On Death

This, my latest piece, is for Solo unaccompanied voice. I needed to write a vocal piece for part of my course at Birmingham Conservatoire, and since Mary Wiegold was going to be singing them, I thought I should make it a little more lyrical than some of my other pieces.

However, I wanted to make this piece a little different in presentation, more like my "Recycling" series (which I will post later).

My first inspiration was a poem by Keats: On Death. I recently saw a trailer for the upcoming film; Bright Star, which chronicles Keat's romance with sweetheart, Fanny (no sniggers please). I later saw the poem On Death on the internet somewhere which immediately became the inspiration for the vocal piece.

I thought that, to remain true to the style of the period, I should enclose this poem in a letter, something which I have done before.

Once I had the poem and the presentation style, the music came easily. Here are some photos of the finished score:



The back will later have a wax seal on it, as a finishing touch, similar to the one seen in the link above.



Here is the finished music. I added some corner illustrations for decoration. All I need now is to set the pencil with some hairspray.



UPDATE:

And the final seal:



(© Jason Dewey 2009)

------------------

New Website

Ok scratch that last.

I just got a proper website domain, so it makes me sound all professional and stuff (something which will quickly dissapear following this post).

Here it is:
http://www.jasondeweycomposer.co.uk

Enjoy!

------------------

Youtube Clip

I just posted a video of the first of my "Two Pieces for Piano".

View it here,

or here:



(© Jason Dewey 2009)

------------------

Call for Works

I am in search of compositions to be written for an evening's performance sometime in the future (date to be set).

I have written a piece using telephonic communication as a basis, but I am in search of compositions related to or featuring the field of communication in general.

Due to the nature of my piece, I am searching for about an hour of content that can be performed with the audience moving about the room/stage area, instead of sitting in their seats, however, it is not necessary.

The Evening will be organised thus:


First Half:

New works from other composers.

Second Half:

My Piece.


Both halves will be an hour long, and will hopefully involve a mixture of electronic and acoustic works.

If you are interested, or want more information, then please email me at jasondeweycomposer@googlemail.com, or contact me through Facebook, or talk to me in college.

Many thanks,

Jason.

------------------

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things:

I just remembered, I didn't post my Quartet on here. Partly because I didn't have a recording, but mainly because as organised as I try to be, I still fail.

Ah well, its on my MySpace now, like I said in the previous post, but I'll tell you a bit more about it.

Its for four instruments (strings in the recording, and also played by the lovely Chroma Quartet, site linked)

It was also written entirely by chance. No, I don't mean it was an accident that I wrote, it. Remember my Post on Chance music? Well, this is that piece.

Written entirely by picking numbers and notes out of a hat, rolling dice and generally avoiding conciously making the choices myself, some might argue that it isn't truely chance music, since everything is a result of it's surroudings. However, the label 'chance' is just that; a label. A label to name a system of picking pitch, rhythm, structure and so on.

Arguably similar to Serialism, people may also complain that its just music by numbers. This is not true! Composers used this system to organise pitches based on their mathematical position in a row, in order to be more expressive with their writing, something I was trying to do as well.

By using chance to come up with the pitches and rhythms in my quartet, I was able to experiment, and get a much more interesting sound out of the quartet.

I am developing this idea in a piece I am currently writing for Wind Orchestra. However, I am going into much more detail with the instrumentation, pitches, rhythms structures etc. than with the quartet, to hopefully achieve a sound far more developed than that of the quartet.

Click here to hear a 1-minute preview of this work.

Well, that's all for now, I think. If I don't post for a while, then that's good, it'll mean I'm working on the Wind Orchestra piece and it'll be far more likely to be finished by the December 1st deadline.

Wish me luck!

------------------

Myspace

I got a MySpace. Its strangely not as bad as I remember.

I put some stuff on there, like my String Quartet, entitled 'Quartet', which I can't remember if I put on here or not.

To visit, go here: http://www.myspace.com/jasonalandeweycomposer

Also, I just got the Dark Crystal Soundtrack. My heart aches...

------------------

Sheogorath

This is a piece for solo oboe I wrote during my first year, but it sadly never entered into my main portfolio. Its two pages, and I'm working on a recording.

Page 1

Page 2

Needless to say, for gamer fans, this was inspired by the God of Madness: Sheogorath, from the brilliant Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Game.

(© Jason Dewey 2009)

------------------