From the Progam Note to " A Suite of Curves", 1990

I have recently grown curious about those pieces of music that retain their identity, their meaning, and an important component of their beauty, regardless of instrumentation. For example, consorts, madrigals, Irish jigs and reels, hymns, Bach fugues, Telemann duets, jazz standards and so on.

This kind of music, that survives transcription, is often quite good, even as music goes, and yet is usually accessible to an amateur technique; also, it is very practical when looking for pieces to play with friends.

When writing for Andrew Sweeney and Stephanie Abercromby, I did not constrain myself to writing for amateur techniques; but I did find myself giving thought to the writing of transcribable music.

This particular compositional goal is less striven after by composers than it was, and I had few recent examples to guide me; but though the writing of "A Suite of Curves" was slow, it was also exciting.

The curves of the title depict such as stability and instability, bifurcation and fractal, the constant and the cycle, growth and decay.

From the Progam Note to " Trombone Quintet", 1995

The instruments played by these five musicians are so different from each other that I decided for the first time in recent years to enjoy indulging their natures, to have each one speak in its own voice, to choose its own notes for the common purpose.

From the jazz quintet I took the idea of each instrument playing a role in a niche, with a turn in the spotlight; from the orchestra I took the width of range of mood and colour.

My language continues to develop along the path of recent works, not repetitious but with rythmic structure on a range of time-scales.

The piece is not without its serious side, but overall the mood is lighter, clearer; more happy, more human.

A New Approach to Funding Composers

The funding of composers over the last fifty years by state patronage or by integration into the tertiary education system has not provided any price signal which might convey information to the composers of music about the preferences of its readers. As a result, composers have had little incentive to write scores that give a reader sufficient interest and pleasure to make the reading worthwhile. This lack of incentive has noticibly infuenced the music that composer have written over the last fifty years. As a result, musicians who play for pleasure now seek their repertoire in the compositions of bygone eras.

In contrast, the funding of authors by book sales over the same years has resulted in a great period in the art of the novel.

Internet Commerce now makes it possible to re-connect the writers of music to the readers, to provide the price signal that will again allow the composition of music that is a pleasure to read, and that rewards repeated readings.

You might also be interested in an interview with Peter Billam, a press release announcing a New Era in Music Publishing, a collection of Peter Billam's favourite quotes, or of his contributions to mailing lists.

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