David Bedford - Avant-garde Classical Compositions

Avant-garde Classical Compositions

All this time, Bedford was also writing avant-garde classical works. The liner notes from a 1970 album cite Piece for Mo (1963) as "his first work of standing", although that piece has never been recorded for release.

Another early composition, Come In Here, Child was recorded twice in the 1960s for two different classical record labels, Mainstream and RCA Red Seal.

O Now the Drenched Land Wakes and The Great Birds (two poems for chorus based on the words of Kenneth Patchen, 1966) were released by Deutsche Grammophon on one of their Avant Garde series of albums in 1968.

Music for Albion Moonlight was released in 1970 by Argo Records, paired with a companion composition, And Suddenly It's Evening by Elisabeth Lutyens.

Star Clusters, Nebulae and Places in Devon (1971), for chorus and brass instruments was premièred by the London Philharmonic Choir and the brass of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

In With 100 Kazoos (1971), an instrumental ensemble is joined by the audience who are invited to play kazoos.

Bedford also composed a number of works for wind orchestra, beginning with Sun Paints Rainbows on the Vast Waves in 1982, commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Many of these works have recorded by the wind orchestra of the Royal Northern College of Music, conducted by Clark Rundell, released by Doyen Records UK in 1998.

Bedford combined skilled and non-skilled musicians in other works as well, with Seascapes (1986), for instance, combining a full symphony orchestra with school children, and Stories from the Dreamtime (1991) written for 40 deaf children and orchestra. This awareness of the need to enrich the musical life of children is evident at the SAGE Gateshead which will be performing one of his latter works for young people titled The Wreck of the Titanic This continues his belief in including non professional musicians, such as the choirs from four North East primary/junior schools.

He is noted for the large amount of educational music he has written for children. The musical notation he uses is often unconventional, frequently making use of graphics, thus letting his works be performed by children and others who cannot read conventional notation. For example, in the liner notes to the album Viola Today (1974) by Karen Phillips, it is stated that in the score of Bedford's Spillihpnerak (1972) (the title being the performer's name printed backwards) there is "(a) page consisting of a drawing of a lysozyme molecule which the performer is asked to interpret".

In general, Bedford's music has a tendency to harmonic stasis, the main interest instead being created by shifting timbres and textures. The score to The Song of the White Horse (1977) instructs the choir to inhale helium gas to be able to reach the highest notes near the end of the piece.

In his music for voice, he has set many texts by the poet Kenneth Patchen, especially on Music for Albion Moonlight which sets four Patchen poems to music, and Instructions for Angels (1978), an album which uses Patchen's poems for inspiration and song titles, although Patchen's poems are not sung or recited in the music, but are printed on an insert.

Science fiction was a repeated area of interest for Bedford. The Tentacles of the Dark Nebula has words taken from Arthur C Clarke's short story Transcience, recorded by tenor Peter Pears with Bedford conducting the London Sinfonietta. The title of Star's End was taken from Isaac Asimov's book Second Foundation. Rigel 9 is a play based on the book by Ursula K. Le Guin, featuring background music composed and recorded by Bedford.