BRITISH WIND MUSIC SINCE 1981 - PART 1

WORLD WIND MUSIC

Every couple of years, the Swiss conductor and pedagogue, Felix Hauswirth, brings out his 1000 Selected Works for Wind Orchestra and Wind Ensembles, (published Ruh Music AG contact@ruh.ch ) a list which is personal but which gives a splendid birds-eye view of repertoire from 1560 to the present day. In the chronological list, there are no British works apart from arrangements of Byrd or Purcell in the first two pages, which cover 1560-1906, a mere two hundred pieces. The third page covers the period 1906 to 1935, and a massive 22% are British; as Frederick Fennell points out, it is on the works of Holst and Vaughan Williams, premiered by the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, between 1920 and 1924 that the developments of the next seventy years of American repertoire are based. It is easy to overlook The Pageant of London (1911, da Capo) and to forget works such as Three Humoresques (Boosey & Hawkes) by Walton O’Donnell. O’Donnell’s Wireless Military Band commissioned several works, as did the BBC and Kneller Hall; the outstanding work was Holst’s Hammersmith (Boosey & Hawkes), still a challenge for conductor, players and audience, but between 1935 and 1981, only a handful of works, mainly by Gordon Jacob, appeared. Welsh Airs and Dances (1975, Dennis Wick) by Alun Hoddinott and Scottish Dance Suite (Chesters) (1959, Chester) by Thea Musgrave are unjustly neglected, and I always enjoy another military commission, the English Suite (1977, OUP) by John Gardner. Rodney Bashford in Scotland and Harry Legge in England commissioned a number of works for the youth wind bands, but in 1943 the BBC sacked the Wireless Military Band, and already the professional military bands had long since turned their attention back to ceremonial and entertainment.

BRITISH RENAISSANCE

However, after 1981, British music begins to vie with American, and the direct cause of this renaissance can be found in Manchester. 1981 was the year when the American organisation, the College Band Directors National Association, led by its President Frank Battisti and administrator Bill Johnson, chose the RNCM in Manchester for the first ever International Conference of Symphonic Bands and Wind Ensembles for Conductors, Composers and Publishers. The range of music and the standard of performance of the American groups were inspiring and led directly to the formation of BASBWE and its worldwide big brother, WASBE. In the next decade a new stimulus was provided by BASBWE, through the annual Conferences, through the Journal which later became WINDS, and through the Annual Boosey & Hawkes Festival with which BASBWE has been closely involved since its inception in 1985.

1981 CONFERENCE MUSIC - BRITISH REPERTOIRE

For the 1981 Conference, the RNCM commissioned Derek Bourgeois' first major wind work, Symphony of Winds (1981 R Smith), unjustly neglected because of its alleged technical difficulties, and a work which now might be well worth restoring to the repertoire, as standards of playing continue to increase. The British Youth Wind Orchestra, playing several of their commissions, and the Surrey County Wind Orchestra, represented the UK. The soloist in Stephen Dodgson’s brilliant Capriccio Concertante (Denis Wick) for solo clarinet and band was the young virtuoso, Michael Collins.

DEREK BOURGEOIS

The main commission at the Manchester Conference of 1981 was Derek Bourgeois' Symphony of Winds (1981, HaFaBra). His scoring here, as in his Sinfonietta (1983, R Smith) is brilliantly effective, but it has been suggested by American colleagues that the difficulties for players are not equalled by the intellectual demands. He views the Wind Band almost as an extension of the brass band, with massive doublings and a luxuriant palette. Bourgeois’ language is deliberately traditional, though the relative naivety of both works is seasoned with the unexpected harmonic or rhythmic twist. Perhaps his most popular piece so far, and easily the most economical, is the little Serenade (1982, R Smith) in 11/8, sometimes 13/8, an audience pleaser that is a metric teaser for players and conductors. A more recent work in this genre has a typical punning title Metro Gnome (HaFaBra 1999).

The influences in his music are Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Ravel, Walton, Shostakovich and Britten, all assimilated into an extraordinarily fluent technical language which has consciously stepped away from attempting to vie with contemporary trends in the seventies and eighties into a far more popular lingua franca which owes much to the world of the brass band. Here virtuosity and sentiment go hand in had, and I find in some of the later works that this juxtaposition, which works for brass bands, jars when transcribed for wind orchestra.

SELECTED LARGE SCALE ROMANTIC WORKS

SELECTED SHORTER CONCERT WORKS

SELECTED SHORT GENRE PIECES

Among his other works is the traditional and rather sentimental Bridge over the River Cam (1989, G&M Brand), the very energetic Diversions (1987, Vanderbeek & Imrie) an attractive work which is sadly neglected. Less inventive are a Concerto for Brass Sextet (1994, HaFaBra), and wind arrangements of the Trombone Concerto (1989, R Smith) and the Percussion Concerto, (1997, G & M Brand), written for Evelyn Glennie. In 1998 he contributed a moving Northern Lament (G&M Brand) to my birthday commissions for school band, just a little too hard for most schools perhaps, but again a work that could be very useful for a more experienced band.

In 1981 his Blitz was the Test Piece for the National Brass Band Finals, and this marked the beginnings of a new wave of brass band composition, embracing contemporary techniques and introducing the conservative brass band aficionados to more progressive music. Many of these works have been transcribed for concert band, and these include Wind Blitz (HaFaBra), virtuosic and aggressive in style. In complete contrast are the salon works such as Molesworth’s Melody (2001, HaFaBra), while recently he has written several epic works, the 77 minute Symphony no 8, the Mountains of Mallorca, (2002, HaFaBra), the ravishing impressionistic Cotswold Symphony and three works written in 2003, the Concerto for Alto Saxophone, the Double Concerto for Trumpet and Bass Trombone, and Mallorca: Symphonic Fantasy on Traditional Mallorquin Songs. His most recent work, Symphony for William, was written in six days in July 2004 as part of my personal commissioning project, and the following Autumn saw yet another celebratory work, Fribourg - the old City. After a time as Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Bourgeois was for some years Director of Music at St. Paul's School for Girls, holding Holst's old post. Retirement in Mallorca has renewed his enthusiasm for the wind orchestra; all of his music is published by Ha-Fa-Bra and his very informative website is www.tramuntana.infoarta.com

BASBWE REVOLUTION

The two decades since have seen a revolution in wind music in the UK. Old works have been restored to the repertoire, new works have been published and recorded, and the selective survey of wind band/wind orchestra literature compiled by Jonathan Good in 1997 and updated recently lists over 600 works currently available. In general it is the initiative of BASBWE and the Royal Northern College of Music, which has created a new repertoire, no longer based on suites of dances or folk-songs, nor dependant on arrangements and orchestral transcriptions. These new works were largely by composers with little or no wind band background, who created new sounds and sonorities. Nearly all of the works commissioned by BASBWE and the RNCM have been published, and many are now well established in the international wind band repertoire.

EDWARD GREGSON

Also played at the 1981 Conference was Edward Gregson'’s Metamorphoses (1979, Novello) written for Goldsmiths College where he was for many years a professor. This remains one of his most experimental and intriguing works, making fine use of simple aleatoric and electronic techniques which challenge performers and intrigue audiences, a first-rate introduction to both of contemporary music. The Tuba Concerto (1984, Novello) was originally written for brass band, but is now firmly in the international repertoire for tuba players in orchestral, wind and brass band versions. Festivo (1985, Novello) is a very successful light overture which combines traditional band formulae with a Stravinsky-like energy. His choral work Missa Brevis Pacem (1988, Novello) for SSA choir, treble and baritone soli and wind orchestra, is a simple yet deeply felt and moving setting of the mass, and the beautiful Benedictus, with its treble solo, deserves to be "top of the pops"; all these pieces are in a more populist vein but none the less very effective. 

*Recorded by the RNCM Wind Orchestra on DOY CD043

Two significant works, based on his music for Stratford-on-Avon productions of the Wars of the Roses; emerged in the nineties; The Sword and the Crown (1991, Studio) is very powerful, as is its sequel The Kings go Forth (1996, Studio), with its brilliant rock parody of Sumer is a-cumin in. Like Metamorphoses, Celebration (1991, Maecenas), a tour de force, was written for orchestral wind, commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, while his latest work, written for the 1995 BASBWE Conference, is the Piano Concerto, Homages, (1995, Maecenas), unashamedly romantic and derivative. Gregson is currently principal of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.

PHILIP SPARKE

Like Gregson, many composers, among them Philip Wilby and Derek Bourgeois, write for wind band in tandem with the more commercial field of the brass band with its great traditions of competition and entertainment. The most successful British composer in the two genres is without doubt Philip Sparke, whose earlier works for brass band such as Gaudium (1973/1976 Boosey) and A Concert Prelude (1979/85 G&M Brand) were later transcribed successfully for wind orchestra. In an interview which I undertook for WINDS, Philip described himself modestly as "a music-writer" rather than a composer, but at his best, in works such as Orient Express (1992, Studio) or the Sudler Prize-winning Dance Movements (1995 Studio), his music has an infectious energy, and a piece such as The Year of the Dragon (1985, Studio) has proved a challenge for wind and brass bands equally. Lindisfarne Rhapsody (1999, Studio) is a rhapsodic concerto for solo flute, a lyrical work that avoids the sentimental. Other works popular with school and amateur bands include Concert Prelude (1979, G&M Brand), Festival Overture (1992, Studio), Land of the Long White Cloud (1987 G&M Brand), two Sinfoniettas (1990 & 1992, Studio) and White Rose Overture (1996, Studio). He is now self-publishing with Anglo.

GUY WOOLFENDEN

Two Manchester Conferences followed, with first commissions in 1983 from Guy Woolfenden and Philip Wilby, premiered by the RNCM Wind Orchestra. Guy Woolfenden, composer, conductor and formerly a hornplayer with Sadlers Wells Opera, is perhaps the most successful BASBWE commissioned composer, bringing his experience of theatre to the medium; he was for many years director of music at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, with scores for every Shakespeare play to his credit. Two early BASBWE commissions, Gallimaufry (1983, Ariel) and Illyrian Dances (1986, Ariel) both draw on the Shakespeare canon; the language is a pastiche of late English renaissance, looking back to both 16th century and the early 20th century, but with twists in the metrical structure and a harmonic piquancy which avoid the obvious.

* Recorded on CD DOY 042: - GALLIMAUFRY   RNCM Wind Orchestra conducted by Guy Woolfenden

More direct are Deo Gracias (1985, G&M Brand) and SPQR (1988). For the 1991 International Conference, he wrote a fine set of variations, Mockbeggar Variations (1981). The most recent pieces are Curtain Call (1997), commissioned for performance at the 1997 WASBE Conference, French Impressions (1998, Ariel) written for the Metropolitan Wind Symphony of Boston, and Rondo Variations (1999, Ariel) a movement for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble. Most recent pieces are Birthday Treat (1998), Firedance, (2002), Celebration (2003, Ariel) and the current commission Bohemian Dances, which will receive its first performance in St Paul, Minnesota on 6th May 2005. Like Gregson, he has recorded most of the works on professional disc with the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra; his wife under the name of Ariel publishes most of his music.

The works of Guy Woolfenden's are perhaps typical of this new wave of music for wind band, which has charm and wit. I believe that it is ignorance of the medium, which leads to this repertoire being largely ignored. Robert Maycock wrote of Woolfenden's Gallimaufry in The Independent:

In so far as music criticism deals seriously with radio at all, it tends to concentrate on Radio 3, such are the cultural blinkers most critics wear. At the least, this means that good things on the other networks get missed - such as the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra playing Guy Woolfenden last Friday, again on Radio 2. If you're in the new-music business and smirking, ask yourself if typecasting someone as a theatre composer isn't another case of cultural blinkers ...... A piece like Gallimaufry, with its witty ingenuities, expert layout, and a tune that stays with you as long as Carousel's, has helped thousands of players to cut their musical teeth and stirred thousands more with the adventure of living music. Yet how many "contemporary" specialists have heard a note of it?

PHILIP WILBY

Philip Wilby also had practical professional experience, as a violinist at Covent Garden and the CBSO, and many years lecturing at the University of Leeds. He brings a more advanced harmonic language and the occasional use of aleatoric techniques to the medium. In Firestar (1983, Chester/Music Sales), a virtuoso Scherzo for orchestra, these elements are carefully controlled. In the more ambitious Symphonia Sacra, (1986, Chester), two groups of percussion and brass typify the forces of evil, with a fine disregard for the conductor and the wind and horns, who play Messiaen-like chords which eventually overwhelm brass and percussion, finally breaking up into folk tunes, before a lone off-stage trumpeter is silenced by the swish of waves from 6 suspended cymbals, and the quiet breathing of the orchestra. The music was chosen, played by musicians from Kneller Hall, as the basis for a moving television programme on Iona, one of the main sources of its inspiration.

Easier is his imaginative Catcher of Shadows (1989, Chester), a superb piece for school band, bringing alive the early days of photography; this again introduces simple aleatoric elements. For the 1993 Uster Festival in Switzerland, he wrote Laudibus in Sanctis (1993, Chester), specifically for amateur players; like Gregson in his Plantagenet music, in these last three works he makes dramatic use of players moving around the auditorium, and this is carried further forward with his most ambitious work, the Passion for Our Times (1997, Maecenas), in which players, singers, dancers and audience move through the Cathedral, re-enacting the drama.

Premiered on Easter Saturday in Liverpool Cathedral, he describes it as a Miracle Play for Wind Orchestra, choir, narrator and dancers, providing an extraordinary musical and religious experience, combining the narrative of the Passion with elements of the Eucharist. His is an individual voice of great importance in the brass and wind orchestra worlds.

His most recent works are the Concertino Pastorale for solo flute and ensemble (2001, Maecenas), commissioned by James Croft at Florida State University, and A New World Dancing, commissioned for a Millennium Festival BBC Prom in 2000, a setting of a text by Archbishop Tutu, performed by the National Youth Choir and the National Youth Wind Orchestra. Like Bourgeois, he is adept at transcribing brass band idiom to wind band, and his works include now a fine Euphonium Concerto (1996 Studio) and a Percussion Concerto.

JOSEPH HOROVITZ

The Woolfenden and Wilby BASBWE premières were followed a year later by Joseph Horovitz with Bacchus on Blue Ridge (1983, Molenaar). Horovitz brings to the wind band a keen ear for sonorities, a central European charm and wit, and an elegance of phrase, which makes his music sometimes elusive in performance. He is on record as longing for a definitive performance of Wind Harp (1989, Molenaar), like Ad Astra (1992, Smith) a wonderfully restrained piece; two other works pay homage to the world of the rococo dance, Fête Galante (R Smith) and Dance Suite (1992, Molenaar). Conductors must bring to all five major works a sensitive feel for balance and restraint, a Viennese light touch and a great sense of fun. For the 1999 BASBWE Conference he completed a long-awaited wind band version of his Euphonium Concerto (Novello) and there is now a version of his Tuba Concerto.

BASBWE CONFERENCES

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

The third BASBWE commission was Arthur Butterworth's evocative tribute to Sibelius, Tundra (1984, Vanderbeek). Its restrained tones have led to undeserved neglect, a fate also befalling his very beautiful Wintermusic (1983, Molenaar), and both works need to be re-assessed and played.

One feature of BASBWE Conferences has always been platform concerts for both new and old works, which then may be taken up and published. One such work was by the late Buxton Orr, who conducted an early Delegates Orchestra in his very successful pastiche on 18th century popular songs, John Gay Suite (1977, Novello), resulting in publication nearly ten years after composition. A work neglected for even longer was, Holst’s Marching Song (1930, Novello), known only in Eric Leidzen’s inflated and transposed arrangement. Holst’s original scoring was played in a performance at the Manchester 1984 Conference and soon afterwards published by Novello.

DAVID BEDFORD AND THE TINGLE FACTOR

In 1985, Conference moved to Bristol; the BASBWE Commission was David Bedford's Sea and Sky and Golden Hill (1985, Novello/Music Sales), with its evocative use of tuned wine glasses. His scores show a fascination for unusual soloists, piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone; he was writing minimalist scores before it was fashionable, and his love of “the tingle-factor”, often caused by sharply contrasted overlapping common chords piled into huge masses, abruptly switching to ppp or to silence, makes his work often very dramatic, albeit needing a large acoustic for full effect.

The Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra/Rundell Doyen DOY CD 082

Bedford had been something of an enfant terrible, but experiences as associate visiting composer at Gordonstoun School and as an arranger in the 1970’s rock scene have tempered his early training with Luigi Nono and the electronic studios in Milan, and in Ronde for Isolde (1985, Novello) and the Symphony No. 2 (1995, Novello) he has created two fine works for schools to stand alongside the best pieces by Connor, Sparke, Woolfenden and Wilby. Praeludium (1990, Novello) makes use of four antiphonal groups drawn from the main band, which remains on stage, while the BASBWE Trust commission for the Leeds Festival is a piano concertante work, Susato Variations (1993, Novello) with orchestral wind accompaniment. The most successful work internationally is still Sun Paints Rainbows on the Vast Waves (1982, Novello) written for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Thus within five years, a small but significant original repertoire was created largely on the initiative of the RNCM and BASBWE, from composers who were to continue writing for the next decade. Alongside these continued the work of proven writers in the educational field such as Philip Sparke, Bruce Fraser and Stuart Johnson, whose well-crafted works, published by R. Smith (G & M Brand) and Studio, fill a need in repertoire for schools and amateur groups.

MICHAEL BALL

I believe that the composer has an implicit duty to serve the society he or she lives in by providing well-crafted music which is both grateful and stimulating to play or sing and hopefully uplifting to the imagination and the spirit, both for the player(s) and the listener. In short, my concern is to be useful and to communicate

For the WASBE Conference in Boston, two British works were commissioned, Richard Rodney Bennett's Morning Music (1987. Novello) and Michael Ball's virtuoso tribute to Italy Omaggio (1987. Novello). In the event, Michael Ball’s piece was judged to be too hard by one of the US top military bands due to play it and the world premiere was given at the BASBWE Conference that Autumn in Manchester, with the UK premiere of the Bennett in a concert also featuring John Harle as soloist in the Ingolf Dahl Saxophone Concerto. Michael Ball has written three less difficult works aimed at the good school band, Chaucer’s Tunes (1993, Novello), commissioned for Stockport Grammar School, Introduction, Chaconne and Chorale (1995, Maecenas) commissioned by Hugh Craig and the Surrey County Youth Wind Orchestras, and the Saxophone Concerto (1994, Maecenas) commissioned for the Huddersfield BASBWE Conference in 1994.

Another outstanding work, unfortunately seldom performed, is his brilliant Pageant (1995, Novello) scored as a companion piece for the Stravinsky Mass for choir, double reeds and brass. His Three Processionals (1998, Studio) is one of those rare works, a successful, musical work at Grade 3 level, and more recently he has transcribed his Cambrian Suite also for school band, while his Euphonium Concerto (2003), originally also for brass band, was premiered in the wind version at the Cheltenham International Festival in 2004.

WIND ENSEMBLE CONCEPT

Many of the earliest BASBWE-inspired works were scored with large-scale forces in mind, the Symphonic Wind Band, with its doubling of players in flutes, clarinets and brass. However, in 1952, Frederick Fennell had founded his Eastman Wind Ensemble, in which the concept of one player to a part gave composers control at last over the sonorities for which they were writing, and in general the most significant repertoire of the past forty years has been written with solo players in mind. 

The Wind Ensemble concept of any ensemble up to about 45 solo players, one to a part, can be adopted for most wind works, and the clarity given even to opaque and dense textures is welcome. The scoring is in fact derived from an enlarged symphony orchestra wind section and is generally for Piccolo and two Flutes, two Oboes and Cor Anglais, Eb Clarinet, 3 Bb Clarinets, Bass Clarinet, two Bassoons and Contra Bassoon and a Saxophone quartet of two Altos, Tenor and Baritone with possible doublings on Percy Grainger's beloved Soprano, in the brass, four Horns, three or more Trumpets or Cornets, three Trombones, one or two Tubas, with Timpani, Percussion, Double Bass, Harp and Piano.

This rich palette of colours has been superbly tapped by Richard Rodney Bennett in his Morning Music (1987, Novello), Four Seasons (1991, Novello) and Trumpet Concerto (1993, Novello).

RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT – THE STYLISTIC MIDDLE GROUND

These three works by Bennett represent the composer at the height of his powers and are in my opinion amongst the most significant works for wind ensemble of the end of the century. Bennett studied at the Royal Academy under Lennox Berkeley and Howard Ferguson, and in Paris with Pierre Boulez. His works include symphonies, concertos, a vast amount of chamber and vocal music, opera, ballet and film and television scores, ranging from the award winning Murder on the Orient Express to the more recent Four Weddings and a Funeral. He has a naturally affinity for wind, brass and percussion, an extraordinary ear for sonorities allied with a lyricism lacking in so many composers for the medium. To be analytical, all three works are in what Bennett refers to as "“more-or-less"” serial texture, but all three have series, which are tonal, based on closely related intervals and harmonies.

Susan Bradshaw writes: No other composer has done more to develop the stylistic middle ground of 20th Century music - an area widely ignored throughout the 1950'’s and 1960'’s - or, incidentally, to encourage its listeners.

MORNING MUSIC – MIDNIGHTMUSIC

THE WIND MUSIC OF RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT And IRWIN BAZELON

RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT

Morning Music

Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Orchestra

The Four Seasons

IRWIN BAZELON

Midnight Music

RNCM Wind Orchestra on DOY CD 037

The row which launches Morning Music can be easily sung by audience and ensemble with its diatonic patterning of 4ths and 3rds, while the row which is boldly stated as an introductory cadenza in the Trumpet Concerto turns out to be the same tune as Miles Davis' Maid of Cadiz; the slow movement is a heartfelt Elegy for Davis, the perfect cross-over work, a bridge between Schoenberg and contemporary jazz. Bennett's most recent work for wind is Reflections on a Sixteenth Century Tune (Novello, 1999); originally scored for string orchestra, the composer has transcribed it effortlessly for a double wind quintet. He is now working on a Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Wind Ensemble to be premiered in Autumn 2005.