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Juliet Palmer  

5 Cactus Dreams

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1988
for voice and chamber ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    vocalist, oboe, tenor saxophone, viola, cello, cactus and camera flash. Performed in darkness with light flashes to trigger each movement - performers also walk while playing.
  • Availability

Helen Caskie  

A Sweet Season but Short

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 1988
for mezzo-soprano and piano

Craig Utting  

Apocalypse

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1985
for bass singer and chamber ensemble

Gillian Whitehead  

Bright Forms Return

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 1980
for mezzo-soprano and string quartet

  • Programme Note

    Bright Forms Return written in 1980 while I was composer-in-residence for Northern Arts (UK), is one of the first pieces I wrote that is concerned with landscape (and sea-scape). I was living in Northumberland, on the moors north of Newcastle, very near the house where Kathleen Raine had spent her childhood. When I was asked to write a piece for the Cumbria Quartet and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Lamb, Raine’s poetry was an obvious choice, as its northern imagery was very familiar to me.

    Although the piece is designed as a single entity, the quartet falls into four clearly-defined sections in its setting of the four short poems. The vocal writing is relatively simple (rhythmically at least), and the writing for the quartet sometimes reflects the poetic imagery or mood, and is sometimes derived from the formal structure of the poems. The text, which comes from The Oval Mirror published by Hamish Hamilton, is used with the kind permission of the author and her publishers.

  • Availability

David Hamilton  

Canticle 4

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1983
for mezzo-soprano, cor anglais and piano

Kit Powell  

Chinese Songs

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 1988
for high soprano and tape

  • Programme Note

    First performed in a concert of the Swiss Computer Music Center with soloist Franziska Staeheli. Later performances in Bern (with a short lecture about it by me) and in Schaffhausen. Bruno Spoerri also played the tape abroad, in a demonstration of our work here.

    Preparation for the work involved analysis of several Chinese instruments; Ch’in (a zither), gong and wood block. The wave analysis was done with a computer program and my imitations were realized on the Computer Music Center’s DMX. There are two sets of texts: from the Tao Te Ching (Lao Tse) and from the I Ching. The Lao Tse texts were chosen by me and set with traditional notation. The I Ching texts were chosen by chance (with the computer) and set with a computer generated graphic notation. Proportions within the piece were also made with a computer program using chance and units of Golden Section. (More details in the introduction to the score).

    This piece could be performed with two singers: one singing the Tao texts, the other singing the I Ching texts.

  • Availability

Willow Macky  

Christ is Risen!

 Year: 1988
for solo voice

Diana Blom  

Clavichord

Duration: 01' 00" Year: 1984
for high voice and piano

  • Programme Note

    Clavichord was written for soprano, Anne Cheng, and first performed by her, with Marilyn Watson (piano), for broadcast on Radio Television Hong Kong in 1984. The piano part draws on the affect of J. S. Bach’s Prelude in C (BWV 846) written for clavichord (or harpsichord).

    Diana Blom

  • Availability

Eve de Castro-Robinson  

Commemoration

Duration: 04' 00" Year: 1988
for unaccompanied mezzo soprano or soprano

Andrew Perkins  

Composition In Red

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1987
for mezzo-soprano, flute, viola and cello