Peter Maxwell Davies

The Turn of the Tide

The task: to write a piece that could involve children as players, singers and composers alongside a professional symphony or chamber orchestra. The solution: a peace-cry for the biosphere, in which the collaborative nature of the enterprise is a metaphor for a wished-for human enlightenment to the ways of the natural world. Davies provides five musical elements and five ways of development, and uses these to illustrate five branches of life on earth: water-plants, trees, fish, birds and mammals (including man). There is a space for answers from children's instrumental groups, and then a larger space in which the children can develop the given ideas, perhaps with members of the orchestra. Davies returns as composer to depict, through an excess of development, creation turned sour. Finally everyone comes together with a unison hymn, with orchestra and instrumental groups, celebrating the turn of the tide
. This work for young instrumentalists, children's chorus and orchestra, was commissioned by the Association of British Orchestras as the centrepiece of an education project which coincided with the implementation of the National Curriculum for music in schools in England and Wales, echoing similar developments in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Score. Duration c. 25mins.