Tommy Fowler

Programme Note

Commissioned by Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and first performed there by the RSNO under Alexander Lazarev in October 1995. When the hall's then managing director Cameron McNicol came up with the idea for this piece he presented me with the problem of finding a musical representation of F-I-V-E for the hall's fifth anniversary. Schumann and others used a simple table which arranged the alphabet in order under the first seven letters (A to G) so that all the letters under A became that note and so on. That not only made it possible to use F-I-V-E but also G-R-C-H (Glasgow Royal Concert Hall). The melodic material is taken from these themes, their inversions and retrogrades. The form of the piece is A - A1 - B - A2 with an introduction and coda. The introduction features two trumpets and three trombones (another five) building chords from the themes and introducing a five-note rhythmic figure. The horns sound the themes before the main body of the piece begins. Here the materials are processed on three levels. The strings, generally, move the harmony with a strong impulse which includes the five-note figure; the woodwind and horns provide a wash of sound over which the melodies are painted. This wash is created using a bell-ringing change system to order the notes. The change system is featured later (from bar 125 - 142) in the horns just before the re-entry of the trumpets and trombones. The coda features brass and percussion only, leading to a climactic finish.