Duration: 21'

Premiere: 9/6/2023, Stephanie Lamprea (sop.), Richard Craig (fl.), InSpace Gallery, Edinburgh

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Message without a Code explores the idea of the photograph in terms of sound, representation, and meaning. It is composed of three movements, with the first and third having an electronic tape part. The electronic part is entirely comprised of photographs turned into sound (sonified) using an application which converts photographs into spectrographs. In this sense, the idea of representation through photography is abstracted, reverting the medium to its beginnings as a light-capturing device; the sonification process is indeed analogous to treatment of negatives with various chemical in the development process. The first movement uses maps and satellite images of Edinburgh to sound a process of geographic expansion and development, with the final movement contrasting an historic photograph of Holyrood Palace and Arthur’s Seat by Archibald Burns (c. 1858) with interruptions from contemporary protest photography (since 2020) as well as AI-generated images: a disjuncture between the natural, human, and technological realms, and their interconnected agency.

The central movement, and the work title, refers to Roland Barthes’ essay ‘The Photographic Message’. This work dispenses with the tape part, and instead explores the idea of photograph through ongoing debates of the medium as an ‘automatic’ art form.

Duration: 8'

Premiere: 30/10/2022, Stephanie Lamprea (sop.), Fiona Winning (vla.), Anatomy Rooms, Aberdeen

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Flawed Power uses an AI-generated text with prompts relating to the environment and social power dynamics. Its main musical focus is on the dialectic between natural and artificial sounds in the voice, as well as a further dialectic between voice and viola. The highly fragmentary and chaotic material in the vocal part is reflective of an unstable internal (i.e. with itself) and external relationship, slipping in and out of coordination with the viola. The irony of the text, and the surreal element of the music is emblematic of using AI to write a piece which nonsensically critiques capitalistic and ecological power dynamics, despite the presence of AI and technology being prolifically linked to powerful media and business interests. Technology at once creates and destroys: our worldview is often deduced from this flawed power.

Duration: 4'

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Performance by Jake Parker (horn), Ida Tunkkari (violin), David Palmer (piano)

This piece is a response to Ted Hughes’ poem Two Legends, which begins the collection From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1970). The title, Crow Forms, has a double meaning, both representing the form of the poem through use of its metric qualities which generate much of the initial material, but also acting as a narrative device, with the piece depicting Crow’s coming into being, as indicated in the text.

Duration: c. 14'

(Ob., Tbn., Perc., Hp., Db.)

Premiere: 7/10/2021, Lonelinoise Collective, International Chamber Music Festival Schiermonnikoog

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This piece explores the tensions between manmade and natural phenomena through the metaphor of Schiermonnikoog’s two lighthouses. The North Tower (Noordertoren), no longer used as a lighthouse, has been repurposed for meteorological study. The South Tower (Zuidertoren), since the installation of a revolving light in the North Tower in 1910, has become partly abandoned over the 20th century, until 1992 when a radio antenna was installed - yet, there still is no prolonged human activity within. Visually, you can see signs of a kind of ‘reclaiming’ of the structure by nature - the algae and peeling white paint of the South Tower contrasts with the bright red and well-maintained North Tower. It is also notable that the South Tower has a monk statue on its roof - similarly, a call to the past and the island’s original inhabitants (from which Schiermonnikoog’s name is derived). Musical materials are derived from transcriptions of Schiermonnikoog’s natural features (e.g. rivers), and these shapes come to define the music of the second movement, which exhibits graphic notation - a kind of notational ‘reclamation’ to parallel the lighthouse metaphor.

This piece was commissioned by the Lonelinoise Collective for the International Chamber Music Festival Schiermonnikoog, with support from i-Portunus.

Duration: 9'

(Fl.(=A. Fl.), Cl.(=B. Cl), Ob.(=Ca), Bsn.(=Cbsn.), Hn., Tpt., Tbn., Perc. (B.D., T-T., Cym., S.D., T. Bl., Tri.)

Tetrahedrons is a response to a painting of the same name by Paul Sérusier (1864-1927), completed circa 1910. The music invokes the painting through its use of timbral inversions, which utilise iterations of the same musical material through geometric transformation. Elements of musical self-similarity, as well as gestural difference, contribute to the elements of stasis and chromatic contrast in Sérusier’s work - as well as alluding to the tetrahedron’s symmetrical and geometric properties.

The oboe has a central role in the piece, acting as a kind of axial symmetry that enacts the shifts from movement to stillness, and could be seen as the ‘orienting’ force within this work.

Duration: 5'

Written as part of Psappha’s Composing For Violin and Cimbalom scheme

Premiere: 19/7/2021, Benedict Holland (vln.) & Tim Williams (cimb.) Victoria Wood Hall, Manchester (broadcast online)

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This piece uses a portion of the River Danube, known as the Danube Bend, to generate its musical material. Through overlaying and tracing the river graphic onto the cimbalom board, as well as in a pitch/time graph, contrasting pitch sets are generated that provide both a structure to the piece, and a dialectic between violin and cimbalom. The final section of the piece utilises graphic notation in both parts building to a cacophonous, wild sound; aggressively denying the convoluted processes within the work, whilst also providing a statement on the notion of manmade interaction with natural elements.

The title of the piece, Folyò, is Hungarian for ‘river’.

Duration: 27'

Commissioned for the Kreutzer Quartet by the Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities

Premiere: 21/5/2021, Kreutzer Quartet, Holywell Music Room, Oxford (broadcast online)

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This work is a continuation of my research concerning the process of pixelation in music. It explores how graphical inputs can organise pitch using two parameters: retained pitches (what remains of set derived from the original image) and regenerated pitches (generated using the new image; see below). The piece uses graphical insertions in the score, using portions of the river map to create glissandi, to be freely interpreted by the performer over the allotted time. The music moves through the river, which is divided into four harmonic sections. Within each quarter, a process of pixelation via magnification occurs, which generates new derivations of the initial tone row. The initial row could be thought of as the ‘surface’ of the river, with each subsequent magnification going ‘deeper’, and thus less clear. These harmonic layers often exist simultaneously, and the ‘retained’ pitches (what is left of the original tone row after magnification) create a tension between these two representations on a local level. This tension can be manifested as a critique of natural and technological processes, forging an eco- crtical interpretation of the work.

The process of composition was layered. From June to August, I wrote solo pieces for each of the quartet instruments, entitled Vignettes of a Pixelated River, which derive their material from each quarter of the river (see image).

Complexes of material are shared across Vignettes, and these are used in the full quartet, informing textures and characterisation of instruments, e.g. the cello may have a more dominant role in ‘quarter 2’ material.

The quartet is played continuously, with no breaks in the structure. Whilst the graphical insertions act as transitions between different harmonic sections, it should not be thought of as different ‘movements’; a river exists and flows in a unidirectional unbroken motion.

Duration: 2'

Premiere: 3/11/2020, Nonclassical website

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All Dead Paper focuses on the musical potential of pixelating text, affecting the visual layout as well as the text’s meaning. The cover illustration shows variations of pixelation on the titular phrase, as well as a line showing the path taken through the array. These pixelated images were analysed and musical details (particularly texture and rhythm) were generated. The metaphor of pixelation is implied through the increasingly nonsensical text in the vocal part, which then begins to semantically deteriorate following a rupture at b. 20.

The text is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s (1806-1861) Sonnets from the Portuguese (1846). These sonnets have a deliberately misleading title in order to mask their intimate nature (they are not translations of Portuguese originals, as one would assume), and this seemed appropriate for a musical exploration of a visual process which causes obfuscation. Similarly, the phrase ‘all dead paper’, taken from the opening of the 28th sonnet, particularly appealed to me for the tension between technology and modernity/antiquity, as well as the fact that one of the causes of visual display errors are ‘dead pixels’.

Duration: 3'

Premiere: 16/08/2020, George Barton (pno.), Siwan Rhys (perc.)

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This piece is a response to Erika Klien’s painting Diving Bird (1939). Whilst the flowing and smooth shapes of the painting seem to be the most prominent feature of the work, the bold contrasts of colour also leap out, creating a feeling of tension. The music of Diving Birds aims to represent the intertwining nature of the geometric shapes, whilst also providing individual characters to reflect these visual chromatic contrasts.

This piece was written for the Peter Reynolds Composition Studio as part of the Vale of Glamorgan Festival 2020, which was sadly cancelled. My huge thanks to George Barton and Siwan Rhys for collaborating on this piece remotely, as well as Robert Fokkens for his compositional advice in a workshop, and Caroline Tress for organising.

Duration: 10'

Premiere: 12/10/2023, Tim Bagley (baritone), Joshua Pizzoferro (horn), David Palmer (piano), St. Bartholomew the Great, London

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The Lights of London focuses on the contrast between the natural lights of the sky, and the artificial lights that pervade London during night–time. It sets Louise Guiney’s The Lights of London, written in 1889, offering an early insight to this phenomenon.

To imbue the piece with a sense of ‘place’, the co–ordinates of Hampstead Heath (mentioned in the poem) were used as compositional generator. The co–ordinates are 51.5578311 (N), –0.1676659 (W). These numbers were converted to interval classes, through which most of the material is based (both horizontally and vertically), e.g. the first entry of the piano in bar 11 uses the north co–ordinate. The sets are used in fragmentation and in standard geometric transformations e.g. inversion, transposition, retrograde.

The characteristic feature of this piece, used in many structurally important moments, is the use of glissando in the horn and voice, both utilising swelling dynamics. This is meant to emulate the gleaming of the stars, and the emergence of the moon into the night sky. This is also reflected in the structure, where there are several escalations to more aggressive and loud material, before dying away again.

The piece exists, loosely, in two large sections: the first is characterised as ‘natural light’, and the second as ‘artificial light’ – thus mirroring the structure of the poem. However, it also utilises a coda section. The first section uses fewer regular figurations and phrasings in the piano and horn to emulate the unpredictability of the night sky, whilst the second section employs regular ‘pulsing’ chords in the piano to match the sustained glow of artificial lighting which obscures the stars and moon above. The coda uses echoes of previous material, with the piano being played from the inside to create a new sound, instilling an ethereal yet longing atmosphere; as if the obscured ornaments of the night may be lost forever as more lights pollute the sky.

Duration: 13'

Premiere: 17/3/2020, Tom Carr (cl.), David Palmer (pno.), Denis Arnold Hall, Faculty of Music, Oxford

Subject of my article in Leonardo54(3), MIT Press, 2021, pp.329-336

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This piece uses the RGB (red, green, blue) colour analysis of Jackson Pollock’s Out of the Web as its fundamental generator of material. The piano consists of three inner movements, representing each colour (red, green, blue) each of which have their own 4–note cell derived from random numbers. The clarinet represents the ‘true’ colour i.e. the average of red, green, and blue, and exists in one movement. Its material is a combination of the three aforementioned 4–note cells to give a 12–tone aggregate. The harmonic rhythm, and resultant implied tempi, are derived from the movement of the colour graphs; the higher the readings, the ‘faster’ the harmonic rhythm. Levels of colour saturation are also linked to harmonic groups and determine whether sets are ordered or not, giving this piece a quasi–serial overarching process.

Duration: 7'

Released 27/1/2023 on NMC Recordings, Young Composers 4

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This piece aims to portray a surreal interpretation of the climate emergency, primarily through its text and notation, touching on themes of human/technological interaction and agency. The text was generated through using the words ‘environment’, ‘climate’, ‘endangered’ into an AI poetry writing application. The grammatical errors, and nonsensical imagery, highlight the fallibility of technology, and its attempt to recreate human action – paralleling to narratives on how technology is the solution to the crisis, whereby people absolve themselves of responsibility. The notation extensively utilises indeterminate elements. I want to focus on the idea of collective action and self-determination as fundamental to creating the music (i.e. the performer’s choices are integral to the result), as these are essential qualities in an ecological, or political context.

Overall, the piece could be seen as an expression of so-called ‘eco grief’, where people grieve the loss of ecological structures. For me, this work is a manifestation of a personal, ongoing, grief, having lost my mother to illness in 2020. This work is dedicated to her.

Duration: 5'

Released 27/1/2023 on NMC Recordings, Young Composers 4

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H(AI)KU is a four-movement work which sets three AI-generated haiku that used prompts relating to the environment, such as ‘dawn’, ‘earth’, ‘life’, along with emotions concerning the environment in a contemporary perspective, such as ‘anxious’, ‘peaceful’, ‘vibrant’. The resulting texts contain grammatical errors, but nonetheless invoke suggestive and impactful imagery that, as humans generally obeying rules of syntax and meaning, we would not have assembled ourselves. Musically, this piece explores the idea of ‘artificiality’, whereby words and meanings become increasingly dismantled and obscured: oscillating between more traditional approaches to word setting and texture, and more unstable formulations of text and sound.

Duration: 3'

Premiere: Broadcast on YouTube on 28/11/2021

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Home is Where… is the result of a collaboration with Horizon Voices, as part of their inaugural Composer’s Award (2020). The work uses a text written by Helen Turner (b. 2011) which was selected as part of a youth poetry competition run by the choir. The piece uses Helen’s text to explore notions of Family as ‘home’, suggested in the harmony through a ‘home’ chord to which the music seems to always return. This piece forms the culmination of Horizon’s Home is Where… project: a series of YouTube videos aimed at engaging young people into choral singing.

Duration: 6'

Workshopped 30/09/2021, BBC Singers, Maida Vale Studios

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In Arbore Corpus sets one of the myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which depicts the transformation of Phaeton’s sisters into trees, using an excerpt from original Latin as well as an English translation by Joseph Addison from 1717.

The piece utilises arborescences, or tree–like shapes, as a musical generator in order to render this myth metaphorically in the music: graphical insertions denote a more out-of-control, free, character to the music, alongside calmer passages derived from graphing an arborescence in a pitch–time space (i.e. section II). Convergence and divergence are overarching themes in the music throughout, similarly echoing evolutionary and natural traits in the subject

Duration: 3.5'

Premiere: 10/6/2018, Christ Church Cathedral Choir / Stephen Darlington, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

London Premiere: 16/5/2019, Choir of St. Pancras Church / Christopher Batchelor, St. Pancras Parish Church, London (part of the London Festival for Contemporary Music 2019)

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St. Pancras Parish Church, directed by Christopher Batchelor

When listening to other composers’ settings of Psalm 150, such as Ives and Britten, I was struck by the celebratory atmosphere that permeated entire pieces.

As a result, I wanted to explore the more solemn, spiritual side of the Psalm; which gives thanks and praise to God. Whilst the middle section does erupt into a ‘joyous’ episode utilising instrumental effects, it is subdued by a return to the opening contemplative material. Musically exploring the contrasts of the psalm, I believe, enhances both the joyous and reverent sides to the experience.

Duration: 7.5'

Premiere: 12/2/2018, Worcester College Chapel Choir / Thomas Allery

Released on Qui Christi Vestigi Sunt Secuti (Jan. 2019: Herald HAVPCD 408)

Yet to be premiered

Duration: 6'

(2, 2, 2, 2 / 2, 2, 2, 1 (b. tbn) / perc. (2 players) / piano / strings)

Exposure is an exploration of the development of photography, and its social and material impacts, particularly of the first modern camera, the daguerreotype (1839). The music begins with the idea of the removal of the protective slide which kept the sensitized metal plate in darkness, which when exposed to light begins to create the photographic image. The music moves through the various refractions of light as they settle onto the plate, react with the chemicals, and create the image. The initial gesture is reused throughout, but in a more stable form in the final section to signify the creation of the image on the plate, i.e. organisation of the elements of light. The whip, which begins and ends the piece, is emblematic of the protective slide being removed and replaced.

The frenzied and unstable nature of the music represents this mechanical process, but also parallels the hysteria and excitement at the development of the technology in the 19th century, rife with polemic, suspicion and intrigue.

Yet to be premiered

Duration: 9'

(perc (1 player): Thunder Sheet, T-T, Cow Bells, Cym., W. Chimes., Tri.). orch. min. 5.4.3.3.1)

Erasure is a work which responds to the tensions between natural and urban environments, primarily through an exploration of two musical generators: arborescences and pixelation. An arborescence, or tree-like structure, was constructed and is varyingly pixelated over the course of the piece, with rhythmic cells and melodic contouring determined through these representations. The behaviour of the ensemble is characterised by strings as representative of nature, and percussion as the city. The increasing influence of the metal percussion upon the strings enacts ruptures and divergences in behaviours (shifting ‘clouds’ of glissandi, pizzicato etc. to lyrical solo lines), acting as a disruptive force.

The use of graphical insertions alongside the determinate notations is intended to act as both a form of embodiment, as well as eco-critical commentary. The indeterminacy of these performative images allows both the arborescence shapes to ‘speak’ for themselves (subduing my own agency), but also allows their degradation to be heard through the insertion of pixelated versions. It also speaks to the role of the individual within the collective, something that is at the heart of this work’s conception as well as narratives of environmentalism.

There is no attempt to project a ‘dominant’ force, since this belies the issue of finding a solution. Nature and modernity must co-exist sustainably; Erasure is a commentary on the urgency of a need to find this balance.

Duration: 5'

(2d1, 2, 2d1, 2d1 / 2, 2, 0, 0 / Timp. / Strings)

Premiere: 22/2/2019, Oxford University Sinfonietta / Tom Fetherstonhaugh, St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford

Awarded the Oxford University Music Society Composition Prize (2019)

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This piece takes its inspiration from the visualisation of the journey of light through a diamond.

A flash of light erupts and shimmers towards a diamond. As the light enters the diamond, it is vigorously refracted into its constituent colours before leaving as a more mesmerising version of its former self, represented by an expanded timbral range and harmonic language in the recap.

The title of the piece comes from two terms used in the appraisal of gemstones. ‘Brilliance’ refers to the light refracted from the interior of a gem (crucially, transparent ones, such as diamonds), whereas ‘fire’ refers to the tendency of a gemstone to split light into its spectral colours.

Duration: 8'

Premiere: 26/10/2019, Kirsty Clark, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

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Collaborating with Kwan Q Li 李君, The Weedist was created for the Ashmolean Museum’s LiveFriday event, which was themed around the idea of witchcraft and magic to coincide with their Spellbound exhibit.

The piece uses recorded samples of Gamelan instruments and manipulates them to create an other-worldly atmosphere to match Li’s film and the text.