EXTRACT "Awakening" for Orchestra - "Awakening" movement 3

Awakening

For Orchestra

John Evans

“What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.”

- Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton, T. S. Elliot

Awakening is a journey. I used to write songs and tour as a rock musician. As the years went by I started to see these songs as snapshots of my life - periods of my life or about someone in particular.

“Awakening” for orchestra is in four movements. Each of the elements and themes within each movement is an expression about my feelings during this period.

The first movement, “Out of darkness” starts with a long forbidding note. There is a slow brooding build up depicting a melancholic state that transcends into something more affirming. The movement explores a variety of themes and contrasting keys and sections resolving into pastoral music depicting a love of nature and England as I thought it once was…

“Flight” movement two, is an expression of escaping the internal violence, angst, fear and the traumatic landscape of half remembered dreams and memories. I explore the high and lows and the extremes of chaos in a fast moving movement that is punctuated with percussive rhythms and strong brass outbursts.

“Awakening”, the third movement of the Symphony and the movement from which the Symphony is named, is a neo-romantic dreamscape, a fulfilling awakening, moving away from darkness and looking towards the light. The movement opens with rich string ensemble writing and soaring melodies, a calming from the previous movement, memories of a lost love. An elegy for the brevity of life and inspired by the T.S. Elliot quote “in my beginning is my end” with the movement resolving in hope.

“Coming Home” (the final movement) is an affirmation of this awakening, a coming home to myself and nature. Each of the previous movements themes are drawn together, entangled and developed seeking an acceptance, but perhaps not a resolution.