Hoyland: In Transit & Vixen

Featuring

Martyn Brabbins
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Vic Hoyland

Did you know?

1/7

Compositional Technique

The melody in In Transit is highly chromatic and sensuous, not overtly tonal nor clearly atonal, with undulations akin to a natural landscape.

Composition History

Hoyland's work, including EM (1970), ES (1971), and Jeux-Thème (1972), showed astonishing originality from the beginning, defying categorization.

Compositional Technique

In Transit features the musicians split into two orchestras with a centrally-placed percussionist, allowing the music to move geographically between them.

Composition History

Vixen's working title, A-Vixen-A, is a play on words, referencing an earlier work called Fox and the medieval Persian scholar Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā).

Composer's Artistic Vision

Hoyland, a confirmed modernist, delights in discovery and experiment, conveying this through works that speak with bold directness and musical clarity.

Historical Context

The composer's research for Vixen led him to modern translations of Ibn Sīnā's writings on music, revealing early understandings of rhythmic cycles and patterns.

Composer Biography

Vic Hoyland, the composer, has influenced generations of students and young professional composers in the UK for thirty years and is currently Reader in Composition at Birmingham University.