This piece is a radical re-working of 'Songs of the Aristos' for two Brass Groups and Electronic Tape, which I composed in 1985 at the request of the late Richard Evans, conductor of the Leyland Vehicles Band. Around that time, It was described by a masters' student, in his dissertation on modern music for brass, as 'the most progressive work ever composed for brass band' - hence the question in the title!
In the present work, completed in 2014, the brass groups are replaced by two large wind ensembles, each incorporating an array of largely metallic percussion; two pianos are added, and the computer-generated electronic element is extended to include both pre-recorded passages and live treatments of certain live instruments including the two pianos.
I created the original mix in 2014 - 15 by exporting audio (NotePerformer) from ‘Sibelius’ and mixing in a DAW - ‘Reaper’ in this case. Being one of my earliest efforts the result was not the best, but it was worth remixing (partially) and remastering. This is the result. It still is not perfect, but it is more than good enough to help you get to know the music.
Do let me know what you think in the comments.
PROGRAMME NOTE
The title is borrowed from John Fowles’ book, ‘The Aristos’; a collection of philosophical musings on human existence which took the tenets of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as a starting point. The Aristos, according to Heraclitus is “the best, the most excellent of its kind”. In his philosophy, this was applied to a moral and intellectual elite, the Aristoi as opposed to the ‘many’, or what others have called the ‘crowd’ or ‘the herd’, which he termed the hoi polloi. Although these distinctions resonate with Heraclitus’ notions of opposites, the present-day derivation of ‘aristocracy’ had no currency then, it had little to do with Fowles’ ideas as articulated in his book, and nothing at all to do with my imperatives in composing this piece.
Fowles stated; “what I was really trying to do was to define human freedom in an unfree world”. He went to point out that "the dividing line should run through each individual, not between individuals." This was what was of interest to me. When I appropriated the term “Aristos’ it meant, for me, the ‘higher nature’ that we all have within us, the discovery of which, through ‘moral’ behaviour and various disciplines is the goal of most religions. So, the opposition of the dual natures within us started me thinking about the fact that opposites are in essence, part of the same whole - widely separated points in a continuum. Here also was a link with Heraclitus, one of whose principal ideas was the unity of opposites. In acknowledgement of this, my original manuscript score was inscribed with the quotation from Heraclitus, “the road up and the road down are the same road”.
In this piece, there are two principal unities of opposites; of spatial location and of timbre.
The spatial opposition of the two wind groups, which are located at opposite ends of the auditorium, and of the speakers issuing the electronic sounds, means that, at times the sound seems to ‘jump’ from one end of the hall to the other creating opposition. At others, it seems to travel smoothly emphasising continuity. At a couple of moments, the groups are synchronised but most of the time, they are not.
The two pianos, placed at opposite sides of the audience, articulate material which is largely imitative - except that the leading voice often ends up behind the answering voice owing to the independent, and very flexible, tempi.
Then there is the juxtaposition of seemingly opposing timbres; the quintessentially harmonic ones of the wind instruments and the inharmonic ones of the percussion and electronics, with pianos somewhere in between. Although many familiar instruments have inharmonic spectra, for example bells, gongs or tam-tam, they are often large and unwieldy. Moreover, the envelopes of the sounds of such instruments consist of a hard attack followed a gradual decay. Once struck, the performer has limited control over the sound; in most cases, there is no ability to sustain other than by adding a trill or roll to give the impression of sustaining. However, with a computer, these timbres and an infinite number of related ones, can be manipulated in an unlimited number of ways: envelopes can be varied, so that attacks are gradual for example; vibrato can be added, rhythmic relationships unplayable by human performers are made possible, and speed of execution (from the extremely rapid to the extremely slow) is unbounded.
Thus, the two ‘opposite’ types of sound and the way the sounds are produced and manipulated (played by performers or activated by a programme over which there is no control during performance) becomes a metaphor for the opposition of ‘human action’ on ethe one hand, and the apparently universal, eternal, divine aspects of the universe which human action is powerless to control, on the other.