Music for Bells and Spaces
(dur: 10' 35")

Notes by Nigel Bartram:

John Stead has written many pieces of 'music Concrete' often large scale 'Son et Lumieres' utilising natural sounds and images. For this work however, the composer focuses on one sound source - that of the St.Mary's church bells. The work is concise but shows a marked development stylistically towards 'spectralism' which is particularly evident in the work's middle section. Spectralist composers consider sounds as living objects, they begin with the physical aspects of sounds (i.e sound frequencies)using these to explore new harmonies and generate compositional structures.

A single strike of a bell produces a complex waveform generating much material for investigation and providing raw material for subsequent composition. The 'sampled' sounds of all the St. Mary's church bells, and their harmonic components, provided this material for the composer.

The work also shows an increased ability (through the availability of computer technologies) to precisely spacialize and place sounds (and transformed sounds)in a given environment. In this case, writing for and utilizing the reverberant properties of St. Mary's church. The shape and mobility of the piece is immediately apparent, from the massive physical swings of the bell which become drawn into an upwardly mobile movement. A sense of space and height is created. This 'human' created energy results in the joyous carillon of bells to the outside world.

We then enter a world inside the tenor bell, the physicality and energy now the properties of the bell, a sense of movement conveyed in highlighted harmonic overtones. We are in the aforementioned 'spectralist' environment. The composer maintains the established sense of massiveness, now related to the earth from which the bell was fashioned.

We are moved around the outside of the bell in large gestures, spot- lighting inherent harmonic properties. The resultant fracturing textures coalesce in a warm and timeless 'tolling' which fades to eternity.