Audio
Chamber Symphony for 9 Sustained Instruments and Percussion (1971) Op. 24 This is the chamber symphony which uses clarinets in Eb and Bb and is written in a classic 12-note style, giving it a rather early 20th century feel.
Duo for Violin and Viola Op. 33 No. 1 This is the first of a set of 3 violin and viola duos written for domestic use. It is in the traditional 3 movement form. If you would like to play it theperforming material is on IMSLP and the Werner Icking site.
1st Suite for Solo Guitar Op. 1 These five pieces were written slowly over about a year and a half in 1977/78, when I was making an intensive study of guitar playing and transcription for the guitar. These 5 pieces have been performed many times by myself in the UK and the music has been available recently to guitar students all over the world via web forums. There are 5 pieces with descriptive titles. The playing score is on IMSLP.
Quartet for Recorders Op. 28 This piece deliberately uses as a model the 'Suite for Recorders' by Vaughan Williams , and is therefore in quite a conservative style, (though there are few pieces in the English pastoral style for recorders). (The Suite by RVW used as a model seems to be out of print, despite rumours that it had been put back into the OUP catalogue.) The suite has 4 movements.
Sonata for Flute and Guitar Op. 18 This dates from around 1981. It is in a somewhat old fashioned style but is quite an extrovert work and who cares about fashion anyway?
Second Suite of Six Pieces for Solo Guitar Op. 21 I use the designation Suite where the pieces could be just as effectively removed for individual performance and Sonata where the movements are an integral part of a whole. This suite for guitar was written for myself to play in 1985.
Variations on a Somerset Folksong for Guitar Duo, Op. 2 This is a computer generated file as I have no recording from the 1970s. (I added about 2 bars to the original version about 30 years later.)
String Quartet Number 1 (1972) Op. 26 This quartet was written in the Easter holiday when I was at university studying chemistry a long time ago. It is written in the Bartok / early twentieth century style which was considered a bit passe even then. I actually think it has some merits though and is rather fun to play in a grim way if you can get your fingers round it, which is what chamber music is all about.
Duo for Treble Recorder and Violin, Op.34 This is the first of a set of pieces for treble recorder and violin. The first is an atonal neo-baroque suite, the second is to be an expressionist atonal piece and maybe two more in a neo-classical and a minimalist style.
Three 4-part In Nomines Op. 30 The first In Nomine is the winning entry for the 2007 VDGS In Nomine competition.
The second In Nomine is a bitonal In Nomine with the In Nomine in F-sharp minor and the rest of the parts in 1-flat key signature.
The third uses a 7-bar counter-melody which passes through the parts.
Orpheus With His Lute Op. 31 This is one of a set of lute songs. This one was for a Shakespeare Song with lute competition. The synthesised guitar version here shows an interesting feature of the 'violin notation' which guitars can use, which is nearest to lute tablature in terms of displaying the structure of the music. What you hear is not what you would expect a human player to produce. It is much less resonant than that or a conventional multi-part guitar notation computer performance. I may use this as an example of the relative merits of Vln notation versus multi-part in the forum.
Concertino for Piano and Orchestra (1971) Op. 25 This is a short atonal work from a period when this was a conventional style and many composers had given up writing tonal music. When I typed it into Sibelius I could see some good things in it and felt it ought to be available to anyone who might like to play it, so it is on IMSLP. Rhythmically it is rather foursquare but I think it has good serial tunes in it.
In Nomine a 6, Op. 35 No. 1 This is an In Nomine inspired by the gongs of the Catalan sculptor Jaume Plensa which are currently at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
The computerised performance here does not articulate the repeated notes as clearly as a real viol consort would..... Must look at this.
Dives and Lazarus, from Ludi Musici, for 2 Violins Ludi Musici is a collection of pieces conceived and scored for treble and tenor recorders. No. 2 is a duo based on the folk song Dives and Lazarus, presented here in the 2 violin version.
Trio for Flute, Oboe & Bassoon (1970) Op. 19 This trio is one of several serial compositions I was wrote in the late sixties early seventies. This was the standard [i]academic[/i] style and several professors of music then wrote [i]how to do[/i] books on serial composition. It uses two twelve-note series and has a vague tonality of E.
1st Movement of Viola Concerto Op. 23 This piece was written in 1971, and is in the Hindemith / Bartok style I was then writing in. It uses a small orchestra of double woodwind.
List of Works
This list of works is taken from the records of concert details
listed in our
concerts section . It is not intended to be comprehensive, but serves
as a useful link to recent performances of this composer's work.
Martin Grayson Biography
Want to improve this description? You can
edit it .
Sheet music by Martin Grayson