HOMEPAGE  10^th SEPTEMBER 2009

Welcome back to school, conservatoire or university. I hope that your summer actually took place, because here in Leyland it has rained virtually every day.

I do not have much news to pass on for September and so plan to leave the Homepage for July up, with a few minor additions to make the indexing clear. There are a number of issues which I feel we need to consider as a profession, hopefully before the next round of conferences in 2011:

• repertoire
• programming
• interpretation

Meanwhile, the RNCM will be holding a two day event in connection with BASBWE in October:

RNCM / BASBWE Wind Weekend   24/25 October 2009

Basbwe returns to the RNCM in a new partnership which combines the college's recent highly successful woodwind days and a wind band focus on the Saturday. More details in the current edition of Winds and here.  Or click here to view or download the flier in PDF format.

For more details contact Jo Athroll at the RNCM. The weekend is free to all participants.

Hope to see many of you there. Have a great Fall/Autumn/Spring and get in touch if I can help in any way.

With best wishes
Tim Reynish  email timreynish@tiscali.co.uk

UPLOADS SINCE JUNE

REVIEWS:

• WASBE CONFERENCE  

• WASBE REPERTOIRE 

• BUDIANSKY Thoughts following the WASBE Conference and original article

VIDEO of clinic on TOCCATA MARZIALE            

BIOGRAPHY updated

WILLIAM REYNISH COMMISSIONING PROJECT

School Band Repertoire Thoughts

September is with us, and any browsers of this site will already have finalised their programmes for 2009-2010 and will start thinking about the following season. Our summer conducting school, Canford at Sherborne, finished only a month ago, and  already my indefatigable webmaster has roughed out a repertoire for August 2010 – watch this space, and follow links to BASBWE and a new Facebook group for former students of the course. The course this year was attended by twenty two students drawn from Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States.

I think the course this year brought several works forward which will be well worth considering for school and community bands, as well as less experienced college groups.  Recordings of most of these works have been uploaded on the www.Maecenasmusic.com site. If you want a CD of these and other useful works at this level, please let me have your mailing address.

SHAFTOE’S HOEDOWN
This is a typical example of the Genesis Series initiated by Malcolm Binney; Binney himself, Gorb, Carroll and Wood all wrote works at about Grade 2 – Grade 3 level with reduced scoring but much cross cueing, and school teachers on the course reported that their students greatly enjoyed these pieces. Why not go to the Maecneas website and browse through the lot to make your choices?

EMERALD BREEZE
This beautiful miniature was written by Malcolm Binney about ten years ago, and at last a recording has been made, soon to be uploaded on the Maecenas website. Real music suitable for bands of modest abilities, in which Binney has employed his gifts of lyrical melodic invention to produce a tone-poem of warmth and appeal. Everything lies beautifully under the fingers, while more experienced players are given the chance to stand out. Essential repertoire for good school bands upwards.

WINTER DANCES
Commissioned by Mark Heron for the opening of the Pyramid Centre at Warrington, this three movement work cleverly combines some minimalist techniques with motifs from well known Christmas music.

SUNRISE AND SAFARI
Commissioned by the Co-Curricular Activities Branch of the Ministry of Education, Singapore, for the 2007 Singapore Youth Festival, Sunrise and Safari is in two movement, the first a Ravellian dawn with some simple aleatoric bird song, the second with trumpeting elephants on half-valved trumpets, screeching monkeys on single reed mouthpieces, hissing snakes on tutti band. The ideal school or music centre motivational learning piece (includes an introduction to aleatoric music).

TRANQUILITY
An antidote to loud music, Tranquility made an enormous impression at its premeire in WASBE.. Most of the work is pianissimo with a climax in pppp! The band has simple vocal lines, there are bells tolled to remember the victims of man’s inhumanity to man, scraps of birdsong before the piece dissolves into muted brass chords. This will be published very soon and a recording uploaded on the Maecenas website.

WASTELAND MUSIC 2
This immensely practical score intended for intermediate players has a real identity of its own. Shorter and less strenuous than its ‘big brother’, it does share some of its material, structure and especially musical qualities while remaining highly individual. Repertoire of such quality at this technical level is particularly welcome.

FOUR NORFOLK DANCES
Commissioned to celebrate the 80^th birthday of Malcolm Arnold, this is a sequence of four dances which catches the spirit of the Arnold Dances wonderfully, good singable tunes, well scored, great to play and to listen to.

HOMEPAGE JULY 2009
I am very grateful to all those who have emailed over the past months or spoken to me at the WASBE Conference about their appreciation for this website. Every so often, someone in a far-flung corner of the world programmes one or two works as a result of reading an enthusiastic review, and that is so encouraging. The essence of the website is to talk about new literature, and this homepage is devoted exclusively to my personal commissions over the past eight years, based on a paper which I had hoped to give at WASBE. I believe that few other commissioning projects cover such a  range of difficulty, from works aimed at school band by Fergal Carroll and Timothy Jackson, to works for professional or university groups by Kenneth Hesketh and David Horne.

The WASBE Conference was as always a wonderful United Nations meeting place for enthusiasts, for bands, for conductors, for composers and for publishers. There are two new files on this website emerging from the Conference, and a Conference review will follow. My open rehearsal on Toccata Marziale with the RNCM Wind Orchestra is also available to view.

• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Toccata Marziale (Errata & interpretation)

• WASBE Repertoire sessions - Review

Have a great remainder of the holiday and let me know of any questions or requests for recordings.

Tim

Winnipeg July 18

WILLIAM REYNISH COMMISSIONING PROJECT

 Dr. William Reynish (24 Dec 1966 – 13 May 2001)

William, our third son, died in May 2001, climbing one Sunday morning in the Pyrenees by himself, something he always told my wife not to do. He was 34, and had packed into his short life an enormous amount of travel, adventure and even study. At the time he was researching into Alzheimers disease and working in the Department of Internal and Geriatric Medicine in the University of Toulouse. His death came at a time when I was still at the Royal Northern College of Music. I had commissioned a wind piece, Blasket Dances, from Matthew Taylor, and the College preferred not to help with the commissioning fee, so Hilary and I turned it into a work in memory of William and paid for it ourselves. This was the start of an eight year commissioning project which has given the world more than twenty works.

I must confess to being biased, but I think that my composer colleagues have made a major contribution to the contemporary repertoire, uniquely for school, community, university and professional bands, with original quality works at every level.  I had hoped to present a paper at WASBE on my commissions. My proposal was turned down, and so instead I have developed a chronological index with programme notes in alphabetical order, usually contributed by the composer.

I am especially indebted to Dr. Isaiah Odajima, of Baylor University, for his research work on this commission series as part of his submission for the degree of DMA at Michigan State University.

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX OF WORKS

INDEX

Recordings of every work are available from the publishers; the Unfinished Symphony by Geoffrey Poole is awaiting a premiere. My latest commission, Tranquility, by Adam Gorb, was written for the Cincinnati WASBE Conference and was premiered in a reading session on Tuesday July 7^th by the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra.  

This commissioning series is unique in that the range of music runs the gamut from repertoire designed for less experienced school groups, such as Fergal Carroll’s Song of Lir or Blackwater to pieces written for professional ensembles such as the works by Judith Bingham, Michael Berkeley or Christopher Painter. Two composers have pairs of works at different levels; Hesketh’s The Cloud of Unknowing was followed by the easier Vranjanka, while Roxburgh’s heart-felt lament for solo oboe and ensemble, An Elegy for Ur, is twinned with his Aeolian Carillons.  Several works, Dances from Crete, Image in Stone, L’Homme Armé, Symphony for William, Song of Lir, and Blackwater have already been recorded commercially, and Timothy Jackson’s moving Passacaglia has met with extraordinary success; its technical demands are modest (perhaps American Grade 4+) but its emotional demands are high. Geoffrey Poole’s  Unfinished Symphony has been resided and awaits a premiere.  Four of the works, by David Horne, Edwin Roxburgh, Adam Gorb and Emily Howard, were played at the Cincinnati WASBE Conference.

Almost all of the works published by Maecenas can be heard in full recordings on their new website and you can view performances of several of the works in the series here.

Aeolian Carillons  -  Edwin Roxburgh

Premiere: June 29^th 2007 BASBWE Conference, Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama

West of Scotland Schools Concert Band, conductor Nigel Boddice

Edwin Roxburgh writes:

Written at the end of 2006 and given its premiere as part of the my 70^th birthday celebrations at the 2007 BASBWE conference at Glasgow, Aeolian Carillons was first performed by the West of Scotland schools Concert band under the direction of Nigel Boddice in June that year. It is my third original score for wind ensemble and forms a kind of ‘pendant’ to my second, the award-winning oboe concerto An Elegy for Ur, both being part of Timothy Reynish’s inspirational commissioning programme of works in memory of his son William. Notionally for lower grade bands, it asks some serious musical and technical questions of players, and it is remarkable how consistently, how enthusiastically and triumphantly they rise to the challenge. The work, which might have been called ‘Fanfares and Interludes’ is extraordinarily compact and intense. It gets down to business right away with an arresting figure combining ideas of fanfares and tolling bells. Marked ‘Powerful and sustained’ it turns out to be a recurring motif, its appearances separated by passages either gentle or brilliant and featuring some daringly exposed writing. At around 5 minutes, the score has an impact out of all proportion to its duration. Apart from a soprano saxophone, the line-up is a standard wind band with no doublings, and fairly restricted – though masterly –percussion demands. 

INDEX

An Elegy for Ur  -  Edwin Roxburgh

Premiere June 27^th 2006, Haden Freeman Concert hall, RNCM, Manchester

Melinda Maxwell with the RNCM Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

Edwin Roxburgh writes:

Ur could be described as the womb of history. It was a civilization which produced ‘works of art so rich and technically so perfect’, as Sir Leonard Woolley described early Mesopotamian art. Modern Iraq inhabits the same soil and for several millennia the country has cared for its invaluable artifacts. As a result of the catastrophic invasion by the USA and the UK this rich heritage was plundered and despoiled in the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.. The earliest surviving musical instrument, the Royal Lyre of Ur, was among the treasures that were either destroyed or stolen. This may not seem as barbaric as the invasion itself, in which thousands of innocent women and children were slaughtered, but it is equally tragic. The world of culture cannot influence the decisions of politicians but it can record a protest for history. Hence, the title of this work.

In dedicating An Elegy for Ur to its commissioners, Timothy and Hilary  Reynish, in memory of their son, William, I am aware that they share the sorrow which so many of us feel for the victims of conflict in Iraq, together with the country’s artistic treasures.

The music takes the form of flourishing rhapsodies for the solo oboist, separated by rhythmic interludes which feature the main orchestra in virtuosic gestures. There is a metaphorical relationship between the oboist and the subject of the piece in that the soloist presents a somewhat anguished melody in the rhapsodies, whereas the orchestra displays what can only be described as anger about the atrocities of the Iraq invasion. The augmented 4th and minor 6th are displayed in all the linear substance and harmonic structure in characterising the nature of the piece. In the cadenza the soloist creates a commentary on all that has happened musically, leading to a conclusion in which both elements are combined. While the metaphor has been a strong motivating factor in the composition process, the work is essentially an abstract musical conception.

The composer is privileged to have had the work commissioned by Hilary and Timothy Reynish. It is an added privilege to have this première performed by Melinda Maxwell, who is one of our finest oboists. The distinguished service which both she and Tim have given to music is widely respected.

INDEX

Blackwater  -  Fergal Carroll

Premiere April 25^th 2007, Ford Hall, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York

Ithaca Symphonic Band conducted by Timothy Reynish

Fergal Carroll writes:

Blackwater is intended for younger bands of between grade 3 and 3.5  standard. It was commissioned by Timothy Reynish and completed in the autumn of 2005.

The River Blackwater is the largest in the south-west of Ireland and flows through the counties of Waterford and Cork before entering the Celtic Sea at the town of Youghal. Two main themes provide the melodic material for this 6 minute work. An old Irish air, Cape Clear, is the basis of the main theme. The region after which it is named is not far from where the Blackwater rises. Against this is placed an original counter-melody which we hear at the beginning in the style of a plainchant. There is a central episode where this counter-melody is developed. It is placed into a dance-like 5/4 metre and carried first by the woodwinds before the entire band brings us into the final section where the Cape Clear theme is heard again.

INDEX

Blasket Dances  -  Matthew Taylor

Premiere 27^th June, 2001 in the Haden Freeman Concert Hall, RNCM Manchester

RNCM Wind Ensemble conductor Tim Reynish

Blasket Dances, commissioned by Timothy Reynish, was written in memory of the courageous spirit which infused generations of Blasket people and is dedicated to the equally courageous spirit of Will Reynish, who loved wild places – and wild ceillidhs

Introduction – First Dance  -  interlude – Second Dance – interlude

Third Dance – interlude – Fourth Dance

Matthew Taylor writes:

The Blasket Islands lie on the very fringe of Europe, exposed and unprotected in the Atlantic few miles off the Dingle peninsular off South West Ireland. In its time, Blasket folklore was as rich as any in Ireland. On a visit  I was particularly captivated by some recordings of solo songs, and dances played by violin and accordion. Enthusiastic grunts, cheers, tappings of feet and clinking of glasses frequently punctuated the songs, whose subjects embraced time-honoured themes of love and nature

This work plays without a break. A slow introduction evokes the Blaskets seen today from the mainland, craggy, deserted, yet strangely impressive, till the first dance is announced by clarinets, initially in the distance but gaining power and force with each subsequent repetition. A brief interlude, begun on horns and trombones, eases into the second dance, based on an old Blasket love song. This is a theme and variations, the theme shared between solo oboe and bassoon, while the other instruments enter successively to adorn the tune in two variations.

A second interlude featuring tuned percussion, leads into the Third Dance, a Romance, intoned by trumpets. The last interlude is the longest but the most contemplative in character. It comprises a calm chorale on trombones, tuba and flute, and a gentle fugato. A brief oboe cadenza leads into the final dance, a vigorous Blasket gigue, fully scored, which gains energy and momentum as it progresses.

INDEX

Bright Spirit  -  Judith Bingham

Premiere 5^th February 2002, Jones Concert Hall, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

Baylor University Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

My lost William, thou in whom

Some bright spirit lived, and did

That decaying robe consume

Which its luster faintly hid,

Here its ashes find a tomb.

But beneath this pyramid

Thou art not – if a thing divine

Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine

Is thy mother’s grief and mine.

Where art thou gentle child?

Let me think thy spirit feeds,

Within its life intense and mild,

The love of living leaves and weeds

Among these tombs and ruins wild;

Let me think that through low seeds

Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass,

Into their lives and scents may pass

A portion  ----

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Judith Bingham in introducing this piece, once spoke of the problem of writing a memorial for someone whom she did not know. The direct inspiration came when browsing in a bookshop through a volume by Shelley, which fell open at an exquisite poem that he had written in memory of his own son, William, who had died at the age of five. Shelley’s poem does not finish, but breaks off in mid-phrase; he contemplates the flowers and grasses growing on the grave, and the seeds blowing in the wind. Poignantly he reflects that although William is no longer here, yet his bright spirit lives on.

The shape of the piece follows loosely the shape of the poem. It begins with a slow, bluesy funeral march which eventually gives way to a more dogged march, building to a massive climax - the message is that the bereaved have to come through grief and continue onwards. The four note twisting phrase is the word “Will” in musical terms. The work was written in the aftermath of 9/11 so the composer felt it was curiously apt to write a memorial piece at that time.

 INDEX

Dances from Crete  -  Adam Gorb

Premiere November 14^th 2003, Royal College of Music, London

Royal College of Music Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

Adam Gorb writes:

Dances From Crete is in four movements and is intended to celebrate the good things in life, drawing much of its material from the dance music from the Greek island of Crete, where many of the ancient Greek myths took place. The first movement, Syrtos is intended to serve as a portrait of the Minotaur, the famous creature that was half bull, half man, and fed upon young men and women that were sacrificed to him every year before being killed by the hero Theseus. The character of this movement is harsh and ruthless.

The second movement, Tik is a more graceful dance based on the sinuous movements of young women, but it is also characterised by a certain roughness; and is in 5/8 time. Tim Reynish writes that ‘in this movement the whole orchestra should feel the pulse like a Cretan Peasant on the threshing floor.’ Following on from this the third movement in a slow 7/4 time is darker in mood and inspired by a steep and perilous walk down the Samaria Gorge; one of the most spectacular of all walks. The movement eventually rises to a triumphant peroration, depicting a welcome plunge into the Libyan Sea. Following distant offstage fanfares the finale, a modern Greek dance, Syrtaki, which bursts in with the offstage trumpeters swaggering back on stage playing a deliberately vulgar theme. The music soon becomes very fast and eventually ends in total festive anarchy, although before the final apotheosis the ghost of the Minotaur can briefly be heard joining the party.

INDEX

Deep Soul Diving  -  Emily Howard

Emily Howard writes:

Deep Soul Diving was composed during the summer of 2006 in response to a commission from Timothy Reynish. It is a lively little piece which opens with a passacaglia-like theme first heard in the flute that gradually builds to a climax. The middle section is more relaxed, being rooted in jazz harmony and finally the opening theme returns to produce an exhilarating finish. Deep Soul Diving was premiered by the Junior Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra, conducted by Jerry Hou, at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, England in December 2006. It lasts approximately 5 minutes.

INDEX

Image in Stone  -  Stephen McNeff

Premieres June 29^th 2007, BASBWE Conference RSAMD, Glasgow

July 28 2007, WASBE Conference, Killarney

Nora King and the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

Giles Easterbrook writes:

Image in Stone does not wear anguish on its sleeve but makes its point through restraint, the poets’ observations on death cosmic but the composer’s response personal and positive, favouring expressive understatement. Effect comes through accumulation rather than explosion because it is not an anthology bolted together but a true cycle with integrity of purpose and poetic logic. I can imagine McNeff setting these verses entirely differently in other contexts. He took pains over texts and instrumentation (2 flutes 2^nd doubling piccolo, 2 oboes, cor, 2 clarinets and bass, bassoon and contra, alto saxophone, 2 each of horns and trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, harp and two percussion v- 21 players plus singer with a range from A below the stave to G above), and approved them with Tim Reynish. This done, progress was rapid for notional premiere at the WASBE Conference in Killarney on 8^th July 2007. In fact it was played first at BASBWE, Glasgow, on June 29^th by the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble under Reynish himself – joint dedicatees – and sung by Nora King.

The title comes from the opening text, a first century grave stele from Greece (a Reynish family stamping ground for holiday and archaeological activity) telling that a man’s life is short but as memory of him can outlive all, we shouldn’t be sad. Short and really a prelude, its mood is celebration not lament, the scoring scintillating, deft, spare, often soloistic as landscape and memorial sun glitter under a bright sun. It takes a brave man to tackle Donne’s famous Death be not Proud. McNeff avoids rhetoric or melodrama by the Britten-like device of exposing a vocal line over stark accompaniment, a slightly grotesque funeral march, for the sonnet’s octet exposition and sestet recapitulation; the fully scored ensemble passage between is emotional expansion as much as thematic development and relaxes tension only to reapply it. Christine Rosetti’s Song, an interlude between extended movements, is equally perilous country. McNeff avoids the usual pitfalls overplaying or over-sentimentalising its poignant charm with guileless folk-like melody and the simplest of accompaniment. The final section sets part of Whitman’s On the Beach at Night from “Leaves of Grass”, not the passage Vaughan Williams used in A Sea Symphony, and a different treatment recalling more The Cloud-Capp’d Towers with its wide spaced, slow moving modal chords. The feeling of unresolved finality, consolation and reflection on immortality balances Donne’s message that death has no real victory. 

From the sleeve note to Music for Wind Orchestra by Stephen McNeff

RNCM Wind Orchestra conductor Mark Heron, Campion Cameo 2077

INDEX

L’Homme Armé  -  Christopher Marshall

Premiere July 8^th 2003 at the WASBE Conference, Jonkoping, Sweden

Guildhall School of Music & Drama Wind Ensemble, conductor Peter Gane

Christopher Marshall writes:

When I decided to write a work based on this ancient tune I had to balance three competing and apparently incompatible intentions. Firstly, given the text of the song and the time I was writing the music – prior to and during the hostilities in Iraq – I wanted it to express some of my feelings towards the institution of war. Secondly, since the melody has been an inspiration over more than five centuries since its composition, I wanted to honour that tradition by alluding to some of the musical styles and employing some of the techniques of my predecessors. Thirdly, some evidence points to the origin of this tune as a French drinking song, so I wanted the music to have an element of enjoyment and exuberance.

As the music progressed I was surprised at the extent to which the first intention became dominated by the second and third. Only traces of the “war theme” could be detected in the finished work. Examples are the siren-like opening and closing motifs, the rhythms of Te Rauparaha’s war chant “Ka mate, Ka ora” (if I live, I die), a “pleading” motif derived from a “waiata tangi” (mourning song), and a brief march and funeral procession. The homage to musical tradition is seen in the form of the whole piece, that most ancient of musical structures, variations on a theme. Within this overall form canons of all possible types and descriptions abound. I quickly came to the conclusion that this L’Homme armé owed much of its popularity with composers to its great contrapuntal potential. As for the “enjoyment theme”, elements of dance and popular song from several ages and places infiltrate much of the piece and power its momentum to a vigorous climax.

INDEX

Passacaglia  -  Tim Jackson

Premiere of this version June 30^th 2007, BASBWE Conference Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, Glasgow

Glasgow Wind Band conductor

Originally the final movement of the composer’s Symphony for 32 Horns, commissioned to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the British Horn Society, premiered at the Guildhall 22 October 2005. This extensively reworked version was commissioned in 2006 by Timothy and Hilary Reynish in memory of their son William

Tim Jackson writes:

There is no specific programme to this piece except that it was originally conceived as the finale of a symphony for 32 horns, and it was Tim Reynish – himself a distinguished former professional horn player of course – who suggested that I rework it for symphonic winds.

One of the great strengths of the original line-up, particularly in this movement, is the ensemble’s capacity to create a really homogeneous sound, and as I considered the new version I had it in mind to exploit this feature. I hope the result is something band directors will enjoy using to work on the blending of sound and balance within the wind ensemble. It’s also a sound world which particularly suits the passacaglia form, with its uninterrupted flow and development of ideas, the continuous unfolding variations and expansion of material over an ever-present, underlying motif (the motif here is heard initially on unison clarinets and bassoons underpinned by bass drum strokes). Like most passacaglias, the pulse is steady, and it begins in a rather solemn, contemplative mood. As the work progresses though the spirit is transformed, with more rapid musical figures increasingly emerging contrapuntally from the texture to bring it (I hope!) to a triumphantly positive conclusion.

INDEX

Resonance  -  Christopher Marshall

Premiere April 27^th 2006 at Ford Hall, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York 

Ithaca College Wind Ensemble, conducted by Tim Reynish

Christopher Marshall writes:

I was honoured when Tim and Hilary Reynish commissioned me to write a second piece in memory of William. This time I wanted to write music of a more contemplative nature as a contrast to L’homme armé.  Resonance is divided into two main sections. The first uses several thematic fragments arranged in their own ‘orbits’. At each appearance they inter-react with each other and evolve. The second section moves back in time to reveal the whole theme in its original form, a simple hymn-like tune. After three variations, material from both sections combines in a brief coda. This is abstract music; there is no programme. However, prior to and during the composition process, images of nineteenth century New Zealand kept coming to mind.

My great-great grandfather was one of hundreds of English missionaries in the North Island during a period of rapid Maori conversion to Christianity. This was the time of the Maori prophets, their writings revealing a vivid amalgam of Victorian Christianity and Polynesian warrior culture – attempts to make sense of the turmoil and upheaval of colonisation.

Mission schools were frequently built in clearings in the dense forest. Contemporary accounts speak of the volume of the native bird song being so intense that lessons often had to be abandoned. These days the exquisite sound of a solitary tui or korimako in the forest is like a pale echo of that time. I picture my ancestor in a small mission school in the forest and imagine his thoughts drifting from the earnest faces of his students to memories of his own youth back in England.

INDEX

Slow Dawn  -  Michael Berkeley

Premiere October 24^th 2005 at the Barbican Concert Hall, London

Guildhall School of Music & Drama Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

Michael Berkeley writes:

Timothy Reynish has been asking me to write for Wind Band for a quarter of a century and Slow Dawn, which is dedicated to the memory of his son, William, is, finally, the result. It depicts the gradual appearance of the sun (in the form of the tuba) as it climbs into the sky. Shafts of light and playful reflections accompany the increasing warmth of day. Although in this hemisphere we have tended to think of, as Wilfred Owen put it, ‘the kind old sun’, the music of midday in this piece suggests more the savage anger of heat in foreign climes with stabbing beams of light. Though the sun winds down as ever, it is its endless power that informs the music’s closing bars.

INDEX

Song of Lir  -  Fergal Carroll

Premiere March 26^th 2004 at the BASBWE International Wind Festival & Conference,

Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, HMS Britannia, Dartmouth, conducted by Tim Reynish

Fergal Carroll writes:

Written for bands of medium ability, Song of Lir is a single movement work lasting just under seven minutes. It is intended to suggest an Irish lament of caoine, and much of the thematic material is derived from a 17th century harping tune called Captain O’Kane. Lir himself was a king in the Western part of Ireland at the time of the Celts. He had four beautiful children, a daughter and three sons. When their mother died, he married again, but his new wife was evil and jealous, and cursed the children of Lir, changing them into swans. They lived for 900 years as swans until they heard the sound of the first Christian bell coming from a monastery newly built beside their lake. At the sound of the bell, the curse was lifted and they were restored to human form, but were now ancient, frail people. A monk baptised them, whereupon they were able to die in peace. Song of Lir is not programmatic except that the sound of the bell, struck four times, is heard near the end of the work.

INDEX

Symphony for William  -  Derek Bourgeois

Premiere October 13^th 2004, Wattenbarger Auditorium, Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville

Tennessee Tech University Wind Ensemble, conducted by Tim Reynish

Will o’ the Wisp  -  Dianthus Barbatus (Sweet William) – Will Power

Derek Bourgeois writes:

For the titles of the movements I looked for phrases that used the word Will, (which is a shortened form of William), the name by which he was known to his family and friends, and that would reflect the varying character of his nature.  A Will o’ the Wisp is a ghostly entity made of marsh gas that is seen over marshes at night in the moonlight.  The movement is suitably flitting in character, but each half of the movement ends with a slow and somber passage that reflects the tragedy that befell him.

The second movement is much more tuneful and romantic.  The lovely flower, Dianthus Barbatus, is called Sweet William in England, and this movement reflects William’s gentle and affable nature.  The theme is first presented by a solo horn, and later by the woodwind.

The finale “Will Power” is a strong and rhythmic movement with driving energy, although it has its quieter and more reflective moments.  Towards the end it bursts into a manic release of energy before subsiding gently into a final reminder of the tune from the second movement.  The work ends peacefully as this reminder dies away.

INDEX

Trumpet Concerto  -  Marco Pütz

Premiere June 29^th 2007, BASBWE Conference Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, Glasgow

John Wallace and the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

The soloist begins with a short cadenza, more reflective than declamatory, into which merge solo wind instruments. The tutti band takes up and develops a semitone motif, rising and falling by turns, and this is interrupted by an energetic allegro with material based largely on motifs from the cadenza. The short second movement is a beautiful setting of the familiar Lutheran Chorale used by Bach in the St. Matthew Passion, O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded, building up to a huge tutti climax, dying away and erupting into a finale of enormous energy. A second motif is a more lyrical alla breve theme, referring frequently to the skittish 6/8 opening motif. In sonata form, the development is mostly based on the secondary theme. The recapitulation is regular, and leads to an extensive cadenza, followed by a grandiloquent coda. 

INDEX

The Broken Sea  -  Christopher Painter

Premiere 27^th November 2008 St. Andrew & St. Teilo Church, Cardiff

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

Christopher Painter writes:

The title is taken from a poem by the Welsh poet Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), one of the Kardomah Boys (along with Dylan Thomas, the artists Frederick Janes and Ceri Richards and the composer Daniel Jones) from Swansea. The piece is continuous and does not follow the narrative of the poem but uses quotations from it to head the five major sections of the work.  The Broken Sea is a description of a brooding sea at night-time as it moves from a cold landscape to a furious storm followed by a sorrowful calm at dawn before the power of the sea returns.

1.”A cold, a moonstruck place

…….Born of the Broken Sea”

2. “Waves. Hooded, raging, thunder, hiding contagious guilt,

Tossing, high on the shale, the hard and scribbled stones.”

3. “Still, the moon pulls on the waves

Which magnify their lunatic insistence…”

4. “Beside the magnificent, quiet, sinister, terrible sea

I hear pebbles grieve……”

5. “I hear the breath of the storm. The engulfed, Gargantuan tide

Heaped in hills by the moles, hurls to the mountain head.

INDEX

The Cloud of Unknowing  -  Kenneth Hesketh

Premiere May 6^th 2005, Royal College of Music Concert Hall, London

Royal College of Music Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

Kenneth Hesketh writes:

In composing this work, The Cloud of Unknowing, I was confronted by many different feelings. It was commissioned by Timothy and Hilary Reynish as part of a series of commissions in memory of their third son William. For various reasons it proved a difficult work to write, not the least in how to approach the piece and what to say musically that would not seem trite or contrived.. I turned to early English literature, in this case texts dealing with the mystical or metaphysical. Such texts have long interested me. The title of this work comes from an anonymous manual and guide to mystical experience and was written in the late fourteenth century. In a manner similar to the concept of nirvana in oriental religion, the text espouses an emptying out of all intellect, of all feeling, so that in silence God’s love and majesty may rush in. A second text, namely, A Litany by John Donne, also influenced the concept of this piece, specifically with reference to stanzas 23 to 25. Certain phrases and words seem to resonate musically and it was from these beginnings that the work took shape. The work grows from one melody which is heard almost at once. Constant variation, renewal and development of this theme moves the music forward, sometimes gently, sometime fiercely. The piece starts and ends as if from afar. Various accompanying figures are allowed to flow freely from background to foreground, seemingly at will. The overall structure moves through three sections; processional, mercurial and eventually explosive, recessional. The Cloud of Unknowing is dedicated to the memory of William Reynish but also with deep affection to Tim and Hilary.

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Tranquillity  -  Adam Gorb

Premiere  7^th July 2009 at WASBE Cincinnati Conference

RNCM Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

Tranquillity is a five minute study in p, pp, and occasionally ppppp. Ideally it should be played in a concert hall many miles away, and one should strain to hear it. The quiet brass chords: ‘R.I.P.’ at the end allude to the death of all that’s civilised (the Holocaust,  etc.etc)

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Vranjanka  -  Kenneth Hesketh

Premiere November 6^th 2005, BASBWE Conference, Haden Freeman Concert Hall, RNCM, Manchester

Guildhall School of Music & Drama Wind Ensemble, conductor Tim Reynish

Kenneth Hesketh writes:

Vranjanka (the title means "From Vranje," a town in southern Serbia, pronounced VRAHN-yahn-kah) is loosely based on the traditional folksong Šano Dušo. The melody exists in two versions, one in 7/8 and one in 3/4. I have chosen the version in 7/8 and in doing so, have extended the melodic ideas of the original with new material.

The musical form of the piece is as follows: a fairly slow introductory section where the theme is only hinted at but never heard and a faster second section cast in a set of variations on the folksong. These are not variations in the traditional sense, with clearly marked beginnings and endings, but ongoing developments of the various melodic materials in the folksong with original material 'growing out' along side.

The text for Vranjanka influenced the composition more often than not at an unconscious level, but it is included here for reference:

Sana, my soul, opens the door to me,

Open the door to me and I will give you coins.

My heart is burning for you, Sana.

Your fair face, Sana, is snow from the mountains,

Your forehead, Sana, is like moonlight.

That mouth of yours, Sana, like a deep red sunset,

That eye, my darling, makes me burn.

When night comes, marvellous Sana, I twist in sadness,

Your beauty, Sana, will not let me sleep.

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Waves and Refrains  -  David Horne

Premiere June 27^th 2006, Haden Freeman Concert hall, RNCM, Manchester

RNCM Wind Ensemble conducted by Tim Reynish

David Horne writes:

Waves and Refrains was commissioned by Timothy and Hilary Reynish in memory of their son William, who died in the Pyrenees in May 2001.Around fifteen minutes long, the musical ideas in the piece grow out of the perfect fifths heard at the opening, creating to my mind a kind of virtuosic tone-poem. The various groupings also suggest a ‘concerto’ for the ensemble. There are two different ‘refrains’ at play, the most obvious being the declamatory series of chords heard in the percussion. Only using tuned percussion throughout, the section is removed on a musical level from the rest of the ensemble. These interjections occur at regular moments in the piece, and catalyse various shifts in mood. The second refrain is a single melodic line, usually performed by heterogeneous duos in unison, and unaccompanied. Around these refrains, the music surges constantly, the nature of its ebb and flow suggesting the ‘waves’ referred to in the title.

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Recordings of the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra

Conducted by Timothy Reynish

 International Repertoire Recording Series