---

Programme Note

The first original test-piece for brass band (Labour and Love by Percy Fletcher) was composed in 1913 for the National Brass Band Championships, held at London’s Crystal Palace. As the centenary of that event approaches, I decided to write a work which pays tribute not only to that particular work, but also to some of those other early test-pieces written in the first few decades of the twentieth century, and which still form the backbone of the brass band repertoire today. The list of the composers is a distinguished one of course, including well-known names such as Holst, Elgar, Ireland, Bliss, Howells and Vaughan Williams, alongside other less familiar ones.

Of Distant Memories pays homage to these composers and their music, and in the process
summons up a kind of subconscious memory bank of the musical languages, styles and forms used by them. To this end my music is conceived in the form of a ‘traditional’ tone poem, reflecting certain aspects (e.g. melodic, harmonic, textural) of those early test pieces. Although I have kept to fairly traditional concepts in planning the architecture of the work, certain aspects of the instrumentation, or scoring, are more contemporary in colouristic terms, as befits a composer writing in the twenty-first century. The percussion requirements are fairly modest, however, similar to those used in the works of that period.

The brass band tradition owes much to the composers of that period, for through their music they established a truly homogeneous ‘British’ brass band sound which has spread throughout many parts of the world. That tradition flourishes today and remains important for today’s composers, even if their musical language is far removed from that of their predecessors. Of Distant Memories is my own way of repaying that gratitude.