Hex (1997)

programme note


Hex: a sorceress/shaman – to Hex: bewitch – to put a curse on.

The catalyst for this piece came from an unlikely source: a Central Asian rock concert. I had been lured there, like a virgin, intrigued by the promise of hearing “The Madonna of Uzbekistan”. As it happens, she was eclipsed by another act on the bill, a group from Yakutsk, in Siberia. Their lead singer was a shaman, who apparently revived old songs and spells that had been largely stamped out by the Soviet regime. Her vocal style was intriguing, a declamatory and obsessive meandering on a few cracked notes, coloured by the local technique of “Kalykhan”, a sort of fluttery yodel. But it was her presence that was mesmerizing. She was large, with waist length raven tresses; and her imprecating, yowling, baying and pleading cast quite a chill over an audience who I imagined had thought themselves in for a frivolous time. I sat well back in my seat, torn with conflicting emotions as the antics were sometimes risible, sometimes disturbing, wondering if her song was protecting me from evil spirits or conjuring them up. I found myself intrigued by the idea of a song as a charm or spell, and two contrasting examples came to mind: Orpheus wooing Charon to cross the Styx, particularly as realized by Monteverdi, and an obscure Georgian opera I had happened upon, “Abesalom and Eteri” by Paliashvili, in which a song causes the heroine to age prematurely and die.

This piece does homage to my Shaman-muse; a double-bass solo imitates her song, and an oscillating figure suggests the “Kalykhan”, but my hex is cast far and wide.

© Julian Grant 1997



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Off Course 1/4

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Off Course 2/4

a new piece for toy piano dedicated to Lewis Friedman

2  Pour les accords et les accents

The title refers to one of the simple components of a Taiji Quan martial arts routine. Taiji Quan, ironically meaning ‘ultimate fist’, has attained unparalleled popularity today as an exercise which links health and meditation to traditional unarmed combat techniques to bring focus and spiritual relaxation to the practitioner. Lao Tzu, in his philosophical classic, The Tao Te Ching, wrote ‘the soft and flexible will defeat the hard and the strong’; and in just such a way, Taiji Quan negates the notion of force conquering force. Instead, students are trained to meet force with softness, thereby victorious through the attainment of balance.

The origins of Taiji Quan are obscure, though some sources cite a Daoist of either the twelfth or fifteenth century, Zhang San-feng, who created the art after watching a crane and a snake fighting. The styles of Taiji Quan in favour today can be traced back to a general from the last days of the Ming Dynasty, Chen Wang-ting, who, when the Ming fell in 1644, retired to his village and created seven sets of styles, of which only two survive today.

Correct motion can only be born of absolute stillness. Thus, this piece opens with four very smooth chords that blur into one another, ending with a surprisingly euphonious one. Now focused, the music can move. A single movement would be learned and repeated until perfected; and only then could one proceed to the next. In the music, a lengthy passage ensues of single notes in differing textures and registers that soon streamline, glide into motion and attain a strong yet smooth line, unencumbered by harmony. The aim of Taiji Quan: to generate power using the whole body, is suggested by the piano entering with a rustling harmonic idea, supported by the ensemble, which builds into a powerful sequence. A fleeting moment of angular conflict passes back to the opening smooth chords, after which the single note passage is repeated, but with increasing agility and drama. An intensified return of the piano sequence idea suggests real menace and builds to an ominous climax. The piece concludes with the initial four chords, though not so formally presented. The next to last word is had by the euphonious fourth chord, here presented as a sharp blow of a fist, followed by a dying flute trill, suggesting the possibility of a return to equilibrium. 

Strike Opponents Ears With Both Fists

In creating this suite of dances for the Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble to perform at Boughton House on July 13th 2014, the composer Julian Grant has also created a tribute to an inspiring British African, Ignatius Sancho
(c.1729-80) It is based on Sancho’s " Minuets &c. &c. for the Violin, Mandolin, German-flute and Harpsichord. Compos'd by an African. Book 2nd. Humbly Inscribed to the Right Honble. John Lord Montagu of Boughton”.(London, c 1770)
Ignatius Sancho arrived in Britain from Africa as a very young child slave, and was rescued from a life of servitude by the enlightened John, second Duke of Montagu, who helped educate him. He became popular in fashionable
London society and was painted by Gainsborough. Bequests from the Montagu family enabled Sancho to publish his music and to establish a grocery shop in Westminster, close to the Montagu mansion. He was the first British African to vote, to own a shop, to have his own music, letters and memoirs published, and the first African to have an obituary in the
British press. Through his accomplished, witty and well-informed letters, which also highlighted the immorality of the slave trade, Sancho's life became a symbol of the humanity of Africans. He left a legacy of four volumes of music - a set of songs and three sets of dances.


7 - 16 Grant  Sancho's Dance - Mix 1 - Many Minuets

SHARDS: four miniatures for clarinet, 'cello and piano


1. diminishing returns
2. on hearing an aria by Handel
3. my secret Mongolia
4. can we have a tango, please, Mr Ogawa?


first performance Western Academy Concert Hall, Beijing, 7 May 2008
Keith Lipson, Zhu Mu, Michelle Yip 


see also SHIVEREENS for piano

programme note 

From 2000 onwards I have written a host of piano pieces, almost like keeping a little diary, or musical journal. The pieces are mostly tiny and have been collected under the title shivereens, which is an old colloquial Scottish term for fragment or shard. Some pieces are written on the spur of the moment, others are excerpted from longer works, or tangential jottings on musical ideas used elsewhere. Shards consists of four of these pieces, dressed up for clarinet, ‘cello and piano. 

diminishing returns is a technical exercise where two little ideas, a motoric theme and a repeated chord figure are presented alternately, yet throughout the piece the repetitions shorten, diminish, and collide. The original material comes from my opera the uninvited from a market scene in south London that ends in a riot. on hearing an aria by handel is a little elegy in memory of a friend, Nancy, prematurely taken away by cancer, who introduced me to the music of Handel, and instilled a love of this music that has never left me. This little piece takes a shard from an aria from Ariodante (1735). my secret mongolia is a transcription of a tiny fragment of folksong heard on the Mongolian steppe at sunset sung and played on a morinxuur (horse- headed fiddle) by a tribesman. can we have a tango please mr. ogawa? was written for my eldest daughter, as when we lived in Japan, she was taken to school by a driver, Mr. Ogawa, who was a keen ballroom dancer and who played dance music in the car of a morning. Hattie liked tangos, and took to requesting them. I imagined a car radio that had many stations, all of them tuned to tangos; the piece jumps abruptly between different styles of tango. 

© julian grant 2008

Julian Grant at Yishu 8

Shards 4 - can we have a tango please mr ogawa?

Shards 3 - my secret mongolia

Shards 2 - on hearing an aria by handel

Shards 1 - diminishing returns

During the time I lived in Beijing, from 2007-2010, I was bought, as a consolation prize for not mastering Mandarin, a yang-qin (butterfly harp), because I had admired it in a shop window. The sight of such a handsome instrument residing at home, unplayed, was a reproach, and so I got a very rigorous teacher who taught me the basics, so I was able to play duets with her, and later even joined in with a traditional ensemble. Strangely it is the one staple instrument of a Chinese opera band that probably originated in Eastern Europe, as it resembles a dulcimer. For a family birthday, I managed to compose and play a piece for my yang-qin, which I later transcribed for piano. I surrounded the piece with satellite pieces, using similar restricted pitches and textures, rather like Satie’s Gymnopédies, to create a small suite. The pieces were composed haphazardly and in no particular order. Because I ended up with five, I allude in the title to the strange inedible fruit, that resembles a lemon with five‐fingers ‐ or an inflated rubber glove ‐ that appears at Chinese New Year to celebrate continuity: Wu Dai Tong Tang: five generations one house – here, five aspects of the same material.

Keyboard miscellany

Grant: Wu Dai Tong Tang - 5

Grant: Wu Dai Tong Tang - 4

Grant: Wu Dai Tong Tang - 3

Grant: Wu Dai Tong Tang - 2

Grant: Wu Dai Tong Tang - 1

Julian Grant is a composer, writer, educator, music journalist and broadcaster. He has composed 18 operas of various lengths and sizes which have been performed by English National Opera, The Royal Opera, Almeida Opera, Mecklenburgh Opera and Tétè-a-Tétè, and has won the National Opera Association of America’s New Opera prize and been nominated for an Olivier Award. From 2002-7 he was Director of Music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, London, a post previous occupied by Gustav Holst and Vaughan-Williams. In Hong Kong, he hosted a classical music radio show and has also lived in Tokyo. From 2007-10 he lived in Beijing, where he worked with the Beijing New Music Ensemble, and attempted to master the Yang Qin (Butterfly Harp). In 2012, his Cultural Olympiad commission ‘Hot House’, devised by Gareth Malone, was premiered at the Royal Opera House. He currently lives in Princeton and New York where he is collaborating with Mark Campbell on a new work for Brooklyn Music Theatre Projects. Forthcoming premieres include a work for Buskaid Soweto Strings based on dances by the 18th century British-African Ignatius Sancho. 


Julian Grant

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