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Terrain
Conductor's score and parts on hire
978-0-19-366591-0
22 March 1993
Price: Available on request
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for full orchestra Forces or CategoryFull orchestraDuration22 minutesDifficultyDifficultOrchestration3 fl (I&II+picc, III+picc&alto), 3 ob (III+ca), 3 (III+bcl&Ebcl), 3 bn (III+cbn), 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, tba, timp, 3 perc (SD, TD, 2 BD, 3 sus cym, 4 w blk, flex, vib, 6 tom, 3 tam, whip, mba, sz cym, metal wind chime, roto-tom, crotales), 2 hp, pn (+cel),
strProgramme NotesI have lived in the Marches for nearly ten years, with views to several counties. My workroom has two windows, one looking west to Wales, and the massive escarpment of the Black Mountains, the other east, over England, the Golden Valley and the rich country that rolls to the Malvern Hills on the horizon.
Terrain tries to encompass this great landscape in its many different moods. No two days are the same, but beyond those continual variations and contrasts, is the slow, inexorable passage of the seasons. The music of this landscape is essentially an abstract symphonic structure. Nonetheless the work is full of programmatic detail depicting, for example, effects of
light and weather. The work is in two main parts linked by an interlude; the first is an extended slow introduction and sonata-allegro, the second a scherzo/finale incorporating a slow episode. Ideas from the first part are re-worked and transformed in the second.
The first part of the piece was suggested by the westerly view to the Black Mountains in winter, both in icy calm and violent storm. The sound-colours are mostly very dark, the music harmonic and vertical, often heavily orchestrated. In an interlude, evoking the bubbling curlews of spring and its silvery-grey light, the eye and ear turn, so to speak, through 180 degrees to the Golden Valley in summer and, for a landscape less of mass than of detail, the music is now contrapuntal and horizontal, lightly scored for
many different ensembles from within the orchestra. The sound-colours are mainly bright.
The turning through time (seasons) and space (landscape) is mirrored in the harmonic basis of the piece. The key centres move in a circle of descending fifths from Eb minor to B minor in the first part, and after combining E minor and Bb major in the interlude, ascending (also in fifths) from F to A major in the second part. The slow sweep round the horizon comes full circle as the tiny introduction to the piece is finally reached again.
Terrain was commissioned by the BBC and composed during the spring and summer of 1992.
© Anthony Powers 1992
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
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Anthony Powers (b.1953) Born in London in 1953, Anthony Powers studied at Oxford, in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and at York with David Blake and Bernard Rands. He taught for two years at Dartington College of Arts before being appointed Composer-in-Residence to Southern Arts. Since then he has moved to Herefordshire where he continues to divide his time between composing and teaching, currently at Cardiff University, where he has been Professor of composition since 2004.
Powers's music is characterized by strong architectonic frameworks that support a language of poetic intensity and magical sonorities. His music often takes its inspiration from the tension between different states, be they physical properties, landscapes, seasons or emotions.Anthony Powers at Cardiff University
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"Powers shows a shrewd feeling for colour, and the effects of shifting light are skilfully evoked as he merges and seperates ensembles within the large orchestra." - Kenneth Loveland, The Musical Times
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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