Score and parts for hire

These pieces were written for the Scottish Ensemble’s 2012-13 season, with one included in each of their UK tours.  Although the musical idea underlying each piece might fit on the back of a postcard, the result is a little more substantial than such a title suggests (for a time Suckling toyed with the title ‘short stories’. They can be performed individually or as a complete set.

I – Chimes at Midnight

A series of bells.  From within the resonance, echoes of a dance emerge, and a high violin sings.

II – Mr Jonathan Morton, His Ground

Where the violin leads, the others follow, eventually arriving at rich, gleaming microtonal chords covering all registers.  Throughout the whole piece a simple melodic phrase loops over and again.

III – Touch

A toccata of scurrying semiquavers in which the players join, separate, and recombine in ever-changing groupings to create a many-voiced polyphony.   The journey repeats – though with each iteration it is squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces, until eventually it is barely there at all.

IV – In Memoriam

Stepping out into what seemed to be the first day of Spring: barely a breeze, and the sunlight warm against my face.  A sequence of microtonal harmonies gradually transform into singing cello lines backed by fragments of dance and birdsong.