(2022) for string quartet
Duration: 23 minutes
2 violins, viola, cello
World Premiere: 25.5.23, Octagon Chapel, Norwich: Solem Quartet
Commissioned by the Solem Quartet with generous support from Marchus Trust, Jerwood Arts Live Work Fund, Peter and Veronica Lofthouse and Carol Nixon.
(2021) for violin, cello and piano
Duration: 7 minutes
World Premiere: 12.12.21, Kohl Mansion, Burlingame, California: The Lee Trio
Through Vanished Arches was commissioned by The Lee Trio
(2021) a ballet score
Duration: 9 minutes
violin and piano
World Premiere: 11.07.21, Kings Place, London, UK: Sara Trickey (violin), Ivana Gavric (piano) Laurel Dalley Smith and Liam Riddick (dancers) Choreography by Kim Brandstrup
commissioned by Spitalfields Music, with the support of the New Music Commission Fund
“The myth of Psyche, able to sense and feel her lover Cupid but forbidden to look at him, forms the subject of A Duet in the Dark, a pas de deux of remarkable beauty, danced by Liam Riddick and Laurel Dalley Smith, who convey closeness, desire and tenderness, but rarely touch, apart from brief, vertiginous lifts. The understated eroticism of Brandstrup’s choreography mirrors Finnis’s exquisitely crafted score, with its throbs, pulses and melodic refinement, the latter very much geared to the lyricism and sweetness of Trickey’s playing. […] Fascinating, all of it.” ★★★★ The Guardian
(2021) for string quartet
Duration: 14 minutes
2 violins, viola, cello
World Premiere: 10.7.21, Christ Church Spitalfields, London, UK: Manchester Collective
“a finely balanced work in four short movements that uses all the timbres and mysterious overtones of four strings, four instruments without hurry or urgency, and with minimal use of vibrato. The slow dialogue between the instruments had the meditative feel of 17th-century English consort music by Lawes or Purcell. Or that’s how it seemed on first hearing. I might think quite differently on a second encounter with this bewitching work, which I hope will be soon.” ★★★★ Fiona Maddocks, The Observer
(2019) For 12 string players
Duration: 14 minutes
6 vn. 3 vla. 2 vc. db
World Premiere: 6.7.19, Purcell Room, London: Manchester Collective
The Centre is Everywhere was commissioned by the Manchester Collective with generous support from the RVW Trust and PRS Foundation.
“Edmund Finnis’s The Centre Is Everywhere offered a tranquil oasis. A rising star, the British composer seems to make the very air shimmer with his music. Written for 12 strings, inspired by a medieval description of God, the piece mesmerises with aquatic loveliness, ideas rising in waves. The whole is ineffably beautiful, it demands us to pay attention.” The Times
“an ecstatic experience”
Bachtrack“delicate, microtonal string writing woven into drifting clouds of sound, that provided real musical subtlety”
The Guardian“…haunting, iridescent work by Edmund Finnis …. scored for 12 string players, the piece has an ageless, ancient-yet-modern quality: like a shimmering ghost of Lawes’ viol consorts, a fine latticework of line and colour is viewed through a kaleidoscope of grainy harmonies and whistling white noise.”★★★★★ BBC Music Magazine
“a bewitching piece for 12 string players”
The Guardian“Filling the stage in an egalitarian formation of a semicircle, Manchester Collective performed Edmund Finnis’ The Centre is Everywhere, an interwoven texture of 12 independent voices that created a shifting foreground of dynamic arching lines, washing over and converging in cascades of harmony, petering out into the texture of white noise.” www.cutcommonmag.com
While composing this piece I was giving a lot of thought to the space of a piece of music; how within a piece of music we can become aware of foregrounds, backgrounds and numerous planes in between. I also have an enduring fascination with the interaction that takes place between the physical space of a performance and the interior/mental space within each of us, where vibrations of air are perceived and held in the memory. The more that I make music, the more richly mysterious I find this process to be.
The movement of sounds and ideas around the space of an ensemble of string players was integral to my thinking about this piece. The twelve musicians create together a layered musical space through which interlocking patterns of sound emerge, accumulate and disperse. The music is replete with overlapping lines that rise and fall, moving from hushed white-noise to wide, full-bodied sound and back again in wavelike motions.
The title comes from an anonymous medieval definition of God as ‘an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere’. The beautiful intangibility of this image captured my imagination when I first read it and made note of it years ago in an old notebook. It came back to me early on while thinking about this piece and somehow guided my decisions about how to shape the music.
© Edmund Finnis
(2019) For violin, cello and piano
Duration: 10 minutes
violin, cello and piano
World Premiere: 11.2.19, West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, UK: Britten Sinfonia
Five Trios was commissioned by Britten Sinfonia
In these five short trios the fabric of the music is made of flowing iterative patterns, delicate pulsations, closely interwoven colours, lines tracing arcs, unfolding and revolving at different speeds, sustained resonances that hover and dissipate in the air like mist, and undulating piano figures that the bowed strings glide through and above.
© Edmund Finnis
(2018) For string quartet
Duration: 16 minutes
2 violins, viola and cello
World Premiere: 25.5.18, Cason Hirschprunn, Margreid, South Tyrol: Minetti Quartet
String Quartet No.1 - "Aloysius" was commissioned by Alois Lageder and Aldeburgh Festival
“Given its affecting rocking patterns, expressive musings on gravely beautiful polyphony by Byrd, and the natural ease of its writing for strings, I now look forward to Quartet 2, 3, and 4”
The Times“[E]in zartes, fünfsätziges Werk voller Poesie.”
“A delicate five-movement work full of poetry”
Klassik.com
This quartet is in five movements. While composing the piece I had in my mind: the shape of a valley; the image of clouds forming and dissipating; lines becoming interwoven and energy being passed around between four individuals; a sense of sounds breathing.
The fourth movement is a reflection on the hymn ‘Christe, qui lux es et dies’ by William Byrd.
String Quartet No.1 – ‘Aloysius’ was co-commissioned by Alois Lageder and Aldeburgh Festival, and is dedicated to the Lageder family.
© Edmund Finnis
(2015) For ensemble of 15 players
Duration: 16 minutes
2 cl (I+II=bcl) - 2 fgh - perc(2): t.bells/crot/2 nipple gongs (medium)/vib/glock/bell plate/2 marbles/2 metal thimbles - 2 pf - strings (2221)
World Premiere: 6.2.16, CBSO Centre, Birmingham: BCMG/Richard Baker
Commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, with financial assistance through BCMG's Sound Investment Scheme
“…music of simply stunning beauty… exquisitely handled … extremely impressive…. the most magical music of the evening”
5against4“The symmetrical construction of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s latest programme reflected the symmetry of the amazing work premiered at the heart of it.
Latest in the long line of BCMG’s spectacularly successful Sound Investment commissions, Edmund Finnis’ Parallel Colour employs two virtually identical ensembles, facing each other, with a lone double-bass as the linking king-pin. In some ways this symmetry goes back to the two orchestras of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and though Bach uses his forces for dramatic and contrasting ends, here Finnis sees his own more as vehicles for repetition and refraction, as mirror-like as the confluence of sea and sky on a still horizon.
There is sheer beauty in the timbres he creates – subdued, sometimes ethereal – and only towards the too-soon-reached end is there a slight livening-up of activity. […] its effect was totally magical. Richard Baker conducted a willing BCMG in this premiere of what I would dare to declare a masterpiece in the genre. ”
Birmingham Post
Parallel Colour
This piece is in seven short movements. The ensemble of fifteen musicians is divided into two symmetrical groups, with a double bass in the centre. The arrangement of the musicians in the space informs the way the music is designed. Clear and direct patterns of sound are made to move across the ensemble-space, variously heard in canon, in parallel motion, overlapping or closely interwoven. Near-replica harmonies and melodic shapes are voiced alongside one another, exchanged between the instruments, or heard unfolding together at different speeds and in different registers. The piece is replete with tilted reflections and echoes, as if the music is mirrored back on itself.
While writing this piece I held in my mind an indelible memory of a late afternoon spent looking out at the Baltic Sea. On that cold and radiantly clear day the incredible stillness of the water’s surface made a near-perfect mirror of the sea, with the horizon as a sharply drawn line dividing subtly divergent colours.
© Edmund Finnis
(2015) For violin and ensemble
Duration: 16 minutes
1(=picc+afl).1.1.0 - 1110 - perc(1): t.bells/crot/2 bell plates/2 marbles/2 metal thimbles - pno - solo vln - 2 vln.vla.vcl.db
World Premiere: 10.12.15, St John at Hackney Church, London: Benjamin Beilman/London Contemporary Orchestra/Hugh Brunt
Shades Lengthen was commissioned by London Music Masters, supported by the Boltini Trust.
Shortlisted for RPS Music Awards 2016 – Chamber Scale Composition
“… Shades Lengthen, a beautiful new chamber violin concerto by Edmund Finnis. That was the centrepiece of a superb London Contemporary Orchestra concert in the incense-drenched cavern of St John-at-Hackney. Commissioned by London Music Masters and the Boltini Trust and played with mesmerising lyricism by Benjamin Beilman, the piece has an elegiac quality that reflects its title, with detunings and rich Tippettian counterpoint.”
The Times, Richard Morrison“exquisite”
Sara Mohr-Pietsch, BBC Radio 3
Shades Lengthen
I have a tendency to begin new pieces by imagining music in quite visual terms. Not in any pictorial or illustrative sense, but in a more abstract way, thinking about foregrounds, backgrounds and planes in between, and considering how different elements within a piece might be made to interact, overlap and sit alongside one another.
While working on this piece I was thinking explicitly about line and shadow. The solo violin is almost always heard distinctly in the foreground, voicing clearly articulated arcing lines of sound. Parts of these lines are often picked up by instruments in the ensemble, ‘shadowed’ and heard again in canon or in stretched elongated forms. The ensemble also creates varied kinds of sound surfaces upon which the solo line and its shadows are cast. Throughout the four movements of the piece there is an overriding obsession with lines in simple rising and falling motions, heard from the violin and threaded through the ensemble at different registers and at varied speeds.
As well as referring to the relationship between soloist and ensemble, I also wanted the title of the piece to evoke a particular quality and mood of evening light, closing of day, when the colours of sky can intensify before draining away. While writing the ending of the piece I was thinking about the subtle sense of acceleration that can be felt while observing the last seconds before sun dips below horizon.
© Edmund Finnis
(2012/2015) For violin and viola
Duration: 11 minutes
World Premiere: First performance of version in 4 movements: 16.3.15, Roundhouse, London: Galya Bisengalieva, Robert Ames
Brother was commissioned by the London Contemporary Orchestra
(2013) For 14 musicians
Duration: 11 minutes
1(=picc+afl).1(=eh).1.1 - 1110 - perc(1): glsp/tam-t/nipple gong (medium)/t.bells/2 marbles/2 metal thimbles - pno (prepared w. blu-tak) - 2 vln.vla.vcl.db
World Premiere: First performance: 8.12.13, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London: London Sinfonietta, Baldur Brönnimann
Seeing is Flux was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta with the generous support of Michael and Patricia McLaren-Turner.
“Notable was the level of technical accomplishment in works conceived in diverse styles and mostly produced by a younger generation of composers. Premiered as the final concert’s centrepiece, Edmund Finnis’s Seeing Is Flux takes its title from the American novelist Siri Hustvedt, its layered textures and ambiguous blend of innocence and sophistication demonstrating a keen ear for sonority skilfully deployed throughout a neat and effective structure; conductor Baldur Brönnimann held its iridescent surface up to the light in what proved to be a compelling reading.”
The Guardian“Melodic patterns swarmed like sardines through Edmund Finnis’s likeable Seeing is Flux”
The Times
(performed by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Garry Walker)
“The Sinfonietta opened with a graceful piece by Edmund Finnis called Seeing Is Flux, its featherlight strands deftly laced together.”
The Guardian
Clear and direct linear patterns of sounds are variously heard in sequence, superimposed and threaded through the ensemble; subtle pulsations and sustained resonances act like grids and flat planes of sound that these patterns flow across, overlap and intersect with; the instruments make lines that intertwine, dovetail and shadow one another.
The title of this piece is lifted from a Siri Hustvedt novel. While composing I was thinking about parallels between listening and seeing, reflecting particularly on experiences of looking at the line-based drawings and paintings of the artists Nasreen Mohamedi and Agnes Martin. I had in mind the kind of friction that exists between the calm, iterative clarity of their work and the complex act of perception itself, which elicits memory, shifts focus and is perpetually in flux.
© Edmund Finnis
(2013) For 9 musicians
Duration: 15 minutes
fl (=afl). cl - perc(1): sus.cym/t.bells/glsp/vib - pno - 2vln.va.vlc.db
World Premiere: 15.6.13, Dillon Gallery, New York City: Chelsea Music Festival Ensemble, Ken-David Masur
in situ was commissioned by the Chelsea Music Festival
“Elegant, shapely, cool in its timbres … the piece deserves to slip into any imaginative programme.”
Birmingham Post
in situ
I. (after Perotin)
II. (after Locke)
III. (after Josquin des Prez)
IV. (after Brumel)
V. (afterRameau)
in situ is inspired in part by the mirror sculptures of the late American artist, John McCracken. These reflective pillars alter our perception of the landscapes they inhabit in fascinating ways, each one simultaneously merging into its surrounding while mirroring it back on itself, creating angular incisions of spaces and uncanny perspectives on otherwise familiar scenes.
Each of the five parts of in situ takes a pre-existing piece of music and treats it as a kind of landscape into which analogous distorting mirrors are placed. Fragments of the original pieces are spliced, freely reassembled, recomposed, dwelt upon, as if being folded into new shapes or reflected back on themselves. The attitude towards the source material is never one of irony or subversion, but instead comes out of a deep fondness, a desire to live and move around for a while in these musical spaces.
© Edmund Finnis
(2012) Clarinet and Piano
Duration: 10 minutes
cl, pno
World Premiere: 8.12.12, Royal Festival Hall, London: Mark Simpson, Víkingur Ólafsson
Four Duets was commissioned by Mark Simpson with generous financial assistance from the Fidelio Charitable Trust
There is parity between the two instruments in these short duets. I wanted to treat the clarinet and piano as equals, avoiding the hierarchy of a soloist-plus-accompaniment scenario.
The first duet takes the opening melodic idea of Josquin des Prez’s motet Memor esto verbi tui and unravels it, prolonging its rise-and-fall motion.
The second makes patterns out of the interplay between varied speeds (like individual parts of a mobile spinning autonomously), ending with a coda of soft imitative pulsing.
The third is a single unfolding melodic line, the piano shadowing and fusing with the clarinet.
The fourth, like the first, is made of canons.
© Edmund Finnis
(2012) String Septet
Duration: 11 minutes
2 vln. 2 vla. 2 vlc. db
World Premiere: 12.3.12, Carnegie Zankel Hall, New York: various/E.Finnis
This piece is influenced in part by looking at Bridget Riley’s vibrant paintings from the late 1980s, and reading Josef Albers’ book, Interaction of Colour.
The ensemble is divided into two trios, underpinned by a double bass. By detuning the strings in one of the trios, a kind of asymmetry occurs: the resonant qualities of the trios become slightly divergent, making the twin instrumental groups speak with subtly different voices.
Musical material is passed around the ensemble, and the trios variously merge, imitate, blur, and pull apart from each other; similar iterative patterns are set against one another in canonic interplay; the surface of the music fluctuates between situations of friction and fusion.
While composing, I had in mind the ways in which adjacent colours seem to vibrate against one another in Riley’s paintings, and Albers’ deft demonstrations of how colours are perceived in relation to one another, rather than as physical absolutes.
© Edmund Finnis
(2012) Chamber ensemble of 4 players
Duration: 12 minutes
cl (=cl in A detuned 1/4-tone). pno. vln. vlc
World Premiere: 19.3.12, The Forge, London: Mercury Quartet
Quartet in Three Parts was commissioned by the Mercury Quartet
(2012) String Duo
Duration: 5 minutes
vln. vlc
World Premiere: 20.8.12, Seiji Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood: Micah Ringham, Michael Dahlberg
(2011 rev.2012) Chamber ensemble of 5 players
Duration: 7 minutes
fl (=picc+afl). cl (=cl in Eb). hn. vln. vlc
World Premiere: 5.11.11, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London: London Sinfonietta
Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta as part of Writing the Future, which is generously supported by the Boltini Trust, The John S Cohen Foundation, Anthony Mackintosh and Michael and Patricia McLaren-Turner
I could point to three non-musical influences that were on my mind while composing this piece: the shimmering grid paintings of Agnes Martin, the near-weightless and transparent architecture of Junya Ishigami, and Italo Calvino’s 1985 lecture on ‘Lightness’ in his Six Memos for the Next Millennium.
In their respective mediums, both Martin and Ishigami seem to me to be reaching for something akin to the ideal of ‘thoughtful lightness’ that Calvino describes. This is not lightness in the sense of frivolity or superficiality, but rather the ‘subtraction of weight’ that can bring about clarity, flexibility, precision… a letting-in of light. They create work whose subtle, elegant forms invite the perception of fine detail.
Thinking about the connections between these influences led me to compose a piece characterised by delicate reiterative musical patterns (sometimes heard in sequence, sometimes superimposed) and an absence of bass or loud sounds. I aimed to make music with a quiet intensity, and to find a balance between senses of agility and poise.
© Edmund Finnis
(2011, rev.2012) Chamber Ensemble of 14 players
Duration: 5 minutes
1(=picc+afl).0.1.1 - 1110 - perc(1): crot(with bow)/tam-t/t.bells - pno (prepared with blutak) - harp - 2 vln.vla.vlc.db
World Premiere: 22.7.11, Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh: Britten/Pears Ensemble/Gregory Charette
This piece is partly inspired by the experience of seeing Junya Ishigami’s designs of near-weightless architecture. The clarity of his structures – their transparency – was frequently on my mind while composing.
The music is made of a number of clearly differentiated musical materials that reappear in various combinations throughout the piece. Hard, stone-like notes ricocheting on prepared piano; iterative patterns of chords on high strings; a rising and falling duet of clarinet and muted trumpet; sustained brass chords whose tunings drift like warped vinyl; various kinds of steady-state metallic percussion backgrounds…
The piece ends with the majority of its constituent musical elements superimposed and interweaved, heard simultaneously. Here another analogy, aside from Ishigami’s work, could be of a clockwork orrery whose individually rotating parts eventually become aligned.
© Edmund Finnis
(2011) Chamber ensemble of 8 players
Duration: 7 minutes
fl (=picc). cl(= cl in Eb). ca. hn. pno. vla. vlc. db
World Premiere: 26.2.11, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London: members of BBC Symphony Orchestra/Guildhall Musicians/Richard Baker
This piece, composed in 2010 for members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and postgraduate students of the Guildhall School, plays with different types of musical momentum. Sound surfaces defined by their high speed are juxtaposed with points of volatile stasis; there is an underlying obsession with basic upward and downward motions; recurring harmonic patterns variously expand and contract; polyphonies alternate with moments of unified direction; related harmonies surge into one another; the music begins over and over, each time being pulled in different directions, the texture eventually coming apart before regaining momentum.
© Edmund Finnis