WordPress charge quite heavily for the right to post audio files so I am going to explore SoundCloud. If and when I have an active account there I will migrate from here some of my better pieces. I will not post future music here.
Not sure if audio files will be deleted once my 10Gb upgrade payment lapses, but in case useful, here are audio files (without words) and pdf versions of scores for the three choral/ vocal pieces I have recently composed:
Work in progress from ‘Ceremony of Colours’, due for possible performance on March 3rd 2018 in West Bridgford, Nottingham
Audio file you should be able to stream as prompted:
Snippet from original manuscript part showing the possibility of interpreting the hard-to-synchronise three demisemiquavers as a triplet:
The dotted crotchets in bar 2 here are shorthand for double-dotted followed by the semiquaver which is the common demominator for the movement in this ‘French’ overture
WAV file generated by Sibelius with parts arrayed across stereo image. A big file if you download it but try streaming as prompted.
If you use this privately for performance, please credit me for the arrangement, and I retain copyright but will license if you are considering commercial use
Looking now at the Bach original, he harmonises the ‘-angst’ in a way I would not have guessed, as the third inversion of a dominant seventh, resolving upwards with a jump upwards of a major seventh in the bass line!
Ths is Boyd exercise 7, Riemenscheider 24 ‘Valet will ich dir geben’, a Palm Sunday hymn.
Bach set this in quite a minor way as a Pietist ‘leavetaking’ but I decided to go back to the original words which translate to ‘Glory, Laud and Honour’ (St Theodulph, 820AD).
This has a very high trumpet part which provisionally I would allocate to a piccolo trumpet in A (not sure yet about the lowest notes as this instrument may need or have an extra valve to extend its range)
This chorale has an unusually narrow range of pitch and moves in steps not leaps so I found avoiding parallels harder than usual, and changed key more often than previously to try and keep up the harmonic interest.
Bach’s original:
Interesting diminished 4th leap in the tenor in bar 6
Mine version has too many false relations but is I hope ‘singable’. The final Tierce de Picardie is the one modification I put in after seeing the original BAch’ I’d forgotten about that option!
This is my first ‘published’ piece since finishing the coursework and assignments for the OCA Course Music Composition, module 1
Here is a carol for one female and two male voices and piano. Ideally voices are soprano, high baritone (or low tenor) and bass. In keeping with the events of 2016 so far it’s rather sombre and agnostic.
Following initial feedback that some would be so dissonant to be hard to sing, I have modified bars 5 and 6 to the version shown here and made just the piano part keep the harsh discords. The rhythm of the ending is slightly different and there is now a three-quarters flat where previously I had written a single-quarter-flat in error.
It’s always been a problem knowing what to play in this Adagio. It ends on a B major chord, the dominant of E minor
One of my favourite movements in Bach is Suscepit Israel from his Magnificat, which ends on the same chord Conveniently, this has three solo high voices so I have used the choirs of first three violins and then three violas. Instruments not otherwise playing take, mostly in solo pairs, the cantus firmus line originally written for a pair of oboes. Bach’s original had no violone so I have doubled sparingly for double bass. It did indicate an organ, with no figuration, so if one is available this can play the cello solo line, and ideally on a separate double reed, manual, join the cantus firmus. Organ and bass are optional in this arrangement but double bass will be needed for most performances of Brandenburg 3.
The last two bars are almost exactly as in the Bach M/S, with a small solo viola 1 cadenza which links the first theme of this Adagio with the subsequent fast movement in G major.
Please credit me (Andrew Chadwick) and let me know if you use it. I have the Sibelius original in case bowings and cues need to be added
Apparently the cantus firmus is the ‘tonus peregrinus’ historically associated with Pasalm 113 the Magnificat and used by Praetorius and others. It does not fit the standard eight church modes and so is sometimes also known as the ‘ninth mode’ In performance of my transcription, the idea is that it should not be obvious to the audience where in the ensemble this line is coming from, so smooth handovers between the parts will be needed. Webern’s Passacaglia used a similar technique.
chadatom 