Score and parts here.

Programme note (this one's a little on the pretentious side):

Curious that
in our circumstances
amongst the hurt
we sing.

So begins the poem Sing by the Scottish poet George Bruce. We all hurt; we all sing, in one way or another. In whatever its context, singing is the irrational celebration of being alive. Singing is magic; C.S. Lewis has Aslan bring Narnia into being through song; similarly it is the singing of the Ainur that creates substance in Tolkien’s void. Song is life; thinking, feeling life.

The goal in each of the four movements of my piece is to sing, but this is only managed in the final section after the orchestra incorporates music from outside. All the movements are very short and run on without breaks. The first takes a highly dissonant chord and breaks it up into widely spaced harmonies based on minor seconds and major ninths. The second movement is obsessed with thirds; here there are the beginnings of melodic ideas but they never amount to anything. A distorted shard of chorale fortissimo in the brass eventually cuts off the cascading arpeggios. In the third movement, many fragments of melody are thrown about the orchestra in great excitement, but none manage to extend beyond a few beats to assert themselves as a singing voice. Behind this, a reverse process to the first movement is taking place: the chord that opened the piece is reformed through an emphasis on stacks of fifths. Out of the frustration of the third movement, a note appears which has not been heard so far in the piece, and this is the catalyst that generates the fourth movement. Unlike the previous three, it is not tied to a fixation with any interval; it is free to follow the impulse of its singing lines. The cellos supported by the low winds have the main melody while high above them the violins and upper winds share slow but steadily moving pairs of lines. Now that the music is singing, the tension of the previous movements is dispersed and the forward urge that drove it into various territories is no longer apparent. By this stage the musical processes are complete and the melodies dissolve into a violin solo closing on the note that would complete the opening chord.