Cat No. JM50332
Price £77.20
Composer: Richard Grantham
Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works)

Set as the 3rd. Section Test Piece for the 2011 National Finals. Duration 12.50

Darkness Visible is a musical essay on light and shade, and can be accessed on multiple levels of meaning. At one level, Darkness Visible is a journey through a dark landscape which could be external, such as space. Flashes of light create islands of expectancy as the music descends to its darkest moment in the short funereal section which begins with muted comets and a mournful solo horn figure. However, like all human stories, light permeates the darkness even at our most extreme moments of tension. After sections of both violence and awe a resolution or indeed re-birth is reached after a broad and expansive theme first heard on a lonely soprano cornet builds to create a brilliant light that will end the journey for all.

On another level, Darkness Visible could be experienced as an internal struggle; one soul’s fight with its own demons, real or imagined. Death and rebirth are alluded to here as part of life’s great journey and the work could indeed be seen as a series of degrees on the square leading to a final mastery over that great fear and uncertainty that all must face at some time.
Darkness Visible is a mosaic of themes and rhythmic ideas revolving around the guiding principles mentioned above and whatever interpretation of these fragments one chooses, the music as a whole should always feel like a journey that begins in darkness and ends in a glorious blaze of light!

RICHARD GRANTHAM :
Richard was born in Sheffield and studied Music at Huddersfield University. He is a former Principal Cornet of The National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain and winner of the Alexander Owen Memorial Scholarship. Richard’s interest in composing and arranging began while still at school where he came under the watchful eye of the legendary George Thompson of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. He later studied with Richard Steinitz and Peter Lawson at Huddersfield. During the next 20 years, much of Richard’s musical focus was on performing and conducting where he performed with some of the UK’s top brass bands and worked as a free-lance Trumpeter and Musical Director.

Throughout this time though, he continued to compose and arrange music for a variety of ensembles including the Rothwell Band in the UK and BB De Waldsang in Holland. During the last 10 years Richard has devoted more of his time to composing and his brass and wind music has been performed, broadcast and recorded throughout the world. In 2009, his popular ‘Hostile Skies’ was used as the First Section test piece at the Butlins National Mineworkers Open Brass Band Festival.

Richard has worked for a number of years in education and is currently Head of Lower School at Kelvin Hall School in Hull.