Planet Hugill

My new PC (just over a year old) is still in at the menders, though they have told me that they have not found anything. Rather worrying, looks as if I'll have to live with a PC which keeps switching itself off at random intervals. I can't face paying yet another person to look at it.

So, currently I'm using my old PC (a venerable Windows 98 machine). This means, of course, that the new pieces I'm doing existing in fragmented form split between the old and the new pc's. So, as and when I manage to get the new one back I will have the delightful task of re-integrating the music.

I've finished the first major draft of the new piece for London Concord Singers 40th anniversary concert in November, 3 lighthearted movements setting secular Latin. I'm rather please with it and can't wait to have it all in one place to try out properly. I've even managed to come up with a half decent tonal scheme for the 3 movements; yes, I've actually managed to write a piece that stays in recognisable keys rather than wandering about and there's no polytonality.

The other piece is a new orchestral piece, something to try just to see if I can. Its a tone poem based on a Sylvia Townsend Warner short story about Welsh fairies, so the piece is currently loosely titled either Fairies and Faith or Of Fairies, Faith and Mountains. I've got the Welsh bit started, using David of the White Rock and have some Tippett-y Midsummer Marriage like bits for the Fairies. I'm just finishing drafting this section and am about to move onto the Faith bit, where St. Patrick gives them a sermon about Faith moving Mountains. I've sketched out a section using the Hymn tune, St. Patrick's Breastplate, though I've yet to work out if I can make sense of my sketches as they are all in manuscript. I've not yet got far enough to see if the thing makes sense, I'll report back.