Perusal scores available on request

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ENSEMBLE/CHAMBER

 

Impressions

to a poem by e.e. cummings
1984 (apprx.7’)

soprano, flute, clarinet, horn, piano, perc., viola, ‘cello
Cobbett Prize for Composition 1984

 

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The Celestial Palace

1989 (appx 27’)

2 mezzo-sopranos and ensemble (alto.fl.0.3.0 – 1.0.3.0 – 2pnos, 2 perc, – 5 vc)

This work relates the legend of the Phimeanakas, The Celestial Palace, that lies in the heart of the ancient city of Angkor Thom. Each and every night the King had to have union with the serpent goddess in order for good to come to the Khmer kingdom. Failure to have this union would bring calamity to the empire.

 

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Five Fantastic Islands

1993 (appx. 12’) Commissioned by Psappha with funds from London Arts Board

flute, clarinet, viola, ‘cello, piano, perc.

Short programme note:

Five Fantastic Islands takes the listener on a journey around a series of imaginary islands. It is unashamedly infused with images of Balinese and Cambodian temples combined with pure imagination – mysterious places in an unreal archipelago. 

A recording of this work, performed by Psappha is available from NMC.

 

 

Glimpses of the Rubayait

1993 version for flute and string trio
Score and parts available from June Emerson Wind Music

http://www.juneemerson.co.uk/productDetails.aspx?GUID=cf4d1762-1e13-4bb2-a07c-b64d23996858

rev 2010 (appx. 10’)
flute, harp, violin, viola, ‘cello

This work was originally composed for the outstanding Canadian flautist Lisa Nelsen who gave its premiere with the Tacet Ensemble. In 2010 the score was revised to include a harp, and the flautist in that premiere was Stina Dawes.

 

String Trio

1994 (appx. 15’)
Commissioned by Alan Ridout

 

Clarinet Quintet

1996 (appx.16’)

for clarinet in A and string quartet

 

Eréndira

1998, rev 2005 (appx 23’)

flute (doubling picc., alto fl.) clarinet A (doubling bass cl.), alto saxophone, piano, violin and electronics 

Programme note:

Gabriel García Márquez’s story The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Souless Grandmother is one of his most disturbing and moving short stories. The young heroine is forced into prostitution by her wicked grandmother in order to repay for the loss of the home – the result of the ‘wind of misfortune’ blowing a candle against a curtain. In this incredible tale of love and loss, of tenderness and cruelty, humanity at its most raw is fully revealed. This chamber work forms the basis for an opera that never has yet been, but might one day. It is full of symbolism and imagery, conjuring up the heady atmosphere of South America and of all the surrealness our protagonists experience.  © Paul Max Edlin 2006

 

 

Eréndira Dances

2007 (appx 15’)

flute, clarinet and harp

Commissioned by Korros 

 

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Eréndira Dances

2011 (appx 15’)

flute, violin, viola, cello and piano

Programme note:

The great Colombian writer, Gabriel García Márquez, wrote his surreal novella The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Souless Grandmother in 1978. Eréndira Dances captures the essence of this story. It takes music from an never completed opera – the rights proved impossible to acquire.

In the first of the three dances, the two main characters of the drama, Eréndira and her Grandmother, are introduced. Eréndira, a wistful yet always busy young girl, is portrayed by the flute. The domineering and incredibly demanding Grandmother, with all her erratic and persistent nature, is depicted by the cello. Surrounding these two protagonists is their home, an old house full of clocks and antique relics from the Grandmother’s past life. The strange surreal environment, set in the heat of the Hispanic landscape is caught from the beginning. Eréndira baths her bloated Grandmother as the wind of misfortune stirs. 

The second dance reveals snapshots of Eréndira’s now troubled life. Time has moved on a pace and the havoc caused by the wind of misfortune has seen the Grandmother’s home burned to the ground, and Eréndira has been forced into prostitution to pay off her debts. She will be a prostitute for years to come, and the Grandmother has made Eréndira the most famous and busy prostitute in all of South America. By chance, a handsome and innocent young man, Ulises, has met Eréndira and fallen in love with her. They make love in Eréndira’s tent. Their relationship has far to go. In the meantime, the Mission has made an attempt to rescue Eréndira from the wicked Grandmother. She finds herself at peace in the mission and hears the soft music of Bach played on a clavichord. She is free from her terrible world at last.

Dance 3 reveals two more snapshots of the last part of Eréndira’s story, now that she is back in the clutches of her Grandmother having been snatched back from the Mission. In the first snapshot, Eréndira is alone at night when Ulises creeps into her tent and they make love as the Grandmother sleeps, burbling away in her usual manner. The Grandmother’s frenetic burblings, now depicted by the violin and finally the viola, are coming to an end as she has been poisoned and stabbed repeatedly by Ulises. When she is finally dead, Eréndira runs away leaving Ulises by the side of the Grandmother’s whale-like body.  © Paul Max Edlin 2011 

 

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Frida Sketches

2012 (appx 16’)

For string quartet

Programme Note

The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo had an extraordinary life.  Born in 1907, she died at middle age in 1954.  At six she developed polio and a terrifying bus accident in her teens meant that she suffered life-long physical and health problems.  She married the Mexican artist and muralist Diego Rivera, who was twenty years her senior.  They had a tempestuous marriage, divorced and remarried.  No doubt due to her illness and her confinement to bed or being strapped in a body cast, Frida became self-obsessed and made many extraordinary self-portraits.  These self-portraits tell us as much about Mexican culture, religion and symbolism, about the tragedy of the country at that time, its politics and its history as they do about Frida and her love-hate relationship with Diego.  Frida also kept a diary, and that is yet another fascinating glimpse into this surreal artist’s equally surreal world.

As a composer who has been surrounded by visual art all my life and for whom surrealist painting is particularly relevant, Frida Kahlo’s work excites me.  Furthermore, I have a love for symbolism in music and enjoy transferring extra-musical ideas into music itself – thus a piece becomes even more than its apparent surface.  A piece ‘becomes’ what it is because of what inspires it and what drives it.  Using ciphers, Frida’s name, the names of those who were around her, the name of her home, etc all ‘create’ the musical notes.  The diary inspires the musical structure – especially the passages which are ‘stream-of-consciousness’ that are actually highly poetic and highly rigorous in design.  Finally, the music of Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’ permeates passages, and so it should as this is music that alludes to Frida’s world and her own crucifixion as a result of that tragic accident.

Frida Sketches is a sketch about the woman and her world, and it is a starting point for me to track a new path.  The work was written for the Arditti Quartet to whom it is dedicated.  © Paul Max Edlin 2012 

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Les Indes Galantes

2014 (appx 10’) – after Jean-Philippe Rameau

1. Air pour les Esclaves Affricains 
2. Tambourines 
3. Adoration du soleil 
4. Air pour boree et la rose 
5. Danse du grand calumet de paix executee par les sauvages

For Flute (doubling piccolo and bass flute), Clarinet in A (doubling bass-clarinet), Percussion (triangle, crotales [bowed], vibraphone, marimba, 3 gongs, tam-tam, tenor drum, tambourine), Piano, Violin, 'Cello 

Programme Note

Rameau's opera-ballet 'Les Indes Galantes' ('The Amorous Indes') was first realised in Paris' Palais Royale in 1735. It is a strange and somewhat incoherent story in several parts, set seemingly in the South Americas, yet really nowhere at all - just in some strange world not known to us. We must remember that this was a time of discovery, and adventure and the exotic was to be marvelled at simply for its curiosity. Rameau's music is startlingly adventurous and is certainly highly exotic, containing music of a wealth of heightened colours. This transcription takes a movement from each act (the Prologue and each of the four subsequent Entrées) therefore giving a nod to the work's overall design. This instrumentation is certainly alien to anything Rameau would have known. While his creation would have used percussion, these would have been fairly rudimentary instruments, and he certainly would not have had access to the plethora of types of instruments that have worked their way into the orchestral palette. Furthermore, the clarinet and piano had yet to be invented, and the bass flute had not even been imagined. This transcription goes beyond the conventional use of that word. The music is restyled. It is done so to leave a message. A sardonic wit should permeate the whole and we should find ourselves both amused by what we hear, yet also somewhat surprised that we can take for granted music with such titles. And yet, Rameau's music is exquisite, and the 'Adoration du soleil' (Adoration of the sun') is breathtakingly beautiful. The 'Air to the African Slaves' gives way to a Chaplainesque 'Tambourin' - the first of these two inhabiting sounds that are deep and rumbustious, and the second being exceedingly light and frivolous. 'The Dance of the Savages' now mixes the music of Russia with Klezmer, Vienna, France, Tango and Great Britain, among an amorphous pool. After all, we are all savages at times. The irony is personal. I am often bedevilled by man's frequent inability to behave decently. I am amused and saddened that so called leaders can make so many mistakes - and in its year of composition (2014) that celebrated the centenary of beginning of the First World War, remembering the innumerable consequences that needless war created was certainly in my mind. But so were the mini jostlings of power in so many environments - even in homes. Thus this transcription becomes something of an irreverent and cheeky nod, which is nonetheless serious in its fundamental creation. The result is a journey in which we discover Rameau's music anew, revel in its colour and charm, laugh at its wit, and ponder the inadequacy of mankind in its ability to properly understand itself. © Paul Max Edlin, August 2014 

 

 

ENSEMBLE WITH VOICE

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Traduit de la Nuit / Translations from the Night

Versions in French and English 

to poems by Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, translated into English by Michael Downes 2000 (appx 20’)

1. A Crystal Star
2. What Invisible Rat
3. Here Is She
4. The Things Which Pass
5. The Skin Of The Black Cow
6. The Black Glassmaker

Mezzo-soprano, flute (doubling picc. and alto fl.), clarinet in A, violin, piano, perc.

Short Programme Note 

The cycle sets poems by the Madagascan poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, translated into English by Michael Downes.

Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (c. 1901/1903 – 1937) is widely acknowledged to be Africa's first truly modern poet as well as the greatest literary artist from Madagascar.

 

 

Song of the Gypsy Siguiriya

To poems by Federico García Lorca 2001 (appx 17’)

Solo soprano, flute (doubling bass flute), clarinet Bb, soprano saxophone, trumpet Bb (doubling piccolo trumpet Bb), guitar, harp, piano, violin, cello

 

Ô saisons, ô châteaux

To poems by Arthur Rimbaud 2001 (appx 14’)

I - Ô saisons, ô châteaux (O seasons, o chateaux…)
II - Conneries (Stupidities)
III - Veillées (Vigils)

Solo soprano, string quartet, electric keyboard

Programme Note

The poetry of Arthur Rimbaud has long intrigued me, and this is not the first time I’ve set his poems. The innate symbolism that permeates every sentence is manna from heaven to me – as my own music is steeped in symbolism. Ô saisons, ô châteaux sets Rimbaud’s famous poem of the same name as well as a nonsense poem and another from his equally well-known Illuminations. 
As an aside, the sound of the glass harmonica has always fascinated me ever since I heard a recording of Mozart’s famous Adagio and Rondo. There is an inevitable beguiling enchantment this extraordinary instrument creates. However, this instrument is seriously limited in what it can do and it takes something extra to make it ‘virtuoso’. Fortunately, the use of modern day sound sampling means that one can create a ‘virtual’ virtuoso glass harmonica. The pianist plays a keyboard which now sounds like a vast instrument that Mozart would surely have adored!
The first song alludes to feelings of nostalgia and life changes, yet inhabits a labyrinthine maze where one is constantly trying to discover the truth. The music is derived from Rameau’s opera Castor and Pollux (all about the Gemini twins). It is the funeral music, where one twin knows he has to live without the other – and inevitably gains strength from it. Hence the baroque nature of the music. The text of the second setting of nonsense verse reveals an essential element: the inevitable ridiculousness that people apply to ‘names’. This song is my homage to those inspiring masters. The final song is all about the importance and relevance of friendship above all things, and is thus set simply and directly.  © Paul Max Edlin 2009

 

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BRASS ENSEMBLE

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The Fifth Trumpet

1985 (appx 10’)
7 trumpets (piccolo, natural, Eb, Bb, bass trumpets, flugelhorn), perc., piano, organ.
Commissioned and by John Wallace and the Wallace Collection,
Won IX Internazionale Premio Ancona

2014 (appx 10′)

7 trumpets (piccolo, natural, Eb, Bb, bass trumpets, flugelhorn), perc., piano, 2 cellos, 3 double basses.  New version made for RNCM ‘After the Silence… Music in the Shadow of War’.

Programme Note:

Revelation 9:1-11: “Then the Fifth Trumpet angel sounded and I saw a star having fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.”

“Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree; but only those men who do not have the seal of God in their foreheads. And they were not authorized to kill them, but to torment them for five months: and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days men will seek death, and will not find it; and they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.”

“The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. And they had breastplates, like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots of many horses running into battle.”

“They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek his name is Apollo.”

“One woe is past. Behold, two more woes are coming hereafter”.

When John Wallace formed the Wallace Collection, he brought together the finest trumpet players in the United Kingdom.  Legendary names of the past such as John Wilbraham and David Mason joined forces with the finest up-and-coming players such as Mark Bennett and Bob Farley.  Their first concert was to be in the Queen Elizabeth Hall and John Wallace, then my trumpet teacher at the Royal College of Music, asked me to compose a piece for this remarkable ensemble.  I wanted to create a work that would leave a message and provoke thought as well as being a demonstration of virtuosity.

The biblical story of the seven trumpets of the apocalypse from The Book of Revelation lended itself to this instrumentation as well as my intention.  Here was the profoundest allegory that responds to the results of man’s inhumanity to man and his environment spawning suffering and torment in the most dramatic ways.  The parallels with the horrors of war need no elaboration.

‘The Fifth Trumpet’ describes an initial vision of Heaven from which the Fifth Angel blows his trumpet. A star falls from heaven creating an earthly abyss from which smoke pours and the locusts with scorpion stings inflict months of agony on mankind who seek the solace of death.  But death evades them.  The programmatic intent of the story should be apparent in the clearly defined sections of the piece.  A range of trumpets are used: piccolo trumpets, natural trumpets in old pitch keys, Eb, Bb and bass trumpets.  Together with these are percussion, piano and either organ (as in the 1985 original score) or 2 ‘cellos and 3 basses (as in this 2014 revision).  The trumpet writing pushes the instruments to extreme limits, not least the 5th trumpet part, which has specific solo passages and which was written for John Wallace.  In the first performance, the 4th trumpet part was played by wonderful John Miller, now Head of Brass at the RNCM, the conservatoire that requested this new version be made.  In the 2014 revision, several changes have been made: the organ part has been reworked for lower strings and there has been some rationalising of barring and some minor simplification of the actual instrumental parts.  © Paul Max Edlin 2014

 

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‘Tis Enough

2002 (appx 13’)

Brass quintet (horn, 2 trumpets, trombone and tuba)

Programme note:

It is not new to draw on another composer’s music and make it a starting point for one’s own work. Nor is it new to use that existing music – especially music that has an ‘implicit’ meaning – to represent something symbolic.
‘tis Enough is such a work. It draws on the music of J.S. Bach (his famous cantata Es ist Genug) and it moulds, develops, suggests and integrates the opening aria throughout the first movement of this three-movement composition. It also informs the direction of the substructure of the rest of the work.
Frankly, I was intending to use Bach’s music in an opera (at a highly symbolic moment), but untold problems set in with that piece. I had ‘had enough’, and this brass quintet emerged. It was a way of saying something in public in the best and most profound way I could, with the group of instruments I grew up with (I was a trumpeter).
The first movement grows out of murmurs, out of whisperings and secrecy. The music twists and turns and occasionally Bach’s music can be detected more apparently. At one point the trumpets erupt with a literal scream (not of anguish, more of frustration). Then the murmurs continue. The second movement is something of a firecracker. It is over almost as soon as it has begun, all the instruments working in the same direction and only at the end going their separate ways. (Bach is still there, but imperceptibly.) The final movement is serene – the calm after the various storms. Each instrument is used delicately, the principal trumpet soaring above the others with an intentionally beautiful line. Again Bach’s music permeates and guides, but unnoticeably. It is easy to see that the master’s work had allowed me to put things in perspective.  © Paul Max Edlin 2003

 

 

The First Four Trumpets

2007 (approx 8 mins)

for 4 trumpets (4 Bb, 2 doubling Eb)

Commissioned by The Park Lane Group in memory of Philip Jones

Programme note:

This work was commissioned by The Park Lane Group for four exceptional young trumpeters to play in the Park Lane Group Young Concert Artists Series. The work is dedicated, at the request of the Park Lane Group, to the memory of Philip Jones – one of my idols, whose influence in brass ensemble playing of the twentieth century remains unparalleled.
The trumpet itself has developed beyond all measure in the last thirty years, in technical terms of construction and the facility of musicians who play it. It is now an instrument capable of playing florid lines, extremes of range and dynamics, etc. This work intentionally explores the various characteristics of the instrument as well as techniques that recent advancements in engineering have made possible. Quarter-tones, low ‘pedal’ notes, valve tremelos and a variety of mutes are a few ways in which alluring sonorities and a palette of timbres are achieved.
The title refers directly to the first four trumpets from the Book of Revelation. About twenty years ago, I wrote a piece called The Fifth Trumpet for The Wallace Collection – a symbolic work on this Biblical theme. With four trumpets available, I felt impelled to return to the subject. The design of this new composition reflects the shape of the appropriate chapters, where increasing trumpet calls generate tension through counterpoint, set against images of a changing landscape.  © Paul Max Edlin 2006 

 

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Tre Canzoni per 10

2007 (approx 8 mins)

for 10 trumpets in Bb

Programme Note

The first of these three canzonas (canzoni) was commissioned to honour the CoFounder and Executive Director of Orvieto Musica, Nyela Basney.  As a trumpeter myself, I have always adored the music of Giovanni Gabrieli – those glorious colourful canzonas that use antiphonal ideas to great effect.  Having just moved to Italy to live – literally down the road from Orvieto, in Montepulciano – I could not help but consider the great Italian master who had been so influential to my own musical life.

Canzonas often explore two principal ideas, one in duple or quadruple meter and another in triple meter.  One idea is often more brilliant and another more reflective.  Thus the first of this triptych combines both these elements, and it was first performed by thirty outstanding trumpeters in Orvieto’s Teatro Mancinelli with a second performance a few days later in the town’s ancient Palazzo del Popolo.

I had already been aware of the images painted by Luca Signorelli in Orvieto’s glorious Duomo.  But at the time of these two performances, I had chance to visit the cathedral properly and see these works in detail.  They are monumental and inspiring, and they are as ‘modern’ and fresh today as they have ever been.  They also have a darkness in their own commentary as well as being hugely colourful and dynamic. I was inspired to write two further pieces.  The second ‘canzona’ explores an ever-evolving dynamic of colours through the use of gradually shifting chords.  It remembers too the extraordinary double helix staircase in Orvieto’s well. A sort of aural vision of a fantasy staircase of shifting colours is the result. The third canzona is directly inspired by Signorelli’s painting that shows two angels playing trumpets above a desolate human race in ‘The Resurrection of the Flesh’, which is part of his extraordinary set of paintings that represent the Last Judgement in the Duomo’s Cappella di San Brizio.

The second and third of these three ‘canzoni’ are dedicated to Amy Gilreath who herself commissioned the first canzone and who conducted its premiere so outstandingly.  © Paul Max Edlin 2023

 

 

ELECTRONIC

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Four Nocturnal Landscapes

1987 (appx 13’)

for trumpet, percussion and electronics
Commissioned by and first performed at Nettlefold Festival 1988

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Looking Glass

2008 (appx 12’)

string quartet and electronics

 

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The Illusionist’s Magic Box

2024 (appx 10’)

Piano, toy piano and electronics

Commissioned with funds from Arts Council Malta

Programme Note

The charming toy piano is actually not an easy instrument to write for, with an often-clumsy action which means it cannot play fast passages.  However, its sound is so instantly recognisable, and it immediately evokes childhood, magic, illusion, and sheer fantasy.  It arouses thoughts of an unreal or lost world.  The piano, on the other hand, is arguably the grand wizard of instruments, capable of conjuring up so many sonorities, and being able to mimic an entire orchestra and much more.

The birth of this piece took a slightly unusual path.  Having received the commission from Dawn, together with some specific instructions and time limit, I set about drafting sketches. I immediately started thinking about a larger-than-life character who could manipulate, transfix, tantalise, beguile and command.  And this was combined with the surrealist art I love and grew up with (my mother painted so much surrealist work).  And then there was the daily news, focusing so much on the politics of charlatans who cast their magic spells on their often-gullible people.  I imagined a grandiose character that was both enigmatic and ambiguous: possibly genial, possibly malevolent, but certainly a combination of many characteristics.   

The sketches became the foundation to a huge (second) concerto for piano and large orchestra that I wrote on a whim.  I temporarily abandoned the immediate commission, knowing I had many months to complete that work.  Then I turned to the task in hand, and the sketches (the exact same musical material I had naughtily yet intentionally used in that concerto) took on a new life, independent yet complimentary, and with a totally different structure.  And the sound world was so different too, because I chose to create an other-worldly electronic soundscape that would act as a cohesive and magical force that allowed the two pianos (real and toy) to expand their ideas (their spells and their stories).  Ultimately, both this work and the concerto are companions – the very same illusionist casting the same spells from their ‘box of tricks’, yet yielding more unforeseen results.

The electronics uses sampled sounds of bowed metal percussion instruments as well as more conventional ‘struck’ sonorities in ranges that simply don’t exist, and using quarter-tones (the notes in-between conventional semitones) that these instruments cannot play.  So, through electronic manipulation, the unreal is created out of the real, and the two keyboard instruments act as the seeming masters of all that goes on, with that ‘grand-wizard’ announcing both start and symbolically shutting up that ‘magic box’.

There is no story to this work.  This is music to evoke individual responses, but the piece is born from visual imagery.  It is dedicated to the pianist Tricia Dawn Williams.  © Paul Max Edlin 2024