(AKA "A Song for Someplace")
Performed on the 1st of April 2015 by Spectrum for the 2015 Carlaw/Ogston Composition Award

This piece uses material originally composed as a movement of a piano quartet which focused on the development and simultaneous variation of a few melodic fragments - but then re-worked in new ways and incorporating an entirely new section based on my first experiment with spectral composition - prompted by discovering the music of Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail.
Spurred on by a sense of "how hard could it be?" I decided to try my hand at spectral composition, and obtained the spectra of a soprano voice, and various percussion instruments. I then proceeded to try and orchestrate them for the forces available - while also trying only to select partials of the spectra that would allow them to match the colours of the rest of the piece. 
The result is a piece of music in three sections - The two outer sections that focus on the rhythmic interplay between the instruments and the interactions between the different melodic fragments, and then the middle section where the music seems to open itself up into a series of resonances, and explores the interactions between singular notes and timbres as the spectra are allowed to develop in the surrounding acoustic.
One day I will learn how to write music that's easy to perform.

Interplay

When I met Kelsey Rose in Oxford in St Stephen’s House chapel over the summer of 2017, we had both just attended a very moving candlelit concert by Westminster Williamson Voices, featuring my Tenebrae Lumini. I was delighted to be asked to write a piece for compline in Princeton University Chapel, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Anglican/Episcopal chaplaincy at Princeton University. 

This piece is the result of that meeting. 
Composing by commission often throws up some interesting challenges. This piece had to fit both as an accompanying piece to the plainchant of compline, whilst simultaneously being a celebratory anthem. I was instantly drawn back to the poetry and hymns of St Ambrose of Milan, and in particular his hymn Aurora iam spargit polum. As I began to write the music for this text I became increasingly introspective. Fragments of chant (both real and imagined) are used to create the powerful imagery of the descending golden light of dawn. The piece reaches its climax with the plea for the despair of night to ‘vanish’, which it then does, leaving the sopranos alone on a high G.

Aurora

Peter Relph is a contemporary classical composer. His music is strongly influenced by his home in the Lake District; its history and culture. Peter's music has been performed across Europe and the United States.

Aurora

Peter Relph - Composer

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