Music by Ted Kirk

 Born in 1927, I have been a composer of sorts all my life. I have worked mainly with school and youth orchestras and music groups, a happy situation if you want to get your scores performed (without an interfering publisher) and to direct the performances yourself. Composing for the computer is a new pleasure for such a control-freak, though of course it is no substitute for human performance, and severely restricts you as regards style. In fact, my years of computer-literacy were mostly occupied with activities other than composition until 1999. My list of MIDI works begins with new pieces composed with no thought of live performance. A few adaptations of earlier compositions follow.

My music does not fit easily into any category, but I am a classically-based musician out of whom all high-flown ideas about art have long ago been knocked. Though keenly interested in all new developments in music, I relish the traditional disciplines of harmony, counterpoint and thematic integrity. I have tried whenever possible to challenge, but never to mystify, the players and audiences I have written for. I hope that somebody will enjoy what I offer here.

I do not use a MIDI instrument, but compose in score, using Sibelius, and make the final mix in CakeWalk. The music files on this site are presented in both MIDI and MP3 format.

Further information on MIDI and MP3: please read

The first group of pieces constitutes an album composed specifically for the Internet. All the titles are quotations from Shakespeare.   Some of the titles were chosen to fit the music already written; in other cases Shakespeares's lines triggered the musical idea.  In recognition that this is probably my last major adventure in composition, the over-all title (Hamlet Act V Scene 2, Line 369) is:
 

The Rest is Silence

For this first set of pieces only, click a blue title to display the quotation in its
context, together with the Play and Download buttons, and my brief comments.

Wishful Thinking

In 1986 I was asked to write something for a brass quintet, and presented the players with the original version of this short suite. Written in contrapuntal style, its musical content is little affected by re-scoring, so it was a strong candidate for MIDIfication, using mainly sounds unrelated to brass.

1. Glad Confident Morning Again  [3' 15"]
(Fugue – a flight from reality)

To a psychiatrist, fugue is a mental state in which contact with reality is lost. This piece is what musicians call a Fugue: a theme chasing after itself in counterpoint. The title quotation harks back to my long-lost days as an ambitious young composer (but in the Browning poem the preceding word is Never).

2. That South Sea Island   [3' 16"]
(Music brings riches ! ) 

Paradise . . . but you have to hit the musical jackpot first! (See next piece.)

3. No More Drum Machines   [2' 33"]
(A brass quintet hits the charts ! ) 

A classical musician's "take" on blues riffs.

4. Son of Superman  [3' 24"]
(The world is saved ! ?) 

I don't think I would have had much success as a writer of television theme tunes.

Tunepiece

Written for orchestra (score and parts available! - a good school orchestra can play it, and did in 1969 and on later occasions). This was the first piece I converted from an orchestra score to MIDI. I decided not to try to make the conversion correspond to the original orchestral sound: the MIDI brass and string sounds, in every wavetable I have heard, cannot do the job (though I do use them elsewhere as abstract sounds on their own terms). So my policy is to re-voice freely. Since I did this arrangement, I have become somewhat better at it.

Tunepiece  [4' 39"]

Wood Music

This is a mini-concerto for xylophone and orchestra with obbligato percussion. In the transcription for MIDI I have tried to suggest the sound of a live performance, though the "orchestration" is modified, avoiding the use of MIDI's very unlifelike string sounds. Wood Music was written in 1984 and premièred by Tim Williams and the Knowsley Youth Orchestra.

Wood Music  [8' 38"]

Instrumentals

Four pieces composed for school instrumental groups in the late 1970s.  They were transcribed as computer music in about 1988 using a non-MIDI system devised by Chris Jordan for Acorn 8-bit computers with microscopic memories – the Hybrid Music System, an amazing achievement in its time.  Work I had done on it was lost when the computer developed a glitch, and I rescued these items from a cassette tape (hence the slight background noise).  So no MIDI files for these, sorry.

Prelude for Celesta

A boyhood trifle that has trailed me down the years. I've never played or heard it live on a celesta, though !

Prelude for Celesta  [1' 56"]

Nocturne and Carnival

More Shakespeare! These two pieces originated as music for a production of The Merchant of Venice in 1965. The Nocturne (without some of the counterpoints) was played on stage as Portia's "music of the house". The carnival tune was played fragmentarily by various flutes, drums etc., dispersed back-stage, with a door we could open and close à la Holst. In the same year the school orchestra played a concert suite developed from the incidental music.

Don't turn up your volume at the beginning of Carnival !

Nocturne  [3' 21"]

Carnival  [3' 29"]   

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