written for a film about nuclear war in 1983

Music For Film

recorded by Regular Music 1985. In Wagner's Siegfried, Brunnhilde is awoken by Siegfried after a long sleep.  She is overwhelmed by joy and love for him but also feels an immense sense of power over the gods, even in the face of death.  This piece is both a celebration of that love and power, and homage to the sublime quality of Wagner's harmonic language.  All the harmony in the opening and closing sections is derived from the opening bards of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll.  In the original the harmony changes virtually every beat.  Here it is stretched out over several minutes, underpinned by driving rhythmic patterns and squeezed for every last drop of propulsive energy.  The vocal part in the middle section is an edited version of Brunnhilde's worlds on awakening.

Idyllic Rhythms

Monument was a continuous piece for radio created in 1993 - London as heard through archive voices and effects from the BBC Archive, here broken up into its seven 'movements'. First broadcast on 'Between the Ears', October 1993, with the score performed by George W Welch, produced by Alan Hall, and engineered by Philip Burrell and Lyndon Jones.
The archive voices were edited from a variety of radio sources - actualities, outside broadcast commentaries, interviews, documentary features, news reports, 'vox pops', public announcements, weather forecasts. 
George W Welch were: Marina Solarek and Anne Solomon - violins, Michael Newman - viola, Hugh McDowell - cello, Julia Munn and Dai Pritchard - reeds and woodwinds, Sid Gauld - trumpet/flugel, James Hill - tuba, Jonathan Parry - piano, Simon Allen, Martin Pyne, Mark Thomson - percussions, Ian Gardiner - percussion, piano, spoons, director

Monument (I) . . . Bank

composer
arranger
orchestrator
emeritus professor of music, goldsmiths
percussionist (lapsed)

Monument (I) . . . Bank

Ian Gardiner

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