Compositions (Recent / Current)

‘Invictus’
 
for Tenor Voice and Piano

Music: Toby Hession
Text: William ‘Ernest’ Henley

Tenor: Adam Pettit
Piano: Toby Hession


This piece, in December 2013, was written in the immediate wake of the sad passing of Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), the anti-apartheid revolutionary and first black President of South Africa. The text, ‘Invictus,’ by the 19th century English poet, William ‘Ernest’ Henley, was recited by Mandela to other prisoners during his incarceration on Robben Island Prison. The title of the poem (and the piece) comes from the Latin meaning ‘unconquerable.’ It is said that Mandela took great solace from and found strength in the message of self-mastery that the poem seems to possess. The text has been a source of inspiration for many other political figures before and since, including Franklin D. Roosevelt; it has also influenced musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other poets… Countless people have found something to relate to in this deeply emotional passage.

Musically, I have tried to reflect the common theme of ‘unconquerability’ that binds the poem (made explicit at the end of every stanza) by binding the piece in the same way with one recurring theme. I am currently working on an orchestrated version of:

1.1.1.1 / 1.1.1.0 / 1. Perc. 1. Timp / Pno. Hp. / 2.2.2.2.1

The first performance was given in December 2013 at Chetham’s School of Music, by Tom Loughlin (Tenor) and Toby Hession (Piano).


'Invictus'

The Peterborough Canticles
Commissioned by Peterborough Cathedral Old Choristers' Association.
Song of Mary 0:00 , Song of Simeon 05:14
First performance: 8 June 2024.
Tansy Castledine | conductor
Christopher Strange | organ
The Choir of Peterborough Cathedral with members of the Old Choristers' Association

The Peterborough Canticles

The second of two settings of Sonnets by Christina Rossetti, given to me initially as excercises for me by my composition teacher. In this particular piece, I sought to capture the single instant in time that the poem focusses on, and to explore the characters in Rossetti's scene. 

The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
    And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
    And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
    ‘Poor child, poor child’: and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
    That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
         Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:
         He did not love me living; but once dead
    He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold. 



Soprano: Alysia Hanshaw
Piano: Toby Hession

'After Death' from 'Two Sonnets' (2015)

This is the live recording of my 'Concert Fugue for Orchestra,' performed at Chetham's School of Music on 24th June, 2015 - a piece that marks the end of five amazing years studying at the school. I had so much fun writing and conducting this piece, but I am especially grateful to all of the 60+ players involved for bringing it to life in such a fantastic performance.

Performed by the Chetham's Contemporary Music Ensemble (Symphony Orchestra), conducted by Toby Hession.

Concert Fugue for Orchestra (2015)

Recollections (2015) - live from The Wellcome Collection, London, September 2015, as broadcast live on BBC Radio3.
Commissioned by the Aurora Orchestra.

Violin: Rakhi Singh
'Cello: Alex Holladay

'Recollections' is a musical response to the work of Paul Ekman, the American psychologist who proposed that human behaviour can be related to six 'universal' emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Surprise. The work is comprised of six variations on a theme from J S Bach's 'St Matthew's Passion', where each variation represents one of Ekman's emotions. It was a conscious choice not to disclose which variation corresponds to which emotion. Each variation is a personal response, and your experience of the should be a personal one too. The theme from 'St Matthew's Passion' is the recitative whence Jesus cries out:

'Eli! Eli! Lama asabthani?' meaning: 'My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?'



Recollections (2015)

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Two Sonnets for Soprano and Piano

Music: Toby Hession (b. 1997)
Text: Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

Soprano: Pollyanna Furness
Piano: Toby Hession

Recorded live in concert in the Chapel of Clare College, Cambridge, Wednesday 27th January, 2016.


I : Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that I once had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.


II : After Death

The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him, but I heard him say:
‘Poor child, poor child:’ and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:
He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold.

Two Sonnets for Soprano and Piano (2015)

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Sonatine for Flutes and Piano

Toby Hession (b. 1997)

Flute, Alto Flute, Piccolo: Jack Reddick
Piano: Toby Hession

Recorded live in concert at Clare College, Cambridge, on February 15th, 2016.

Composed for the astounding Jack Reddick, this two-movement piece is one of the most technically challenging works I have composed (for either instrument). It draws in particular on a french-influenced soundworld, with elements of Poulenc and Ravel in particular dominating the language.

Sonatine For Flutes And Piano (2016)

Violin I: Aditya Chander
Violin II: Harry Castle
Viola: Roc Fargas Castells
'Cello: Joshua Ballance
Piano: Toby Hession

Recorded at Clare College, Cambridge on 20th April, 2016.

Eclogue (2016)

Originally composed for the same, unusual instrumentation as Darius Milhaud's 1922 Chamber-Ballet 'La Creation du Monde' (and therefore intended to be played alongside it), this work tells the story of the creation of the world according to Norse Mythology.

In the beginning there is nothingness. Gradually this space fills with water, which freezes and then partially melts. From the drops of melting water a giant in human form emerges. This is Ymir. From his armpit a man and a woman appear - human in form, but giants like himself. Meanwhile Audlumba, a cow, has licked the melting ice and has revealed another giant, from whom the god Odin descends. Odin and his brothers kill the aged Ymir. They fashion the world from his body: of his flesh they make the earth, of his skull the heavens, of his blood the sea, of his bones the mountains and of his hair the trees.

Recorded live in the Chapel of Clare College Cambridge, Wednesday 22nd February 2017
Clare College New Music Ensemble
Conductor: John Tothill

Flutes: Jack Reddick, Heloise Lecomte
Oboe: Marie Louise James
Clarinets: Alex Card, Caroline Grint
Bassoon: Zac Moxon
Horn: James Liley
Trumpets: Ed Liebrecht, Martin Dibb-Fuller
Trombone: Tirion Rees-Davies
Timpani: Finlay Stafford
Percussion: Jordan Murray
Piano': Toby Hession
Violins: James Jones, Anita Monserrat
Alto Saxophone: Matthew Nixon
'Cello: Joshua Ballance
Bass: Graeme Hollingdale

Ymir And Odin (2017)

I: God saw all that He had made (from Genesis 1)
God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. God breathed into man the breath of life. Alleluia. Come to redeem us, O Lord Adonai.

II: Drop down, ye heavens... (from Isaiah 45:8)
Drop down ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.

Recorded live in the Chapel of Clare College Cambridge, Wednesday 8th March 2017
Clare College New Music Ensemble
Conductor: Graham Ross

Two Antiphons (2017)

A pastiche in the style of Sergei Rachmaninov. 

'Cello: Leo Popplewell
Piano: Toby Hession

Recorded at Clare College, Cambridge on 12th March, 2017.

Elegy for Cello (2017)

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If You Forget Me

Music: Toby Hession (b. 1997)
Text: Pablo Neruda(1904 - 1973)

Baritone: Stephen Matthews
Piano: Toby Hession

Recorded at Clare College, Cambridge, Friday 21st April, 2017.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

If You Forget Me (2017)

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Two Songs of Autumn

Music: Toby Hession (b. 1997)
Texts: James Wright (1927 - 1980) and Thomas McGrath (1916 - 1990)

Baritone: Stephen Matthews
Piano: Toby Hession

Recorded at Clare College, Cambridge, Friday 21st April, 2017.

Beginning (James Wright)

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens. 
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon's young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back towards its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

Beyond the Red River (Thomas McGrath)

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled towards the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winder dark.

Two Songs Of Autumn (2017)

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The Clare Canticles

Music: Toby Hession (b. 1997)
Text: Luke 

The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
Conductor: Graham Ross
Organ: Eleanor Carter

Baritone: Kit Holliday

Recorded at Choral Evensong at Clare College, Cambridge, Sunday 11th March, 2018.

The Clare Canticles

Quintet for Piano and Winds
I: Sonate (0:00)
II: Ballade (6:52)
III: Rondo (13:19)

Recorded at Clare College Cambridge, Saturday 5th May 2018

Flute: Jack Reddick
Oboe: Pip Elmer
Clarinet: John Tothill
Bassoon: Zac Moxon

Piano': Toby Hession

This work was never conceived as any sort of explicit pastiche – rather, it serves as a point of confluence between the languages and styles of several different twentieth-century composers, but in particular, four: Malcolm Arnold (1921 – 2006), Francis Poulenc (1899 – 1963), Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937), and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975). From this list alone, it is possible to see that the piece was influenced most strongly by French music – and this becomes even more apparent upon listening. Additionally, these French pretentions are reflected in the spellings of the movement titles – Sonate, Ballade, and Rondo.

The opening movement is robust and heavy, with a generally serious outlook. Its French influence is certainly never far away (the harmony is imbued with fluctuating levels of octatonicism throughout, most prominently in the ‘development’ section), but there is also a nod towards the English folksong trope, as captured especially in the resolute peak of the first subject group. The exposition and development sections are clearly demarcated in the music, but the ‘development’ section perhaps resists playing such a typical role – less-inclined to focus on high-intensity invention, it is instead tasked with sustaining the high musical energy of the quartal codetta.

Rather than being a ‘ballad’ in the textbook poetic sense (i.e. a narrative poem of short stanzas), the second movement is simply a gentle, nostalgic song. It draws upon the etymology of the word ballade, too, from the Provençal ‘balada’, meaning ‘song to dance to’ – and is closely aligned through its lilting 12/8 meter with the Loure, a slow French-Baroque dance originating in Normandy. The Chorale is not consciously based on any pre-existing tune, but adds to the bucolic, folk-like transparency of the music; however, a very conscious tonal scheme does exist in the movement. The opening in D-flat major is followed by a new melodic idea initially in F minor; the Chorale, being in A major, leads back to a restatement of the opening in D-flat major by virtue of a pivot about C-sharp / D-flat. These three tonal regions outline an augmented triad, in which each region is separated from the other by an equal distance. Furthermore, the augmented triad can be extracted from the whole-tone scale – a characteristic mode of early-twentieth-century French music.

To call the last movement a Rondeau (with French spelling) would have been an oversight, since the term refers specifically to one of the forms fixes of fifteenth-century French poetry, and bears very particular structural connotations; Rondo is a term more common in musical usage, and universally understood. The main Rondo theme is practically a homage to the lighter side of Shostakovich, but the movement overall draws more heavily than ever on Poulenc, not just in its harmonic language but also in its patchwork-like structure. It draws together themes from both of the first two movements into a four-minute frenzy of almost unstoppable energy – only the triumphant return to the first-movement theme can succeed in curbing the tempo – and, in direct contrast to the opening movement, the Rondo is deliberately jovial, light and humorous. The return of the ‘B’ theme almost completes a sonata-rondo form – but alas, it is not to be, as at the music breaks down into a final push towards its conclusion.

Quintet for Piano and Winds (2018)

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...to see these things again...

Music: Toby Hession (b. 1997)
Text: Christina Rossetti(1830 - 1894)

Soprano: Olivia Brett
Conductor: Toby Hession
Clare College New Music Ensemble

Recorded in the Robin Orr Recital Room, West Road, Cambridge, April, 2018.

I - Paradise: In a Symbol

Golden-winged, silver-winged,
Winged with flashing flame,
Such a flight of birds I saw,
Birds without a name:
Singing songs in their own tongue
(Song of songs) they came.

One to another calling,
Each answering each,
One to another calling
In their proper speech:
High above my head they wheeled,
Far out of reach.

On wings of flame they went and came
With a cadenced clang,
Their silver wings tinkled,
Their golden wings rang,
The wind it whistled through their wings
Where in Heaven they sang.

They flashed and they darted
Awhile before mine eyes,
Mounting, mounting, mounting still
In haste to scale the skies—
Birds without a nest on earth,
Birds of Paradise.

Where the moon riseth not,
Nor sun seeks the west,
There to sing their glory
Which they sing at rest,
There to sing their love-song
When they sing their best:

Not in any garden
That mortal foot hath trod,
Not in any flowering tree
That springs from earthly sod,
But in the garden where they dwell,
The Paradise of God. 

II - Paradise: In a Dream

Once in a dream I saw the flowers
That bud and bloom in Paradise;
More fair they are than waking eyes
Have seen in all this world of ours.
And faint the perfume-bearing rose,
And faint the lily on its stem,
And faint the perfect violet
Compared with them.

I heard the songs of Paradise:
Each bird sat singing in his place;
A tender song so full of grace
It soared like incense to the skies.
Each bird sat singing to his mate
Soft cooing notes among the trees:
The nightingale herself were cold
To such as these.

I saw the fourfold River flow,
And deep it was, with golden sand;
It flowed between a mossy land
With murmured music grave and low.
It hath refreshment for all thirst,
For fainting spirits strength and rest:
Earth holds not such a draught as this
From east to west.

The Tree of Life stood budding there,
Abundant with its twelvefold fruits;
Eternal sap sustains its roots,
Its shadowing branches fill the air.
Its leaves are healing for the world,
Its fruit the hungry world can feed,
Sweeter than honey to the taste
And balm indeed.

I saw the gate called Beautiful;
And looked, but scarce could look, within;
I saw the golden streets begin,
And outskirts of the glassy pool.
Oh harps, oh crowns of plenteous stars,
Oh green palm-branches many-leaved—
Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard,
Nor heart conceived.

I hope to see these things again,
But not as once in dreams by night;
To see them with my very sight,
And touch, and handle, and attain:
To have all Heaven beneath my feet
For narrow way that once they trod;
To have my part with all the saints,
And with my God.

...to see these things again... (2018)

'Soliloquy' is a transcription of an improvisation I gave in 2017 between performances of two American spirituals. It unfolds over a constantly-held low E-flat, and gently meanders between deceptively complex time signatures such as 13/8 and 9/16. The score itself is still a work in progress at the time of uploading this - I plan to evolve the work into a more complex 'indeterminate' structure, whereby the performer can not only perform a number of component 'sections' in any order, but also freely improvise themselves on the basic material given. This recording was taken from the first 'performance' - a performance that was semi-improvised itself.

Soliloquy (2018)

Triptych
for Solo Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra

I: Rhapsody (0:00)
II: Fanfare (7:57)
III: Rondo (12:32)

Recorded in the Robin Orr Recital Room, West Road Concert Hall, 14th June 2019

Clarinet: John Tothill
Conductor: Toby Hession
Clare College New Music Ensemble

Triptych (2019)

... one holy light, one heavenly flame

Text: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

Commissioned by Choir & Organ Magazine

Recorded at Choral Evensong in the Chapel of Clare College, Cambridge, 26th January, 2020

The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
Conductor: Graham Ross
Organ: Ashley Chow

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... one holy light, one heavenly flame (2019)

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Toby Hession (b. 1997) is a British conductor, collaborative pianist and composer, currently on the Music Staff of Scottish Opera. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Opera School 2019-21) and is a prize-winning graduate of Clare College, Cambridge (BA 2015-18 and MPhil 2018-19). He is a proud alumnus of the Georg Solti Accademia and Chetham's School of Music.

Toby's music is published by Edition Peters, and has been recorded and performed around the world by ensembles including The King's Singers, Voces8, The Aurora Orchestra, The Phoenix Chorale, Ensemble Perspectives, The National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain, Inner Voices, and the Choir of Clare College Cambridge. 

For enquiries, visit www.tobyhession.com

Compositions (Recent / Current)

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