| scoring: |
Unison children's chorus, 2 flutes, alto flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in Bb and A, bass clarinet in Bb, 2 bassoons.contrabasson, 2 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 2 trombones , *percussion (2 players), optional organ, **ceremonial brass, timpani, strings
*percussion (2 players): side, drum, glockenspieal, very large bass drum, crotales (2 octaves, chromatic), large suspended cymbal, clash cymbals
**Ceremonial Brass
Group 1: 2 trumpets in Bb, 2 trombones
Group 2: 2 trumpets in Bb, 2 trombones |
| world premiere: |
19 July 2006, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London (in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlávek conductor, fanfare trumpeters of Scots Guards, choristers of Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace and Chapel Royal, Hampton Court, Children's International Voices of Enfield, City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus, Finchley Children's Music Group, New London Children's Choir, Southend Boys' and Girls' Choirs, Trinity Boys Choir |
| commissioner: |
BBC for the BBC Proms to celebrate the eightieth birthday of Her Majesty The Queen |
| press quotes: |
 It was by no means bland and it did what it set out to do. For all that it ended on an affirmative tonic chord, the music sounded appreciably modern while being relatively easy on the ear.
Shaped like a miniature, single movement choral symphony, it had its dissonances and its rhythmic puzzles, but there was some compensatory harmonic mellowness.
The princpal theme, given out in muscular form by the trumpet at the start, turned out to be susceptible to all sorts of metamorphoses, economically supplying material for the equivalent of a first movement, scherzo, slow movement and finale. It was the closing section that deployed the chorus, singing a text by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, that ticked all the right politcally correct boxes - coastal erosion, the ozone layer, corruption of language - while celebrating the constancy that the Queen represents.
With BBC Symphony Orchestra boosted by the Fanfare Trumpeters of the Scots Guards and the 250 children's voices from various Chapels Royal, schools and youth choirs, the end was aptly rousing.
Daily Telegraph
August 2009
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| programme note: |
Extended Note by Roderic Dunnett ©
A Little Birthday Music is Peter Maxwell Davies's second setting of Andrew Motion's poem The Golden Rule. The first was sung by the Choir of St George's Chapel, Windsor,during the celebrations of The Queen's 80th birthday held there in April this year. With nine children's operas and 50-plus works for school musicians behind him, 'Max' (as he is known) is no stranger to penning music for younger performers.
Yet tonight's work posed, he acknowledges, 'a great challenge', in terms of steering a course between the expectations placed upon a contemporary composer to generate music that sounds genuinely 'modern', and the conflicting requirement to produce an immediate, positive effect upon a large audience drawn from different musical backgrounds.
Despite the overall celebratory nature of the work, both the words and the music here have plenty of 'bite'. Motion's innocent-looking stanzas (with shades, perhaps, of Shakespeare's The Tempest) tilt obliquely at the outcome of mankind's actions or inaction: the erosion of forests and coastlines; the shrinking ozone layer; the metamorphosis, of the English language; and so on. The underlying 'green' message seems all the more poignant for being sung by children's voices: 'Help us make something better of the world,' they seem to be pleading. Set against all this is the 'constancy' of The Queen, who courageously stands for enduring principles and inherited values.
The poem's pitting together of change and constancy is mirrored in Davies's music: while the work's structure is= steeped in Viennese Classical sonata form, which traditionally highlights two 'contrasted' themes or subjects. Here, however (following examples of the same practice in Haydn), the work is essentially monothematic. 'Though transforming throughout,' Davies points out , 'the material remains essentially constant.' A classic Max conundrum.
A slow, chromatic introduction in the orchestra states what the composer calls the 'thematic and harmonic core' (the music's bare bones), with extrovert flourishes from brass and woodwind, answered by gently contemplative strings. Excitable timpani then pitch us into an orchestral Allegro, before a brief scherzo section leading to an Adagio, which together function as a kind of 'development' section (inspired, Max says, by one of his favourite works, Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1). A brassy recapitulation leads to an extended coda, at which point massed children's voices, military trumpets and organ all join the fray.
Much of this music, says Max, is both celebratory and extrovert (although not as outrageously 'extrovert' as his screeching expressionist works of the 1960s). The final section includes moments of quiet reflection (notably Max's treatment of the refrain), before the piece ends in a buoyant and rumbustious royal birthday conclusion. |