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5 Canons
5 Canons (1997), for solo harpsichord, was written for Kevin Bowyer who is internationally known for his interpretations, at the organ, of the music of J.S. Bach. He was beginning (in the 1990s) to give harpsichord recitals and this piece was commissioned as part of this new venture. To my mind, something of Bach had…
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Dance of Leilah: Dance of Lilith
Some notes on: Dance of Leilah: Dance of Lilith for solo piano (1994, c. 11 mins) Dance of Leilah: Dance of Lilith is a solo piano piece inspired by Angela Carter’s powerful novel ‘The Passion of New Eve’. In the book, Leilah and Lilith are the same character transformed – physically, emotionally and intellectually – an…
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Notes on A Woldgate Requiem
A Woldgate Requiem for organ solo (c.8 mins) A Woldgate Requiem is a solo organ piece, extremely virtuosic in it’s orientation. It was written in response to a tragic road accident close to my home, when I was living in the East Riding of Yorkshire. A school coach carrying school children from Woldgate School, Pocklington crashed…
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The 4 valve microtonal trumpet
I have described in the blog, Developing the Microtonal Trumpet and its Pedagogy how The Microtonal Trumpet project developed from an exploration of a three-valve instrument using ‘natural’ deviations of pitch from the 12-div equal tempered standard. The first 5 to 10 of the 24 Microtonal Studies for trumpet were written with the idea that – more or…
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24 Microtonal Studies for Trumpet
24 Microtonal Studies for trumpet were written as first material for the replaceable valve mechanism microtonal trumpets developed by Stephen Altoft (although the first five to ten studies can be played on a standard trumpet as is described in the blog Developing the Microtonal Trumpet and its Pedagogy). They are pedagogical studies in that they: demand…
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Developing the Microtonal Trumpet and its Pedagogy
The trumpet is microtonal by its very nature because different pitches, which are made by overblowing a length of brass tubing, produce a harmonic series and are therefore not equally tempered: In the example, pitches are shown as sounding in open position on a C trumpet. Open position refers to there being no valves depressed: the trumpet player…
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A Journey of Nineteen
19-division tuning I’ve been interested in tuning since I was a student in the late 70s, early 80s, when I encountered very sporadic examples of quarter-tones in music by Penderecki and others. More than the music itself, or the use of the quarter-tones, it was the idea that the 12 division octave could be expanded by acoustic…
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DONALD BOUSTED Edition 