Seizing the day

This article was originally published by Classical Music Magazine​. You can find the original version of this article here.

How does your symphonic writing contrast with your scoring for stage works?

Music for theatre or film is a cog in a larger machine that’s telling someone else’s story. It’s there to illuminate the (possibly unspoken) thoughts and emotions of a character on the stage or screen, or subtly amplify the emotions the audience might themselves be feeling about the scene. My concert music, however, is an expression of myself and my own story. You might say the ‘characters’ are the elements of the raw musical material that I choose; the melodies, motifs, rhythms, timbres, the harmonic language. And just as a good story needs rounded development of its characters, a concert piece is founded on the strength and convincing development of its musical material, even if – as with some pieces (Strauss’s Don Juan, say) – there’s a background narrative giving context to the musical journey. Development of such material is typically more complex in a concert piece, and takes place over longer periods than in theatre or film cues.