DANCINGS OF THE AIR for concert band (2012)

Duration: 12.5 mins
Instrumentation: 1 or 2 picc.2fl.​2ob.2bn.​pcl.3cl.bcl.​2asx.tsx.bsx.​4tpt.4hn.​3tbn.2euph.2tba.​cb.4perc
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‘For what are breath, speech, Ecchos, musick, winds, But Dauncings of the ayre in sundry kinds?’

Sir John Davies, Orchestra: or, a Poeme of Dauncing (1596)

Dancings of the Air is a two-movement piece based around the idea of melodic lines emerging from successions of single notes, each of them voiced by a different instrument in turn, and then held on in the background to create constantly thickening and/or shifting harmonies. So although you might not know it, it is rare for two different pitches to sound simultaneously, and quite common for notes to be played by just a single instrument.

In the first movement this idea is explored predominantly in passages of quickish, regularly-spaced, accented notes which tend to fall and then rise again through the ensemble. The longer second movement builds momentum by piling up the ever-higher final notes of stepwise ascents which follow one another in accelerating sequences. Increasingly prominent across the piece as a whole is a slow-moving, gradually rising melody, heard initially in the first movement in a relatively simple scoring for brass, and finally cutting through the busier texture of the second movement's most climactic passage.

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