Mark Bowden

May 2006 – August 2007
www.markbowden.net

Commissions

Fuga Allegro
11 June 2006 | Handel House
A keyboard fugue by Handel, arranged for string quartet by Mozart, and completed by Mark to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.

when the sun begins to fling
21 June 2007 | Spitalfields Festival, London
A work for a flexible ensemble commissioned as part of the Spitalfields Festival. when the sun begins to fling takes as its starting point the oratorio L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato by Handel. The oratorio is a setting of two poems by Milton. In the first poem Milton evokes the delights of the country and the excitement of the city in order to banish melancholic feelings whilst the second poem seeks to drive out ‘vain, deluding joys’ by welcoming quiet contemplation and the pleasures of the mind. The piece draws on one particular section of recitative from Handel’s oratorio, And when the Sun begins to fling, from which all of the harmonic and rhythmic material is derived.

black yew, white cloud
A string quartet in three parts. The title is taken from a line in Sylvia Plath’s poem Little Fugue and refers to the many musical polarities at play in the work.