In the Summer of 2004, I received my first commission for a new piece of music – a fanfare to launch that year’s Arts Festival in Tenby, Pembrokeshire. My patron was my former organ tutor, John Harrison, who was arranging and directing the concert. The fanfare was to be played by a group of surprisingly dauntless young musicians from the area, rehearsing over the first few weeks of the school term.
Over the Summer vacation, I put the learnings of my first year at University to work, including the one about running to the wire by arriving at the first rehearsal with freshly printed parts. What had emerged was a five-minute lip-bruiser of a piece scored for six trumpets, tam-tam, timpani and organ that I enigmatically titled Strange resolutions. It combined traditional fanfare elements (interlocking ascending fourths and fifths, and so on) with some fairly intricate counterpoint and a disconcerting alternation between C minor and B major.
A few weeks after the first performance, still glowing with pride at my creation, I set it in front of my new composition tutor at college, Tim Brown; for his part, he looked at me in perplexity and sent me away to write something that made some sense. Some months and a number of rather unsuccessful (and unfinished) pieces later, Tim came to the conclusion that I was very good at making it seem as though I was writing something coherent when, in fact, I was assembling numerous ideas into one piece without really developing them. He addressed it directly with my next exercise, saying, to paraphrase, ‘This week, allow yourself one interval, and let that set the entire tone of the piece; when you choose the next note, it should reflect that interval. None of this one-idea-after-another nonsense. Just one idea.’
Strange resolutions still makes me smile and I quite like its many foibles and grandiose gestures, if largely for the fun of them; whatever the ins and outs of that subjective enjoyment, though, Tim was entirely right. Alongside old chestnuts like ‘10% inspiration, 90% perspiration’ and ‘write the music that you want to hear’, his advice was, and is, by far, the most important thing anyone had, and has, ever said to me about my own writing.
Each time I write, which is never enough, I thank him for it.
Here is Strange resolutions, by the by, in all its youthful quirkiness and over-enthusiasm …
