Slow Dawn

Conductor's score and parts on hire - wind band version

Forces or Category: Wind band

Orchestration: picc, 2 fl, 2 ob, ca, Ebcl, 3 cl, bcl, 2 bn, cbn, ssx, 2 asx, tsx, barsx, 4 hn, 2 cor, 3 tpt, 2 tbn, btbn, euph, tba, timp, 3 perc (glock, vib, ant cym, deep log dr, SD, BD, rototoms), hp, db

Slow Dawn is a gentle and evocative piece for wind band. Berkeley depicts the gradual appearance of the sun (in the form of the tuba), 'shafts of light and playful reflections' which accompany the increasing warmth of day, the 'music of midday' suggesting 'the savage anger of heat in foreign climes with stabbing beams of light', and the final descent of the sun at the end of the day.

Slow Dawn

Conductor's score and parts on hire - wind band version

Michael Berkeley

Description

Slow Dawn is a gentle and evocative piece for wind band. Berkeley depicts the gradual appearance of the sun (in the form of the tuba), 'shafts of light and playful reflections' which accompany the increasing warmth of day, the 'music of midday' suggesting 'the savage anger of heat in foreign climes with stabbing beams of light', and the final descent of the sun at the end of the day.

Programme Notes:

Tim Reynish had been asking me to write for Wind Band for a quarter of a century and Slow Dawn, which is dedicated to the memory of his son, William, was, finally, the result. It depicts the gradual appearance of the sun (in the form of the tuba) as it climbs into the sky. Shafts of light and playful reflections accompany the increasing warmth of day. Allthough in this hemisphere we have tended to think of, as Wilfred Owen put it, 'the kind old sun', the music of midday in this

Slow Dawn

Conductor's score and parts on hire - wind band version

Michael Berkeley

Composer Information

Michael Berkeley (b.1948)

Michael Berkeley was born in 1948. He studied composition, singing, and piano at the Royal Academy of Music but it was not until his late twenties, when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett, that Berkeley began to concentrate exclusively on composing. In 1977 he was awarded the Guinness Prize for Composition; two years later he was appointed Associate Composer to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Since then Michael's music has been played all over the globe and by some of the world's finest musicians. Most of Michael's significant orchestral work, much of his chamber music and his operas are available on CD as part of the Chandos Berkeley Edition. For ten years from 1995 Michael was artistic director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music. He currently presents Radio 3's Private Passions, which won the Broadcasting Press Guild's Radio Programme of the Year Award in 1996, and is Chairman of the Governors of The Royal Ballet.

Michael Berkeley's website