London Consorts of Winds

The following music we have played is available from the composers

• Martin Jones - Burnt Offering
• Simone Spagnolo - Dizziness and Silence
• John Holland - Misericordium
• 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
• Howard Jones, Blue Mobile
• John Holland - Like a Twisty Turny Thing
• Martin Read - "...no full legal advice"
• Liz Lane - Turnabout
• Marisol Gentile - In B
• Benjamin Wardhaugh - Hill on a Walk
• Natalia Solomonoff - Plumas de Cobra Azul
• Luis Menacho - La curvatura de A
• Dante Grela - Lejanos Reflejos - Distant Images
• Alan Taylor - In Remembrance of a Passing Generation
• Giles Brindley - The Four Temperaments
• Paul Burnell - 5 pieces for wind instruments
• Andrew Melvin - Marche Futile

I was introduced to the Ancient and Modern Consort early in 2008 through Forum London Composers Group and invited to write something. In an attempt to cover both Ancient and Modern, I thought of re-using the Royal Theme written by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, and used by Bach as the basis for his Musical Offering in 1747. Bach created a number of canons and fugues on this theme, the intricacy of which is astonishing even now. The theme is stretched out, compressed, turned upside down and reversed: sometimes two of these at once. Bach offered this to the King with comically excessive humility: my efforts are far more deserving of such excess. The theme is the first melody you hear, played by the Clarinet in three phrases (harmonic, chromatic, cadential); and the last thing you hear from the trombone. In between it's been "processed", perhaps most noticeably in its inversion on brass and bassoon underneath waving woodwind.

This composition aims to depict something almost impossible to represent through the media of music: silence. Dizziness and Silence aims to create the sensation of time passing by while the mind loses its sense of stability and orientation within the music.

The work has three movements, which despict in turn silence, then dizziness, and finally returning to silence. The first movement, despite its lack of pulse, is based on a repeating rhythmic subject, forwards, in reverse and both simultaneously. The concept of dizziness, in the second movement, is provided by faster figuration and constant use of trills. The last movement exploits Webernian pointillism which causes the harmony and the melody to float through the consort without providing intelligible phrases to any one instrument.

The movements are joined together by a harmonic design derived from the first chord of the piece inverted and transposed creating a harmonic chain without apparent destination. Theatrical gestures such as emphasized breathing and percussive key movements add to the atmosphere.

This pice was written especially for our Ancient and Modern Consort as part of a larger piece including sections for all the ensembles which form South London Community Music, including Southwark Concert Band and South London Jazz Orchestra. This is the concert premiere.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

'Blue Mobile' for nine wind instruments was written in 2008, and was inspired by the mobile sculptures of Alexander Calder. Its structural principles are based on the idea of a limited set of materials that interact in ways that are determined partly by events during the performance and partly by the nature of the materials themselves and the way they are linked together. It borrows some elements from the language and performance practice of the blues, as suggested in the title. Each performer takes a solo, and these instrumental solos, though fully notated, have an improvisatory feel.

The accompaniment maintains a continuous feeling of rhythmic time, and is coloured by individual choices of timbre made spontaneously by the performers. The sculptural quality comes from the fact that there is no set starting or ending point, so hearing a performance of this piece is rather like walking all round a sculptural form, seeing it from every angle.

Howard Jones won the the Community Music category in the 'Composer of the Year Awards' in 2007.

A short, but frantic, movement suitable for occasions of extreme silliness or indeed, highbrow seriousness... Inspired by the little twisty, turny things in life that make it seem more fun, like roller coasters, country roads, or fusilli.

...no full legal advice was written for the Southwark Consort of Winds. During the performance, fragments of an article - which appeared in The Independent newspaper on 11 March, 2005 with the headline Iraq war revelation: There was no full legal advice, together with fragments of another article - Iraq war is blamed for starvation - which appeared in The Guardian newspaper on March 31, 2005, are muttered by the players.

The main building blocks for the piece are i) the juxtaposition of three modes - dorian on F, mixolydian on Ab and aeolian on F. All three modes share most of the same notes [a pentatonic scale on Ab], however what colours each mode - and creates the tension in the piece, is the use of either Db or D and either Gb or G. This can be seen at the outset in the introduction, with alto saxophone and bass clarinet sometimes playing one note and then changing it in the next phrase; & ii) the fact that we 'like to belong'. The instrumental ensemble has been divided into three groups, each with an identity. Individuals can often be influenced by others - to a greater or lesser degree, or they never change.

I was commissioned to compose a piece for the Southwark Winds Ancient and Modern Consort in the summer of 2004 and looked forward to the challenge of writing for this unusual combination of instruments. I was particularly interested in how the ensemble could be grouped into blocks of sound using different combinations, in particular the woodwind versus brass with the alto saxophone taking an independent lyrical role in the middle. The work was partly built around this and the tutti ensemble is not heard until over halfway through the piece.

I began writing Turnabout at the beginning of 2005 shortly after starting my PhD studies in composition at Cardiff University, having just finished teaching A level music. Bach Chorales were much on my mind as I had taught them for several years and I was aware of how they had epitomized Western harmony for several centuries. I thought it would be fun and interesting to include a contemporary version of a chorale, almost to get them out of my system! In fact, I included two, both closely related to each other and they are at the heart of this work.

There is also a waltz - although you couldn't dance to it because of the irregular time signature. Later in the piece the two styles combine, and it is this contrast and development that inspired the title.

This piece was written for Southwark Consorts of Winds, and is dedicated to the ensemble. Marisol Gentile is the director of the Ensamble Rosario, in the city of Rosario, and organises many events there for the promotion of new music. She teaches conducting, and teaches and performs viola.

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This piece was written in autumn 2004 in response to a commission from Southwark Consorts of Winds, and represents something of a new direction in my compositional thinking. The ambiguity of the title is intentional - is the hill walking or being walked on? - and the 'walk' refers to the structure of the piece. Sometimes the walk refers to a previous location; sometimes it moves in an unexpected direction, but there are unexpected reversals or changes of perspective as new vistas open up. A small amount of musical material is constantly reinterpreted: in a sense it is the opening flute melody which goes on a walk.

If the players are seen as two quintets, the relationship between the two shifts from generally cooperative to generally antagonistic during the central section, and the resulting tension is not resolved.

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The snake, and especially the cobra, are seen as symbolic animals of great ambiguity in their meaning. In several pre-colombian cultures, the image of the plumed serpent, which combines the symbolic qualities of birds and snakes, is of great importance as a symbol of the union of opposites.

The piece is composed of ideas containing different elements. These follow one another, and are superimposed on one another. As in the symbolic image of a plumed serpent, the piece deals with the unification of opposites and the generation of a cyclical structure.

The title of this piece, "The Curvature of A" gives little away about this 3 minute piece described by the composer as "very expressive'. Luis Menacho is a teacher of composition in the School os the Arts in Berisso, a city to the south east of Buenos Aires. The school seeks to give opportunities for development through the arts to young people who would otherwise lack opportunities.

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This piece was written for our double wind quintet in 2004. Dante Grela is an esteemed Argentinean composer who teaches at the National University of Rosario. He visited the USA as a Fulbright scholar in 1996. He received the 2003 Symphonic Music Prize from the Argentinean Society of Composers and Authors. Reflejos Lejanos (Reflections from Afar) is a single-movement work built around folk-melodies and rhythms typical from the northern provinces in Argentina.

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"In August 2003 my aunt in California died. She was one of the last of a remarkable generation who had come through the Depression and the Second World War, moving from a stable but relatively poor environment into the modern world of relative riches and great instability, while retaining their fundamental values. They were the children of a family who had lived at different times in parts of Latin America, adventurous and innovatory, but with a fundamental sense of moral purpose and personal closeness. The piece is my tribute to their courage and sense of values."

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This short piece consists of a 16-bar quotation from the 2nd movement of Schoenberg's first strictly serial work, the wind quintet op.26, followed by three variations on it. The theme is played three times with different instrumentation, the first being Schoenberg's. The first and third variations are serial, and slower than the theme. The second variation is faster, and acerbic in tone. The fourth variation in the same tempo as the theme, and is successively in the Phrygian, Lydian and Aeolian modes.

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Each of the five movements subject familiar musical stereotypes to simple but rather strict processes. The first movement is a march where the phrase lengths are gradually shortened. The second movement presents a simple melody imitated by other instruments. The middle movement, which is like a hinge in the overall structure, is a canon - where the imitation is between two groups. The fourth movement is a reverie with slight but systematic changes to the sustained harmony. The fifth movement is a jig or waltz where the phrase lengths are, unlike the first movement, gradually lengthened.

The pieces were written for Southwark Consorts of Winds.

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March Futile is a piece in which the strong sense of purpose inherent in marching is matched by an equally strong sense of purposelessness. The piece is purposefully dedicated to the members of Contemporary Music-making for Amateurs. It was premiered at the 1997 State of the Nation event at the South Bank Centre, and has been performed since by COMA and by the London Chamber Group.

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