HELLAWELL
Symphonies in Chains for
Orchestra
Full Score
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PIERS HELLAWELL
Symphonies in Chains
for Orchestra
Full Score
ISSUU Version
For perusal only
ISSUU Version
INSTRUMENTATION
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2 Flutes (2nd doubling Piccolo)
2 Oboes (2nd doubling Cor Anglais)
2 Clarinets in B- (2nd doubling Bass Clarinet)
2 Bassoons (2nd doubling Contrabassoon)
4 Horns in F
2 Trumpets in C
2 Trombones
Bass Trombone
Tuba
Percussion (2 players)
Percussion 1: Marimba, Glockenspiel, Crotales, Bass Drum, Floor Tom-toms, Vibraphone, Temple Blocks, Tam-tam, Tubular Bells, Bongos
Percussion 2: Bass Drum, Tubular Bells, T Bell for submerging, Crotales, Vibraphone, Snare Drum, Guiro, Tam-tam, Glockenspiel, Temple Blocks, Floor Tom-toms
Harp
Strings
(Double Basses to have C extension where possible)
Duration: 13ʹ
Transposing Score
Commissioned by New Horizons Music
Funding from the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
First performed by the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by David Brophy, at a BBC Invitation Concert on 8th January 2020 in the Ulster Hall, Belfast
Symphonies in Chains was commissioned by New Horizons Music for the Ulster Orchestra, with funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
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This work began life with a discussion about ‘symphonism’ – the tradition of symphonic writing and what it means. I feel removed from the symphonic tradition of Brahms and Bruckner as we hear it in our programmes – a drama of large-scale contrasts, gradual progressions and the pull between forces like key and motif. My goal here, meanwhile, is a series – a chain – of disparate themes and ideas, which I then try to weld together into a story-line; it makes for a very different drama. It is not ‘a symphony’ – something I find it hard to believe in today – but a cumulative series of discussions: symphonies, to use the Stravinskian meaning of ‘soundings together’.
The piece lasts around thirteen minutes and is continuous; I release a clutch of ideas in the first half of the piece, and these are revisited in the later part (from about seven minutes in) as if in a dream state. Three ‘cadenzas’ crop up, interrupting this action: the first is for tuba/tutti violins; a second is for trumpet/violas/bass clarinet; the third is for horns and double basses, this last leading into the fast coda. With this in mind, perhaps the work is as much a concerto for the orchestra as it is a symphony. Some of the questions faced by composers over time vary, while some remain unchanged.
An artist now painting an abstract canvas faces many different issues from those George Stubbs faced when painting a horse in 1760 – but some challenges are common to the two, for truly there is not much new under the sun. The release of multiple ideas as a source of later reflection, for example, is exactly what we find in some of Mozart’s most exuberant sonata-forms.
Piers Hellawell, 2019
2ClarinetsinB
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SymphoniesinChains
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TubularBell'F'
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