Chris Crawley, born in 1945, was for many years a self-taught composer and performer, who, after doing the usual childhood rite of passage thing with piano lessons, concentrated his performing energies on playing the French horn (taught by Ted Chance, Antony Gray and David Bentley) and is now principal horn with the Hemel Symphony Orchestra and third horn in the St Albans Symphony Orchestra (community groups based in Hertfordshire, U.K.).
He has a degree in English Language and Literature from University College London and spent his working life as a schoolmaster; he was Head of English at Verulam School, St Albans, prior to retirement. He has written for The Horn Magazine, the former publication of the British Horn Society, and for The Horn Player, the current one. He is also a qualified reflexologist, with experience of hospice work.
In November 2014 he was awarded an MMus with Distinction in Composition at Goldsmiths College, London after two years of study. He remains at Goldsmiths as a research student following a practice-based MPhil/PhD course concentrating on composing music and investigating compositional processes, supervised by Prof. Roger Redgate.
He has written music since childhood and as a young adult consulted Herbert Howells and Lennox Berkeley in connection with his compositions. Some years ago he published The Sir Gawain Carols with the Oxford University Press. Other works include compositions and arrangements for orchestra, for choir, for chamber groups and for his own instrument - works which, though the majority have been performed, have not been published.
The end of the 1999 - 2000 season saw the highly successful première of his Four Romantic Songs for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, which attracted much favourable comment in the local press. This song-cycle is a reflection of his interest in words as well as music. Revising the Songs and preparing them for performance was an opportunity to get to grips with the Sibelius program as a composition tool. The Songs , together with another Christmas Carol, A little Child there is y-born, are published on the web at The Score Exchange, http://www.scoreexchange.com/search?composer=Crawley
In 2008 he completed and revised Aspects of Eden, an extended work in one movement for large orchestra, based on ideas suggested by a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall, extracts from which were performed in May 2006. Public performances of the complete score of Aspects of Eden took place on October 18th 2008 in St Albans (St Albans Symphony Orchestra) and May 16th 2009 in Berkhamsted (Dacorum Symphony Orchestra). Both were very favourably reviewed.
In 2010 he reworked a piece originally for horn and piano into a more ambitious piece for horn and orchestra, entitled Impulse, which was given a play-through in July the same year.
In 2012 he wrote a set of three pieces for horn duet and in 2013 completed Celebratory Dances for large orchestra to mark the Dacorum Symphony Orchestra's fortieth anniversary, which were performed in May 2013; he also wrote some material for a workshop involving the Allegri Quartet, which was later expanded into four miniature pieces entitled Four Hours - Four Minutes. In 2014 he composed the first scene of a short opera based on a Daphne du Maurier short story - The Alibi.
He recently completed another large-scale work, a symphony in three movements for symphonic wind ensemble lasting approximately 45 minutes, the first two movements of which were workshopped by the City of London Symphonic Winds. In the summer of 2017 he wrote a set of six pieces for unaccompanied violin, due to be premièred in London in the near future.
His work currently in progress is a nine-movement cantata, provisionally entitled Innocence and Beyond, setting texts by English poets, from Shakespeare to living writers, for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra.
Other projects are to learn properly to use the notation program, Dorico (www.steinberg.net/en/products/dorico/start.html) and to improve his fluency in Polish.
Chris would describe his tastes in music as eclectic, ranging from early choral polyphony to twentieth century composers such as Britten, Shostakovich, Panufnik and Górecki, more recent composers such as Magnus Lindberg, John McCabe and Einojuhani Rautavaara and taking in some jazz and popular music. During his MMus course he developed a particular interest in Soviet and post-Soviet music.
He is particularly partial to the rich tonal palette of the orchestra. When he finds the time to listen to music he is as likely to reach for the symphonic repertoire of the late nineteenth century as anything else; he has a particular fondness for the music of Rachmaninov and Dvořák.
His own music is fundamentally atonal, but there are tonal elements in it, though no functional harmony. He would acknowledge that years of sitting in the horn section playing the standard orchestral repertoire have had an enormous influence on him as a composer.
He has a degree in English Language and Literature from University College London and spent his working life as a schoolmaster; he was Head of English at Verulam School, St Albans, prior to retirement. He has written for The Horn Magazine, the former publication of the British Horn Society, and for The Horn Player, the current one. He is also a qualified reflexologist, with experience of hospice work.
In November 2014 he was awarded an MMus with Distinction in Composition at Goldsmiths College, London after two years of study. He remains at Goldsmiths as a research student following a practice-based MPhil/PhD course concentrating on composing music and investigating compositional processes, supervised by Prof. Roger Redgate.
He has written music since childhood and as a young adult consulted Herbert Howells and Lennox Berkeley in connection with his compositions. Some years ago he published The Sir Gawain Carols with the Oxford University Press. Other works include compositions and arrangements for orchestra, for choir, for chamber groups and for his own instrument - works which, though the majority have been performed, have not been published.
The end of the 1999 - 2000 season saw the highly successful première of his Four Romantic Songs for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, which attracted much favourable comment in the local press. This song-cycle is a reflection of his interest in words as well as music. Revising the Songs and preparing them for performance was an opportunity to get to grips with the Sibelius program as a composition tool. The Songs , together with another Christmas Carol, A little Child there is y-born, are published on the web at The Score Exchange, http://www.scoreexchange.com/search?composer=Crawley
In 2008 he completed and revised Aspects of Eden, an extended work in one movement for large orchestra, based on ideas suggested by a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall, extracts from which were performed in May 2006. Public performances of the complete score of Aspects of Eden took place on October 18th 2008 in St Albans (St Albans Symphony Orchestra) and May 16th 2009 in Berkhamsted (Dacorum Symphony Orchestra). Both were very favourably reviewed.
In 2010 he reworked a piece originally for horn and piano into a more ambitious piece for horn and orchestra, entitled Impulse, which was given a play-through in July the same year.
In 2012 he wrote a set of three pieces for horn duet and in 2013 completed Celebratory Dances for large orchestra to mark the Dacorum Symphony Orchestra's fortieth anniversary, which were performed in May 2013; he also wrote some material for a workshop involving the Allegri Quartet, which was later expanded into four miniature pieces entitled Four Hours - Four Minutes. In 2014 he composed the first scene of a short opera based on a Daphne du Maurier short story - The Alibi.
He recently completed another large-scale work, a symphony in three movements for symphonic wind ensemble lasting approximately 45 minutes, the first two movements of which were workshopped by the City of London Symphonic Winds. In the summer of 2017 he wrote a set of six pieces for unaccompanied violin, due to be premièred in London in the near future.
His work currently in progress is a nine-movement cantata, provisionally entitled Innocence and Beyond, setting texts by English poets, from Shakespeare to living writers, for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra.
Other projects are to learn properly to use the notation program, Dorico (www.steinberg.net/en/products/dorico/start.html) and to improve his fluency in Polish.
Chris would describe his tastes in music as eclectic, ranging from early choral polyphony to twentieth century composers such as Britten, Shostakovich, Panufnik and Górecki, more recent composers such as Magnus Lindberg, John McCabe and Einojuhani Rautavaara and taking in some jazz and popular music. During his MMus course he developed a particular interest in Soviet and post-Soviet music.
He is particularly partial to the rich tonal palette of the orchestra. When he finds the time to listen to music he is as likely to reach for the symphonic repertoire of the late nineteenth century as anything else; he has a particular fondness for the music of Rachmaninov and Dvořák.
His own music is fundamentally atonal, but there are tonal elements in it, though no functional harmony. He would acknowledge that years of sitting in the horn section playing the standard orchestral repertoire have had an enormous influence on him as a composer.
