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The Royal School of Church Music announces the ‘Platinum Project’, a special choral music commission from award-winning British composer Thomas Hewitt Jones to commemorate Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022.

‘In Our Service’ is a 4-minute anthem with themes of service and dedication, celebrating the RSCM’s Royal Patron, HM The Queen. The text has a deliberately wide appeal to ensure it has a lasting value beyond the Jubilee itself.

Encouraging for all

Written as an attractive and uplifting piece of music, which is really enjoyable to sing, ‘In Our Service’ is adaptable for different ensembles/situations – 4-part/SATB choir and organ, unison/2-part with piano and leadsheet, and a full symphonic orchestration available for hire. Music packs are available to download from the RSCM’s online shop at £19.95, together with optional backing tracks, videos and other resources to inspire others to take part.

Designed to be performed by a wide variety of groups, from cathedral and church choirs, choral societies and chamber choirs to community choirs and in schools, RSCM is inviting all choirs to join in singing ‘In Our Service’ and to share their performances via the RSCM’s website and on social media using the hashtag #RSCMplatinum to create a wonderful, collaborative celebration of this unique occasion through shared musical expression.

RSCM Platinum Project

Listen to a full performance of ‘In Our Service’ sung by St Martin’s Voices, directed by Andrew Earis, with organist Polina Sosnina: In Our Service (mp3)

Hugh Morris, Director of RSCM, says:

‘We wanted to be able to celebrate our Royal Patron’s unique Jubilee; and for us as a charity to commission this new piece was a fitting way of doing that. We have made sure that it’s accessible, easy to learn, and rewarding to sing, and very much intend it to be an ‘Anthem for all’, be that cathedral or church choir, community choir, school choir; indeed pretty much any group of singers. As a charity, RSCM works to encourage, nurture and inspire musicians in a wide range of contexts. I warmly encourage you to include singing this piece in your Jubilee celebration planning; and to join us on an exciting journey for this project over the next few months. Keep us up to date with your progress on social media!’

Thomas Hewitt Jones says:                                        

‘I was delighted to be asked by the Royal School of Church Music to write a choral anthem to celebrate HM the Queen, their Royal Patron, on her incredibly special jubilee. Typifying selfless service to her country, her very existence encourages togetherness – so the opportunity to celebrate her with a new and inclusive, yet weighty, piece of choral music that can be sung by choirs all around the UK really resonated for me.

When searching for words to set to music, it became apparent that many of the Queen’s royal speeches over the years have contained pertinent and thoughtful messages, all relevant to today’s world. I wanted to incorporate many of these in the anthem, so I decided to write new words inspired by certain quotes which particularly stood out. I hope that the result is a vibrant, uplifting (and, if I’m honest, quite emotionally-charged) piece of music which celebrates both the reign of our incredible monarch, and the ever-valuable medium of choral singing – arguably one of the most natural, uplifting and unifying experiences of the human condition.’

RSCM hopes that this special commission will not only encourage groups to come together to sing, but will also draw attention to its wider activities, aims and vision as it approaches its centenary in 2027. One of RSCM’s most important annual activities is Music Sunday, which celebrates the role of church music in worship and the dedication of all church musicians, and aims to reach out into the community and join with others. This year Music Sunday takes place on 12th June, the weekend after the Jubilee.

About the Royal School of Church Music

The RSCM is the Salisbury-based, national, independent charity supporting, nurturing and sustaining church music. As the central ‘home’ of church music, RSCM provides relevant education, training and resources to its membership, the wider church, and beyond. It is committed to encouraging the best of music in worship, and to advocating music as a tool for growth of the church.

The RSCM supports thousands of Affiliated churches across the UK and worldwide through its international partners. In addition, it also supports many schools and Individual members, and its work is sustained by thousands of Friends, Regular Givers and other donors.

RSCM is an open, life-long learning organisation, offering face-to-face and distance education and training through its programmes, published resources, courses and activities.

Founded by Sir Sydney Nicholson in 1927, the RSCM’s original emphases were English and choral. Now, in a diverse international context, the RSCM’s work is far broader and more diverse, and aims to make all its work ecumenical in purpose, nature and content.

HM The Queen is RSCM’s Royal patron, and its president is The Most Revd and Rt Hon The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. The organisation celebrates its centenary in 2027.

rscm.org.uk

About Thomas Hewitt Jones

Thomas Hewitt Jones is an award-winning composer of contemporary classical and commercial music. Since winning the BBC Young Composer Competition in his teens, his music has been published by many of the major music publishers and is frequently heard in concert and on radio, TV and in the cinema.

Thomas’s diverse catalogue includes small instrumental, orchestral, choral and ballet works, and his large number of choral titles includes seasonal carols. ‘What Child is This?’ (OUP) has become a choral classic of recent years, garnering large numbers of performances each season. In 2021, he released ‘Can you hear me?’, an acclaimed response to the COVID19 pandemic.

thomashewittjones.com

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The Writings on the Score

As a writer, the marks I make on paper, or via the word-processing programme on my laptop, are the outward signifiers of my creativity. When I publish an article or essay those marks are made public, put out there and held up for scrutiny.

I am also a musician, a pianist in fact, a role, which, like writing, is largely undertaken in isolation. The outward signifier of my musical creativity comes when I perform for others; like my writing, the work, the graft, the practising is done alone.

The tools of the musician’s craft, in addition to their instrument and intent, are the “text”, the “literature” contained within  musical scores, and these documents provide the map for our musical journeys. On a most basic level, the markings we make on the score relate to fingering schemes, dynamics and marks of expression, pedalling and so forth. Learning music is a complex mental and physical process, and anything that assists in that process is useful. Often it is simply not possible to remember all the details in the music, and annotations provide a useful aide memoir and an immediate mnemonic for the practice of practising. These marks are our individual “hieroglyphs”, and our own secret code, through which our scores become precious, often highly personal documents.

Our writings on the score reveal our individual working processes and practice patterns, our attempts to dig away at the surface of the music, to look beyond the notes to find a deeper meaning. The permanence of a pencil mark is such that, until we choose to erase that mark, it remains there on the page in front of our eyes.

The markings and annotations we make on our scores may also be deeply associated with memories – of significant teachers or mentors, special concerts and venues, colleagues and friends, and may even correspond to certain periods in our lives. Returning to the piano after a 20-year absence, I came upon an earlier teacher’s markings in my dog-eared edition of Bach’s ‘48’. In a curiously potent Proustian rush, I was a gauche teenager again, back in Mrs Murdoch’s living room, her big Steinway stretched out before me, the book of Preludes and Fugues open on the music desk. Returning to a score after a break from it, one reacquaints oneself not only with the dots upon the staves; in the interim, the annotations have become a snapshot of another time and place.

Looking at another musician’s annotated score is an act of voyeurism: a score liberally marked with someone else’s fingering and comments might reveal someone’s deepest insecurities and frustrations, their unspoken hopes and most secret desires…..

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Following on from his comprehensive Indian Raags Made Easy, a guide to playing Indian classical music on the piano (review here), composer John Pitts has now turned his attention to the distinctive and beautiful music for gamelan orchestra from the Indonesian island of Java. This was the music which so intrigued Claude Debussy when he first encountered a gamelan orchestra at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, whose delicate, shimmering timbres are found in works like Pagodes.

In Extreme Heterophony: a study in Javanese Gamelan for one or more pianists, John Pitts offer a carefully-researched and clearly presented guide to the instruments and music of Java, with detailed explanations of the sounds, tunings, scales, metres and rhythms, using Western staff notation and terminology.

“Extreme Heterophony” refers to a foundational principle of how this music is constructed – akin to a theme and variations, but where c.10 types of related but widely diverse, decorative variations are all performed simultaneously – creating a rich, vibrant, exciting texture – and where the theme itself isn’t directly played. – John Pitts

This large-format book offers a deep dive in to the world of the gamelan, from descriptions of the instruments themselves to the use of melody, rubato, textural and rhythmic density, structure of performances, and notation. The author then goes on to explain the individual instruments (for example, the gambang, a xylophone, the “gender” barung, a metallophone, or the suling, a bamboo flute), their role and distinctive sounds within the gamelan orchestra, and how these roles and sounds translate to the piano, or a group of pianos.

The music, which makes up the greater part of the book, is adapted by John Pitts, each piece with a short introduction, clear directions and prompts to support the player/s. The pieces can be played at one piano, in duos or multiple duets at two or up to seven pianos. John Pitts’ website includes downloadable backing tracks to play along with, plus other useful resources for those who want to explore the music of Java in more detail.

This detailed, well-researched handbook is a fascinating introduction to the alluring soundworld of Javanese gamelan. The book is available in the UK/US from Amazon in printed book and Kindle format, and also as a PDF.

John Pitts website

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“bringing the very best classical chamber music to London audiences at affordable prices”

The innovative and now well-established London Chamber Music Society (LCMS) series returns to Kings Place with a generous and varied programme of Sunday concerts beginning on Sunday 23 January.

Old friends and new ones, including Solem Quartet, Rossetti Ensemble, and the Chamber Ensemble of London, are welcomed for this fine series of concerts with leading international artists. On 30 January, the Chilingirian Quartet, one of the cornerstones of British chamber music, celebrate their remarkable 50-year career in a concert culminating in the First String Sextet by Brahms. Other highlights include wind soloists from the Philharmonia Orchestra on 23 January, with pianist Andrew Brownell, in a programme featuring French music and the Sextet by 19th-century composer Louise Farrenc.

More in the French vein comes with violinist Philippe Graffin, who is joined by his compatriot, oboist Capucine Prin, on 15 May in a concert of oboe quartets as well as a fascinating new arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Further highlights include Finzi’s Dies natalis on 20 March, in a concert of string orchestra works with the Northern Chords Festival Orchestra. There is more wonderful string music on 1 May, with violinist Peter Fisher and the Chamber Ensemble of London, joined by pianist Margaret Fingerhut in Finzi’s ever-popular Eclogue and also music by Vaughan Williams and Britten’s Simple Symphony. As well as the Solem and Chilingirian quartets, on 3 April the Navarra Quartet perform Dvořák’s String Quartet in G, and a new work by the American-Irish composer Jane O’Leary.

This season also celebrates the work of the remarkable Anglo-American composer Rebecca Clarke. The Fitzwilliam Quartet perform Clarke’s short quartet movement, ‘Poem’, on 8 May, in a concert that also features, with Anna Tilbrook, the mighty piano quintet by Brahms. Other trios include clarinettist Mark Simpson, cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Richard Uttley on 20 February, to include Simpson’s own Echoes & Embers, and the Barbican Trio on 24 April, in trios by Brahms and Saint-Saens.

This season’s coffee concert, on 13 March, is given by cellist Thomas Carroll and pianist Anthony Hewitt, with music by Prokofiev and Rachmaninov’s ever-popular cello sonata in G minor, with its beautiful long romantic lines. Linos Piano Trio open the LCMS 2022/23 season on 2 October.

All concerts take place in Hall 1 at Kings Place and start at the very civilised time of 6.30pm, apart from the coffee concert on 13 March, which begins at 11.30am.

For full details of this season’s concerts & to book tickets, please visit:

www.londonchambermusic.org.uk/

Chilingirian Quartet

The London Chamber Music Society boasts a proud history of Victorian music making in London with the regular Sunday Concerts that developed at South Place and then the Conway Hall from the 1920s. The LCMS continues that rich legacy at Kings Place, its home from 2008, with London Chamber Music Sundays – a diverse annual season of high-quality classical chamber music, ranging from duos and trios to chamber orchestras, coming from the UK, Europe and beyond. Many of Britain’s most celebrated ensembles have regularly appeared in the Series, from the Brosa and Amadeus string quartets of the past, to the Chilingirian and Carducci quartets today.

Artistic Director: Peter Fribbins

Header image: Solem Quartet