Kevin George Brown

Choir (ssss, aa, tt, bb)

First Performance: Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, Dir. Christopher McElroy

Programme Notes:

This Marian motet uses as its source the Ave Maris Stella plainchant ascribed to Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers (c.600), and is influenced by medieval, Renaissance and modern practices.

It was premiered at the Metropolitan Cathedral Liverpool by the Cathedral Choir (boys and men) under the Director of Music Dr Christopher McElroy. The work has subsequently been accepted into the Cathedral repertoire and performed on a number of occasions.

Scored for 10 parts (s1, s2, s3, s4, a1, a2, t1, t2, b1, b2) the work commences with long low bass notes which serve as a drone, the tessitura gradually ascending as the piece progresses to culminate in a high solo voice, this overall transition being gently punctuated with dynamic cadences. The work employs imitative counterpoint whilst harmonically the perfect intervals of 8th, 5th and 4th predominate. Rhythmically the piece moves very slowly, the upper voice parts providing more movement than the lower ones, whilst texturally the gradual varying of specific voice groupings produces subtly different shadings and sonorities. Both the original plainchant and Latin text are fragmented and split across parts and at times simultaneous texts and/or melodies are employed. The meaning of the words are conveyed musically in certain places, as for example in the opening low bass Funda nos in pace; Mutans Hevae nomen reflecting the changed presentation of melodic fragments; Felix caeli porta for the final ascending line, etc.

The resulting liturgical work produces a shifting, seamless continuum: slow, meditative, peaceful. It aspires to a restrained serene beauty, a joy, ecstasy, simplicity of texture, transparency, and ultimately transcendence: a window onto the ‘beyond’.

© Kevin George Brown

First Performance: Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, Richard Lea.

Jubilate. Audio Excerpt

Meditation. Audio Excerpt

<score sample (Meditation)>

Programme Notes:

Three Movements for Organ was composed for Richard Lea and the Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool. It was premiered in September 2008 as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations. A CD recording was made by Richard Lea on the Metropolitan Cathedral organ the following year. The entire work lasts approximately 33’, each movement having a duration of 11’. The three movements may be performed in any order or individually as stand-alone pieces.

The whole work uses as its source aspects of the Gregorian Chant ‘Credo III’ and takes its form from the architectural, spiritual and atmospheric aspects of this iconic building. The three individual movements manipulate the same basic time frame in different ways, offering different perspectives of the same core material.

Jubilate utilizes a structured circular form, its point of reference being the 12 chapel spaces around the periphery of the cathedral: there are 12 sections in the movement each named after a chapel, the material being presented from 12 different angles as circles within a circle.

Meditation is a spiritual, free-floating movement wherein material is presented concurrently as independent layers of sound, underpinned by the tolling of a single bell at precise 1 minute intervals to mark the passing of time. The movement also features a solo treble chorister singing individual elongated fragments of the Credo theme. Extremes of tessitura and the controlled use of improvisation utilizing a choice of  “colour” fragments reflect the shifting daily/seasonal light and atmosphere that is such a feature in the building.

Processional. Essentially ostinato based, this is not a goal-orientated linear procession but rather a fragmented mosaic: the ‘procession’ suddenly nearby, suddenly afar, sometimes in juxtaposition passing either side, or as “fragments on the wind”. The thematic material is conveyed as three interlinking layers comprising asynchronous rhythm, harmony and melody. The culmination of this movement is accompanied by a peal of bells.

© Kevin George Brown

Chamber Orchestra/Ensemble (flexible instrumentation, ideally from three groups: strings, woodwind, brass, + keyboard)

First Performance: Tate Gallery Liverpool, Music for Modern British Art Project.

<score sample>

Programme Notes:

1932 was shortlisted for the Music for Modem British Art Tate Liverpool project in October 2002 and was inspired by the painting of the same name by Ben Nicholson.

The music comprises three simultaneous parts or layers: a constant background surface texture, brief sporadic melodic fragments and a subdued reiterative melodic line. No beginning or end is defined as such in the score, rather a conductor/director cues an ‘entry’ and ‘exit’ point to the work. The harmonic framework of the piece is exclusively based on the number 1,9,3,2.

Aleatory/improvisatory elements are common throughout; the main melodic line is freely governed by the conductor/director, whilst individual instrumentalists randomly and independently perform the abstract melodic fragments and subtle shifts of background texture. The variable length and content of this piece allows for a different spontaneous, though structured performance each time.

© Kevin George Brown

Commissioned by SPNM/Sound Inventors.

First Performance: Telford, Shropshire.

Programme Notes:

Following on from the successful premiere of Kevin George Brown’s music theatre work Cold Blows the Wind for mezzo-soprano, viola and bassoon in 2009, this short piece for string quartet provides a different perspective of the same core material and continues the composer’s preoccupation with allowing certain musical ideas and forms to be reinterpreted and juxtaposed both within a single work and also across different pieces and time spans.

Based on a Shropshire folk song of the same name this work presents the original melody as short fragments which are passed around all four players, the complete melody being heard only once at the end of the piece.

This ‘open-ended’ evolving work was originally commissioned by the Society for the Promotion of New Music as part of an education project in Shropshire, UK.

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mezzo-soprano, viola, bassoon

Commissioned by Prescot Festival.

First performance: Prescot, UK.

Programme Notes:

Based on the English folk song lament of the same name this short music theatre piece is a selective interpretation using fragments of the original melody and text to weave independent linear threads which slowly intertwine, variations into a theme one might say. The work was specially commissioned for the Prescot Festival and the original stage production was by the composer.

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contralto solo

First Performance: ISCM World Music Days Festival, Deborah Jacob.

Programme Notes:

Requiem was inspired by a collection of three poems by Irina Kuzminsky. The language of Requiem is concerned with ancient ritual, latent female power long suppressed, angst, loss, sorrow and retribution, and was created after the Kuzminsky’s visit to a graveyard in the Cotswolds. The collection is prefaced with a quote from a 17th century headstone: “One sonne shee had which was to her soe deare, That whiles shee gave him life, shee dead lies heere”.The music employs controlled aleatoric passages and indeterminate pitches, and sets the collection in three movements: The Dream of the Stillborn – insular, claustrophobic, a coiled spring, mournful; The Fall – ancient sacrifice; Christine – a fatal, sleazy cabaret.

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recorder (sopranino/descant/treble/bass), cello, voice (spoken, preferably female)

Programme Notes:

An instrumental duo with spoken voice, this is a contrapuntal work for cello and recorder (sopranino/descant/treble/bass) which also includes a lyrical text by myself. 

Icanho was inspired by a visit to Suffolk, the title being the medieval form of the name Iken, a village on a promontory overlooking the wide estuary of the river Alde. I had walked out across the marshes to a vantage point on the estuary and was so moved by the ambience of my surroundings: the distant birdsong, the rustle of the wind in the reeds, the silences, the timeless quality of the place. This piece of music and the accompanying short poem is a result of that experience.

© Kevin George Brown

Composed for David Heyes.

Programme Notes:

Three plays on one minute intended to give three different aspects of the same time frame. These pieces may be performed collectively or as separate entities.

In 5 on a Ground the tempo and time signature serve as a precise clock, each reiteration of a 5 bar phrase gradually introducing rhythmic subdivisions within the regular pulse. The ‘harmonic’ language also subdivides, extending outwards from a single pitch.

The metre of Gavel Neese is governed by free-floating time frames, the piece arriving at a 1’ duration via a different route.

The tempo and rhythm of the jazz influenced Creeping Out the Bare Square allow for a degree of expressive interpretation resulting in a duration of “approximately” one minute.

© Kevin George Brown 

First Performance: Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, Mark Rowlinson, Peter Lawson.

Programme Notes:

Description of Spring is a short song composed in a free modal style setting the words of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry. The text was found in a collection of English Poetry owned by the composer’s mother and the song is dedicated to her memory. A recording of this work together with another song by the composer Dying Day is available on the CD The Wagon of Life, performed by Mark Rowlinson and Peter Lawson.  An arrangement of this work also exists for descant recorder and soprano.

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Programme Notes:

Description of Spring is a short song composed in a free modal style setting the words of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry. The text was found in a collection of English Poetry owned by the composer’s mother and the song is dedicated to her memory. An arrangement of this work also exists for baritone and piano which has been recorded on the CD The Wagon of Life.

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First Performance: Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, Mark Rowlinson, Peter Lawson.

Programme Notes:

Dying Day is a setting of a poem of the same name by Philip Larkin, also titled Going. An overall sense of transformation is present in the work: evening into night, foreboding into death.

A recording of this work together with another song by the composer Description of Spring is available on the CD The Wagon of Life, performed by Mark Rowlinson and Peter Lawson.  An arrangement of this work also exists for tenor, piano, cor anglais and cello.

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Programme Notes:

Dying Day is a setting of a poem of the same name by Philip Larkin, also titled Going. An overall sense of transformation is present in the work: evening into night, foreboding into death.

An arrangement of this work also exists for baritone and piano which has been recorded on the CD The Wagon of Life.

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First Performance: Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, Jonathan Scott.

audio extract

Programme Notes:

This is the first movement of a proposed four movement Dance Suite for piano, originally conceived to be performed with one or two dancers. The title is loosely derived from the fact that the short unmeasured prelude is followed by a dance that has an improvisational character underpinned by an initial ‘fixed’ bass that proceeds to permeate the piece in a variety of guises. Other than that, there is no conscious similarity to the historic form. Apart from a brief pentatonic passage, the harmonic structure of this movement is comprised solely of a scalic division of 1:1:4:1, that is to say the intervals of minor 2nd, minor 2nd, major 3rd, minor 2nd, which occur in a variety of transpositions and arrangements.

© Kevin George Brown 

Programme Notes:

The Blue Girl is a short meditation for piano, inspired by a pastel drawing of the same name which was presented to me as a birthday present by the artist Irina Kuzminsky. I was immediately drawn to three aspects of this image: the gentle sweep of the hair; the dream-like state of the girl; the ‘beyond’, that other-worldly transcendental state which is sometimes only glimpsed. The piece is thus divided into these three aspects.

© Kevin George Brown