CCA Composer of the Month: MARCH 2016-APRIL 2016

Simon Mold - CCA Composer of the Month: MARCH 2016-APRIL 2016

CCA Composer of the Month: MARCH 2016-APRIL 2016

YOUR FEATURED COMPOSITION(S) OF THE MONTH:

Candlelight Carol

´Merciless Day´: Chaconne for the Fallen

INSTRUMENTAL AND/OR VOCAL RESOURCES USED:

Candlelight Carol: SS/SATB and organ/piano

´Merciless Day´: Chaconne for the Fallen - Voice and piano

FIRST PERFORMANCE DETAILS – IF RELEVANT:

Candlelight Carol: Free Trade Hall Manchester 1988 with the Manchester Boys’ Choir, Nigel Ogden organ

‘Merciless Day’: As part of the song cycle “In Memoriam” in Otham Church near Maidstone, Kent, by Benjamin Odom (baritone) and Trevor Brearley (piano) – 14th September 2014.

PERFORMERS ON YOUR RECORDING – IF RELEVANT

Candlelight Carol: The Promenade Girls´ Choir at St Andrew´s Church, Walton-on-Thames on December 22nd 2015. Directed by Christopher Goldsack with Camilla Jeppeson, piano. The video performance is available by clicking HERE or see below..

´Merciless Day´: Oliver Barton [treble] and Christopher Barton [piano]. The recording is available by clicking HERE.

OF THE WORK(S) YOU HAVE SELECTED FOR THE COMPOSER OF THE MONTH FEATURE, WHAT WAS THE SOURCE/INSPIRATION/COMMISSION WHICH SET THIS PIECE OR THESE PIECES IN MOTION?

Candlelight Carol: A desire to write a carol that would be relatively easy to sing, appealing to general audience yet (hopefully) interesting to perform. I’m afraid that it was deliberately designed to be popular in several senses, and it seems to have been!

´Merciless Day´: Two or three years ago a friend in South Wales was writing a requiem mass and had the idea of interspersing the various movements with songs to non-liturgical texts in the manner of Britten’s War Requiem, which he suggested I provide. The full project has yet to be performed, but in the meantime I came up with seven songs for baritone or mezzo-soprano which also form a discrete cycle of their own. This cycle, entitled “In Memoriam”, has now been performed several times, and No. 3, “Merciless Day” was recorded on the recently-released CD “A Treble’s Voice” (see link).

WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD PROGRAMME NOTE FOR THIS WORK (OR THESE WORKS) WHICH EXPLAINS THE STRUCTURE, USE OF MELODY AND HARMONY AND ANY TECHNICAL POINTS RELATED TO THE PERFORMERS?

Candlelight Carol: It’s basically AABA form (ie da capo aria with repeat) with alternating sections for optional soloist and full voices. The slow 3/2 melody is deliberately diatonic, and makes great play with thirds between the voices, and uses the leading note of the scale to create a kind of lullaby effect (?a Mahlerian feature?!). When I was very young I tended to fill staves with notes and was deservedly told off for this, so the accompaniment is consciously spare, which perhaps makes the occasional climaxes more notable. I think the tune is easily memorable, and I am afraid really is hummable in an Old Grey Whistle Test kind of way. Using a treble soloist probably contributes to a sentimental effect, but I don’t write this kind of music all the time so I make no apologies! It’s appeared on CDs, radio and television (Lesley Garrett’s Christmas show), and I’m pleased I managed to come up with it when I was still relatively young. Incidentally, I had no idea, when I came up with the title, that John Rutter had also written his Candlelight Carol – and come up with the same title - and I remain eternally grateful to him that he has not appeared to mind (so far!). Oh, I also wrote the lyrics; I thought that it would save hours searching for a text nobody had set, an increasingly difficult beast to discover when it comes to Christmas carols.

´Merciless Day´:

“In Memoriam” begins with wistful musings upon the past, passes through the despair of conflict and loss, and finally reaches a form of resigned closure and acceptance. “Merciless Day”, the third song in the cycle, sets words by the Kent novelist and poet Lizzie Ballagher which combine heartfelt thoughts concerning the futility of war and its consequences with a plea for conflict to end. The apparently never-ending cycle of war and destruction in which mankind seems to engage suggested the chaconne form, with its inexorably recurring ground bass upon which voice and piano interweave a series of variations. I tried to write a theme that offered possibilities of both major and minor harmonic treatment, with a Neapolitan sixth at the last moment that contributes to an unsettling tonality. As with most chaconnes or passacaglias, things become more complicated as the music progresses: the opening Kyrie/Christe eleison has a spare 2-part accompaniment which gradually fills out with additional “parts” as the poetry intensifies. The text offered many opportunities for word-painting, which I did my best to incorporate as subtly as possible, so as to avoid drawing too much attention away from the overarching whole. At just one point about three-quarters through, the piano bass is suddenly abandoned as the text pauses to contemplate mothers’ tragic loss “of babes they have loved”: here the vocal part charts an unfinished upward scale intended to represent parents reaching out in vain for their lost children. (Compare, perhaps, “Envy, eldest born of hell” from Handel’s Saul.) The poem ends with a prayer for a “new dawn”, which encouraged me to end with a major chord in tierce de Picardie style, which can become something of a cliché but which I felt was justified in this case. At over 6 minutes it turned out to be a relatively long piece, which young Oliver Barton (just 13 at the time of recording) took tremendously well in his stride (as did the slightly older accompanist!).

WHEN DID YOU FIRST START COMPOSING AND WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST PIECE?

When I became a cathedral chorister one or two other boys in the choir would compose music, so I suppose I naturally joined in. It was the usual cathedral music/pastiche stuff, with occasional flashes of originality. I’ve no idea what my first piece was! – something that deserves to languish in a bin far, far away.

WHO WAS IT THAT FIRST ENCOURAGED YOU TO DEVELOP YOUR INTEREST IN COMPOSING AND HOW DID THEY HELP?

At Peterborough Cathedral Stanley Vann kept an amused eye on me, and Andrew Newberry (RIP) actively encouraged me to learn basic harmony. The Director of Music at school, Paul White, was encouraging, although he kept making me write spare atonal stuff that sounded weird; that was the 70s for you. He nevertheless tolerated my tunefulness, and arranged several early performances (and a radio interview) while I was a schoolboy, for which I remain ever grateful. Rich Unwin, who taught French but also produced school plays, asked me (aged 15) to provide an orchestral score for a version of “Candide” and this (risky!) encouragement gave me some invaluable experience.

WHO DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST INSPIRATIONS IN TERMS OF THE MAJOR COMPOSERS AND WHICH OF THEIR WORKS HAS INFLUENCED YOU THE MOST AND WHY?

English cathedral music, in all its forms – then the challenge is to write things that haven’t been written before! Before that, though, my father (a music teacher, amongst other things) introduced me to music of all sorts from my earliest years, and I particularly took to folksongs, in a VW kind of way, and still do. People have sometimes laughed at my unashamed love of Handel, in particular, but I was eagerly finding out about everything of his that wasn’t Messiah or the Water Music several years before others started to discover what else he had written. I love his use of melody, harmonic invention and subtle orchestration: listen to an oratorio like Alexander Balus (what? Never heard of it!) and you’ll happen upon an amazing soundscape. The other composer I love is Vaughan Williams – melody again, the folksong element I suppose, and above all the sheer glorious beauty of his music; try especially The Pilgrim’s Progress, the opera Sir John in Love (thanks to John Dexter, Colin Dexter’s brother, for introducing me to this when I was young), and the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, which is now all over Classic FM but had to be sought out when I was a schoolboy.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE TO SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER HEARD YOUR MUSIC BEFORE?

Tuneful; somewhat conservative; listenable-to; sensitive (I hope!) when setting words.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS ORIGINAL IN YOUR MUSIC?

I think I have written some attractive original melodies. I have been told that I sometimes use unusual harmonic progressions to get from A to B, and in spite of writing in apparently “traditional” style I have a tendency (at least these days) to avoid the obvious. I think I’m quite good at spotting how words and music can happily go together; writing my own texts (sometimes) can help.

HOW DO YOU WORK? WHAT METHODS OF CREATIVITY AND WORK ETHIC DO YOU HAVE? DO YOU SOLELY USE MUSICAL TECHNOLOGY OR DO PAPER AND PENCIL STILL FORM A PART OF YOUR PROCESS?

I tend to do the old-fashioned thing of writing a piece out using paper and pencil, then music-processing it. I tend to work at the piano; I’m not a very good pianist (ie I’m not a pianist!) but can get a feel how an accompaniment goes under the hands. I don’t want performers to complain that their parts are unidiomatic. I don’t like music that is supposed to be, say, for piano but has clearly never been near one, or choral music that takes no account of what singers find comfortable. I fear to say that Monsieur Poulenc is a tad guilty here. As to what I write: sometimes something occurs to me and I feel the need to compose it properly. Sometimes a commission or need to write something for a specific project works wonders!

WHAT PROJECTS ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?

I’m finishing off a trio of songs for mid-range voice and piano called A Peakland Suite (to my own texts, inspired by the Derbyshire hills and dales). With luck, a couple of (commercial) CDs featuring some of my church music, one with fellow CCA composer Charles Paterson, are to be recorded this year.

To finish, who or what is your favourite:

Genre of Music?

Baroque / English revival (Vaughan Williams et al)

Instrumentalist?

Jean-Pierre Rampal (flautist)

Singer?

Oh, this is hard. Andreas Scholl