DESCRIPTION:
Third movement of UK Composer Daniel Basford's Symphony No.1 for Concert Band, 'Prometheus'.

World Premiere Recording, made in 2014
Hertfordshire Wind Sinfonia, cond. Mark Eager
CD available on ASC Records

Programme Note
This symphony began as pure music; it did not tell a story, nor was that my original intention. A work I was planning to compose after the symphony - a tone poem for wind band on the subject of the well-known story of Prometheus - was making virtually no progress, until I realised that the symphony in fact had some parallels with the story. The symphony is therefore not an exact description of the entire story, but rather a commentary on certain parts of it. The main source of inspiration comes from two poems: Byron's 'Prometheus' and Shelley's epic drama 'Prometheus Unbound'.

From a musical and structural point of view the symphony owes much to English symphonists such as Walton and Elgar but also Bax, a composer whose developmental style I empathised with strongly.

The third movement is a slow rhapsody, with a section of Byron's poem being the catalyst:

A silent suffering, and intense;
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Much of the calm and emotive music here stems from fragments of melody heard in the first movement. Soprano saxophone and alto flute feature frequently, showing the solitary and abandoned Prometheus. The music builds towards a big climax which includes a thunder machine, suggesting Zeus chastising Prometheus chained to the rocks for eternity as punishment for his crime.