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Meditations
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String Orchestra
Michael Berkeley
Meditations
Conductor's score and parts on hire
978-0-19-362027-8 31 August 1978
Price:
Available on request
Customers in the US order from C. F. Peters Corporation
for string orchestra
Forces or Category
String orchestra
Duration
14 minutes
Difficulty
Easy to Moderately difficult
Programme Notes
Meditations
for strings is Michael Berkeley's first acknowledged orchestral work. It was written at the beginning of 1975, in response to a commission from Colin Mawby and the Westminster Cathedral String Orchestra, who gave the first performance. It was the work that led to Berkeley, a late developer as a composer, doing post graduate studies with Richard Rodney Bennett. In 1977,
Meditations
won the Guinness Prize for Composition and it was this piece and the
Concerto for Oboe and Strings
that first brought critical attention to Berkeley's music.
Michael Berkeley writes:
The piece is called
Meditations
because its atmosphere is essentially contemplative, though the nature of the subject is far from being continuously passive. Another reason for the title is the inspiration behind the thematic material - though the actual melodies are original, they use rhythmic and melodic patterns suggested by Gregorian chant which I sang every day as a chorister at Westminster Cathedral.
The piece falls quite clearly into two sections bound together by the tolling ostinato figure in the bass of the orchestra that begins and ends the work. Virtually all the material that follows can be traced back to this opening music. Each section begins with an Introduction followed by a statement of themes and a discussion, and a coda rounds them off. Broadly speaking, part two considers what has passed and adds to it, but now the argument becomes more intense - an agitated solo violin attempts to move the conflict onto an altogether more agitated plane and soon the whole orchestra bursts into a fast animated passage. Gradually, via a recapitulation, the music becomes more settled, and the work ends as it began, with the repeated note E on the double basses.
© Michael Berkeley
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Michael Berkeley
(b.1948)
Michael Berkeley was born in 1948. He studied composition, singing, and piano at the Royal Academy of Music but it was not until his late twenties, when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett, that Berkeley began to concentrate exclusively on composing. In 1977 he was awarded the Guinness Prize for Composition; two years later he was appointed Associate Composer to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Since then Michael's music has been played all over the globe and by some of the world's finest musicians. Most of Michael's significant orchestral work, much of his chamber music and his operas are available on CD as part of the Chandos Berkeley Edition. For ten years from 1995 Michael was artistic director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music. He currently presents Radio 3's Private Passions, which won the Broadcasting Press Guild's Radio Programme of the Year Award in 1996, and is Chairman of the Governors of The Royal Ballet.
Michael Berkeley's website
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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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