Music for oboe, solo and chamber works 
Music for other small instrumental groups 

Pibroch (1981) for oboe and drone

Published by Emerson Edition Ltd (2007) No; 528

Recorded by MM for Lorelt Records LNT 103 British Women Composers Volume 2 (1992)

The art of pibroch is a fifteenth century tradition of Scottish ornamentation that was handed down through the generations by ear, and only notated at a much later date.  It is music for the bagpipes and a folk art belonging to this instrument and its environment; some of the music is related to old Scottish songs and ballads whose lyrics portray stories of rural life. In Pibroch the ornamentation is the very character of the music and also a harmonic starting point, dominating throughout, until at the end it is transformed into another melody entirely.

Pibroch was given its first performance at the 1982 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival by the composer.

Endless Chain (1990) for oboe, soprano saxophone, percussion (four drums, bass drum and tuned crotales)

First performed on Radio 3 by MM, John Harle and Simon Limbrick in 1991 for a late night recital.

This piece is a setting of an anonymous Italian basse dance ‘Ré di Spagna’ from 1465.  The musical language sustains a quasi 15th century sound world. There are two tempi that alternate in an endless chain of events. One is a dance with dotted syncopated rhythms and the other a slower, wistful, and more melodic section. In the dance the oboe and saxophone hocket and spin around each other and in the slower music they converse in longing calls and responses.  The piece ends with a fragmentation of the dance music that slows and softens to end.

Transformations (1990) for soprano and ensemble  

Commission from Composer’s Ensemble performed St John’s Smith Square 1990

Mary Wiegold, soprano

Three Movements for Solo Clarinet (1994)

Recorded for Dutton Epoch CDLX 7139 Melinda Maxwell Composer & Oboist

Nicholas Rodwell, clarinet

1. Raw & Bold 2. Fluent & Striking 3. Tender & Defiant

Each movement deals with the nature and character of making a sound with the breath and how on a wind instrument, in this case the clarinet, the breathing pace defines the music. The clarinet’s ability to contrast dynamics and register are exploited. The first is about timbre and pitch and the expression is in how these two coincide. The second is a dance that juxtaposes two compositional threads. The third is the combination of these two melded together and metamorphosed.  

Elegy (1994) for oboe and piano

Recorded by MM for NMC D042S Melinda Maxwell: Birtwistle, Maxwell, Holt (1996)

Elegy was completed in May 1994 and first performed by MM and John Lenehan as part of a BBC Radio 3 live recital at St John’s Smith Square in London. 

The work is serial in technique, taking as its starting point a twelve note row that reveals a richness of possibilities, by turns reversing, fragmenting and permutating into ever changing patterns. The piece moves in and around a fixed harmonic point of reference, occasionally moving away, but always returning. There are two melodies, made up of the same material, but different in character. The piece, if you like, has a binary form, where each statement of each melody plays out its story in succession. Ultimately, the more doleful melody seems to speak with more presence and this permeates the piece and concludes it; hence the title Elegy.  

The composition lends an insight into my reflections on the nature of the oboe and its hauntingly expressive sound world. It was completed the day John Smith, leader of the British Labour Party died and so the title seemed doubly appropriate.  

Pelagos (1995) for string trio

Recorded for Dutton Epoch CDLX 7139 Melinda Maxwell Composer & Oboist

Clio Gould, violin Catherine Bullock, viola Jonathan Ayling, cello

In 1993 I visited an exhibition of sculpture by Barbara Hepworth at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool. One particular piece, “Pelagos”, a wooden sphere containing a double spiral with string, made a deep impression. I loved its geometry and clear form. It also expressed a tension between a whirling movement and a severe stillness. The feeling of a type of symmetry and a form that revolves and mirrors itself I have tried to capture in my string trio. The violin and cello revolve and the viola is the pivot that binds and connects. This piece was first performed at Bromsgrove and played by the London Metropolitan Ensemble in 1995. 

From Tree to Tree (1998) for string sextet

Recorded for Dutton Epoch CDLX 7139 Melinda Maxwell Composer & Oboist

My starting point for this specific commission - a three-minute string sextet relating to some kind of journey – was a poem by the artist Richard Long entitled From Tree to Tree – A Walk in Avon, England, 1986. The poem states the distance in numbers of miles from the starting point of a walk to some particularly striking trees. I have used these numbers to generate a pitch row. This row determines the nature of the material, its melodic character and harmony. The piece opens with a Chorale that returns twice, once in the middle and once at the end, each time with slightly altered harmony. The two episodes in between develop a melody that moves whimsically from instrument to instrument. The piece was performed at the Isleworth Festival in London in 1998 and played by Clio Gould and the RAM strings.

Interrupted Lines (1999) for electric cello 

Commission from Philip Shepherd 1999

Song Lines and Cadences (1999) for clarinet and harp

Recorded for Dutton Epoch CDLX 7139 Melinda Maxwell Composer & Oboist

Nicholas Rodwell, clarinet Hugh Webb, harp

The instruments each have their own music, the clarinet a dark chromatic harmony based on B flat, the harp a light Lydian harmony based around augmented fourths and B natural. The juxtaposition of these two harmonies creates a tension that is occasionally relieved when the two merge in their song lines and melodies. There are moments of repose where cadences calm the melodic lines. Towards the end the harp takes the clarinet into a dance. This piece was written for Hugh Webb and Fiona Cross and first performed by them in St. Giles Cripplegate, London in 1999.

Song for Sidney (2001) for oboe and two drone oboes (or piano)

Published by Emerson Edition Ltd (2015) No; 702

Recorded by MM for Dutton Epoch CDLX 7180 Melinda Maxwell Volume Two In Manchester: New Music for Oboe from the RNCM (2007)

There are two versions of this piece (and they can be read from the one score). The initial version is for solo oboe (with two drone oboes) and the later version with a piano accompaniment was made at the request of the Royal Academy of Music as repertoire for their annual oboe prize.  

Sidney refers to Sidney Sutcliffe, the charismatic orchestral British oboist who was principal oboe with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (from 1945), the Philharmonia (from 1949), and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (from 1964). He taught at the Royal College of Music from 1961, and I studied there with him as a postgraduate student in 1976. He died in 2001. I was very saddened at not being able to attend or to perform at his memorial concert, and it was agreed by Edwin Roxburgh (who was organizing the concert) that I could give my tribute by composing a piece for him instead, which I duly did. Song for Sidney was first performed by students of the RCM at St John’s, Smith Square, London in October 2001.

The song consists of certain letters taken from his name that are also pitch names. S in German spells Eb, and this note becomes a crucial pivot point in the melodic line. Two variations enrich and elaborate the line after which the initial song re-emerges, but slightly changed. The two ‘echo’ oboes sustain a note each, a C and an F, and create a harmonic backdrop, or landscape, for the song as it journeys to a resting place. I wanted to end on an optimistic ‘note’ and F sharp appears for the first and last time at the very end, leaving I hope a feeling not of closure but of an opening of hope and anticipation for his memory and legacy to continue. 

Crane Dance (2008) for double reed ensemble: six oboes, two bassoons, and one contra bassoon.

First performed by RNCM students on RNCM Woodwind Day October 2008

Conducted by Timothy Reynish

Cranes are beautifully elegant birds particularly in their exquisite mating dances, but also in the chevron formations they make when migrating. They are very vocal and sing and call to each other during their activities. In many mythologies the crane has cultural significance and in Asia it is the symbol of happiness and eternal youth. I wanted to celebrate this graceful bird and a double reed ensemble seemed the perfect sound. The piece is in one movement and plays out a ritual dance between groups of oboes and bassoons. The music hockets in a majestic tempo in irregular rhythmic patterns and gradually becomes more relaxed and calm finishing with a long and softening rallentando.

Cadenzas to Mozart’s Oboe Concerto K.314 (2008)

Published by Emerson Edition Ltd No; 588 (2009)

This publication consists of three examples of cadenzas for each of the three movements with suggestions for the ‘pick-ups’ in movement three. They attempt to show, in the style of Mozart, ways of constructing a cadenza using the thematic material of each movement. They are designed to be constructions that can be altered, adjusted, or used as a basis for extemporization and as starting points for inventing and developing further material. 

Singla Rock (2009) for flute, bass clarinet, horn in F, cello and vibraphone

First performed by Endymion Ensemble at Kings Place, London in June 2010

Recorded by NMC Sound Census Artists Series NMC D160

Singla is the name of a rock formation on the island of Lolui in Lake Victoria, Uganda. One particular rock has indentations where long ago mallets or stones were used to hit the rock’s surface. The ringing tones emanating from the rock are beautiful, eerie and mysterious and are thousands of years old. In February 2007 I was part of a London Sinfonietta team that visited this place in order to register these sounds. Hearing and experiencing them was a tremendous privilege and they have haunted me ever since. 

I have taken the notes from the rock to construct a slow, light, modal melody. This opens the piece and gradually its notes are consumed and transformed by a darker texture based on a contracted and diminished version of the rock notes.

No-one knows why or for whom these rock sounds were played. Singla Rock is written both as a memory of these sounds and to my musician friends in Endymion. 

Cross Lines (2011) for oboe and accordion

First performed by MM and the composer Howard Skempton in a concert at the RBC in March 2012 featuring the music of Heiner Goebbels.

I have performed music by Goebbels on a number of occasions and most particularly his piece Songs of War I have seen (2007). Before completion of this piece several small groups of London Sinfonietta players collaborated with him in exploratory sessions that involved improvisation. His positive stance on improvisation led me to consider writing my own piece based on one of his melodies as a starting point for harmonic and melodic interactions. He agreed and sent me some material. 

The piece is in one movement and begins with a Goebbels melody followed by a section involving improvisation with indications in the score to show the parameters in which to do this. In effect the piece is in two sections beginning with the melody and then transforming into an improvisatory section. The accordion accompanies with chordal figurations. 

Ein Dankeschön Vorliegenden für Hansjörg (2013) for groups of oboes (doubling Cor Anglais)

First performed and composed in June 2013 at the RNCM in thanks to Hansjörg Schellenberger for his tenure as RNCM International Tutor in Oboe. 

The piece consists of two groups of oboes, one a chorus group of four parts and the other a solo group, consisting of oboes doubling CAs. The number of oboes can be indeterminate but need to be balanced. The piece begins with the chorus oboes establishing a chordal backdrop against which the second group play a melody in solos that start at different times so the music becomes phased. The next section is rhythmic and faster in tempo with the cor anglais players gradually introducing the slower version of the initial oboe melody thus bringing it into the foreground and closing the piece with it. 

Reflections (2013) Duo for oboe and violin

First performed by students at the RNCM for a forty years celebratory concert of the RNCM in 2013.

This is a short fanfare piece with two contrasting sections of material that alternate. The first is slow and spacious and the second is fast and staccato in irregular patterns. The piece ends with a triumphant rhythmic unison on a major third. 

FRACTURES: Monk Unpacked (2015) a septet for oboe, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), horn, violin, cello, double bass and percussion (marimba, three tom-toms high middle and low, suspended cymbal, bass drum)

First performed by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in November 2015 conducted by Oliver Knussen. The piece was commissioned by BCMG with financial assistance from individuals through BCMG’s Sound Investment Scheme. The piece is dedicated to Oliver Knussen, and Jackie and Stephen Newbould of BCMG.

Two experiences influenced my state of mind in 2015. One was the completion of a Masters degree in Jazz in 2013 and the other was an untimely fall from a stage in 2014 when I broke my right leg. Certain thoughts around these experiences began to come together. During my jazz studies I inevitably explored the music of Thelonious Monk (d.1982, a brilliant American composer and pianist) whose diverse music broke new ground making links for me to modern contemporary music. Monk’s famous piece Round Midnight with its shifting chromaticism led me to explore its major/minor harmony, and making improvisations on it, I found a way into my own harmonic material. My broken leg got me thinking about fractures and fissures, broken bones and broken lines, hence the melodies in this piece being interrupted and split.

There are two sections within the single movement entitled Chase and Bone Waltz. The horn and percussion tend to signal events, and there are dialogues between duets of instruments and the piece resolves with a short Chorale. The double bass has the first and last word. 

ANCESTRAL TRACES (2019) for baroque oboe, bass viol and harpsichord

Commissioned by Peter McCarthy for Music in the Village, and first performed by Gail Hennessy, Peter McCarthy and Pawel Siwczak in St Mary’s Church, Walthamstow, London on February 21 2019.  

The piece traces a particular melody by Bach, the Sinfonia from the Easter Oratorio BWV 249 and certain melodic contours in the Sequenza VII by Luciano Berio (1969). The two differing musical styles (although both centering on a B tonality) co-exist beginning tentatively from a modern perspective to invoke a past musical style. Both styles are taken on a journey in order to explore a taste of oboe character; the baroque oboe sampling modern multi-phonic sounds in a search for a melody. The investigations made by the baroque oboe gradually yield a baroque style pertinent to Bach and culminates with a melodic celebration in the key of the Sinfonia, B minor.  

The piece could be played on modern oboe, double bass and harpsichord.

Sounding Out Varèse I for any solo instrument and Sounding Out Varèse II for any mixed ensemble (2019). These pieces involve improvisation.

Sounding Out Varèse II was first performed at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Stranger Danger Night in November 2019.

The music of Edgar Varèse (1883-1965) has always held a fascination for me because of its combined angularity and lyricism. It epitomises a new music of the twentieth century, a century in which industrialisation and mechanisation of a brave new modern world, influenced artists’ perceptions and imaginations. One piece in particular, Octandre (1923) for seven wind players and a double bass, has become, over the years, very close to my musical heart.  I have performed it many times and often thought the opening oboe solo had a richness of expression that I could extend and elaborate. 

During my jazz studies I wrote a piece called Varèse Sketches (for oboe, piano, bass and drums) in which I began to analyse the intervallic relationships and extend the language into a form with improvisation.  In Sounding Out Varèse I have taken this process a step further by creating an open form improvisation for either an ensemble or a solo instrument.  Both pieces are a response to the musical language and beauty of the Varèse melody and include two contrasting sections. They both open with slow rhapsodic improvisations that are restricted to the intervals of the original melody with their transpositions and extensions. This keeps the improvisation structured and close to the musical language of Varèse. It is a place with space to be expressive. The other section is a cathartic response to this lyricism with the licence to extend the melody freely into a landscape more foreign (possibly with extended techniques), faster and higher in energy, a sort of stepping stone moment to another world of brave new music. 

It is very much to be encouraged that the pace of the improvisations allows the performers to determine the length of the form and, depending on how the music materialises, how the overall piece comes to life.  

Within the score there are Performance Notes with guidelines and methods for improvising and a Transposition Sheet offering methods for building musical material. 

Six Meditations and Responses after Britten (2021) for solo oboe

As the title shows this piece alludes and is in homage to Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for solo oboe by Benjamin Britten. Each of the three Meditations are composed forms that complement each of the three Responses. These are reworked transcriptions of improvisations that are (what I call) outside the form improvisations. They use the premise of each of the six Britten pieces that juxtaposes two interacting and competing harmonic centres that eventually resolve and amalgamate with different types of character. I performed and recorded three improvisations outside the form of Pan, making two of each, and chose one from each that I felt had clear form, autonomy of character, and harmonic coherence. I transcribed them as starting points to rework into composed forms. Stylistically the Meditations serve as short, composed preludes that are serene and controlled in contrast to the Responses that are spontaneous and impetuous.

There are two performance models:

1: Meditation I – Response I – Meditation II – Response II – Meditation III – Response III

2: Depending on context and programming a performance could have either the three Meditations or three Responses as stand-alone sequences.

Pan - A Solo Improvisation (2021) for any melody instrument in graphic score design

The idea for this piece came as a result of many improvisations I made on each of Benjamin Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid Op.49 for solo oboe. My improvisation process involved explorations in making new versions of these miniature pieces. For instance, staying faithfully within the harmonic form using similar rhythmic configurations or moving further away to much freer territory. This solo improvisation piece, using the overall formal construct of the first of Britten’s pieces, Pan, is a graphic score version that offers an alternative way to explore the material via a visual representation. It is not essential to know the original, but for any oboist it will be of significance.

Aulos Transfer (2022) for solo oboe

I own an aulos that is a copy of an original in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Its date is thought to be any time between 400BC and 200AD and it was discovered in northern Egypt in 1969. I have composed a piece for my Louvre aulos (consisting of two cylindrical pipes each with a double reed) called Aulos Awakes (2022) that shows some of the possibilities of this instrument.

In my study of it and my explorations playing and improvising with it, I wanted to make a contemporary piece for oboe that reflects some of the other aulos music I created.  I began by transcribing one of my oboe improvisations based on some of this material. I tried to emulate the microtonal pitch differences, particularly with unisons, that exist between the two pipes. The tuning is very flexible and not set in equal temperament (although one’s ear tries to correct differences) and there are often moments when any two notes sounding together, particularly unisons, can set off a fluttering in the sound when there is pitch discrepancy. I wanted to exploit these differences with bisbigliando effects, multiphonics and glissandi.

The piece begins exploring the note B (a prominent aulos note), that gradually settles to a high C. There follows a contemplative melody whose scale belongs to my Louvre aulos and this time ends on a high C sharp. This develops into a fast, urgent, and playful dance that engages a lively conversation between the two melodic areas of C and C sharp. The music resolves to the C natural and finishes on the starting note of B.

I can’t help but acknowledge the similarity in concept to Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VII for solo oboe. It is the idea of unpacking the note B into many timbral and harmonic areas. Berio’s piece has a drone on B throughout that produces a kind of polyphony. On the aulos one can also make a drone on B and play a melody against it. With only one pipe instead of two I have tried to make a counterpoint with one pipe, the oboe.

Aulos Awakes (2022) for Louvre Aulos

My Louvre Aulos is made by Thomas Rezanka and was purchased in 2018. It is a copy of an original in the Louvre thought to be from a Greco-Roman context in Egypt, so dating from any time around 400BC to 200AD. My study of this instrument has led to a desire to create music for it from a 21st century standpoint. The sounds are beguilingly evocative of an ancient musical world and my piece stretches out a hand to it whilst at the same time joining our ears to a contemporary setting.

The piece is based on a transcription of one of my aulos improvisations. I have also integrated material developed from other improvisatory explorations that I have collected and learnt in my study of the aulos. These are beginner findings, and my own limited technical ability has instigated a concentration on harmonic ideas. The acoustic of the aulos generates its own laws that govern the movement of the sound at any one time. Therefore, the built-in space in the piece allows for a flexibility in phrasing as the tempo relies on how the aulos ‘speaks’. This flexibility, as I have experienced, gives each performance its own character depending on the performance acoustic.

The piece has two sections beginning with a slow exploration of unisons and specific intervals that exploit differences in pitch and timbre. The second section moves into a more rhythmic texture and a gentle dance to finish.

Janus (2022) for small ensemble and live electronics

This piece was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group with the support of Arts Council England and with financial support from individuals through the BCMG’s Sound Investment Scheme.

It was first performed by BCMG with Melinda Maxwell (oboe, aulos, nadaswaram), Callum Armstrong (aulos), Oliver Janes (clarinet, bass clarinet), Percy Pursglove (trumpet), Liam Halloran (percussion), Julian Warburton (percussion), Sebastiano Dessaney (bass), James Dooley (live electronics) as soloists, on November 19 2022 at the RBC Recital Hall.

This performance was recorded live by the Birmingham Record Company engineered by Simon Hall and distributed by NMC Recordings Ltd in 2023.

Janus represents a culmination in my PhD research that involves investigations in perspectives of oboe character. Is there a melodic and harmonic language that can be found in the study of oboe ethnomusicology, including the contemporary, to make a music that defines oboe essence? Janus - the two-headed Roman god of transitions, duality, beginnings, and endings - is an attempt to find this essence and bring together, if you like, the double reed soundscapes of an ancient music with that of a contemporary one: ancient wisdom meets modern knowhow. It uses improvisatory and compositional methods discovered in my research that combine, alongside the contemporary sound world of the modern oboe, the music texts and playing histories of two exotic double reed instruments: the ancient Greek aulos and the South Indian nadaswaram. The former is an instrument that has been re-discovered only in the last couple of decades, whilst the latter is the oldest oboe of the ancient Dravidian culture that is still heard today in Tamil Nadu. These are instruments I have learned to play, and their sounds have inspired and led my contemporary ear. The double reed sound itself is a very ancient one: two blades of grass, straw or bamboo vibrating with the breath, carry far and wide, outside, and inside. This direct sound evokes instinctive connections to our past inner musical selves and brings the original spiritual home of the oboe back to life.

The ideas behind Janus stem originally from the aulos. It is the oldest oboe in the world and consists of two cylindrical pipes, each with a double reed, played simultaneously. The idea of “two” and “double” became my starting point with ideas around doublings, pairings, mirror images (similar and dissimilar), reflections and refractions, repetitions (ornamental, regular and irregular), similar and dissimilar versions, and duets within duets. The instrumentation reflects these doublings with mixes of oboe/aulos, oboe/trumpet, oboe/clarinet, aulos/trumpet etc. The chosen wind instruments reflect each other, and the double bass, percussion and electronics are the glue that binds them together. The harmonic reasoning derives from the makeup of the double lines one can make on the aulos and its pitch patterns of major/minor that revolve around ratios of 4ths and 5ths. I have also referred to ancient Greek music theory based on tetrachord relationships. The flexible aulos tuning, based on subtle inflections around the way the double reeds vibrate, encourages explorations into microtones.

I have composed four “arches” through, and around which improvisations can journey. They act as gateways and frames for the music as it travels back and forth from the past into the future or vice versa. The piece has a central pitch of B-natural around which the harmony of the arches rotates. B is a fundamental pitch for the aulos, nadaswaram and oboe. There is alternation between an F-sharp/F-natural axis that acts as a provocative interval with the B determining certain harmonic decisions and outcomes.

The piece travels into unknown territory, never heard before in the UK. It is the first to combine the oboe with two of its exotic cousins, the ancient Greek aulos and the South Indian nadaswaram, in a composed and improvised structure. The mirroring with the additional instruments gives Janus a setting in which to explore the past, present, and possible future of “oboe essence”.

The piece has been written with my own community of improvising musicians in mind (including a rare specialist aulos player with whom I have performed and collaborated), and for BCMG. It employs a rarefied instrumental combination, but the piece is also designed to work without the auloi and nadaswaram. It was composed with the aspiration that future oboe players will be able to double on these instruments and that the aulos, an instrument slowly re-emerging after centuries of silence, will return.