Clive Strutt
Encyclopedia
Clive Edward Hazzard Strutt is an English composer born 19th April 1942 in Aldershot
, Hampshire, England. He was educated at Farnborough Grammar School.
Strutt lives on the island of South Ronaldsay
in Orkney
, Scotland. He studied composition under Lennox Berkeley
, orchestration under Leighton Lucas
, and piano with Robert O. Edwards, Georgina Smith, and Hamish Milne
at the Royal Academy of Music
, London. He also studied the viola for one year under Watson Forbes
. He is very interested in the music of the Eastern Orthodox Church
, and has visited Mount Athos
several times. He is also a philatelist, and an authority on the Universal Postal Union
.
Strutt's works have been performed in France, Germany, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, as well as in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Canada and the USA. A large number of his scores are available from the Scottish Music Centre (SMS), Glasgow
, the Bibliothéque Božidar Kantušer
, Paris
and more recent ones from Amoris International & Amoris Imprint, Vouvry
, Switzerland.
The money from the Manson Bequest enabled the composer to spend the summer in the Highlands of Scotland at Loch Kishorn, in Wester Ross, where he was able to make good headway on the composition of the symphony No. 2 in C minor, also in four movements. Scored for an orchestra of more conventional size this work plays for some 57 minutes, and includes a chorus singing wordlessly in the second movement, and, in the finale, singing a text of one line only, taken from Virgil
's epic, the Aeneid
, Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt ("These are the tears of things which pierce the universal heart"). The second movement is based on the Romanesca bass as a passacaglia
theme, and the following slow movement attempts to reflect an experience which the composer had during a highland holiday. One evening while staying at the Carbisdale Castle
youth hostel on the Firth of Sutherland he walked up the hill behind the castle and was deeply impressed by the total and absolute silence: no sound of human voices, or bird calls, no mechanical noise, and not even the sound of the wind. Paradoxically, then, the music attempts to convey the impression of silence. The original part for organ in the score was minimal, and was removed in 1991 on the revision of the symphony. The score was taken on a visit that Strutt made to the home of the composer Havergal Brian
in Shoreham-by-Sea, and was read through by Brian for his approval as the dedicatee. This happened a couple of years before Brian's death in the 1970s.
With his Symphony No.3 in E flat major subtitled "Visions of Albion
" Strutt moved into the world of William Blake
, and expanded his own symphonic ambitions even further. In seven movements for large orchestra (including quadruple woodwind, a quartet of saxophones, 6 horns, 5 trumpets, harpsichord, two mandolins, two harps, organ, as well as a tenor soloist, a boys' two-part choir and a double mixed chorus), and lasting 75 minutes, this work clearly betrays the influence of Mahler.The inspirational origin of the work lay, however, in the simple act of walking along a very rocky and boulder-strewn shore at Loch Kishorn during his stay there in 1964, and observing the dense texture of rocks and vegetation which translated itself into a similar musical texture forming part of the first movement entitled "Vision of Nature". Most of the movements are prefaced with quotations from William Blake
, in this case "All things begin and end in Albion's Ancient Druid Rocky Shore" from his prophetic poem Jerusalem:The Emanation of the Great Albion. Movement II "Camelot" bears the quotation "Great Things are done when Men and Mountains meet;/This is not done by Jostling in the Street". Movements III and IV are both songs. III "The Schoolboy", and IV "The Garden of Love" are settings of Blake poems, the first for boys'choir, and the second for tenor solo.Movement V "The Holy Oblation" has prominent parts for harpsichord and trumpets, and is prefaced with the Blake quotation "What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care". The sixth movement "Avalon", another reference to the Arthurian legends, is the real slow movement; its prefatory quotation is "We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to converse with you whose words are only Analytics".The Finale "The New Jerusalem" is prefaced "Without Contraries is no progression"' alluding to the use by the composer of a structural device known as progressive tonality
. The movement is structured around the augmented fourth interval between A minor and E flat major. The text used is the one immortalized by Sir Hubert Parry in his setting of it called "Jerusalem", but in this symphony it is used in a fugal manner, with unaccompanied boys' voices in a fugal exposition heralding the final peroration. The composer dedicated this work to his parents, Edward and Stella Strutt, as a mark of respect and recognition for the role they played in providing him with material support for his musical activities.
The score was completed on 1st August 1967 at Park Croft Cottage, Rackwick, on Hoy, Orkney, and the first movement having been completed on 4th June 1966 at Shirva Hut on Fair Isle
, Shetland. The title of the first movement and the Blake quotations (Movements II-VII) were all part of the original conception, but the titles of movements II, V, VI, and VII were added in 1979 after the composer had read Geoffrey Ashe
's book on King Arthur's Camelot
. The subtitle of the entire work "Visions of Albion
" was also added at that time.
With the Symphony No. 4 "Kenosis", completed in 1986, Strutt moved right away from tonality as a source of structural method, and the composition consequently exhibits a high degree of atonality
. This one movement symphony, lasting 20 minutes, features a large array of percussion instruments (marimba, bass marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, crotales
, tubular bells, Swiss cowbells, tuned gongs, glockenspiel, tamtam, side-drum, suspended cymbol, wood-block, clash cymbols, bass drum, tambourine, wind machine and güiro
) set in a normal sized orchestra (triple woodwind, etc). In fact, 78 players are required in all, including four percussionists. The "Kenosis
" subtitle refers to a theological concept which centres on the emptying of the self, such as Jesus Christ is considered to have done.
The Symphony No.5 in D major was actually written before No. 4, but was numbered after it since the composer conceived the fourth first. The dedication is to Edward Winston Watson, and was added to the score on 8th November 1980 as a token of esteem and friendship, and in recognition of his provision of support during the composition of the work, which took place at the Villa Clos Collonges in Territet, Montreux, in Switzerland in 1973. The work is in three movements, and the underlying structural concept is a transition from serialism
returning to tonality in the finale, this tracing an emotional journey from relative chaos and turmoil into restful tranquility. It is scored for a large orchestra of 99 players and lasts 24 minutes.
Strutt's Symphony No.6 in E flat minor "Eclogues from a Vanished Land" plays for just 40 minutes and is intended to evoke the lost world of Edwardian rural England, especially the countryside which would have been known to the folk-song collectors, Cecil Sharp
, Ralph Vaughan Williams
and Percy Grainger
. The Vanished land is of course England, but that particular England. The first of the three movements is entitled "ROUNDELAY:'Under the Greenwood Tree...'". Prefaced by the literary quotation "...and this prayer I make, / Knowing that Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her,...(lines 121-123 from Wordworth's "Tintern Abbey
"), this movement is obviously from its title intended to evoke the world of Thomas Hardy
. A curious point regarding this first movement is that the conductor, the late Venon Handley, rejected it for performance on the grounds that there was just one bar for the second violin in the first movement which was too difficult to play!
The second movement "TRIPTYCH:'The Mirror of Venus' (after Sir Edward Burne-Jones
)' is in three sections: (i) ELEGY, (ii) SCHERZO (founded on the English folk tune "Staines Morris"), and (iii) "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" (after Salvador Dali
). "Staines Morris" is the only actual folk tune used in the work. The title of the "TRIPTYCH" provides a clue to the structure of the movement, in that Burne-Jones' painting shows a group of Pre-Raphaelite maidens gazing at their own reflections in a pool of water. The three sections form a musical palindrome - the music of the "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" (also a painting showing a youth gazing at his reflection in a pool); is the reverse of the "ELEGY", and hence the "SCHERZO", where the forward-moving music starts to reverse, is scored for a solo bassoon where the writing is unusually rapid.
The third movement, "FINALE.Three Worlds" (after M.C. Escher and with a title also referring to a visual work depicting reflections in water) is also subdivided into three sections: (i) PROLOGUE "A Future IN MEMORIAM"; PERPETUUM MOBILE: and EPILOGUE "In a Country Churchyard" (which is referring to the famous poem by Thomas Gray
evoking yet again the idea of "eclogues from a vanished land" which pervades the whole composition).
Symphony No.7 in G minor ("Athonite") lasts for one hour, and is in three movements: I "Pilgrimage", II "Ek Batheon" (the Greek, Έκ βαθέον, meaning "from the depths", or in Latin, "de Profundis") and III FINALE "The Garden of the Panaghia" , referring to the Greek Orthodox monastic idea that the peninsula Mount Athos
(Άγιον Όρος, Agion Oros) forms a garden for the all-holy one, the Theotokos
, or Mother-of-God. Strutt being a member of the society The Friends of Mount Athos (FoMA) has made many visits to Mount Athos, finding it a holy place of inspiration. The symphony was conceived in the early 1990s, but not scored until 2003. "Pilgrimage", the title of the first movement, simply represents the feelings of a visiting pilgrim to the Holy Mountain. "Ek Batheon" however is a much more profound study of the torments of the soul experienced by the solitary hesychast, or hermit, living in utter and total simplicity and wrestling with temptation, arrested by the attempts of the devil to conquer him. In this movement the orchestra is divided into two parts, and the musical events portray a terrifying state of mind. The last movement includes a boys' and men's chorus who sing six of the Orthodox Apolytikia of the Resurrection
, and is an attempt to portray the beauty and peace of the Holy Mountain as it appears to an outside visitor.
The Symphony No. 8 ("Orkney Choral Symphony") sees the composer back on home ground - Orkney - where he has lived since 1970. More of a song cycle, the seven movements are settings of Orcadian poetry. The movements are: I-PROLOGUE:"Orkney Summer"(SONNET I), the text by Robert Rendall;II SONG 1: "Cataface" (the Scots
for the short-eared owl
), to text by Harriet Campbell; III-LAMENT:"The Brig o' Waithe", the text by Ann Scott-Moncrieff describing the civilian casualty in World War II
Britain when a German aircraft returning to base after attempting to attack Scapa Flow
randomly released its bombs over Orkney; IV-SONG 2 "Sleep! Baby, sleep!", the text by James Morrison; V-INTERMEZZO "Merlin" (SONNET II), the text by Edwin Muir
; VI-PANEGYRIC "For Ann Scott-Moncrieff (1914-43)", the text by Edwin Muir
and VII-EPILOGUE "The Peace of Orkney", the text by John Skea. The total duration of the composition is just under 25 minutes and the score was completed in 1999.
Strutt's Symphony No. 9 in D minor ("The Fountain of Tears") was completed in 2004. It is a two-part symphonic study of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca
. Part I comprises nine settings of his poetry, for soprano and baritone soli, and SATB choir, and orchestra. Part II, entitled "Ainadamar
(18/ix/1936)", (the name and date of the place where Lorca's execution took place), is purely orchestral and can be considered to be a symphonic poem on the life and death of the poet. In part II the poems set are I "Ballad of the Little Square", II "Hunter", III "Little Balade of the Three Rivers", IV "Song" (to Claudia Gillen), V "Village", VI "Song", VII "Song of the Rider" (1860), VIII "CASIDA of the Rose",and IX "The Lament". This symphony may also be considered a quasi concerto in that there is a prominent part for the acoustic Spanish guitar. The title of the composition, "Fountain of Tears" is the actual meaning of Ainadamar
(Arabic, Ayn al-Dam).
" was created by making a transcription for orchestra of the Rondo for oboe and piano in 1962, the bicentenary year of Cobbett's birth (9th March, 1762) at Farnham
in Surrey
, close to where the composer was born and grew up. Cobbett was a local figure with whose attitudes to life the composer was sympathtic. The overture received a rehearsal performance by the BBC Northern Ireland Light Orchestra in Belfast
in 1969, under the auspices of the BBC's light music rehearsal scheme. The conductor was Havelock Nelson
and the producer was Alan Tongue. It was on this occasion that Strutt first met and became acquainted with Derek Bell
, the harpist in the orchestra, who became a lifelong friend and exponent of Strutt's works.
In 1973 another transcript was made, for small orchestra, of a single movement originally written for string quartet, under the title King Richard II. At the head of the score of this concert overture appears a quotation from Shakespeare, generally known as John of Gaunt's speech. The quartet dated originally from 1962 and 1966. The orchestral scoring is for double woodwind, two trumpets and two horns, timpani, three percussuinists, celesta
and strings, and the duration is six minutes.
In 1987 a concert overture entitled "Céilidh
" (a Scottish Gaelic word denoting a dance-cum-social gathering) appeared, this also being a transcription but this time from an original piece for clarinet quartet. The work is entirely based on Scottish dance tunes, namely the slow march "John Bain McKenzie's March" (also known as "The Fairy Piper", the Strathspey
"Dainty Davie", and the Reels "Maxwell's Rant" and "The Fairy Dance". The scoring is for double wind and brass (without tuba), timpani, percussion and strings, the only exception being that the clarinet section is expanded to four players, and includes bass, alto and piccolo clarinets. The pemiere was given on 30th November, 1996 (St. Andrew's Day
) at the Nicolson Square Methodist Church Edinburgh
by the New Edinburgh Orchestra under the American conductor Daniel G. Monek, with Lucy Creanor as leader. Another public performance was given on 1st December, 1999 at Adelaide's, Bath Street, Glasgow
by the Glasgow Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tommy Fowler.
, a composer much admired by Strutt, inspired the production of a symphonic poem
entitled "Pluto, the Bringer of Change". This was intended as both a tribute to the memory of Holst and a commemoration of his birth, and the intention in performance terms was as a work to be played in the same programme as Holst's "Planets" suite - the orchestration is the same, except that no vocal forces are used. The compositional history of the piece is, however, not of a work originally composed for orchestra, but of a work transcribed for orchestra from a chamber piece for seven clarinets. This clarinet septet - the scoring included the rare octocontrabass and contrabass clarinets, as well as the E flat piccolo and alto clarinets - was played in a private run-through at Kneller Hall (the Royal Military School of Music
by an ad hoc ensemble led by Terry Busby in 1969, but subsequently caesed to have a separate existence once the orchestral transcription had been made.
Festival, the performers being Jenifer Springate and Gillian Feltham (violins), Helen Johnstone (viola) and Dietrich Küchemann
(cello). A minor revision of the score was carried out in 2003, followed four years later by a substantial revision which saw the composition expanded to four movements: I "Prologue" (being the original "Lament" of the 1960 version); II "Variations on J.S.Bach's Chorale Harmonisation of "Valet will ich dir geben" by Melchior Teschner (c. 1615); III "Scherzo and trio" (substantially as in the original version) and, IV "Epilogue" (a re-working of the material from the first movement).
The String Quartet No. 2 similarly has had a long history of revision. Originally composed in 1963 it was revised in 1991 for submission to the Third Concurso de Composición Musical ("Luis de Narváez
"), in 1992 in Granada, Spain. The work is in four movements: Prologue; Scherzo; Adagio ; Finale.
The composition of String Quartet No.3 (from "The Frieze of Life" of Edvard Munch
) was prompted by the Oslo Grieg Society's Fourth International Edvard Grieg
Memorial Competition characterised as "The Music in Edvard Munch
's Paintings". Its three movements are intented to portray musical interpretations of three of Munch's paintings: I "The Dance of Life"; II "Melancholy"; III "The Scream
".
Aldershot
Aldershot is a town in the English county of Hampshire, located on heathland about southwest of London. The town is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council...
, Hampshire, England. He was educated at Farnborough Grammar School.
Strutt lives on the island of South Ronaldsay
South Ronaldsay
South Ronaldsay is one of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. It is linked to the Orkney Mainland by the Churchill Barriers, running via Burray, Glimps Holm and Lamb Holm.-Geography and geology:...
in Orkney
Orkney Islands
Orkney also known as the Orkney Islands , is an archipelago in northern Scotland, situated north of the coast of Caithness...
, Scotland. He studied composition under Lennox Berkeley
Lennox Berkeley
Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley was an English composer.- Biography :He was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Gresham's School and Merton College, Oxford...
, orchestration under Leighton Lucas
Leighton Lucas
Leighton Lucas was an English composer and conductor. Born into a musical family , he began his career as a dancer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes...
, and piano with Robert O. Edwards, Georgina Smith, and Hamish Milne
Hamish Milne
Hamish Milne is a British pianist known for his advocacy of Nikolai Medtner.Milne studied at Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury and then at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he now teaches, and later in Italy under Guido Agosti...
at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
, London. He also studied the viola for one year under Watson Forbes
Watson Forbes
Watson Douglas Buchanan Forbes was a Scottish violist and classical music arranger...
. He is very interested in the music of the Eastern Orthodox Church
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
, and has visited Mount Athos
Mount Athos
Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...
several times. He is also a philatelist, and an authority on the Universal Postal Union
Universal Postal Union
The Universal Postal Union is an international organization that coordinates postal policies among member nations, in addition to the worldwide postal system. The UPU contains four bodies consisting of the Congress, the Council of Administration , the Postal Operations Council and the...
.
Strutt's works have been performed in France, Germany, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, as well as in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Canada and the USA. A large number of his scores are available from the Scottish Music Centre (SMS), Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, the Bibliothéque Božidar Kantušer
Božidar Kantušer
Božidar Kantušer was an American and Slovene composer....
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and more recent ones from Amoris International & Amoris Imprint, Vouvry
Vouvry
Vouvry is a municipality in the district of Monthey in the canton of Valais in Switzerland.-Geography:Vouvry has an area, , of . Of this area, or 36.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 38.4% is forested...
, Switzerland.
Symphonies
The Symphony No. 1 in E minor (a student work composed during 1962–3 whilst Strutt was at the Royal Academy of Music, London) was submitted for the Division V Composition Examination in 1964 and was awarded the Manson Bequest for Composition. A four-movement large-scale piece for large orchestra (including 2 bassett horns, piano, organ, 8 French horns, 4 trumpets, and a large body of strings), and lasting one hour, it is dedicated to the memory of the great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose achievements had impressed the composer and were a source of inspiration to him.The money from the Manson Bequest enabled the composer to spend the summer in the Highlands of Scotland at Loch Kishorn, in Wester Ross, where he was able to make good headway on the composition of the symphony No. 2 in C minor, also in four movements. Scored for an orchestra of more conventional size this work plays for some 57 minutes, and includes a chorus singing wordlessly in the second movement, and, in the finale, singing a text of one line only, taken from Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's epic, the Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt ("These are the tears of things which pierce the universal heart"). The second movement is based on the Romanesca bass as a passacaglia
Passacaglia
The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
theme, and the following slow movement attempts to reflect an experience which the composer had during a highland holiday. One evening while staying at the Carbisdale Castle
Carbisdale Castle
Carbisdale Castle was built in 1907 for the Duchess of Sutherland and is now used as a youth hostel, operated by the Scottish Youth Hostels Association. It is located on a hill above the Kyle of Sutherland in the region of Ross and Cromarty in the Highlands. The castle is situated north of Culrain,...
youth hostel on the Firth of Sutherland he walked up the hill behind the castle and was deeply impressed by the total and absolute silence: no sound of human voices, or bird calls, no mechanical noise, and not even the sound of the wind. Paradoxically, then, the music attempts to convey the impression of silence. The original part for organ in the score was minimal, and was removed in 1991 on the revision of the symphony. The score was taken on a visit that Strutt made to the home of the composer Havergal Brian
Havergal Brian
Havergal Brian , was a British classical composer.Brian acquired a legendary status at the time of his rediscovery in the 1950s and 1960s for the many symphonies he had managed to write. By the end of his life he had completed 32, an unusually large number for any composer since Haydn or Mozart...
in Shoreham-by-Sea, and was read through by Brian for his approval as the dedicatee. This happened a couple of years before Brian's death in the 1970s.
With his Symphony No.3 in E flat major subtitled "Visions of Albion
Albion
Albion is the oldest known name of the island of Great Britain. Today, it is still sometimes used poetically to refer to the island or England in particular. It is also the basis of the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland, Alba...
" Strutt moved into the world of William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, and expanded his own symphonic ambitions even further. In seven movements for large orchestra (including quadruple woodwind, a quartet of saxophones, 6 horns, 5 trumpets, harpsichord, two mandolins, two harps, organ, as well as a tenor soloist, a boys' two-part choir and a double mixed chorus), and lasting 75 minutes, this work clearly betrays the influence of Mahler.The inspirational origin of the work lay, however, in the simple act of walking along a very rocky and boulder-strewn shore at Loch Kishorn during his stay there in 1964, and observing the dense texture of rocks and vegetation which translated itself into a similar musical texture forming part of the first movement entitled "Vision of Nature". Most of the movements are prefaced with quotations from William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, in this case "All things begin and end in Albion's Ancient Druid Rocky Shore" from his prophetic poem Jerusalem:The Emanation of the Great Albion. Movement II "Camelot" bears the quotation "Great Things are done when Men and Mountains meet;/This is not done by Jostling in the Street". Movements III and IV are both songs. III "The Schoolboy", and IV "The Garden of Love" are settings of Blake poems, the first for boys'choir, and the second for tenor solo.Movement V "The Holy Oblation" has prominent parts for harpsichord and trumpets, and is prefaced with the Blake quotation "What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care". The sixth movement "Avalon", another reference to the Arthurian legends, is the real slow movement; its prefatory quotation is "We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to converse with you whose words are only Analytics".The Finale "The New Jerusalem" is prefaced "Without Contraries is no progression"' alluding to the use by the composer of a structural device known as progressive tonality
Progressive tonality
Progressive tonality is the name given to the compositional practice whereby a piece of music does not finish in the key in which it began, but instead 'progresses' to an ending in a different key...
. The movement is structured around the augmented fourth interval between A minor and E flat major. The text used is the one immortalized by Sir Hubert Parry in his setting of it called "Jerusalem", but in this symphony it is used in a fugal manner, with unaccompanied boys' voices in a fugal exposition heralding the final peroration. The composer dedicated this work to his parents, Edward and Stella Strutt, as a mark of respect and recognition for the role they played in providing him with material support for his musical activities.
The score was completed on 1st August 1967 at Park Croft Cottage, Rackwick, on Hoy, Orkney, and the first movement having been completed on 4th June 1966 at Shirva Hut on Fair Isle
Fair Isle
Fair Isle is an island in northern Scotland, lying around halfway between mainland Shetland and the Orkney islands. It is famous for its bird observatory and a traditional style of knitting.-Geography:...
, Shetland. The title of the first movement and the Blake quotations (Movements II-VII) were all part of the original conception, but the titles of movements II, V, VI, and VII were added in 1979 after the composer had read Geoffrey Ashe
Geoffrey Ashe
Geoffrey Ashe is a British cultural historian, a writer of non-fiction books and novels.-Early life:Born in London, Ashe spent several years in Canada growing up, graduating from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, before continuing at Cambridge.-Work:Many of his historical books are...
's book on King Arthur's Camelot
Camelot
Camelot is a castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and eventually came to be described as the fantastic capital of Arthur's realm and a symbol of the Arthurian world...
. The subtitle of the entire work "Visions of Albion
Albion
Albion is the oldest known name of the island of Great Britain. Today, it is still sometimes used poetically to refer to the island or England in particular. It is also the basis of the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland, Alba...
" was also added at that time.
With the Symphony No. 4 "Kenosis", completed in 1986, Strutt moved right away from tonality as a source of structural method, and the composition consequently exhibits a high degree of atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
. This one movement symphony, lasting 20 minutes, features a large array of percussion instruments (marimba, bass marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, crotales
Crotales
thumb|right|Crotales are often used with other mallet percussionCrotales , sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about 4 inches in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly...
, tubular bells, Swiss cowbells, tuned gongs, glockenspiel, tamtam, side-drum, suspended cymbol, wood-block, clash cymbols, bass drum, tambourine, wind machine and güiro
Güiro
The güiro is a Latin-American percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches to produce a ratchet-like sound. The güiro is commonly used in Latin-American music, and plays a key role...
) set in a normal sized orchestra (triple woodwind, etc). In fact, 78 players are required in all, including four percussionists. The "Kenosis
Kenosis
In Christian theology, Kenosis In Christian theology, Kenosis In Christian theology, Kenosis (from the Greek word for emptiness (kénōsis) is the 'self-emptying' of one's own will and becoming entirely receptive to God's divine will....
" subtitle refers to a theological concept which centres on the emptying of the self, such as Jesus Christ is considered to have done.
The Symphony No.5 in D major was actually written before No. 4, but was numbered after it since the composer conceived the fourth first. The dedication is to Edward Winston Watson, and was added to the score on 8th November 1980 as a token of esteem and friendship, and in recognition of his provision of support during the composition of the work, which took place at the Villa Clos Collonges in Territet, Montreux, in Switzerland in 1973. The work is in three movements, and the underlying structural concept is a transition from serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
returning to tonality in the finale, this tracing an emotional journey from relative chaos and turmoil into restful tranquility. It is scored for a large orchestra of 99 players and lasts 24 minutes.
Strutt's Symphony No.6 in E flat minor "Eclogues from a Vanished Land" plays for just 40 minutes and is intended to evoke the lost world of Edwardian rural England, especially the countryside which would have been known to the folk-song collectors, Cecil Sharp
Cecil Sharp
Cecil James Sharp was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early 20th century, and many of England's traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in recording and publishing them.-Early life:Sharp was born in Camberwell, London, the eldest son of...
, Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
and Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
. The Vanished land is of course England, but that particular England. The first of the three movements is entitled "ROUNDELAY:'Under the Greenwood Tree...'". Prefaced by the literary quotation "...and this prayer I make, / Knowing that Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her,...(lines 121-123 from Wordworth's "Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey was founded by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow, on 9 May 1131. It is situated in the village of Tintern, on the Welsh bank of the River Wye in Monmouthshire, which forms the border between Monmouthshire in Wales and Gloucestershire in England. It was only the second Cistercian...
"), this movement is obviously from its title intended to evoke the world of Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
. A curious point regarding this first movement is that the conductor, the late Venon Handley, rejected it for performance on the grounds that there was just one bar for the second violin in the first movement which was too difficult to play!
The second movement "TRIPTYCH:'The Mirror of Venus' (after Sir Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
)' is in three sections: (i) ELEGY, (ii) SCHERZO (founded on the English folk tune "Staines Morris"), and (iii) "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" (after Salvador Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
). "Staines Morris" is the only actual folk tune used in the work. The title of the "TRIPTYCH" provides a clue to the structure of the movement, in that Burne-Jones' painting shows a group of Pre-Raphaelite maidens gazing at their own reflections in a pool of water. The three sections form a musical palindrome - the music of the "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" (also a painting showing a youth gazing at his reflection in a pool); is the reverse of the "ELEGY", and hence the "SCHERZO", where the forward-moving music starts to reverse, is scored for a solo bassoon where the writing is unusually rapid.
The third movement, "FINALE.Three Worlds" (after M.C. Escher and with a title also referring to a visual work depicting reflections in water) is also subdivided into three sections: (i) PROLOGUE "A Future IN MEMORIAM"; PERPETUUM MOBILE: and EPILOGUE "In a Country Churchyard" (which is referring to the famous poem by Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
evoking yet again the idea of "eclogues from a vanished land" which pervades the whole composition).
Symphony No.7 in G minor ("Athonite") lasts for one hour, and is in three movements: I "Pilgrimage", II "Ek Batheon" (the Greek, Έκ βαθέον, meaning "from the depths", or in Latin, "de Profundis") and III FINALE "The Garden of the Panaghia" , referring to the Greek Orthodox monastic idea that the peninsula Mount Athos
Mount Athos
Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...
(Άγιον Όρος, Agion Oros) forms a garden for the all-holy one, the Theotokos
Theotokos
Theotokos is the Greek title of Mary, the mother of Jesus used especially in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic Churches. Its literal English translations include God-bearer and the one who gives birth to God. Less literal translations include Mother of God...
, or Mother-of-God. Strutt being a member of the society The Friends of Mount Athos (FoMA) has made many visits to Mount Athos, finding it a holy place of inspiration. The symphony was conceived in the early 1990s, but not scored until 2003. "Pilgrimage", the title of the first movement, simply represents the feelings of a visiting pilgrim to the Holy Mountain. "Ek Batheon" however is a much more profound study of the torments of the soul experienced by the solitary hesychast, or hermit, living in utter and total simplicity and wrestling with temptation, arrested by the attempts of the devil to conquer him. In this movement the orchestra is divided into two parts, and the musical events portray a terrifying state of mind. The last movement includes a boys' and men's chorus who sing six of the Orthodox Apolytikia of the Resurrection
Resurrection
Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...
, and is an attempt to portray the beauty and peace of the Holy Mountain as it appears to an outside visitor.
The Symphony No. 8 ("Orkney Choral Symphony") sees the composer back on home ground - Orkney - where he has lived since 1970. More of a song cycle, the seven movements are settings of Orcadian poetry. The movements are: I-PROLOGUE:"Orkney Summer"(SONNET I), the text by Robert Rendall;II SONG 1: "Cataface" (the Scots
Scots
Scots may refer to:*The Scottish people, the inhabitants of Scotland*Scots language *Scotch-Irish*Scottish English*Scots pine, a Scottish tree*Short for Pound Scots...
for the short-eared owl
Short-eared Owl
The Short-eared Owl is a species of typical owl . In Scotland this species of owl is often referred to as a cataface, grass owl or short-horned hootlet. Owls belonging to genus Asio are known as the eared owls, as they have tufts of feathers resembling mammalian ears. These "ear" tufts may or may...
), to text by Harriet Campbell; III-LAMENT:"The Brig o' Waithe", the text by Ann Scott-Moncrieff describing the civilian casualty in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Britain when a German aircraft returning to base after attempting to attack Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow
right|thumb|Scapa Flow viewed from its eastern endScapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, United Kingdom, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay and Hoy. It is about...
randomly released its bombs over Orkney; IV-SONG 2 "Sleep! Baby, sleep!", the text by James Morrison; V-INTERMEZZO "Merlin" (SONNET II), the text by Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
; VI-PANEGYRIC "For Ann Scott-Moncrieff (1914-43)", the text by Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
and VII-EPILOGUE "The Peace of Orkney", the text by John Skea. The total duration of the composition is just under 25 minutes and the score was completed in 1999.
Strutt's Symphony No. 9 in D minor ("The Fountain of Tears") was completed in 2004. It is a two-part symphonic study of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
. Part I comprises nine settings of his poetry, for soprano and baritone soli, and SATB choir, and orchestra. Part II, entitled "Ainadamar
Ainadamar
Ainadamar means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic, and is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The libretto is by American playwright David Henry Hwang. It premiered in Tanglewood on August 10, 2003. After major revisions, the new version premiered at the Santa Fe Opera on July 30,...
(18/ix/1936)", (the name and date of the place where Lorca's execution took place), is purely orchestral and can be considered to be a symphonic poem on the life and death of the poet. In part II the poems set are I "Ballad of the Little Square", II "Hunter", III "Little Balade of the Three Rivers", IV "Song" (to Claudia Gillen), V "Village", VI "Song", VII "Song of the Rider" (1860), VIII "CASIDA of the Rose",and IX "The Lament". This symphony may also be considered a quasi concerto in that there is a prominent part for the acoustic Spanish guitar. The title of the composition, "Fountain of Tears" is the actual meaning of Ainadamar
Ainadamar
Ainadamar means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic, and is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The libretto is by American playwright David Henry Hwang. It premiered in Tanglewood on August 10, 2003. After major revisions, the new version premiered at the Santa Fe Opera on July 30,...
(Arabic, Ayn al-Dam).
Overtures
The Concert Overture "William CobbettWilliam Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...
" was created by making a transcription for orchestra of the Rondo for oboe and piano in 1962, the bicentenary year of Cobbett's birth (9th March, 1762) at Farnham
Farnham
Farnham is a town in Surrey, England, within the Borough of Waverley. The town is situated some 42 miles southwest of London in the extreme west of Surrey, adjacent to the border with Hampshire...
in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, close to where the composer was born and grew up. Cobbett was a local figure with whose attitudes to life the composer was sympathtic. The overture received a rehearsal performance by the BBC Northern Ireland Light Orchestra in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
in 1969, under the auspices of the BBC's light music rehearsal scheme. The conductor was Havelock Nelson
Havelock Nelson
Havelock Nelson was a composer and conductor. He joined the BBC in Belfast in 1947, having been educated at Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He conducted the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra, also the Studio Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Singers...
and the producer was Alan Tongue. It was on this occasion that Strutt first met and became acquainted with Derek Bell
Derek Bell
Derek Bell may refer to:* Derek Bell , Northern Irish musician and composer, long with The Chieftains* Derek Bell , British racing car driver* Derek Bell , American baseball player...
, the harpist in the orchestra, who became a lifelong friend and exponent of Strutt's works.
In 1973 another transcript was made, for small orchestra, of a single movement originally written for string quartet, under the title King Richard II. At the head of the score of this concert overture appears a quotation from Shakespeare, generally known as John of Gaunt's speech. The quartet dated originally from 1962 and 1966. The orchestral scoring is for double woodwind, two trumpets and two horns, timpani, three percussuinists, celesta
Celesta
The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
and strings, and the duration is six minutes.
In 1987 a concert overture entitled "Céilidh
Céilidh
In modern usage, a céilidh or ceilidh is a traditional Gaelic social gathering, which usually involves playing Gaelic folk music and dancing. It originated in Ireland, but is now common throughout the Irish and Scottish diasporas...
" (a Scottish Gaelic word denoting a dance-cum-social gathering) appeared, this also being a transcription but this time from an original piece for clarinet quartet. The work is entirely based on Scottish dance tunes, namely the slow march "John Bain McKenzie's March" (also known as "The Fairy Piper", the Strathspey
Strathspey
Strathspey may refer to one of the following:* Strathspey, Scotland, an area in the Highlands of Scotland;* Strathspey ....
"Dainty Davie", and the Reels "Maxwell's Rant" and "The Fairy Dance". The scoring is for double wind and brass (without tuba), timpani, percussion and strings, the only exception being that the clarinet section is expanded to four players, and includes bass, alto and piccolo clarinets. The pemiere was given on 30th November, 1996 (St. Andrew's Day
St. Andrew's Day
St Andrew's Day is the feast day of Saint Andrew. It is celebrated on 30 November.Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, and St Andrew's Day is Scotland's official national day...
) at the Nicolson Square Methodist Church Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
by the New Edinburgh Orchestra under the American conductor Daniel G. Monek, with Lucy Creanor as leader. Another public performance was given on 1st December, 1999 at Adelaide's, Bath Street, Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
by the Glasgow Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tommy Fowler.
Symphonic Poems
In 1973, the centenary of the birth of Gustav HolstGustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
, a composer much admired by Strutt, inspired the production of a symphonic poem
Symphonic poem
A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...
entitled "Pluto, the Bringer of Change". This was intended as both a tribute to the memory of Holst and a commemoration of his birth, and the intention in performance terms was as a work to be played in the same programme as Holst's "Planets" suite - the orchestration is the same, except that no vocal forces are used. The compositional history of the piece is, however, not of a work originally composed for orchestra, but of a work transcribed for orchestra from a chamber piece for seven clarinets. This clarinet septet - the scoring included the rare octocontrabass and contrabass clarinets, as well as the E flat piccolo and alto clarinets - was played in a private run-through at Kneller Hall (the Royal Military School of Music
Royal Military School of Music
The Royal Military School of Music in Twickenham, west London, trains musicians for the British Army's twenty-nine bands. It is part of the Corps of Army Music...
by an ad hoc ensemble led by Terry Busby in 1969, but subsequently caesed to have a separate existence once the orchestral transcription had been made.
String Quartets
Strutt's String Quartet No. 1 has a long history. Originating in 1959 as a pre-student work, its two movements constituted the only remaining sections of a much longer piece of which the rest was destroyed. The two movements - "Lament", and "Scherzo" - were premiered at the Farnham Festival, Surrey, England on 12th May, 1960 in St Andrew's Parish Church, Farnham, and were repeated on the next day at the AldershotAldershot
Aldershot is a town in the English county of Hampshire, located on heathland about southwest of London. The town is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council...
Festival, the performers being Jenifer Springate and Gillian Feltham (violins), Helen Johnstone (viola) and Dietrich Küchemann
Dietrich Küchemann
Dietrich Küchemann CBE FRS FRAeS was a German aerodynamicist who made several important contributions to the advancement of high-speed flight...
(cello). A minor revision of the score was carried out in 2003, followed four years later by a substantial revision which saw the composition expanded to four movements: I "Prologue" (being the original "Lament" of the 1960 version); II "Variations on J.S.Bach's Chorale Harmonisation of "Valet will ich dir geben" by Melchior Teschner (c. 1615); III "Scherzo and trio" (substantially as in the original version) and, IV "Epilogue" (a re-working of the material from the first movement).
The String Quartet No. 2 similarly has had a long history of revision. Originally composed in 1963 it was revised in 1991 for submission to the Third Concurso de Composición Musical ("Luis de Narváez
Luis de Narváez
Luis de Narváez was a Spanish composer and vihuelist. Highly regarded during his lifetime, Narváez is known today for Los seys libros del delphín, a collection of polyphonic music for the vihuela which includes the earliest known variation sets...
"), in 1992 in Granada, Spain. The work is in four movements: Prologue; Scherzo; Adagio ; Finale.
The composition of String Quartet No.3 (from "The Frieze of Life" of Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
) was prompted by the Oslo Grieg Society's Fourth International Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
Memorial Competition characterised as "The Music in Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
's Paintings". Its three movements are intented to portray musical interpretations of three of Munch's paintings: I "The Dance of Life"; II "Melancholy"; III "The Scream
The Scream
Scream is the title of Expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky...
".
Compositions
- 1964 Symphony No. 1 in E minor
- 1965 Symphony No. 2 in C minor (revised 1991)
- 1967 Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, "Visions of Albion"
- 1986 Symphony No. 4, "Kenosis"
- 1973 Symphony No. 5 in D major
- 1987 Symphony No. 6 in E flat minor, "Eclogues from a Vanished Land"
- 2003 Symphony No. 7 in G minor, "Athonite"
- 1999 Symphony No. 8, "Orkney Choral Symphony"
- 2004 Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "The Fountain of Tears"
- 1962 William Cobbett, a concert overture
- 1973 King Richard II, a concert overture
- 1987 Céilidh, a concert overture based on Scottish dance tunes
- 1973 Pluto, the Bringer of Change, a symphonic poemSymphonic poemA symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...
- 1986 At the Tomb of the Sea-Eagles, a symphonic poemSymphonic poemA symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...
- 1985 The Tragedy of Man, an existentialist opera in four acts
- 1996 Praeludium and Trisagion
- 2009 Piano Concerto
- 1983 Hibernian Rhapsody
- 2008 Song Cycle "Athos Ethos"
- 2007 Japanese Sketches:Book IV, "Autumn Haiku"
- 2011 Opus Alchymicum, sonata for oboe and piano
- 1973 Fantasy:"Strange Philosophy", for solo cimbalom and orchestra
- 2009 Orkney Songbook
- 2003 Northumbrian Folk-tune Suite for flute and piano
- 1996 Song Cycle "The Unknown Goddess" for mezzo-soprano and piano, to poems by Humbert Wolfe