Elevator music: for orchestra (1997)

Elevator Music is a description which is often used as an easy way to put in its place any excursion by orchestral musicians into the "popular" realm. But such a derogatory attitude is misplaced. The twentieth century has produced a remarkable body of popular orchestral music, much of which contains genuinely creative and imaginative musicianship. Popular orchestral music is not always soporific - it's often highly exhilarating, and it's to this spirit that l’ve sought to pay homage in Elevator Music.

This piece can be considered the third in a trilogy of works in which I've taken elements of popular music as my starting point. Or rather, in which particular enthusiasms - new encounters for me - have stirred my musical imagination. In Unchained Melody, it was the construction of popular song and the rhythmic conceptions of contemporary pop. In Powerhouse, it was the inventive music of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons (Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott) and the Latin-American music of Xavier Cugat.

In Elevator Music, it's the music of Les Baxter, Henry Mancini and John Barry that has given me ideas. All three composers built upon their classical schooling to integrate jazz and popular music into orchestral music. What's distinctive about these three, among the legions of popular orchestral composers, is their interest in what was then called "The Beat".

John Barry, for instance, (before becoming the great composer of the James Bond movies), was something of a star in the burgeoning English rock'n'roll scene of the late fifties and early sixties. The John Barry Seven provided a perfect testing ground for Barry to forge a uniquely exciting form of instrumental music which accommodated The Beat’s powerful influence. The timpanist in the John Barry Seven, Dougie Wright, made a particularly important contribution, inspired by Eric Delaney.

As in the previous pieces of the "trilogy", I haven't used any of these composers' actual material. I've made some observations about the ways they "use" an orchestra, and launched my piece off on its own tangent.

The basic material of Elevator Music is a twelve-tone agglomeration, consisting of two interlocking hexachords. I haven't used any of the conventional twelve-tone methods of developing this material, though. That's where Baxter, Mancini and Barry come in ... which introduces a possibility I wish Schoenberg had thought of - one day while playing tennis with Gershwin, perhaps.

Unchained Melody, Powerhouse (rhumba): perpetuum mobile for orchestra, and Elevator Music; for Orchestra form a trilogy of sorts.