Tag Archives: minimal

Westron Wynde

Orchestra

2015

Duration: 8’45”

Scored for four clarinets, organ, piano and strings, Westron Wynde is is a contemplation derived from the Sanctus from John Sheppard’s mass of the same name. The music unfolds across three panels and depicts a vast empty landscape. Two brief extracts from Sheppard’s Sanctus can be heard as the music progresses, the first stated by the clarinets, the second, at a distance, by a string quartet.

In Autumn

(2010, 2016, 2023)

for orchestra (strings, flutes & piccolos)

Duration: 11’11”

In autumn is a piece for string orchestra with flutes and piccolos. It is an evocation of a woodland scene in late autumn in the pre-Appenini mountains of central Italy, specifically an area named Forca d’Acero which is a high mountain pass (1500m) on the border between Lazio and Abbruzzo: an evocative woodland landscape.

Mesto

2023

for String Orchestra

Duration 8′

Originally written for string quartet, Mesto is a study in melancholy. Using a diatonic palette, the strings pivot around a central harmony with the upper and lower parts mirroring one another as they expand outwards from the centre.

Score and parts available for purchase or hire

Priest – Mesto (sample)

Overflow (version for strings)

Written originally as a chamber orchestra piece to accompany the artwork of the Italo-Canadian artist Janet Bellotto in 2013, this version for string orchestra was completed in 2020.

(2013 – revised 2020)

Duration: 5’15”

Instrumentation: string orchestra (minimum 3,3,2,2,1)

Score and parts available on request.