Secondary cover lessons

Kate:
The most northerly islands in the UK are surrounded by magnificent and dramatic seas.
Calm and beautiful one moment, dark and stormy the next.

Imagine for a moment you're at sea. The waves are high and rough, and your ship is being tossed and thrown about.
But then you see it.
In the distance…land, safety…home.

Composer Sally Beamish was inspired to write this piece called Seavaigers, by the journey between two Scottish ports: Dundee and here in Shetland.

The title of the piece means seafarer: the people who sailed the dangerous North Sea, around the coast of Scotland.

Sally beamish wrote Seavaigers for Scottish harp and fiddle. It could be described as a double concerto - a piece for solo instruments and orchestra.

Seavaigers tells the story of a sea journey in three parts, or movements. This movement called Haven is the last and follows a ship safely home after a difficult journey.

That was wonderful. What a treat to be able to hear this piece of music in this setting. And when you set about writing it, did you have this, sort of in your head?

Sally:
Well in fact I was thinking about this very boat which is called The Swan, and I believe it's the oldest fishing boat that is left and it's over a hundred years old. And I had heard a piece of music written by Catriona and played by the two of them called The Swan, which was about them travelling on this very boat.So yes, I was thinking about that. And I was also thinking about that sea journey between their two homes, Dundee and Shetland. And what that might be like on a boat like this.

Kate:
And Chris and Catriona, how did it feel when a composer like the great Sally Beamish comes to you and says, “I want to write a piece of music specifically for you”?

Chris:
Feels amazing, I mean Sally as you say, she’s an incredible composer. It's like she's given us a stretch of water, a big sea in sound and we get to have this wonderful voyage on it you know and create that journey, you know it's fantastic so we're very honoured.

The fiddle, or the violin is such an expressive instrument with such a broad range of sounds and emotions. You can create a sound which could be really raw and brutal, just in a moment. And yet, a split second later you could play something tiny, small, and tender and beautiful. And it can be as unpredictable as the sea, as the weather that we are thrown at when we’re on a journey.

Catriona:
Just for example, you’ve got the strings that you can pluck normally, but also, Sally has me strumming them. So, I'm actually stopping – dampening - a few of the strings and strumming the ones that are loose there. So, I do lots of fun things within the whole journey.

Kate:
And Sally how did you work with Catriona and Chris to musically convey all the moods of the sea?

Sally:
Well in the last movement, in Haven, I wanted to create the idea of coming home. So, the excitement of coming home and the direction.But at the same time, you’re still in danger. Until you reach land you’re still in danger. So, in passages like this one, if you listen to it and try and tap your foot, you’ll find you can’t, because it sounds rhythmic, but you’re going to be wrong footed. The beats are uneven.

Kate:
How much as musicians, does your physical environment - this environment - the land and the sea that you both know so well, how important is that when it comes to playing and contributing to a piece of music like this?

Chris:
The sea and the land when you’re brought up next to it, it shapes people's character. It shapes people's character in the way they speak, and not only in our accents and how we talk to people but also in the way we speak in our instruments, and it shapes the accent of our sound. And that is what brings an incredible sort of authenticity to music because it’s exactly shaped by the environment and where it's from.

Molly:
Can you hear the footsteps? Who could be marching and why?
Rules are important. They keep us safe, they keep things running. But what if a rule was wrong? Would you do something to change it?

Composer Margaret Bonds was inspired to write this piece of music by a group of people standing up to rules that were unjust, prejudiced, and needed to be changed.

In the 50s, many states across the United States of America had segregation laws. This meant that black people and white people were treated very differently.

It's hard to imagine now, but back then, black and white people were not allowed to eat together in a restaurant, sit together in a cinema, or sit on the same part of a bus.

Black people had to sit at the back whilst white people were given better seats at the front. If the white section was full, black passengers had to give up their seats.

This prejudiced treatment of black people led to a huge protest in the city of Montgomery in Alabama, and the actions of those people went on to change laws across America.

It was this historic event that inspired Margaret Bonds to compose The Montgomery Variations.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December 1955, when a lady called Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. This act of defiance set the wheels turning - the wheels of change!

People across Montgomery began boycotting the buses in protest. They took to the streets, and they marched, shared car journeys or even taxis, rather than travelling by bus. In fact, so many people stopped using the buses, that they almost put the bus companies out of business.

In December 1956, the US Supreme Court finally ordered Montgomery to allow black and white people sit together on the buses. This huge change didn't just affect the people of Alabama, but the whole of the United States.

Margaret Bonds was a composer at the time of the bus boycott. She often wrote music combining classical music with folk tunes and African American spirituals that she'd grown up with. The Montgomery Variations are based on a spiritual theme called “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me".

Margaret Bonds used the melody from this song in lots of different ways, or variations, throughout the seven sections of the piece. Each movement tells part of the story.

Can you hear how she uses the music to show the strength and the anger of the people? But also, the hope and pride?

40,000 people boycotted the buses on the first day of the protest in Montgomery.

In this movement called March, Margaret Bonds represents the boycott with the timpani and double basses playing the same notes together in unison.

It sounds like thousands of feet pounding the streets together. The music draws us into the crowd as though we are marching with the people. It's almost impossible to keep your feet still.

The melody is passed between the instruments of the orchestra. First bassoons, then cellos, violins and cor anglais. The melody builds in strength each time, just like the community of Montgomery. Single voices joining together as one.

The next movement has a very different mood. It's hopeful, like an early morning - dawn, new beginnings, and the feeling of change.

Margaret Bonds has been inspired by the same spiritual melodies in the March, but she's written it very differently this time. Can you hear the woodwind playing the melody? The music swells around the orchestra, like the sun rising or birds in a dawn chorus, reflecting a community waking up to the change they've helped to make happen.

Margaret Bonds was inspired by the people who marched. The people who marched were inspired by Rosa Parks. And Rosa Parks was inspired by her belief in what was right, and that changed the world.

Naomi:
What do you notice when the seasons change? Different colours? A change in the weather?
What about the sounds that you can hear?

The leaves in the trees sound different when they're fresh in the spring, rather than when they're dry and crispy in autumn, or in winter when there aren't any leaves at all.

Each season has its own soundscape, and none is busier and more hopeful than the spring.

When you're out and about in springtime you can hear bees buzzing and birds singing. It's all going on. And it was the busyness and joy of springtime that inspired French composer Marie Juliet Olga Boulanger, known to her friends -that's us- as Lili, to write her piece D’un matin de printemps. That's French for ‘On a Spring Morning’.

Lili Boulanger is using the instruments to create the sounds and feeling of a busy spring morning out in the garden or in the park. The string instruments are playing a fast repeated rhythm, over and over. It's called an ostinato. Almost feels like the hum or buzz of bees, busy and constant.

The melody played by the flute at the beginning is copied by different instruments as it echoes through the orchestra.

It's a bit like birds singing or calling to one another.

Lili Boulanger was born in Paris in 1893, and even from a really young age, she loved playing music, and she was a very talented composer.

D’un matin de printemps - On a Spring Morning - was written as part of a pair of pieces. The other half of the pair was D’un soir triste, which means On a Sad Evening. That's quite a different vibe from a spring morning, isn't it?

I wonder why Lili wrote these two pieces to go together. This young woman was feeling inspired by the hope of spring, so she was feeling hopeful. But she was also very ill, and sadly, she died when she was just 24 years old. By writing both pieces, Lili Boulanger is showing the world that she was feeling several emotions all at once.

Oh, now what kind of bird is that? I have a trusty book of bird facts here to help me. It’s like a handy set of instructions for nature. And luckily many composers give instructions too, on how their pieces should be played. It means the musicians are able to play the piece as the composer intended.

At the beginning of On a Spring Morning, Lili Boulanger asks that the notes be played, in French, léger and gai, which means light and cheerful. After a happy and energetic start to the music, the mood changes. Here, the instruction from the composer is to play mystérieux, or mysteriously, with slower, longer notes.

I wonder what could be happening out in the garden during this change?

The clouds are rolling in. The music builds and builds and listen, here comes the rain.

But don't give up and head inside just yet. No, a violin solo plays the spring melody from the beginning of the piece.

The rain is stopping. Sun is peeking through the clouds. Typical spring weather!

Joel:
What did you dream about last night? Some people believe that when you dream of a night sky it represents your mind, and all the possibilities open to it, and that a starry night shows your hopes, dreams and aspirations. Like reaching for the stars!

What do you think your dreams are telling you?

This music, called Sun Sundar Sargam by Reena Esmail is inspired by dreams and the idea that sending your dreams out into the world might make them come true. You can imagine the stars link together, taking your dreams with them across the sky.

The lyrics to the music are in Hindi, one of the main languages of India, and translate as,

Listen to the beautiful melody

Weave the dream of achieving your dream

The world will sing your song

Listen to the beautiful melody

If you are quiet, then the echoes will arise.

Do you recognize the instrument that you can hear playing with the choir? It's a string instrument called the sitar, and you'll hear it a lot in Indian music.

Although this piece of music doesn't sound exactly like traditional Indian music, it is based on a traditional Indian Raga called Raag Yaman that came from North India. It's one of the first that people are introduced to when they start to learn Hindustani classical music.

Raga means something that colours your mind with feeling and emotion and can help you feel that the music is happy or sad, or many more emotions. Raag Yaman that this piece is based on, is performed in the evening and can help create a romantic feeling of calm at the end of a busy day.

Reena, tell me about the inspiration for this piece of music.

Reena:
So, when I was a kid, I knew that there was music inside of me and I didn't necessarily know how I would make that music come out into the world, but I just knew it was there.

And so, I think sometimes you look out into the world, and you see something, and you think, wow, I want to be like that. I'm going to follow that direction. I'm going to do that thing. I'm going to follow that path. And then other times you don't see what you want to be in the world, and that means that it's up to you to create it.

And that's what this piece is about, creating what you want to see in the world.

Joel:
Once you decided on the theme of the music, how did you get started?

Reena:
So sometimes I come up with a melody first. Sometimes I come up with some chords first. Sometimes I just ruminate on the words and what they mean to me, and somehow the music starts to flow.

Joel:
Can you tell us a bit more about the sitar and why you chose it for the piece?

Reena:
Oh, I love the sound of the sitar. To me, it sounds like the way I imagine the universe sounds. The sitar has 21 strings sometimes, but you only play on a couple of them and yet all of them vibrate with one another and create this beautiful thing that feels to me almost like the Milky Way.

Here you'll find that the singers and the sitar are in dialogue with one another, and they speak to one another, and they take turns leading and following one another.

When you're listening to this piece, I want you to feel that you can almost reach out and just touch the edge of the universe. I want you to feel that there are really no boundaries, and that, as far as you can see and beyond, is what's possible. When you listen to this piece, I want you to think about that furthest possibility and dream your way into it.

Joel:
What do you think your dreams sound like? Would they be peaceful and quiet, or would they be bold and loud? Would they sound like Reena Esmail’s piece? Have a think. What dream would you send out through the sky and into the world? Maybe it will come true!

Linton:
This music was written by Hildegard of Bingen, who lived nearly 1000 years ago in Germany.
Inspiration came to her as visions that only she could see, and she believed they were from God.

The inspiration for everything that Hildegard created came from her visions, or ideas that she experienced in her mind.She described them as a flame that filled her mind and her body.

Hildegard said that her words and poetry came from these ideas and that the music she composed perfected them.

And this has given me some inspiration!

So, in this, I want to try and capture Hildegard of Bingen and some of her visions, and I want to take the eye across the page and in to the visions.Hildegard was the 10th child of an aristocratic family and when she was eight years old, she was sent to live in a convent - a place where nuns live and pray together, devoting their life to working for their church.

Hildegard became a nun, and later the Abbess of the convent in charge of the whole community of nuns. But she had a big impact outside the convent too.
Hildegard wrote about religion, medicine, and the natural world of plants and animals. She also wrote poetry, and her music is still performed today.

So, one of the things she did say was that her visions were like fire that filled her mind and her body, so I want to start with those flames, coming out the back of her head.That fire. That spark of inspiration.So, drawing for me is a lot like composing music; it’s about the composition.Music is about where the sounds take your ears, and ultimately your imagination, and drawing is about where the images take your eye.

The music Hildegard wrote is often described as plainsong which is sacred, or religious music sung in Latin.
There’s usually a single melody with no harmony or accompaniment, or even rhythms. And we call this monophonic music, which means one sound - voices singing together in unison.

Hildegard’s plainsong melody uses melisma and that’s when lots of notes are sung on just one syllable. Melisma is often used in pop songs too.

Hildegard wrote beautiful soaring melodies, and this piece of music was written in honour of St Eucharius and the work that he did for the church.It’s performed a cappella so there are no instruments accompanying the singers.

Hildegard of Bingen’s music is still performed, nearly 1000 years after she lived.
What musical ideas could you come up with to last 1000 years?

Cassie:My name is Cassie Kinoshi. So, I am a composer and saxophonist and that means that I spend a lot of my time practising my instrument and a lot of my time writing for various ensembles.

When I was eleven, I had the chance to perform at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Hertfordshire Schools' Gala which was lots of different children's choirs combined into one, performing with orchestra.And for me being in the centre of the sound, in the middle of the music, with all of these other childrensinging in this massive orchestra, performing epic music, was life changing.That moment was one moment that I think really cemented wanting to be a composer and a performer, because it really allowed me to understand what it was like to be part of something big.

Belinda Zhawi is a poet who writes beautiful evocative words that I’m really drawn to, to be read or to be set to music. And for this particular piece I thought she’d be a wonderful fit because she already has a background of writing lyrics and writing words that fit with music.

The name of the piece is, ‘the colour of all things constant’, which is a phrase which came fromBelinda's poem originally. And while she has created really beautifully colourful lyrics for, for this composition, I'm also exploring the colour and texture through music.

The next step in the process once establishing the subject is to just sit down and write it, which is often quite a scheduled thing once the inspiration is there for what you want to write about.

So, that means either sitting at the piano and improvising until I’ve found a particular melody, or for this piece it was singing melodies and developing the piece from what I heard in my head.And most of this was written actually at the computer after I had sort of moved away from the piano, and moved away from singing it into my phone. I would just sit at the computer and write every day and develop the ideas that I came up with, in a more organic setting.

Just trying to figure out if the phrase that Belinda has written here which is, ‘All things good: trees, rain and ocean.’ actually works with how I’ve set it.

All things good.[Sings melody]

Because I think sometimes the way I'm setting it is a little clumsy here, so I'm just trying to work outif I need to change some of this.The word good going on, [sings] good.I don't know if that works. I might change that.

I think the thing I am most looking forward to in hearing this piece performed is the scale ofthe sound. I’ve really written moments that are hugely dynamic, and you’ve got a lot of things going on so I can’t wait to hear that, moving away from computer sound and fake instruments and hearing that in real life, with the real richness of a real life orchestra and real life voices.

So, it’s been five months since I last spoke about my new piece, and we are here in Salford to see them rehearse in preparation for a live broadcast this afternoon.

Ellie:Welcome back.I'm really, really delighted to welcome Cassie Kinoshi to the rehearsal today.

Really, really good, well done.So, when we get to kindness, kindness, kindness, there, those three big statements of the word.It's the K at the front that's going to get a little bit lost, okay.If the K is full of energy and articulated, then the sound that follows will be amazing anyway.

Cassie, anything from you for that section?

Cassie:How would you feel if it’s a touch faster?

Ellie:Oh yeah, okay.

Cassie:Is that…yeah?

Ellie:That’s fine.

Cassie:Yeah, that'd be great.

I'm really looking forward to sharing this piece with everyone. Like, I put a lot of work in. Belinda also put a lot of work in, and the musicians and choir have done such a great job in rehearsal that I'm really sure that the live performance on BBC Radio 3 is going to be brilliant.

Yeah, there was a huge difference between hearing it on a computer and hearing it live.I think one of the things I love the most about composing is the life that players and performers give the music, and how everyone brings their own voice to the sound of it.

Always look forward to hearing your music have life breathed into it, and the experience of getting it out of your head and the collaboration of working with other people in making music.

I think that's one of the most important parts of music is the collaboration and the community around bringing a piece to life.

Kindness

that silent friend who listensbefore pulling you away.

A portal the colour of all things constant -grass, sky, sunshine.

All things good: trees, rain, ocean.That act of magic, holds us togetherwith nothing but fingertips.

Ask the cracked land how kindness soundsin these times of rains that have not come.

In this drought of empathy,kindness emerges, crystal clear.

In the solidarity of a protest march,the gentle touch in a strangers' eyes.

Kindness - a bridge across chasms,for the land that holds you each day.

Thread of light, winking through chaos.

Shini:What comes to mind when you think about your community? Your neighbours? Your friends? Your school? It might be your street.Sometimes, a whole community lives in one building.

Composer Marianna Martines lived with her family in an apartment block in Vienna, Austria, over two hundred and fifty years ago.

The community living around Marianna Martines turned out to be the perfect people to help her unlock and develop her extraordinary talent for music.
This particular community of neighbours included composers and a famous singing teacher.
Imagine being interested in music and your building just happens to be full of other talented musicians who love music as much as you do - fantastic!

At the age of seven, Marianna Martines was having keyboard lessons with Haydn… that’s Joseph Haydn who later became one of the most famous composers. He was living in the attic flat!She was also having singing lessons from the teacher who lived upstairs, and composition lessons from musicians living nearby.

You’ve probably got the idea by now that Vienna was a very special place for music around the 18th Century. You couldn’t walk down the street without bumping into a musician!

Marianna Martines was very lucky when it came to the like-minded people living alongside her, but she was less lucky when it came to the time in which she was living.
Even though she was an incredibly talented composer and performer, back in those days, women were not allowed to work professionally as musicians.
It must have been frustrating being told you can’t do the job that you love.

Despite not being allowed to compose for a living, her talent was impossible to ignore. She was often asked to perform at public events as a singer and keyboard player, including for the royal court of Empress Maria Theresa.

Marianna Martines also hosted concerts. Ever heard of Mozart?Well, he used to come to her parties, and composed pieces for them both to play together. This is some super A list stuff!

Marianna Martines wrote over two hundred pieces of music including religious pieces, works for the keyboard, voice and orchestra. But this piece, Symphony in C is special. It is special because it is thought to be the first symphony composed by a woman.
A symphony is a big piece of music for orchestra, usually with 4 sections, or movements, each with a different feel.

The first movement of Marianna Martines symphony is marked by the composer as Allegro con spirito in Italian which means it should be played fast, lively and with lots of spirit!

The lively melody and rhythms at the start of her symphony, played by the strings gives the music a really celebratory feeling.

The melody is repeated throughout the piece with different harmonies underneath. This changes the music from a happy sounding major key to a muddier sounding minor key.

Marianna Martines has written lots of different dynamics in her symphony to guide the musicians on how loud or quiet the notes should be played. Composers usually write markings like dynamics in Italian.
Marianna Martines often marks the music as piano or quiet and then follows this with a musical reply that is forte which means loud or even fortissimo which is very loud!
It’s like a musical conversation of whispering and shouting!

Marianna Martines was a remarkable woman. An incredible composer and performer, respected and celebrated by the key figures of the time, and yet, have you ever heard of her?
You’ve probably heard of Mozart, maybe even of Haydn, but the likelihood is that you’ve never heard of Marianna Martines. But she paved the way for many women composers who followed her and it’s about time people learned her name and how extraordinarily talented she was.

Mwaksy:
How do you play a video game using only the power of plants?In the game, Plants vs. Zombies, plants are the heroes. The player has to defend their house by using different plants. Some plants can throw things at zombies to stop them from coming, and other flowers and fruit and veg are planted for the zombies to eat.

Composer Laura Shigihara created the music for the game. There are almost 30 different pieces of music that make up the soundtrack. All that for just one game! Some composers don't compose that many pieces in their whole lifetime.
Laura Shigihara uses lots of different styles to reflect different stages of the game.

This piece is called Grasswalk and it's used at the start of the game. Laura Shigihara uses short melodies repeated by different instruments. They are catchy and make you want to hum along, but don't distract you from playing the game.

What a fun game and a brilliant soundtrack. What sort of things did you have to think about when you were writing the music?

Laura:Well, I knew from the beginning it was going to be a really fun and crazy game, and I was actually really excited to get to compose music in my own style. You see, normally you have a producer or a director that's telling you what instruments you can use, and they're sending you examples of music they want you to make your music sound like. But with this project, I actually had a lot of flexibility.

Mwaksy:Are there any special techniques you have to use to compose for video games?

Laura:
Because I was making video game music, I really had to make sure that the music could be listened to on repeat for long periods of time because unlike with a regular song where you can, you know, listen to it once or twice and be finished, with video game music, a lot of times the player may hear this track over and over and over again.

So, you want to be really careful that you don't make something that would be kind of annoying to the player. I also really like to think about the style of the game when composing music. So, in this case it was really interesting, right? Because we have zombies that are a little bit creepy, we have plants that were kind of cute, and there's also a lot of parts in the game that I think are really funny. So, I had to ask myself, okay, how do I make music that is creepy and cute and funny at the same time? So, for the kind of creepy part, I used a lot of instruments and music styles and stuff like that that are kind of associated with, like, more dark things. For the cute part, I made sure to have a lot of kind of simple but catchy melodies. And for the funny aspect, I changed things up by mixing in beats from different genres.

Mwaksy:
Do you think that video game music is something that anybody could try?

Laura:
Sure, basically you just have to find a game that you like, maybe one of your favourite ones, and you play it with the audio muted. That way you can kind of imagine what music might fit. You can ask yourself, what's the feel of the game and how do you want players to react when they listen to your composition?

Mwaksy:The music you compose is usually electronic. How does it feel to have an orchestra perform and play your music?

Laura:
Ah, It's such an honour and really exciting for me to get to hear my music played by an orchestra. I feel like it really brings new life to it. I just love it, it's so cool.

YolanDa:
Just a few hundred years ago, people from Africa were captured, sold and taken in ships to the Caribbean and different parts of America. They were enslaved - kept as prisoners and forced to work incredibly hard without being paid.
Now we can all find things unfair sometimes; if we're not allowed to hang out with our friends all the time or have to do homework that we don't enjoy. But just think, if your entire life was controlled by someone else and all choice was taken away. It's almost impossible to imagine, isn't it?

The slave trade was abolished through an Act of Parliament in 1807. 200 years later, the composer Errollyn Wallen wrote her piece, Mighty River, to mark this significant moment in history.

Enslaved people were forcibly moved around the world on ships sailing over the water. Errollyn Wallen’s piece contrasts the free-flowing movement of the water with the people sailing on it who were not free at all.

The piece begins with a solo horn playing Amazing Grace. A piccolo and then clarinet join the horn to play the melody.Soon we hear the theme of constantly moving water, flowing and bubbling through the different instruments of the orchestra, with a background of a repeated rhythm, or ostinato, played by the strings. Through the flowing water we can hear bursts of the Amazing Grace melody.But there is a hint of something else going on underneath. Do you hear it? Do you think it sounds friendly? Hopeful? Or do you think it seems a bit sinister?Well, the lower instruments in the orchestra - bass trombone, cello and double bass, along with the timpani, play threatening sounding notes underneath the hopeful, constant moving river above. It's a real clash of feelings.
But could hope and freedom be in sight? The Amazing Grace melody is played again by a solo horn at the end of Mighty River, but this time it sounds slightly different.The composer has suggested that this time it's played freely. The melody now also features an African talking drum, which is an instrument used by the enslaved people to communicate with each other.The whole orchestra close the piece by playing a chord all together. Do you think it sounds like something's changed?

Now, as a composer, you've chosen a beautiful place to live and write your music. Where are we?

Errollyn:
Living by water is what I seem to have done for most of my life. And I, when I moved to Strathy Point, it really revolutionised how I worked - to be on top of the Atlantic. Being in this particular place has really, really, I don't know, changed my whole sense of being in the world.

Being such a vast landscape makes me feel small and makes composing somehow even an increased pleasure. And it's so quiet here, but at the same time majestic. And I would say also water, from the beginning of composing, it's something I think a lot about.

YolanDa:
Tell me a bit about Mighty River and the inspiration behind this extraordinary piece.

Errollyn:
I wanted to write a work that celebrates the human spirit through suffering and endurance.The piece is about the journey to freedom.

YolanDa:
And how did your musical ideas grow from what you knew about the transatlantic slave trade?

Errollyn:
How do I represent freedom in music? I thought of water. The way water - a river, a stream will always want to run towards the sea. And I suppose human beings, we have this innate instinct to be free.It's about freedom and I use water to sort of, sort of almost pictorially represent that.

When you listen to the work, you will hear all these flourishes in the wind, harp solos. And there's a lot of, sort of quite virtuosic stuff, but to me the background movement of how the rhythm works and is relentless, I worked possibly hardest on that.

It's got lightness in it, but it's also got this darkness.There's one moment where the djembe, which is an African drum, talks to the horn. I always think of it as if, you know, a European talking to an African. And there's this, there's this talking and trying to understand and communicate.

YolanDa:
How does freedom factor into this piece?

Errollyn:
Why I like being a composer is that I feel very free. But freedom takes so many different forms. And in the case of Mighty River, there's this journey, which is a difficult journey, but you do feel the sense of moving through different stages. And then at the end, I hope you feel the sense – ah, we are now out into calm sea.

Kiell:It sounds like it’s almost time for me to go onstage.
You’d better go and take your seat!

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless footDo chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly himWhen he comes back; you demi-puppets thatBy moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastimeIs to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoiceTo hear the solemn curfew… I have bedimmedThe noontide sun… graves at my commandHave waked their sleepers, opened, and let them forth.

Those poetic words were written by William Shakespeare hundreds of years ago for his play, The Tempest. His plays were, and still are, performed here at The Globe in London, and all over the world.
The Tempest inspired composer Judith Weir to write this music, called Storm.

A tempest is a fierce storm, and the play begins with one created by a powerful wizard.
The main characters are shipwrecked on a mysterious island full of magical spirits and monsters. On the island the characters find love, meet long lost family and, as Judith Weir says, “through the exercise of mercy, their quarrels are healed”.

Judith, what was it about The Tempest that inspired you to write Storm?

Judith:The Tempest is a play by Shakespeare, and it has so many words in it about music. It seems like Shakespeare really wanted to hear music all through the play.I don’t have any actors, but I could get some singers and some instruments so I thought that I could make own little version of The Tempest.

Kiell:So, talk to me about the instruments that you use for this piece.

Judith:One day I was walking around, I just saw outside a couple of old oil drums somebody had left in the street. Needless to say, being a composer, I went up and hit them to see what kind of sound they made, and they were great, they were very echoey. So, that made me start thinking what kind of instruments, what kind of stuff would be washed up on a beach like we have got in The Tempest, which is set on an island.And we’ve got instruments like, it’s called a guiro - it’s in fact a South American instrument – but it’s like a dried-up husk of a, say a coco pod, or something like that – makes great sounds.

Kiell:This movement is called Magic. Magic is an important theme for The Tempest, isn’t it?

Judith:Magic is a huge theme in The Tempest because the main character, thjs man called Prospero, he was a Duke, he was the Duke of Milan but he also, his biggest interest was magic, and he spent apparently years and years studying it. Now he lives on the island, he uses magic to his advantage.

Prospero’s words say a lot about the strange creatures that live on the island. For instance, he says something about at midnight all sorts of mushrooms appear, he says there are elves, kind of fairies and goblins. We don’t know exactly what they’re like, but I imagine them being sometimes quite terrifying, scary creatures. So, I give a lot of work to the high piccolos because I think that gives some description of what the kind of sounds these strange creatures would make.

But also, I think magic is maybe something very beautiful. At times, he casts these magic spells and maybe the island is bathed in a special light. As if you were a painter, you could use every single colour in the world.

Kiell:Judith Weir creates a magical world through music and brings every element of a play to life - without actors.What kind of world would you create? And how would you make it sound magical?