Jonathan Harvey

Instrumentation: 1(=picc).1(=ca).1.1 – hn – pno – 2 vln.vla.vlc.db Tendril (1987) is scored for eleven instruments and was commissioned and first performed by the Nash Ensemble. The work is a vivid so...

Body Mandala was commissioned by the BBC for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2006. The work is influenced by purification rituals in Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries and is arranged for a large Orc...

Speakings for orchestra and electronics is undoubtably one of Jonathan Harvey's most important and ambitious works. Composed in 2008, it utilises a unique process of electronic transformation develope...

In Ricercare una melodia , an ingenious work for solo instrument and tape delay from the mid 1980s, Jonathan Harvey takes the literal meaning of Ricercare - 'to seek' - as the inspiration for its stru...

First performed by the Orion Trio in Southampton 1971. Arranged for Violin, Cello and Piano. Duration 15 minutes. Includes score and parts.

A short but compelling solo for cello. . . revealed a familiar intensity of spiritual ambition. Daily Telegraph, 21 June 1982 This work takes as its starting inspiration a model of human personality....

Pre-Echo for Jean-Guihen, composed by Jonathan Harvey. Arranged in handwritten digital sheet music format for solo cello.

These two brief and fragmented miniatures are based on similar and fugitive material, though they span the 10 years between 1967 and 1977. Dialogue is dedicated to Sharon McKinley and Song is dedicate...

. . . a little like Messiaen's birds gone wild. Margaret Legge-Wilkinson, The Canberra Times, 27 June 1987

Composed in 1979, Jonathan Harvey’s Be(com)ing is an intense exploration of ecstatic expressionism. The demands made on both instruments are very considerable, and the clarinet especially is asked to...

The ensuing web of melody at first intertwined with the trumpet in close canon, and then - by the device of running some of the tape tracks at half-speed - plunged far below the trumpet's plangent inc...

. . . A fascinating evocative soundscape: a long-drawn, hovering, gently undulating melodic line sustained high on the violin above an almost continuous, rhythmless susurration of piano sound produced...

For bass-baritone and piano.

Instrumentation: 2(II=picc).2.2(II=bcl).2(II=cbsn) – 2200 – perc(1): large tam-t/4 gongs/4 bamboo clusters/10 small bowls and bells/4 Japanese rins/3 crot/2 susp.bells/wdbl – strings (min 7.6.4.3.3)

This was commissioned by Louis Halsey for his Christmas Concert in December 1965.

Written for the choir of Westminster Abbey, Harvey's Missa Brevis is an inspiring piece for any cathedral choir or ambitious mixed-voice ensemble.

Transcendental sequence Sobre un éxtasis de alta contemplación (Verses written after an ecstasy of high exultation), is a setting of the poem by St John of the Cross. Commissioned by Richard Marlow, f...

This anthem was written in 1976 for Martin Neary and the Winchester Cathedral Choir. A G major chord sounding through most of the anthem depicts the joyful love and irrepressible faith of a soul that...