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Program Note: Singer’s London Landscapes

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Neal Gittleman got in touch with me. We had not had been in contact for many years, and it was wonderful to reconnect with him. Neal wanted to use my spoken Fugue in an online talk he was giving during lockdown. He had remembered my piece from our student days in 1975 with Nadia Boulanger at the American School in Fontainebleau. Since the text of my piece describes the form of a fugue, he thought it would be great to use as an illustration for his talk.

Not long after, Neal proposed commissioning a short piece from me to be performed alongside the ‘London’ Symphony (Symphony No. 2) by Ralph Vaughan Williams. I leapt at the chance to write music for the same forces—a large orchestra with triple woodwind and a big percussion section.

My work—London Landscapes—is not programmatic as such, but possibly captures the mood of London pre-COVID and pre-Brexit: a vibrant city that worked hard and played hard; an international center bustling with optimism, excitement and creativity.

In hindsight, I realize that my opening section might be thought to mirror that of the Vaughan Williams symphony—with quiet meditative music, perhaps hinting at the magnificent skyline at dawn visible from one of the London bridges across the River Thames. This leads to fast, jagged, dissonant repeated passages in the middle, full of energy, which might reflect the soaring skyline of the city. The music climaxes with alarm bells ringing and the distorted chimes of Big Ben being heard. This is followed by a short, quiet coda that returns to the pitches heard at the start, settling inconclusively with part of the opening chord left hanging in the air.

— Malcolm Singer