Southwark Consorts of Winds

• Tony Matthews - Consortium
• George Mayne - Music for Consort
• John Holland - In The Round
• Bernard Hurley- Modal Study No. 1
• David Arditti - Sonatina for Wind Ensemble: first movement
• Martin Jones - As Winter Follows on from Spring

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  Programme Notes

  Tony Matthews - Consortium

  A chorale of praise and a song of love, corrupted by life's thoughts whirling in and out in all the wrong places. Energetic and full of cross rhythms, with other rhythms that are just simply annoyed.

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  George Mayne

  George Mayne, a composer and concert pianist, author of theatre, symphonic and chamber music. His music is diverse in styles ranging from post-expressionism and extreme dedocaphonics to traditional. "Music for Consort of Winds" was inspired by some of his sketches played by "Modern Consort of Winds", for which he is very grateful to them. In this piece meditation is combined with movement and development of the themes.

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  John Holland - In The Round

  A deceptively simple idea; combine numbers, notes and noises into familiar patterns and then mix it all up! 'In The Round' is partly theatrical, partly experimental (or just 'mental') and almost completely nonsensical in its outlook, giving every musician in the group a chance to provide a unique voice in the overall scheme of things whilst using military-like precision to command their allocated numbers and tones. Counting to 10 will never be the same again...

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  Bernard Hurley - Modal Study No. 1

  Based on the music of the Banda-Linda people of Zaire

  Banda-Linda traditional horn music uses a large orchestra of tuned animal horns each of which is capable of playing only two notes. My piece is organised around a traditional melody that weaves its way between the instruments. The other instruments play melodic fragments around it in such a way that a very complex texture is generated. Since the melody itself is fragmented it becomes imperceptible to anyone who does not know it is there.

  Complex music in oral traditions can normally be broken down into conceptually simple ideas, which I call "modes". These cover not only concepts such as pitch, rhythm, and polyphony but also notions that are foreign to "western music" such as the time of day a piece can be played or whether drinking beer is allowed in the performance. My interest derives not from a wish to "Europeanise" such music, as, for instance, so-called "World Music" does, but from a wish to explore non-European compositional techniques. This piece is mainly based on the "modes" used in Banda-Linda horn music, but also contains traditional xylophone melodies and "talking" drum rhythms.

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  David Arditti - Sonatina for Wind Ensemble: first movement

  As implied by the work's title, this movement uses elements of sonata form. It is dominated by a slightly pastoral idee fixe announced at the beginning by the sax, in which rubato plays an important role. This is repeated impressionistically in different harmonisations and instrumentations, and played with rhythmically. A second, but related, subject commences, traditionally, in the dominant. A unison interruption in an unexpected key kicks-off the short development, taking the second subject into the home key, and the movement ends on a question mark, preparing for the next.

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  Martin Jones - As Winter Follows On From Spring

  Er, no it doesn't, not even in the Southern Hemisphere. Except that in southern England it did in early April 2008, when the population woke up to tens of centimeters of snow on the ground. So here is a ternary piece where the ice of winter, represented by static music, melts into rivulets of spring, but then refreezes. The Consort is divided into Winter instruments and Spring instruments.

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