Music archive entry



Composer: Alan Taylor
Title: Where Will The West Wind Blow You?
Instrumentation: Chamber Orchestra of fl, ob, cl, bsn, hn, tpt tbn, strings, percussion, piano
Duration: 9 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate

Recording:
MIDI Realisation

Technical Issues:
The percussion required is floor tom, snare drum, suspended cymbal, claves, wood block, tambourine.

Programme note:

The sub-title of the piece is taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ode, 'Dejection' which describes a calm and clear night, with the poet sunk for hours in depression, but woken from this reverie by the storm which has blown up unnoticed. The penultimate verse begins with the words:

"Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind...
I turn from you, and listen to the wind"

The piece was written as part of a project run by Forum Composers Group, to write pieces in some way drawing on the Western Wind Mass by the 16th century composer, John Taverner.

Taverner's Western Wind Mass is written in one of the church modes, the Dorian, rather than in a modern scale, and repeats the same 24 bar harmonic pattern through the entire Mass. This piece is also written in a mode, the Locrian, though with one pitch omitted, and it too repeats the same sequence of chords, over either 8 or 16 bars, throughout.

Availability:
from Alan Taylor
or from his SibeliusMusic home page where you can view, play, and print the score.



Return to

Alan Taylor's catalogue

More on

London Chamber Group

Forum London Chamber Symphony

Forum London Composers' Group

South London Community Music


This page created on
24.9.05