I’ve completed a significant new work. Entitled ‘A Still, Sad Music’, it is a setting for choir, orchestra and (optional) organ of lines 90-113 of ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ by William Wordsworth.

I had to consider how to make a demo of this. With instrumental pieces I can just use the audio from the scoring program, but in this case the words are important, which of course cannot be synthesised. My solution is to make a video combining the audio with a scrolling display of the vocal, organ and string parts (the words would be too small if you saw the whole score). This demo is on YouTube.

The orchestration is:

Oboe
Cor Anglais
2 Bassoons
2 Horns
2 Trumpets
2 Trombones
Bass Trombone
Timpani
Harp
Organ (optional)
Strings

In the video the full orchestration may be heard, but only the choral, organ and string parts are seen.

The work could be performed with choir strings, harp and timpani only, or with an incomplete group of wind instruments, particularly if the organ were used. With full orchestra, the organ part would be optional.