Index of compositions since 1998.

Click on individual titles below to listen to excerpts.
Piano arrangements and full scores of other people's compositions also undertaken.  to discuss your requirements.

All pieces are available from White Cottage Publications. Details on request. .

Fantasia for Violin & Piano    March 1998

This was my main submission for A level composition. It draws on the folk influenced romanticism of English composers at the beginning of the 20th century. The main theme uses pitches that sing out particularly well on the violin while the middle section is basically a jig, conjuring up images of village dances (not necessarily a thing of the past!) The two are combined to provide a triumphant finale. Performances: Springwood High School concert, July 1998. DUMS (Durham University Music Society) Composers' concert, February 1999.
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'Alla Sarabande' for Flute, Violin & French Horn    January 1999

This trio for flute, violin and horn was submitted as part of my first year composition folio at Durham. It has a sparse texture of three melodic lines without substantial harmonic support and the contrasting timbres of the three instruments and the way they blend add to its haunting atmosphere.
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Hornpipe for unaccompanied violin    March 1999

This is a simple piece for unaccompanied violin in which the dance theme appears twice, first in the minor over a drone, then faster in the major key and a more dancing rhythm.
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'Orient' for unaccompanied flute    April 1999

Inspired by the beautiful music of the shakuhachi this piece has a feeling of rhythmic and harmonic freedom only possible in an unaccompanied line.
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Study for unaccompanied French Horn    April 1999

'Joke-in-a-Box' for Xylophone & Metronome    April 1999

The tune to this light-hearted but fairly tricky piece first occurred to me when walking along the river banks of Durham in a flippant mood. When I came to write it down and think about getting it played I realised that there is no way for a listener to latch onto the rhythm, especially at the beginning, so I decided that a beat should be provided by a metronome which, to prevent it from being too obtrusive, should be placed in some sort of box and could be positioned for maximum comic effect, maybe at the back of the hall, under the xylophone, on top of a doorway or under someone's chair.
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'Look To' song for unaccompanied Female Voice     April 1999

This song for unaccompanied female voice is a setting of the poem by Chris Gutteridge from his anthology,
'An English Man At Home':

LOOK TO

Bellringers without faith
Call the faithful to prayer.
Faltering, tumbling
Changes hang in the air.*
Belching and mumbling,
High in their dusty lair,
Bellringers without faith.

Bellringers without faith
Tumble down spiral stair;
Push through Sunday-best tide
Out into open air.
Organ rumbles inside,
But bellringers don't care;
Bellringers without faith.

Bellringers without faith
Ringers without faith
Without faith
Out faith
Faith
Faith

© Chris Gutteridge, 1999

*  excerpt in MIDI file ends here

'Look To was inspired by a team of Norfolk village bell ringers of the old style. As their captain said, "Jus' 'cause we ring the bells, that dun't mean we ha' ter gew ter chuch!" I was fascinated by the idea of people of no particular religious convictions being the ones who summon those who, presumably, do have faith, to prayer.
The first two verses have six syllables per line - one for each bell in the tower - regardless of where the stress falls. This un-English style replicates the random way that stresses fall on certain notes with a team of less than perfect ringers. The last verse represents the process of ringing down the bells after use, with the ringer of the final bell failing to silence it at the right time. The title is from the age-old cry of the person on the number one bell, to commence ringing - "Look to, treble's going, she gone!"'
Chris Gutteridge.

The poem is set to a piece of change ringing called plain hunt in which the notes are subjected to a simple procedure whereby they are swapped in pairs so that each note will move gradually towards the beginning or end of the bar and back. The irregular rhythm is in free imitation of the "less than perfect" team portrayed (of which I am an irregular member). The dynamics enhance the effect, in imitation of the effect of position and wind direction which conspire to make some bells much louder than others. The whole thing is highly unvocal and I'd love to meet anyone who would like to have a go at singing it! (transposition for any voice range is fine.)
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Suite for the King's Lynn Waites     July 1999 (commissioned)

This suite was commissioned by King's Lynn Waites with funding from Norfolk County Council's Music Fund for use in their civic duties for the Mayor of the Borough of King's Lynn & West Norfolk. It is scored for the Lynn Waites' usual ensemble of soprano and alto shawms, cornett, sackbut and serpent.

Fanfare for a New MayorThis was composed for the Mayor-making ceremony at King's Lynn Town Hall in May 1999, at which Dr Richards, a noted local historian and keen supporter of the Waites was re-elected for a second term as Mayor. It was therefore, strictly speaking, a fanfare for the same Mayor again! We tend to play it faster than Elizabeth intended, which is a great relief to the serpent player, struggling to maintain intonation on the long F's and B flats.

The Mayor of Lynn's March Claire Clarke (alto shawm) says this reminds her of Trumpton. The Mayor was very pleased with it, but when we led his procession for the opening of the Mart (King's Lynn's fair held on Tuesday Market place every February since medieval times) the shawms found they hadn't enough time to expel their 'stale air' - a problem often met by oboe players - and when we returned the Mayor up the High Street to the Town Hall, the Mace-bearers, having the scent of mulled wine in their nostrils, set such a cracking pace that the shawm players very nearly keeled over! Since then we only play it standing still.

Dr Richards, His Farewell This piece was intended for the Mayor-making ceremony in May 2000 as our farewell to Dr Richards on his retirement as Mayor. However, due to political problems, we were not able to perform it in the hall during the ceremony, although we did play it in the musicians gallery, built in 1620 on the staircase of the porch specially for our predecessors to perform in. We rectified the situation by playing it in Dr Richards' garden, in the shadow of a Tudor merchant's watch tower, a few days later. It's a suitably sad piece, and the soprano shawm part is particularly tricky. Since then, we have taken to replacing the shawms with recorders, which sound more suitable, allow the cornett to be heard better, and make the piece much easier to play.

Takest Thou Five!This is the Waites' favourite. The title is an acknowledgement of Dave Brubeck, but the time signature is the only thing it has in common with his piece. It is essentially a Tudor-style piece in 5/4 time - a complete anachronism, and great fun. We like to take it at breakneck speed, and go through it twice, so Elizabeth added a descant part for the cornett to play second time round. The cornett is a fiendishly difficult instrument to play, and at first our cornettist, Karen Hall, was quite taken aback by this descant part, but she has mastered her instrument to such an extent now that she soars above us in a very satisfactory fashion.

Main performances:Fanfare, Takest Thou Five; Mayor-making ceremony, King's Lynn Town Hall, May 1999, NSPCC concert, Downham Market, July 1999. Fanfare, Mayor's March; Institution of Rector at All Saint's Church, King's Lynn, January 2000, Opening of King's Lynn Mart, February 2000. The whole suite: Mayor-making ceremony, May 2000, Three Crowns Yard, May 2000, Langham Street Fair opening concert, July 2000, Concert, Wolterton Hall, Norfolk, November 2000. 'King's Lynn Waites & Friends', concert at King's Lynn Arts Centre in the presence of the Mayor, May 2001. Wolterton Hall, Norfolk, November 2001. Since 2001, the suite has been performed entire or in part at all performances by the King's Lynn Waites, which have become too numerous to mention.
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Hunstanton Hornpipe   folk melody (violin)    August 1999

A simple folky melody composed whilst sitting on the beach at Old Hunstanton, North Norfolk, England. I can smell the salt air...
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'Aurient' for Piano     December 1999 available from SibeliusMusic.com

That's Aurient as in golden (a Terry Pratchett term). As part of my degree course I was asked to write a piano piece using a 6-note pitch class set and this was it. Probably not quite what they had in mind, but I hope it's good music. The basic idea of this piece is the stereotyped, rose-tinted view (musical and otherwise) of the orient at the turn of the last century. Exotic, yet somehow familiar enough to be comfortable.

This piece can be viewed and played on the SibeliusMusic.com website, where it is available for purchase.
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'Perpetuum' for Flute, Violin, Clarinet, 'Cello & Double Bass     March 2000

This piece was submitted as part of the second year of my music BA course at the University of Durham. We were asked to compose "a rhythmic piece" using any of various techniques and drawing from a range of examples. I was taken with some of the minimalist pieces, but I was also influenced by my growing interest in world musics, especially the Javanese gamelan and Indian singing, both of which I study. The piece was first performed in June 2000 at the Durham Contemporary Music Festival.

This piece is available free from the SibeliusMusic.com website.
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'Coopers' Jig' duet for Cor Anglais & Bassoon   April 2000 (commissioned)

String Quartet    May 2000

This piece is about gradual natural changes and patterns. The image that started me off was the waves left on a lake after a duck had just flown away. After the first performance in Durham in June 2000 it transpired that various members of the audience had their own equally appropriate ideas.

Performances: Workshop with the Allegri Quartet, May 2000, Performed DUMS Composers' concert (by students), July 2000.

This piece can be viewed and played on the Scorch Music website, and is available for purchase from Scorch.
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'Bell Study # 1'  for chamber ensemble    August 2000 available from SibeliusMusic.com

This piece was composed as part of the Northern Junior Philharmonic Orchestra Course that summer. It was suggested that we should base our compositions on Durham Catherdral and I chose to use the sound of the bells that ring a monotonous minor third at about 5pm. I built up the piece on the harmonics I heard with the bells and the echoes created by the nearby river banks. The instruments should be placed in three groups of three around the room, to left, right and directly in front of the audience. If necessary the vibraphone part can be reproduced on a synthesiser and the harp part played on a piano.

Performance: Workshop performance on NJPO course, August 2000

This piece can be viewed and played on the SibeliusMusic.com website, where it is available for purchase.
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Snowdrop    for soprano, violin and piano    January 2001

This is destined, I hope, to be one of a suit of settings of Hughes' poetry with a winter theme. It was one of the pieces composed for members of the Gemini Ensemble who performed it at a workshop at Durham in spring 2001.

SNOWDROP

Now is the globe shrunk tight
Round the mouse's dulled wintering heart.
Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,
Move through an outer darkness
Not in their right minds,
With the other deaths.* She, too, pursues her ends,
Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal.

* excerpt in MIDI file ends here
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Alap    for unaccompanied voice      March 2001

Influenced by what I learned in India, this is a quiet and introspective vocal study.
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Wodwo    for clarinet, soprano and piano                      March 2001

Another Hughes setting for the Gemini workshop in Durham in spring 2001, much preferred to the snowdrop by those there present. The setting reflects the disjointed sentences and bewildered manner of the text.

WODWO

What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over
Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge
I enter water.* What am I to split
The glassy grain of water looking upwards I see the bed
Of the river above me upside down very clear
What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find
this frog so interesting as I inspect its most secret
interior and make it my own? Do these weeds
know me and name me to each other have they
seen me before, do I fit in their world? I seem
separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped
out of nothing casually I've no threads
fastening me to anything I can go anywhere
I seem to have been given the freedom
of this place what am I then? And picking
bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me
no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it
me and doing that have coincided very queerly
But what shall I be called am I the first
have I an owner what shape am I what
am I am I huge if I go
to the end on this way past these trees and past these trees
till I get tired that's touching one wall of me
for the moment if I sit still how everything
stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre
but there's all this what is it roots
roots roots roots and here's the water
again very queer but I'll go on looking

* excerpt in MIDI file ends here
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Incidental music for Searching for Mrs Dickens by Ann Courtney, performed by Mad Dogs & Englishmen  November 2001

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