This piece was awarded the 2015 Lord Mayor's Composition Prize ???and was given its premiere as part of the ??City of London Festival by the Morisot Trio at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street on June 24??th of that year.

This piece explores different ways of expressing single musical strands. The first movement is a piece of pure two-part counterpoint for violin and cello in which the two lines begin apart and gradually 'bind' together. In the second, the piano outlines the descent of a single line while the violin and cello create and 'weave' falling and rising lines respectively. In the third, fugal movement, a line of music is gradually 'spun' out over longer and longer periods. These first three movements all undergo a process of either centrifugal or centripedal motion, collapsing in on themselves or, in the case of the third movement, opening out. The final fourth movement is more like an extended single moment, in which the ensemble trace a single line from the bottom to top of the keyboard surrounded by fleeting memories of previous movements, as if seeing the whole piece from above.


Bind, Weave, Spin - I

WP: Morisot Trio, 24th June 2015, St Bride's, Fleet Street, City of London Festival
 
This piece was awarded the 2015 Lord Mayor's Composition Prize and was given its premiere as part of the City of London Festival by the Morisot Trio at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street on June 24th of that year.
This piece explores different ways of expressing single musical strands. The first movement is a piece of pure two-part counterpoint for violin and cello in which the two lines begin apart and gradually 'bind' together. In the second, the piano outlines the descent of a single line while the violin and cello create and 'weave' falling and rising lines respectively. In the third, fugal movement, a line of music is gradually 'spun' out over longer and longer periods. These first three movements all undergo a process of either centrifugal or centripedal motion, collapsing in on themselves or, in the case of the third movement, opening out. The final fourth movement is more like an extended single moment, in which the ensemble trace a single line from the bottom to top of the keyboard surrounded by fleeting memories of previous movements, as if seeing the whole piece from above.

Bind, Weave, Spin

First performance: The Hermes Experiment, St John's, Notting Hill, September 2014

Bach - Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not (arr. Cole)

Her Face Was Full Of Woe
for solo harp (8')

First performance: Anne Denholm (Harpist to HRH Prince of Wales), February 5th 2016, Theatre Royal, Nottingham

I saw my lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advanced so,
In those fair eyes where all perfections keep.
Her face was full of woe,
But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts,
Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts.
    
                                                           John Dowland 
 
This piece is inspired by my interest in the creativity and flexibility of continuo realisations in Renaissance and Baroque music. At the opening, archetypal continuo gestures - trills, arpeggios and an 'English cadence' are heard alongside a four-note cell from the eponymous line of Dowland's song. After this music gradually spins out the opening material, and eventually flies out of control. The Dowland is then heard, with the first section's gestures now wrapping around the melody as a genuine continuo accompaniment. 
​

Her Face Was Full Of Woe

Natqik (drifting snow) - Kannevluk (fine snow particles) - Qanisqineq (snow floating on water) - Pirtuk (blizzard) - Pirrelvag (severe blizzard) - Utvak (snow blocks) - Muruaneq (soft deep snow)

This piece was written for Zoe Martlew and Huw Watkins as part of a project at the Royal Academy of Music, and was premiered by them at the Royal Academy of Music in April 2015.


William Cole - Qanuk

Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh' darein
Und lass' dich des erbarmen,
Wie wenig sind der Heil'gen dein,
Verlassen sind wir Armen.

Ah God, look down from heaven
and still have mercy on us,
How few are Your saints,
we poor are abandoned.

Performance by Benjamin Morris, April 2016, Lincoln's Inn

A short chorale prelude written for William Whitehead's Orgelbüchlein Project. The commission brief was to achieve a 'density of musical and symbolic languages'; the imagery of looking up to the heavens suggests the form of this piece, in which each phrase descends by an octave and gets slower, while 'looking up' at the dense canonic workings of itself at the top of the organ's register.

Ach Gott Vom Himmel Sieh Darien

Plorans Ploravit for mixed choir (5')
         
First performance: BBC Singers | Matthew Hamilton, September 1st 2015, Maida Vale studios 
First public performance: BBC Singers | Matthew Hamilton, January 12th 2016, St Paul's Knightsbridge
    
Text: Lamentations

1:1  ALEPH. Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo! Facta est quasi vidua domina gentium; princeps provinciarum facta est sub tributo.
1:2  BETH. Plorans ploravit in nocte, et lacrimæ ejus in maxillis ejus: non est qui consoletur eam, ex omnibus caris ejus; omnes amici ejus spreverunt eam, et facti sunt ei inimici.

1:1  ALEPH. How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the cities has become a vassal.
1:2  BETH. She weeps bitterly in the night, tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.

This text, written centuries ago, seems eerily prescient when we think about current events in the middle east. This setting takes literally the image of abandoned widows; throughout the opening, the sopranos and altos sing mournful, intensely chromatic falling phrases These phrases coalesce and spread across the whole choir before climaxing in a communal cry of 'Jerusalem!'. The piece then collapsed down into its opening chromatic weavings.

This piece was published by Choir and Organ in their November/December 2015 issue.
​
​
​
​

Plorans Ploravit

William Cole - The Bells of Lubeck

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra / Victor Aviat

Recorded at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Composers Day 2017.

Cole - The Bells of Lubeck

Innigkeit for solo violin

Peter Sheppard Skaerved, violin - St John's Divinity School, March 15th 2013

A short piece for violin which takes as its point of departure the Adagio from Bach's C major violin sonata. Bach's oscillating figure turns into a series of wandering microtones, which interact with a contrasting, more fluid line as the piece rises upward and upward.

http://www.peter-sheppard-skaerved.com/2013/03/the-cambridge-caprices-in-preparation/

Innigkeit for solo violin

I'm a composer and conductor currently studying at Cambridge University. 

I've written pieces for a range of student and professional musicians, with recent performances by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, musicians from the Britten Sinfonia and violinist Peter Sheppard Skaevard. Amongst other projects, I'm currently working on a song-cycle for countentenor and piano on poems by Michelangelo, and a commission for the Britten Sinfonia for their 2013-14 At Lunch series.

As well as composing, I'm also a conductor, currently holding the positions of Conducting Scholar for the Cambridge University Music Society and conductor of the Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra. I'm lucky enough to travel the world as a Choral Scholar in the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge and also sing in close-harmony group Over the Bridge. 

I'm a pianist, cellist and for the last two years have enjoyed working with English Touring Opera on their outreach project Turtle Song.

Musings about various musical things can be found here: http://www.interlude.hk/

Follow here for new pieces and projects - or email me at williamajcole@gmail.com


williamajcole

Popular tracks