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From the Fairground of Dreams
Conductor's score and parts on hire
978-0-19-335958-1
14 February 2008
Price: Available on request
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Set in two parts, the shorter opening section starts as a bubbling under the surface, building to a frenetic, giddy climax showcasing some exciting percussion and rhythms before submerging below again.
The second section uses harmonics, more spacious melodic lines, solos and muted instruments to enhance the dream-like quality that the piece depicts. However, the excitement and contrast of the first section returns, exemplifying the multiple moods and confusion of both the fairground that the title suggests and the cacophony of emotions, memories and images that are ever present in our dreams.
Commissioned by Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra and first performed on 16 January 2008, Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Barry
Wordsworth.
Forces or CategoryFull orchestraDuration19 minutesDifficultyModerately difficultOrchestration3 fl, 3 ob, 3cl, 3 bn, 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, tba, 3 perc, hp, pn/cel, strProgramme NotesFrom the Fairground of Dreams was commissioned by the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra with funding from the Arts Trust of
Brighton and Hove. This commission was a part of the orchestras Composer-in-Focus scheme during its 2006-7 and 2007-8 seasons.
Id had it in mind to write a piece about Brighton in some way from the outset, although the result is quite far removed from my initial ideas. The title certainly suggests associations with one particular aspect of the citys character, and there are passages in Fairground that may indeed conjure up images of mechanical rides, gentle or gut wrenching. More important to me, though, was the impression of circularity the city often seems to evoke: not just the circular nature of the fairground rides on the pier themselves, but that of its dance music, its way of life (the seasonal nature of its existence) and its looped geography, encircled by the Downs to the
north, the sea to the south as well as its indestructible aspirations to decadence and hedonism.
So, Fairground is built out of strings of circular episodes: musical ideas that constantly loop, return, get stuck in a rut, generate sometimes-manic energy by their persistence. The piece falls into two parts, the first functioning as a kind of prelude to the second and lasting only a third of its length. In fact, I intend the first part to be heard, in retrospect, as a sort of miniature version of the second: to a significant extent, both parts follow a similar sequence of events, and all the material of the second part is introduced in the first (with the exception of the final whirligig fairground ride).
I also wanted this piece to acknowledge my debt to the orchestra for
making me its first composer-in-focus and for programming a number of works of mine over these two seasons; so, by way of a kind of summary of the experience, I have made more or less direct reference to three of the four other works of mine they have performed.
© Martin Butler 2007
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
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Martin Butler (b.1960) Martin Butler was born in Romsey, England, in 1960 and studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music. In 1983 he received a Fulbright Award for study at Princeton University, USA, where he was resident until 1987. From 1998-1999 Martin was Composer-in-Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in the United States. He is currently Professor of Music at the University of Sussex.
Butler's works are widely performed and broadcast both in the UK and abroad.More on Martin Butler from the British Music Information Centre
Martin Butler at the University of Sussex
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