WORDSWORTH MINIATURES

Although his special subject as an undergraduate at Cambridge University was the Renaissance, Edwin Roxburgh's guiding principle is "that all musicians have a responsibility towards the music of our own time and should give as much attention to it as to music of all periods." He has applied this philosophy as a virtuoso solo oboist by giving the first UK performances of works by composers such as Berio and Holliger, and as a conductor he has premiered a vast number of contemporary works with the Twentieth Century Ensemble of London, which he founded. Until 2003, he taught Composition at the Royal College of Music where he created a department of Twentieth Century Performance.

Solos and duets make up about half his catalogue of over eighty published works and include the four pieces collected under the heading 'Wordsworth Miniatures'. The titles of numbers 2, 3 and 4 are lines from Wordsworth's 'Ode: Intimations of Mortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', published in 1807, and the first title comes from his 'Evening Voluntaries' of 1835. Roxburgh's musical representations of Wordsworth's lines have no key signatures but plenty of accidentals so that their tonality is elusive and shifting. No.1 'Calm is the fragrant air' is the most accessible with its motif of three or four quavers at the same pitch which starts and ends the piece, and its haunting but attractive feel. 'Waters on a starry night' is as fluid as its name suggests and fully descriptive while 'Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears' has wide interval leaps leaps which are unsettling, even slightly sinister. 'The cataracts blow their trumpets' is marked 'Incisive and rhythmic' and has many changes of time signature and is punctuated with wide interval leaps which make it the most bravura of the four pieces. This music cannot be described as 'easy listening' and neither is it easy to play.

Wordsworth Miniatures was commissioned by the internationally acclaimed clarinettist Linda Merrick CBE, who has also recorded the work (Classicprint 'The Hemlock Stone' CPVP008CD).

• 2. Waters on a starry night
• 3. Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears
• 4. The cataracts blow their trumpets

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