From this red earth
SKU: FP.FZZ07
ISBN 979-0-57050-328-5.
Forsyth's Modern Wind Music is a series of volumes containing exciting and challenging, but not unduly difficult, works by talented English composers of current or recent vintage for recital, study or recreation. Each volume includes three works with piano, one unaccompanied piece, and one piece for two or more players of the instrument. In this volume for clarinet John Casken's 'Taerset' takes its title from Tarset in Northumberland, inspired by a holiday there, while Julia Usher's 'Subsequent Darkness' is inspired by a game of chess. The solo work is a capricious 'Arabesque' by Richard Orton, who also contributes a quartet for clarinets that plays on diaphragm articulation. David Ellis's 'Berceuse' is an extended lullaby, but not without its troubled dreams.
SKU: HL.49046450
ISBN 9781540095695. UPC: 842819106388.
SKU: HL.49044382
ISBN 9790220135286. 8.25x11.75x0.063 inches. English.
This Easter anthem by British composer John Casken is an expert example of contemporary choral writing and would be ideal for amateur choirs looking for exciting new repertoire.
SKU: HL.49030434
ISBN 9790220119873.
Apres un silence was originally written as a work for violin and piano. The piano part was subsequently orchestrated in such a way that the work may be performed with a chamber orchestra or with an ensemble of the same forces using strings. 'The violin's opening interval of a rising sixth is the gem from which everything is developed into one extended movement.' This will become a regular presence in the violin and piano repertoire.
SKU: HL.49019937
ISBN 9790220134159. UPC: 888680029135. 8.25x12.0x0.135 inches. English. Choral Music of Our Time.
John Casken's Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis was commissioned to mark the return of the Lindisfarne Gospels to the North East of England, where Casken lives. The book, dating from the 7th century, is one of the finest examples of Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian illuminated manuscript, containing the oldest surviving translation of the Gospels into English. The manuscript was produced at a monastery on the island of Lindisfarne but is normally housed at the British Library in London, and its special exhibition in the Palace Green Library at Durham was marked by a summer-long celebration of the arts. Casken's Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis is set in English.
SKU: HL.49045179
ISBN 9790220136801. UPC: 841886027442. 9.0x12.0x0.115 inches.
Stolen Airs takes as its starting point an episode from Sylvie and the Songman, an opera I am writing in collaboration with the novelist Tim Binding. The Songman has developed the technique of stealing the voices and songs of birds and animals, and eventually humans. Slowly stealing Sylvie's voice, the Songman offers to give back her song if she will tell him the secret of a group of instruments invented by her father that have produced an all-powerful single sonority. Using this scenario, the music of Stolen Airsmoves from a dark place towards three simple airs, with a distant, different air as a quiet coda. -John Casken.
SKU: HL.49019910
ISBN 9790220134395. UPC: 888680089528. 8.25x11.75x0.25 inches.
My Concerto for Orchestra (2007) is a twenty-minute work in which different sections of the orchestra, as well as individual solos and duos from within the orchestra, are highlighted as the music unfolds. The work continues my interest in two-movement forms that began with my Cello Concerto (1991), and was later developed in Sortilege (1996) and Symphony (Broken Consort) (2004). In these works, and in the Concerto for Orchestra, each movement is given equal weight and importance with the second developing earlier material and taking it in new directions.The two-movement form of the Concerto for Orchestra derives from a symphonic sonata structure, reshaping the traditional four-movement form and combining this with aspects of sonata form, a tradition that goes back to Liszt, Schoenberg and Sibelius:1st movement (i) exposition of ideas - dramatic and sudden (ii) scherzo and development 1 - resolute2nd movement (iii) adagio - calm and unhurried (iv) development 2 with recapitulation - intense and energeticThe Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by the Musikalische Akademie des Nationaltheatre-Orchesters Mannheim with the support of Die Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg for its first two performances on 31st March and 1st April 2008 conducted by Friedemann Layer. The score is dedicated in friendship and admiration to Ronald Zollman.John Casken3(3.pic).2.ca.2(2.Ebcl).bcl.3(3.cbsn)-4.3(1.Dtpt).2.btbn.1-timp.3perc(crot, vib, tub bells, sizz cym, Chinese cym, h.h, Swiss cow-bell, gong, horizontal gong, 2tam-t, tamb, bng, s.d, 5tom-t, b.d, clav, casts, marac, 5tempbl, wdbl, cabaca, vibraslap)-hp-str.
SKU: HL.49017921
ISBN 9790220131509. UPC: 884088567590. 8.25x11.75x0.062 inches. English.
Composed for the Alwinton and Holystone Church Choir near the composer's home in Northumberland, John Casken sets Christina Rossetti's In the bleak mid-winter - a poem popularised by Gustav Holts' setting of the same name for SATB choir and organ. A traditional carol based on the nativity it paints a vivid picture of the chill of winter and is ideal for choirs wishing to move away from the well-known whilst retaining an element of tradition. Constantly flowing organ lines create a sense of unease but this is uplifting music with subtle crescendos and powerful homophonic writing for the voices.
SKU: HL.49046316
ISBN 9781540072108. UPC: 842819110149. 8.25x11.75x0.301 inches.
Madonna of Silence is far from the quiet piece implied by the title. Indeed, it reflects the inner turbulence of Michelangelo's extraordinary drawing Madonna del Silenzio on which the work is based. Michelangelos drawing has informed every aspect of my new work, which I have decided not to call trombone concerto, but a drama for trombone and orchestra. The trombone takes on many roles: at the start it represents the quiet, inner voice of the Madonna as she gazes in contemplation at the child, later singing a hymn and, towards the end of the work, lamentations. Both soloist and orchestra are equally engaged in the unfolding drama of a scene brimming with unease and premonitions. John Casken.
SKU: HL.49043955
ISBN 9790220134555. 9.25x12.0x0.339 inches. English.
The title Deadly Pleasures was suggested by the content of DM Thomas's dramatic poem on an imagined episode in the life of Cleopatra. Cleopatra offers any three men from her royal court a night of unbridled passion, in return for which they must forfeit their lives the next morning. Three men step forward, the last of which is the son she had by her brother Ptolemy, whom she gave away at birth. Unaware that Cleopatra is his mother, he gives her wine laced with mandragora and makes his escape before daybreak. The grisly tale provided the composer many opportunities for dramatic characterisation. The use of a narrator necessitated an episodic structure in which the music captures the atmosphere suggested by the text, and mirrors the different moods as the journey unfolds and the three characters live out their different fates.
