yale University, he is currently studying for a DMA in Composition at the University of Michigan.

Harry Castle

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