Pagan Ritual

There is no programmatic element to Pagan Ritual. It started out as a simple peasant dance and grew in the telling, rather in the manner of the artist Paul Klee's famous quotation: 'A drawing is simply a line going for a walk'. The theme gave me the opportunity to make some diversions in the use of minor thirds, but I set myself some clear limits – not to make it too difficult and not to veer too far away from traditional language. Beyond a little bitonality, the occasional harmonic piquancy and the odd rhythmic tweak, the language stays in the box. Apart from a few bars of digital dexterity the technical demands are not too extreme. However, when it was finished I realised that my simple peasants had become more frenzied and a little less simple as the dance progressed. Such is a pagan ritual.

Published by Studio Music Company

Recorded on Scenes from Childhood (Great British Music for Wind Band Vol.15),
Polyphonic QPRM155D Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra.

£94.95