AGNOSTIC was commissioned by the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in 1997 for David Campbell and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Graham Fitkin   1997

Aract was composed in 1990 for piano duo.   It is short and loud.  The piece opens in C minor, flirts with Eb major in the middle and ends in C minor again.  It’s rhythmic, doesn’t develop its material very much and doesn’t try too hard.

Graham Fitkin 1990

Ardent was commissioned by the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in 1993. It was composed in the spring of that year and first performed at St Donats Castle in South Wales.

Much of my music starts in a certain way and doesn’t deviate from those parameters set up at the opening.   For instance if the piece is loud and fast then so be it for the whole thing.  Ardent was the first piece in which I decided to incorporate different parameters (maybe different emotional slants) in the same piece. There are five distinct sections - fast, slow, fast, slow, fast. There is no attempt to blend or fuse these sections. They use the same material, placed in different contexts, and each section is internally structured, as is the whole, by way of bald juxtaposition. The main thread of development which does occur throughout the piece is contained in solo piano chords. Initially these are moments of repose but as the piece progresses they expand, using elements of cross-relation, and the music closes with a piano coda.

Graham Fitkin 1994

BEBETO is a footballer.   He is a striker.   He played for Brazil.

Graham Fitkin   July 1995

In the early 90s I watched too many Australian soaps on tv. In particular the Neighbours storyline involved a slightly sordid and some would say unnecessary flirtation between Rosemary and some man with a beard whose name escapes me. I was watching the lunchtime slot wondering (again) when and if their tortuous relationship was ever to be consummated when Rosemary knocked at the bedroom door of a dreary hotel, hiding a surprise bottle of champagne behind her back. The man with beard opened the door, realised she had something for him and in a deeply lugubrious baritone, accompanied by overly gestural eyebrows and a smirk straight out of Twin Peaks, said - “I hope it’s something we can use in ... bed” - pausing for quite enormous dramatic effect at the appropriate point. I remember thinking - daytime telly, you can’t knock it - and went off to pay the licence fee.

This is a new arrangement of the piece and lasts approximately 7 minutes.

Graham Fitkin November 1999

This piece is short, loud and broadly in G major. It takes material from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, forces it into a small place and adds some kitsch whilst retaining some of the original pomposity.    It lasts about 2 minutes.

Graham Fitkin   February 2000

Blue was written in 1994.    It’s initial material was derived from music that I had written for a theatre piece - Skating For Many Scars - which was set on the frozen canals of a North European landscape.   Blue however is an entirely self  contained and non-narrative concert piece imbued with my interpretation of the original piece’s character, i.e. dark, bleak and progressing with inexorable momentum.

Graham Fitkin   1994

Bob was composed in 1996.   It is short, has a melody and accompaniment feel and is in C major.

Graham Fitkin    January 1997

Bolt was commissioned by Tom Bowes and Eleanor Alberga and received its first performance at the 1997 Vale of Glamorgan Festival.

Despite my general preference for writing music which doesn’t rely on hefty development for its momentum, BOLT is entirely constructed from the opening repeated motif.   It is something I’m not used to doing.   It posed some very interesting problems for me and resulted in a piece which I personally hear as music trying to escape from an enclosed box.   This again I find unusual - to be able to describe music in such a way.

It is 15 minutes long.

Graham Fitkin   July 1997

Bract is an orchestral piece based on the 1990 piano duo Aract. It is short and loud. The piece opens in C minor, flirts with Eb major in the middle and ends in C minor again. It’s rhythmic, doesn’t develop it’s material very much and doesn’t try too hard.

Graham Fitkin 2009

Carnal was composed in 1993 for Kate Ryder with financial support from Northern Arts.

Much of my  music has involved pianos to some degree, there are pieces for two, four and six pianos and a series of short stark miniatures for the solo instrument.    However Carnal  is one of the first extended works I have written for solo piano and breaks away from the somewhat introspective nature of the miniatures.     It attempts, in some small way, to explore the harmonic implications of the  ‘perfect cadence’  and how this might act as a starting  point for a piece rather than merely a close down.   The various sections of the piece approach this matter in different ways.

Carnal lasts approximately ten minutes.

Graham Fitkin  January 1995

I was asked to compose a piece for children to sing.  I was pleased.   I have often worked with children on music projects but not had the opportunity to write a piece for a specific age group.  I didn’t want to write a piece in which children ‘could’ sing but it might also be sung by others.  I wanted to write a piece in which it was vital that children sang and that no one else could do it with the same meaning.

It seemed sensible to me that children should have some input to the text being used.   At the time I was to compose the piece the schools involved in the premiere had not been identified, so I approached Waterloo Primary School in Liverpool, who I have worked with in the past, and they kindly agreed to help.  I compiled the final text from various sources - phrases from those children in Liverpool, phrases from adults about childhood, my own memories of my early thoughts and questions and obviously my own thoughts as an adult about childhood and growing up today.

Graham Fitkin November 2000

Graham Fitkin March 2002

Cliche is a short piece.   It is simple, repetitive and gushingly tonal.

Graham Fitkin   July 1993

Cud was written in 1988 for the Cleveland Youth Jazz Orchestra as part of a residency I undertook that year at the Dovecot Arts Centre in Stockton.   It was subsequently recorded by the John Harle Band in 1993.

At the time I was interested in integrating aspects of so called ‘light’ music into a mathematically proportioned structure and exploring ways of placing ‘muzak’ in different environments.   Cud is the result and lasts 15 minutes.

Graham Fitkin October 1998

This piece was commissioned by Andrew Roberts and composed in January 1997.     It was  written specifically  for the first national clarinet competition - The Trophee de Paris.    I wanted the character of this piece to be a precarious one,  continually on edge and not giving predictable paths through to the end.   The title refers to this.

Graham Fitkin   March 1997

Edging was written for Sophie Harris in 1999. It focuses on a small amount of musical material. I was interested in the way a single note can be ‘viewed’ from different perspectives.  I wanted to eschew unnecessary frippery and concentrate on sustained pitches placed in shifting but similarly restrained contexts. This I think is what happens on the whole.

Graham Fitkin    December 1999

Fervent was composed over two years.  This is unusual for me.   I normally work on a piece exclusively until it is completed before moving on to another piece.  In this case a great deal of other music was composed in between and quite possibly changed my perspective on FERVENT as I went.  The piece is in four parts - fast, slow, fast, slow.

Graham Fitkin December 1994

Flak was composed in 1989.   It lasts approximately six and a half minutes, has one major metric modulation and uses only the white notes of the pianos.

Graham Fitkin  September 1990

Food comprises five songs.    The text is derived from How To Eat by Nigella Lawson, and the recipes used are as follows -

Crostini

Gorgonzola with Mascarpone and Marsala (2 parts)

Lemon Linguine

Pea Souffle (2 parts)

Red Slump

Graham Fitkin    April 2001

Fract is a ten minute piece and was composed in 1989.   It contains some pretty lyrical stuff pitted against some more harmonically brutal passages.   I wanted to write a piece that was fractured from the very start, continued in that vein but endeavoured throughout to knit itself together, as if  a solid pulsating patchwork really would be the best conclusion.

Graham Fitkin  July 1993

FRAME was originally composed in 1991 for flute and marimba.  It was rearranged last year for two saxophones, piano and marimba.

Like many of my pieces Frame proceeds by the alternation of disparate blocks of music.  As is the case in other works the pulse remains the same throughout the piece.  Each block of material is developed in parallel, using a hefty amount of repetition, and is modified, extended and truncated according to some peculiar number system.  The reason for using this system was not arbitrary however, but designed to create and build tension and unpredictability throughout the piece.  I hope, for your sake, that it works.

Graham Fitkin  January 1997

Furniture was composed in 1989.   It is quite strange and twisted.  Harmonically the piece involves the manipulation and superimposition of major triads and dominant 7ths.   The resulting sounds are often intended to encase both the tension of an unresolved chord and the resolution of a final concord.   At other times the results are more likely to be perceived as tone clusters and good old-fashioned atonal discords.

Graham Fitkin March 1999

Game Show was composed in May and June 1997.   It was commissioned jointly for the Uster Festival in Switzerland and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and was written for the saxophonist Rob Buckland.

From time to time my life seems to hone in on the cosy ersatz world of soap operas, quiz shows, chat shows and phrases such as ‘...and on the conveyor belt tonight we have...’.   This somewhat worrying interest in those glitzy, smiley and kitsch elements of popular culture seems to lie at odds with my desire for a non-passive society.    In this piece I was trying to explore that nebulous territory between the high and the low, the superficial and the profound, the ironic, the camp and the notion of going ‘too far'.

Graham Fitkin    September 1997

This piece was commissioned by Mixing Music Festival in 2001 for Federico Mondelci and Kathryn Stott.   It starts from a trill.   The alternation of two adjacent notes gives rise to a simple and constant grouping of beats.  Place it in different temporal contexts and the inherent quality of the trill is questioned.

Graham Fitkin 2001

A catastrophe may be defined as an occurrence which changes an already existing state.

Catastrophes, large and small, can be executed in many ways and two brands particularly interest me.   The first (‘cusp’) is that open ended sort which allows for subsequent reappearance of the original state, such as the boiling of a kettle of water.   The second (‘fold’) is a more final brand allowing for no revertion at all and is the direct cause of a new ongoing state, for example when a china plate is smashed.

Granite uses this rudimentary notion of catastrophe theory to proceed from beginning to end.   Different bits of musical material are set up, altered slightly or altered beyond recognition, pushed out of the way only to recur identically later on, chopped into fragments, sown together to produce something else or obliterated once and for all.

Harmonically, texturally and instrumentally I wanted to create a sense of establishing, a sense of loss and a sense of no sense at all.   Therefore the sweetness of C major is foiled by violent discord, rampant polyphony butts in on simple melody and accompaniment, motorised neo-baroque rolls in on controlled romanticism, traditional structures are met by the flippancy of high camp.

Graham Fitkin    December 1995

Hard Fairy was composed in 1994.   A lot of the material used in the piece was composed  for a BBC2 dance film, however this final version of Hard Fairy is a complete reworking and restructuring without the visual and narrative elements.  It is non-programmatic, works by juxtaposition of blocks of material and, I like to think, is propelled by rhythmic momentum until the final coda, when everything sits back and the whole business can be viewed from a different angle.

Graham Fitkin  May 1994

1995 marked the 300th anniversary of the death of Purcell.    Henry was commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in acknowledgement of this anniversary.

I like Purcell’s music.   I have listened to a fair bit and enjoy it tremendously.    However, the commission to compose a piece specifically referring to his work required me to consider the relevance of his music to my own and how to utilise that in a piece written at the end of the 20th century.

I had a strong desire to avoid pastiche, for if that were the outcome I suggest we would all be better off listening to the original.    I also wanted to avoid the musical routes which have become Purcell’s trade marks and have been well plundered in themselves.

So in composition I wished to work with those elements that I perceive in his music and have found important, such as the overwhelming sense of clarity, the simplicity of harmonic movement and the desire for strong unfussy shapes.    Certainly there are direct references to his music (fragments from at least eight of his pieces are interwoven within HENRY) but it is these general factors set within the reverential character of the piece which I wished to convey.

The piece is in one movement and lasts for eleven minutes.

Graham Fitkin  April 1995

Hook was commissioned by Ensemble Bash for performance in the 1992 Park Lane Group Concerts.

Perversely, having been given an unlimited choice of percussion instruments to work with, I chose four marimbas as the medium best suited to the fast and rhythmic music I wanted to write.  I felt that in order for the little counterpoints to come though properly the four players should perform on instruments of the same timbre and not ‘rouge it up’ with lots of unnecessary clatter.   Having said that there is a little punctuating clatter supplied by rototoms and an ironic splash cymbal.

Graham Fitkin  July 1997

Hurl  was composed for the Apollo Saxophone Quartet in March and April of  1996.

As is the case in much of my work the piece proceeds by juxtaposing self-contained  musical blocks with the quartet often acting as a single homogenous instrument.   However,  there is increased polyphonic movement in this piece by building up two, three and four independent lines simultaneously alongside the passages in rhythmic unison.   In addition to this, I have used melody, and quite a lot of it too, to propel the music forward.    Hurl lasts about nine minutes.

Graham Fitkin   July 1996

I’ve never been one for splitting a piece into different movements with different characters.   I have a fondness for a single block of music in which I try and sort everything out with as much clarity as I can muster.

This piece is different.   It is my first piece to be split into three distinct movements - fast, slow, fast.    I wanted music to cross-reference between these movements but the perspectives to change for each one.  So the first movement hits the listener straight on, the second movement takes a more distant approach while the last movement sidles up in a disconcertingly underhand manner.  It’s hardly a novel way of going about things, in fact it’s a very traditional format, but I’d never done it before and I can now see why it’s been around so long.

This piece was commissioned by the Bath International Festival in 1997 and was premiered by the Graham Fitkin Group on 1 June that year.

Graham Fitkin  February 1999

The piece started from one phrase (the first bar).   It is a lilting monody which expands through additive durations (3 semiquavers, then 4 then 5).    I wanted the piece to retain this initial dance like quality but progress, expand in pitch range and rhythmic excitment, but utilise the notion of question and answer throughout.

Graham Fitkin 1995 

Graham Fitkin December 2005

In 1996 I collaborated with the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh on a new project entitled Palimpsest.   A palimpsest is a manuscript of some sort which has been erased in order to make way for something new.

Latent is the concert piece that I derived from that project.

When I composed the piece I wanted to be aware of a choice of musics layered on top of each other and the listener happens to be listening to just one of them.   Occasionally layers from underneath  cut through so that there might be uncertainty about which is the dominant music.    Sometimes a sub-plot from a larger idea is focused on and expanded to assume an independent and self-sufficient role.

The juxtaposition of layers and cutting from one music to another is structured quite carefully with rhythmic divisions and fragmentation coming from the number fifteen.   The piece lasts about 20 minutes.

Graham Fitkin  January 2000

Line was the third and final piece composed for Piano Circus in the 1990s.

Unlike the previous two works it is slow and sustained, though still focusing on the nature of unison and counterpoint.

Graham Fitkin    December 1991

Log was composed in 1990.

It is the third piece from a triptych of six-piano pieces and incorporates elements of the other two works, Loud and Line.   The piece unfolds simply through the alternation of slow unison material with faster polyphonic music, each slow passage acting as a massive upbeat to the following rhythmic section.   The piece lasts approximately 17 minutes.

Graham Fitkin  December 1990

Loud was composed in 1989 for Piano Circus.

The piece focuses on the nature of ensembles performing as one instrument.   The six pianos come together in rhythmic unison constantly throughout the piece but also split into trios, duos and solo lines.

It lasts 16 minutes.

Graham Fitkin 1989

An idea which fascinates me is how something which appears to be of the utmost importance can eventually turn out to be trivial.   Something which initially seems to be the whole reason for another activity can be subsumed by that subsequent activity and almost forgotten.  That initial something is a MacGuffin.

I first came across the term while reading Truffaut’s interviews with Alfred Hitchcock.   Hitchcock used MacGuffins throughout his work.   Secret documents, elements of narrative or pretexts for plots seem vital at certain times but in the larger context become virtually a byproduct of the film’s own momentum and therefore largely irrelevant.

This piece uses the idea of a MacGuffin.

It is sectional.  Each section is self-contained yet alters the course of all subsequent sections.  Initially I wanted to eschew what I saw as unnecessary frippery and focus each section on its own vital characteristics.  These characteristics might then bleed over from one section to another only to be lost in the evolving music and that which appeared vital at one stage becomes just another element of the whole.

Of course the MacGuffin occurs at different levels over the piece and perhaps the biggest is that what seems important to me in the music is quite possibly very different to what is important to you.

Graham Fitkin   September 1999

Metal was composed for the reopening of the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool in September 1995.

It is a short piece which is pretty celebratory in style.   The title refers to the use of metal within the piece.    It opens with untuned scaffolding being hit and as the piece progresses there is increased use of the RLPO’s four tuned ship’s bells.

Graham Fitkin  September 1995

Nasar was composed for Nicola Walker Smith in the summer of  1992.  The text comprises twelve sentences taken from Cronica De Una Muerte Anunciada by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Passages from the first chapter, on events prior to the killing, are alternated with passages from the final chapter, on the death itself.   The piece proceeds by  juxtaposing musical blocks.  These blocks are largely differentiated by tempo, rhythmic manipulation and melodic direction but are connected through their use of similar harmonies and modes.

Graham Fitkin   October 1992

North was commissioned by the Northern Orchestral Consortium and Yorkshire Promoters’ Group in 1998 and has received performances by the RLPO, ENP, BBC Philharmonic and Halle orchestras.

Much of my music is composed in conjunction with a desire for clarity and rigour.   I like clear shapes, abstract structures and immediacy.   So, if a piece starts loud and fast then I have a fondness in seeing it through to a loud and fast conclusion with little mucking about.  Likewise with  slow or sustained music.

This one’s different.   I find it tricky to describe but I wanted to explore different worlds within the same piece.   I wanted the music to hit the listener from different perspectives, not always straight on but occasionally in a sly manner from the side.   I wanted to blur the edges and allow a certain amount of musical nestling.

Personally I see this as something of a voyeurs’ piece.  I get the feeling of spying on different musical worlds, from a distance as if through glass, trying to experience and be part of something which remains out of reach.  Whether these aural worlds seem life affirming or empty is almost immaterial for ultimately one is left alone on the outside.

Graham Fitkin   February 1999

This piece was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for The Duke Quartet and composed in 2004.

I wrote Pawn at a time when I seemed to be constantly mulling over the notion of democracy.   I was thinking that for me it doesn’t really seem to work these days the way it was intended, and how I dislike the assumption that it is the best system today for so many different cultures.   I was thinking about the decisions of elected representatives and the basis on which all those decisions are made.   It all seemed pretty bleak.

This piece was commissioned by Nottingham City Council for performance by Nottingham choirs and the East of England Orchestra.    It was premiered on 15 July 2000 at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham.

Early this year I read Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and it started a train of thoughts which I wanted to explore in this piece.   I was interested in his ideas on the amount of time allotted to each one of us, how we all come to the same end and how only the ‘present’ really exists for each one of us - no past, no future.

A piece of music can be said to only exist when you’re actually hearing it.   This is not a new idea.   But I still wonder what exists of a piece of music outside that time and the codes which represent it?     And life, like music, exists in time.   It has similar parrallels and so again I wonder about these ‘codes’ which represent and record our lives, their incredible ability to mimic them and the idea of these ‘codes’ replacing the real thing.

As the fictionalising of our world accelerates and incorporates nanotechnology, digital communication and virtual reality, it seems that the prediction of catastrophes, which we humans relish so much, might not take into account the fact that they may have already occurred and are continually occurring.

The text of Perfect Crime comprises on the one hand statements from Marcus Aurelius, and on the other, my own questions to him regarding change, substitution and my own demise.

Graham Fitkin   October 2000

Piano Piece 93 is one of a series of piano works written in the 80s and 90s which set out to do very little.   All of them are simple in construction but unlike many of these pieces which are chordal, ‘93’ focuses more on melody.   In the piece I was concerned with the ideas of restraint and nostalgia.

Graham Fitkin   December 1993

PK was composed for musicians from Cornwall and London alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra and commissioned by the BBC for performance at the 2010 Proms Festival.

For many years the cove of Porthcurno in the far west of Cornwall was central to global connectivity.   It was the exit point for the first submarine cable linking the UK to India and at one time was the world's largest cable station with 14 cables running worldwide linking the UK with all the major continents.   My home is close to this site and I'm interested in the pivotal role that a tiny remote settlement in rural England had with a global communication system then and which persists still today in the digital age.   The code name for Porthcurno was PK.

The music is often derived from morse code (the language of telegraphy) and the sung text was chosen from telegraphic messages sent in the late 19th century.

Graham Fitkin   August 2010

The situation might be as follows.   A successful end result is incredibly important.   The emphasis on achieving a result could not be greater.   The process of getting there is ridiculously tense.   It is littered with potentially disastrous problems.   There can be no admission of this.   Failure is not permitted.   As the process continues the sense of urgency grows.   What degree of forced compromise is necessary to break a deadlock?   What if the end result is not achieved?  That is not a possibility.  The end result must be achieved.   But what if there is no breakthrough - what is Plan B?   Plan B?   There is no Plan B.

Graham Fitkin     November 1999

This piece is about time.   It is about my perception of time, its various manifestations and ultimate inevitability.   I think about the way I use my time, how much I need and just how long it feels like.  I think about continuous time, circular time and our society’s preoccupation with marking the passage of time.   And then I think about the relentless addition of time and how for me some day it will just stop.

This piece was composed for Kathryn Stott for premiere at Wigmore Hall in 2000.

Graham Fitkin   November 1998

Sciosophy was composed in 1986.   It was the first piece that I ever wrote using the juxtaposition of musical blocks as a prime structuring tool.  There are four of these blocks which are repeated, truncated, modified and generally mucked about with for four and a half minutes.

Graham Fitkin    September 1988

Servant was written in 1992 as a string quartet and reorchestrated in 1998 for full string orchestra.    It is in one movement and lasts thirteen minutes.

The piece opens with the strings appearing as a single instrument presenting its material in strict rhythmic unison.    As the piece proceeds the orchestra splits in to two voices, then three, four and so on with increasing frequency.    However, the inclination towards rhythmic unison is strong and, despite evolving polyphony, continues to recur and duly the piece is closed from the perspective of the single instrument.

Graham Fitkin   December 2002

Skew was commissioned by the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble for performance at the Muziekcentrum, Utrecht on 28 January 1997.

This piece was conceived and composed as one complete movement.   I intended that the music within this structure would travel from one plateau to another, flitting both harmonically and texturally through diverse and juxtaposed blocks of music before grabbing at the stability of new tonal centres.   I wanted the music to transmit a strong rhythmic momentum, negotiating the sharp corners of intercut passages, extended or truncated, and framed between syncopated ostinati of equal or unequal groupings, whilst maintaining a constant tempo.

By placing familiar harmonic progressions in this context I wished to create a somewhat perverse ambience, slightly off centre, slightly bemused.

Graham Fitkin     November 1997

Slow was composed in 1990 with the financial support of an Arts Council bursary.

It is a single movement piece lasting twenty five minutes and is based on the methodical juxtaposition and parallel development of three contrasting blocks of material.   The music is sustained and deliberately eschews excess harmonic activity, rhythm is used more homogenously than in previous pieces and the seventeen sections are laid end to end with only a single collision of material two-thirds of the way through the piece.

Graham Fitkin      January 1992

Stub was commissioned by The Delta Saxophone Quartet in late 1991.   It is in one movement and lasts ten minutes.   The piece opens with the quartet appearing as a single instrument presenting its material in strict rhythmic unison.   As  the piece proceeds, by way of juxtaposing musical blocks, the quartet splits into pairs, three parts and finally four independent voices with increasing frequency.

Graham Fitkin     January 1993

By that I mean devising some sort of strategy to conceal something.       This piece was composed in the summer of 2007 for the 10th anniversary of 10:10 Ensemble.

Graham Fitkin    August 07

There Is A Great On My Head Tonight was composed in 1986.   It lasts approximately nine minutes, works through both polyphony and rhythmic unison towards utter chaos at the golden section and closes with a strong backbeat-led coda from underneath.

Graham Fitkin     September 1990

This piece, with its frighteningly long title, was written in 1986.   The roles of the two instruments are clearly defined throughout the piece.   The bass clarinet charges jaggedly across its range from one zone to the next while the piano percussively fragments the piece with chordal stabs and occasional bass.  The piece uses vertically symmetrical harmonies from clusters to fifths and is ridiculously syncopated.

Graham Fitkin    October 1995

This piece was composed for the Fitkin Group in June 2000 for a UK tour of the group later in the year.   It was financially supported by the Arts Council National Tour Programme.

Turning focuses on a very small amount of material.   I wanted to limit the development of this material and keep the emotional side of things within a tolerably narrow band width.

Graham Fitkin      June 2000

Although it was composed between June and September 2010, the sketches and harmonic material for this piece were generated during a 26 day bicycle journey I took with my partner Ruth in October 2009 from the top to the heel of Italy.  The music has nothing to do with cycling or Italy, but in a somewhat pedantic way, at the end of every day’s cycling, I spent time ritually working on sketches for music  according to the gps data and other such stuff for that day’s journey.

This piece was jointly commissioned for Ensemble 10/10, the Contemporary Music Group of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Graham Fitkin  November 2010

Graham Fitkin    1994

The music for Watching comes from a chamber opera, Ghosts, which I composed in 1993.   The opera, based on a story by Paul Auster, focuses on a man who has been hired to watch another man for as long as necessary.   It concentrates on his state of mind, the way he begins to notice things that he hasn't seen before, the increasing loneliness which descends and how watching another person so intimately seems akin to watching himself.

It lasts about 8 minutes.

Graham Fitkin   January 2000