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Compositions & Transcriptions

This section of Mark Argent’s web site has a work list of compositions and transcriptions, and further details of many of these. Works are divided into four categories:

Vocal Instrumental Voice and instruments Transcriptions

Vocal

Five Mediæval Lyrics, for ATTBB or SSATB solo voices

Angels’ Song, for ATTBar solo voices

Sunlight, mountain top, for chamber choir (8 or 16 parts)

Instrumental

Osterley Suite I, for solo cello

Osterley Suite II, for two recorders

Image I, for solo tenor recorder

Image II, for solo tenor recorder

Song of the Wayfarer, for solo tenor recorder

Quintet, for three recorders, harpsichord and viola da gamba.

Hymnus, for solo cello.

Osterley Suite III, for solo clavichord.

Fløyen in the rain, for string quartet.

Voice and instruments

Anima Christi, for tenor and cello

Binsey Poplars, for (male) alto and flute, or tenor and either cello or viola

Magnificat, for soprano, two baroque flutes, harpsichord and viola da gamba

Song of the Beloved, for tenor, two baroque flutes, harpsichord and cello

Transcriptions

D minor Toccata and Fugue, (J. S. Bach, BWV 565 originally for organ), transcribed for solo five- or four-string cello

Trio sonata, after D major Gamba Sonata, (J. S. Bach, BWV 1028 originally for viola da gamba and obbligato harpsichord), transcribed for two flutes, or flute and five-string cello/gamba, and continuo

 
ATTBB version
ISMN M 9002047 8 3
Previews p. 3, p. 5, p. 7
 
SSATB version
ISMN M 9002047 9 0
Previews p. 3, p. 5, p. 7
 
Programme note
Price: £10, Click here to order
Five Mediæval Lyrics, for ATTBB or SSATB solo voices

This work is on the 2001/2002 shortlist for the Society for the Promotion of New Music, and received its world première from the BBC Singers at the Purcell Room at London’s South Bank Centre in October 2001.

The original version is scored for five solo voices, ATTBB, working much of the time with the alto voice accompanied by TTBB. A second, transposed, version is available for SSATB, which was prepared for members of the BBC Singers.

The pieces set five anonymous mediæval English poems which vaguely relate to Christmas, — or at least to having a good time at Christmas.

 
 

Programme note
Preview
Price: £10, Click here to order
Angels’ Song, for ATTBar solo voices

This piece is based on the account of the encounter between Mary Magdelene and the angel at the empty tomb in John’s gospel. It weaves together the mediæval plainchant Sedit Angelus with modern words and music.

 
 

Programme note
Preview
Price: £10, Click here to order
Sunlight, mountain top, for chamber choir (8 or 16 voices)

This piece has its origins in a visit I made to Tromsø in north Norway in the summer of 2005. Walking on the nearby mountain of Bønntuva, I was fascinated by the interplay of sunlight on clouds and mountain-top mist.

Rather than setting a text, I've simply worked with those words to evoke something of the experience for SSAATTBB choir (divided into 8 or 16 parts), using dissonance to create moments of brightness in the context of a sustained sound.

 
 
Price: £8, Click here to order Osterley Suite I, for solo cello

This suite was sketched during a retreat in Advent 1998 and is effectively a journey from dark to light. It is cast in four interconnected movements, which travel from a dark D minor to a bright D major.

The suite has two versions, the original for five-string cello, and another for four-string cello.

 
 

ISMN M 9002047 1 4
Programme note
Preview
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Osterley Suite II, for two recorders

This suite was sketched during a retreat in Advent 1999, and is effectively a musical meditation on the Annunciation. It is scored for two recorders players, who change instruments at various points to produce a wide range of sound qualities as different aspects of the Annunciation are explored.

 
 

ISMN M 9002047 2 1
Preview
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Image I, for solo tenor recorder

This piece was written with half an ear on Debussy’s Syrinx, though others have heard more of an asian sound world in it.

The tenor recorder is a beautiful instrument, but it lacks the penetrating power of some of the smaller recorders: writing for solo tenor recorder provides a way to let the beauty of the instrument come through.

 
 

ISMN M 9002047 3 8
Preview
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Image II, for solo tenor recorder

This is another simple piece for solo tenor recorder, with half an ear in the direction of Satie’s Gymnopediæs.

 
 

ISMN M 9002047 4 5
Preview
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Song of the Wayfarer, for solo tenor recorder

This piece uses the tenor recorder in a more explicitly shakuhachi-like way. William Summers has performed this a number of times using a rennaisance tenor, which works very effectively.

 
 

Programme note
Preview
Quintet, for three recorders, harpsichord and viola da gamba

This piece is an experiment in whole-tone composition, cast in a series of short movements.

 
 

Programme note
Preview
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Hymnus, for solo cello

This is a reposeful, three-movement work for solo cello, which explores the contrast between open and stopped strings.

 
 

Programme note
Preview
Osterley Suite III, for solo clavichord

This is suite of four connected movements, written for solo clavichord in the spring of 2004. Much of the melodic material is based on birdsong written down in the gardens of the Osterley Retreat Centre during the penultimate Ignatian Day there.

 
 

Programme note
Preview
Fløyen in the rain, for string quartet.

This one-movement work was written in response to an SPNM call for new works for string quartet, and received its premiere at the Spitz Club in London, played by the Elysian String Quartet, on 7 December 2004.

 
 

ISMN M 9002047 7 6
Programme note
Preview
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Anima Christi, for tenor and cello

This is a spare-textured setting of the Anima christi for tenor and cello.

The piece is cast as a single movement, which walks gently through the prayer with a texture which is sometimes very spare, and sometimes uses double stopping on the cello to add harmonic richness. The rhythm is free and meditative, wandering between triplets and duplets with frequent changes of time signature.

 
 

Preview: alto & flute
Preview: tenor & viola/cello
Price: £8, Click here to order
Binsey Poplars, for (male) alto and flute, or tenor and cello/viola

This piece, with a text by Gerald Manley Hopkins, was originally written for male alto and flute. It has a simple, spare, texture which means that it achieves a very simple expressive effect.

A second version is available transposed for tenor and cello or viola.

 
 

ISMN M 9002047 5 2
Programme note
Preview
Price: £10 (score  only),
£25 (performing material)
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Magnificat, for soprano, two baroque flutes, harpsichord and viola da gamba

This was written in the autumn of 1999, for the Loki ensemble to perform in the closing concert of that year’s Kingston Early Music Festival in West London. In musical terms, it explores the way in which wooden baroque flutes can be persuaded to sound like their asian relatives, and the clear light sound of an early music soprano is quite close to that of chinese traditional music.

 
 

Programme note
Preview
Price: £10 (score  only),
£25 (performing material)
Click here to order
Song of the Beloved, for tenor, two baroque flutes, harpsichord and cello

This is a setting of words from the biblical Song of Songs. This erotic text has fascinated composers down the generations, and the Song of the Beloved explores some aspects of this. Conventionally the text is cast, in translation, as a dialogue between a man and a woman, though the original only shows (from the grammar) the gender of the person being addressed, which left me free to allow a male singer to sing of a male beloved.

Musically the idiom is quite spare, but owes a big debt to jazz rhythms, reflecting my growing interest in jazz.

 
 


ISMN M 9002047 0 7
Programme note
Preview: 4 string cello
Preview: 5 string cello
Price: £10, Click here to order
D minor Toccata and Fugue, (J. S. Bach, BWV 565 originally for organ)

In 1981 Peter Williams advanced the radical idea that this piece might have originally been written for a solo stringed instrument, and might not even by by Bach.

I’ve taken Williams’ ideas further, exploring in an article in the Autumn 2000 issue of Musical Times the case for suggesting that the most likely original instrument is a five string cello. The article can be read on Jstore or here (as a pdf).

In this volume there are two versions of the Toccata and Fugue, one exploring all the potential of a five-string cello, and the other adapted to a four-string instrument.

 
 
Trio sonata, after D major Gamba Sonata, (J. S. Bach, BWV 1028 originally for viola da gamba and harpsichord)

Bach’s sonatas for viola da gamba and obbligato harpsichord are, effectively, trio sonatas where the viola da gamba and harpsichordist’s right hand supply the upper parts, and the left hand the continuo. Of the three sonatas, the one in G major has the purest three-part texture, and also exists as a trio sonata for two flutes and continuo. In this transcription I adapt the D major sonata as a trio sonata — which works as well with two flutes, or flute and five-string cello/gamba, and continuo.