Noble et polyvalent

By David Sanson

The Versatile Peer

The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and is deeply moving. [Bryars] allows you to witness new wonders in the sounds around you by approaching them from a completely new angle. With a third ear maybe.

This statement, found on Bryars’s website and given by his friend the Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje, perfectly captures the elusive position Bryars occupies as a composer and double bass player in the contemporary music scene. This position is in part the result of his wide range of experiences as a free-jazz musician and as part of the British experimental music scene in the wake of Cornelius Cardew. Bryars passed through various other schools of art, finally to veer toward minimalism. While his music is, in a post-minimalist way, mostly tonal, the many facets of his work remain difficult to grasp, to summarize, and, even more, to label.¹

Yet, this matter of categorization can hardly explain the void of information concerning him. Up to now, he has been the subject of only one monographic work, a collection of interviews in French by Jean-Louis Tallon.² This lack of attention is all the more surprising considering that Bryars composed two “hits” for the contemporary music scene, The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, and that he is regularly a guest artist and his music is performed around the globe. It is also striking how those two pieces, like Maurice Ravel’s Boléro and Pavane pour une infante défunte, largely overshadow the rest of his work. They are the subject of almost all the interviews and press articles devoted to Bryars. Dating from 1969 and 1971, they are among the earliest pieces in his catalog, which now includes over two hundred works. Nevertheless, they serve as an enlightening introduction to Bryars’s body of work, a collection that has kept an experimental edge, sharpened by his work in art schools, as well as by his acute curiosity about eccentric figures such as Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie, Lord Berners, Percy Grainger, and Raymond Roussel.

Bryars is a fascinating and prolific artist, a tinkering pataphysician, and an honnête homme whose cultural panorama and love of collective art have proven an endless source of inspiration. While his use of quotation casts his music as postmodern, it could be better described as iconoclastic. It is permissive and inclusive, especially when it comes to his teaming up with rock musicians. Collaboration is an important aspect of his work. His slow music only seems simple, its fluctuating harmonies the fruit of an internal rigor that relies on text, words, and the voice. His music moves freely between poles: between system and feeling, lyricism and abstraction, rationality and sentimentality, experimentation and experience, Fluxus and flux. All his pieces share an immediate power. Unraveling the mystery of this power is the task at hand.

Genealogy of Freedom

As the musicologist Keith Potter predicted, the first two decades of Bryars’s career — a fertile period spanning from the early 1960s to the 1980s — contain germs of the creative choices that burgeon, in various ways, in later pieces.³ One can also see, in this period, why his career has unfolded in such an atypical way.

It was atypical, first, because Bryars started out as a jazz musician and improvisor. He quickly became central to the developing European free-jazz scene, together with Sheffield, the guitarist Derek Bailey, the drummer Tony Oxley, and the pianist Gerry Rollinson. In November 1966, only three years after he started learning the double bass, he set it aside to concentrate on notated music by composers from Christian Wolff to Karlheinz Stockhausen and from John Cage to Olivier Messiaen. He wouldn’t take up the instrument again for fifteen years. He was finding improvisation to be a display of tricks and egotism.⁴ In 1978, however, he released My First Homage, a tribute to Bill Evans; this piece for two pianos launched a series of openly referential compositions and exorcised the “strong and pathological dislike” for jazz he had felt at the end of the preceding decade.⁵ The influence of jazz regularly crops up in succeeding pieces: for example, By the Vaar (1987) for small ensemble and the double bassist Charpie Haden and 11th Floor (2015), which quotes American film noir music and uses choreography by Edouard Lock. The saxophone begins to play a major role in Bryars’s music, such as in Alaric I or II (1989), a saxophone trio on the album After the Requiem (1991, ECM label). This album features several jazz musicians, including saxophonists from the Kenny Wheeler band (such as Evan Parker) and guitarist Bill Frisell, who features in a long improvisation in the title piece. Bryars’s recent harpsichord concerto, Liverpool (2023), includes improvised sections that can be linked both to jazz and to the chance procedures of John Cage. Through the 1970s, Bryars continued to collaborate with Bailey, who can be heard alongside Bryars himself, Fred Frith, and Brian Eno on The Squirrel and the Ricketty Racketty Bridge, a 1978 piece for eight electric guitars.

During this same decade, Bryars premiered works for multiple pianos by his friends Christopher Hobbs and John White. He also occasionally played percussion with pianist John Tilbury’s Music Improvisation Company. His activities as a performer, which he resumed in 1983 with the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, demonstrate the importance he put on keeping close contact with the audience. Bryars states that “there’s another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.” His performance experience also explains the influence chamber music has in many of his scores, including his concertos, where the soloist trades virtuosic licks for a fusional dialogue with the orchestra.

Bryars’s career is also atypical in that, by standard academic criteria, he is largely self-taught. He acquired his deep knowledge of Western art music and his practical experience not through a conservatory but by collaborating with other composers. He worked with Ben Johnston and John Cage during his stay at the Illinois University in 1968, and, upon his return to Britain, with Cardew and his young colleagues in the British experimental music scene. Like the American minimalists, these British musicians follow Cage in pursuit of a new music that eschews the linearity, unequivocal meaning, and claims of progress made by the avant-garde. Their association with their American counterparts became even stronger starting in 1970. That year, in the large house he shared with Parker and Hobbs in northwest London, Bryars invited Steve Reich to perform the London premiere of Reich’s Four Organs. Two years later, Bryars was one of the four British musicians who toured with Reich to perform Reich’s piece Drumming. They participated in the Holland Festival and the Festival d’Automne, alongside Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Ingram Marshall, Charlemagne Palestine, and John Adams. Some of his later pieces, such as Adnan Songbook (1996) and Winestead (2017), for voice and ensemble, contain ostinato motivic patterns that evoke American repetitive minimalism.

With the monopoly the avant-garde held in musical institutions, art schools presented a welcome alternative for experimental composers. This is the third, and perhaps most significant, atypical aspect of Bryars’s early career. Even more than John Tilbury and Howard Skempton, who also taught in art schools, Bryars was very much influenced by alternative institutions. He taught in Portsmouth in the late 1960s, and it was there that, for a student exhibition, he composed The Sinking of the Titanic (1969), a piece whose score was a single page of text. He also founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra open to non-musicians, like Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra. Bryars’s pieces from this time usually involved procedure; as Potter describes, they were “nearer to what is now called performance art than to traditional music making.” The performance setup and lengthy titles were often as important as the musical result: examples include Marvellous Aphorisms Are Scattered Richly throughout These Pages (1969), The Ride Cymbal and the Band that Caused the Fire in the Sycamore Trees, and Serenely Beaming and Leaning on a Five-Barred Gate (1970), where sixty-four tape recorders are linked to sixty-four performers. Daniel Caux, who, alongside the Festival d’Automne in Paris, was one of the first supporters of Bryars’s music, calls such works “ready-made” pieces.⁶ Manipulated magnetic tape was often central to their performance. These pieces were also heavily indebted to the outlandish spirit of the Fluxus movement; for example, the series Private Music (1969) is meant to be played simultaneously with other works. The piece 1-2, 1-2-3-4 (1971) uses the same concept: each musician accompanies a pop or jazz standard that they hear at various speeds in individual headphones. This type of uncategorized music continued to punctuate Bryars’s work in the subsequent decades, from A Man in a Room, Gambling (1992) — a radiophonic piece for string quartet and magnetic tape, inspired by card games and created with the visual artist Juan Muñoz — to the pataphysical pieces of 2018 and 2019 (Le Haha Platonique, The Pataphysical Calendar) and The Stopping Train (2016), a piece in collaboration with the poet Blake Morrison and meant to be listened to on the train between Bryars’s hometown of Goole and Hull. Related projects are the many sound installations, both temporary and permanent, that he created for the opening of the Tate Liverpool gallery and museum in 1988 (for example, Invention of Tradition, with the artists Bruce McLean and David Ward, as well as the late sound engineer Bill Cadman) and for the Château d’Oiron (Chambre d’écoute, 1993).

His immersion in visual arts explains why most of works from the first two decades of his career are conceptual, meaning that Bryars required what Potter calls “justification” for each musical element. The Sinking of the Titanic is a good example, as it is based on three years of research on the shipwreck. In it, he “recreates, through a series of variations on a theme played during the wreck, the acoustic transformation of the sound environment during the progressive immersion of the ship into the Atlantic.”⁷ Characterized by repetitive minimalism, The Sinking of the Titanic foreshadows the slow climatic development and richly chromatic structure in Bryars’s later works. The same is the case with Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), a series of variations for orchestra based on a looped recording of a homeless man’s song. Both pieces were critical failures when they premiered in 1972. It is only in their recorded format on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in 1975, and a decade later on the Brussels label Les Disques du Crépuscule, that they received critical acclaim. Both were thereafter extensively performed and adapted for various media. In 2014, Bryars asked the esteemed electronic music artist Philip Jeck to perform improvised interludes between the seven sections of the ballet Pneuma by Carolyn Carlson, based on The Sinking of the Titanic. In the same vein, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet has evolved from its original twenty-five-minute form (the duration of one side of a vinyl record), to sixty minutes (for a cassette released in 1990 by Les Disques du Crépuscule), and then to seventy-four minutes for the CD launch by Point Music featuring the American musician Tom Waits, who succeeded in popularizing the piece; ; a 12-hour version was even performed during the night at the Tate Modern in 2019!

In the 1970s, Bryars developed his interest in conceptual pieces by studying the works of “marginal” artists who fascinated him. He read Jules Verne and Sherlock Holmes as well as mystery novels in general. He was passionate about the approaches to language proposed by such philosophers as Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and John Searle, and he published articles, gave conferences, and even began biographical projects on Marcel Duchamp, Henri Rousseau, Alfred Jarry, Roussel, Satie, Lord Berners… to the point that he put his career as a composer on hold to be admitted to the Collège de ’Pataphysique. Indeed, Bryars’s creative work has always developed in parallel to work as an “intermediary.” He taught for many decades and has remained committed to helping spread contemporary music, whether as a performer, an administrator for Hobbs’s Experimental Music Catalogue, or an artistic advisor (for Obscure Records starting in 1975 and for the Leicester Theatre in the 1980s). Bryars felt deeply attached to historic figures who excelled in various domains while being self-taught. In 1976 for the periodical Studio Magazine, he underlined that Lord Berners, Rousseau, and Satie “had little tuition in the art for which they are best known, and yet their work is of such startling originality that perhaps this in itself has been a contributing factor.”⁸ These lines seem to stand out as a mission statement.

Studying Duchamp and Roussel led Bryars to compose using playful restrictions similar to those in the Oulipo language experiments: the goal being to create multiple levels of meaning within a single work. His pieces from the second half of the 1970s can be read from multiple angles and make numerous nods and allusions. For example, The Cross-Channel Ferry (1979) alludes to Jean Ferry, an interpreter of Roussel’s work, quotes Satie, and uses only instruments that end in a: tuba, marimba, quijada, viola. White’s SS, a 1977 piece for two pianos, is a reference to his colleague John White, who stated that the two fundamental elements of his work were systems and sentimentality.

In addition to Satie and Lord Berners, other mavericks and outcasts of art music can be added to the list of Bryars’s mentors, including Grainger, Charles Ives, Ferruccio Busoni, Gustav Holst, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, and Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji. Poggioli in Zaleski’s Gazebo (1975) and Out of Zaleski’s Gazebo (1977) pay tribute to two mystery-novel heroes, Poggioli and Zaleski, while quoting the Valses bourgeoises by Lord Berners (1919) and the Interludes for organ by Karg-Elert. Released in November 1981 on Les Disques du Crépuscule, the album Hommages is a tribute to Busoni, Grainger (in Hi-Tremolo), and Holst (in The Vespertine Park and in The English Mail-Coach, whose title makes reference to Thomas de Quincey). These marginal but essential figures of music significantly impacted Bryars’s composition method and techniques. One can hear, for example, the influence of Grainger and Ives in his use of percussion — and in particular tuned percussion as in The English Mail-Coach (1980), One Last Bar that Joe Can Sing (1994), and Extra-Time (2018), for bowed vibraphone and electric guitar — as well as in the opera Medea (1984). Bryars was also inspired by Busoni’s appreciation for music of the past and fervent opposition to rules of any type. Busoni’s influence infuses works like Allegrasco (1983), a piece for saxophone and string orchestra (the title refers to Edmondo Allegra, the clarinetist who premiered Busoni’s Elegy for clarinet and piano), and The Solway Canal (1990), a piano concerto in which, following Busoni, a choir sings.

Without losing their conceptual rigor, the ideas Bryars uses in the second half of the 1970s become more subtle and ample over the next four decades, as his need for justification becomes internal and intrinsic. While broad knowledge, an interest in games, and an insatiable curiosity for the arts and sciences still inspire his work, Bryars becomes a more mature musician and often opts “for simple, sometimes apparently naive, tonal statement, often through the use of familiar classical or popular material.”⁹.

A Deceptive Simplicity

Staged in Lyon in 1984, Medea marked a turning point for Bryars. This five-hour-long opera, written for the director Bob Wilson, resulted in Bryars gaining a new type of recognition and being solicited by other renowned musicians. It also opened a new field of references and technical possibilities for Bryars, who until then had learned his trade on the fly, so to speak. He developed an interest in late-Romantic lyrical works, dedicating two full years to studying Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Busoni, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Alexander Scriabin. In 2017, he concluded that he had “started to look more and more to historical models in other areas of [his] work.”¹⁰ After having found artistic mentors in more “eccentric” figures, he slowly reached out to other areas of music history. His entire production can be understood through the lens of reference. From the medieval ars subtilior to Tōru Takemitsu, from Elizabethan composers to Joseph Haydn (Farewell to Philosophy, 1995, was inspired by Haydn’s Symphonies Nos. 22 and 45) and Richard Wagner (The Porazzi Fragment, 1999, is based on a mysterious thirteen-measure theme that Wagner sketched out), the vast majority of his compositions are explicitly based on music of the past. Since 2007, he has also composed adaptations of Antonio Vivaldi, Henry Purcell, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and others for Lock’s choreography.

References to music of the past might be common among British experimental composers. Michael Nyman, who is also interested in such an approach to composition, has noted that

unlike Americans […] English composers have tended to use as their source material the music of Western classical composers. And as regards to method, while the Americans have evolved highly controlled systems, English composers have tended to adopt less restricted processes.¹¹

Bryars’s approach is at odds with Nyman’s in that, despite his well-known sense of humor, he writes with not one speck of postmodern irony. Though he juxtaposes different artistic worlds, his references are not mere quotations: they help him to reach “greater depth.”¹² His oeuvre is not a collage but a work of syncretism. He has been tireless in studying scores by other composers and then feeding them naturally into his own, not to exploit or reproduce them, but to make them bear fruit. From these scores, he also draws conceptual and formal structures that, from his first Fluxus-influenced works, have sparked his creativity and enabled him to be spontaneous.

The approach Bryars takes to past music could be described as post-historical, as opposed to postmodern. This links him more to Valentyn Silvestrov, who explores the artistic potential of cultural memory, than to Nyman. As with Silvestrov, the seeming simplicity in Bryars’s music is perhaps more deceptive than novel: his pieces’ familiar idioms are misleading, as they bring the listener into an unstable harmonic universe, punctuated by peculiar progressions, chords, and various other small and ambiguous variations. Speaking about his Danse dieppoise (1978), Bryars described how such a “deceptively simple surface […] lulls the listener into a false sense of security.”

His music is no more neo-medieval than neo-romantic. It is simply contemporary:

I don’t write old-fashion music. Rather, I take the original forms of pre-existing pieces and try to find in them something new. The type of music that I write, its style and its instrumentation was simply not possible when these pieces were composed.¹³

Although he has not shied away from writing in canonic genres (he has composed six concertos, four string quartets, and six books of madrigals), he has not tried his hand at the symphony or the sonata, and he completely ignored the solo piano until his Ramble on Cortona (on themes from his Laudes) from 2010.

Again like Silvestrov, Bryars composes slow music. Except for a few exceptional pieces and passages in his operas, he writes in slow tempi in which the lack of contrasts becomes apparent only when they appear at the most unexpected moment. In the liner notes of The Fifth Century (2014), a piece for choir and saxophone quartet on texts by the English poet and theologian Thomas Traherne, Bryars explains:

I do enjoy experiencing time in a way that is structured but not hectic or hyperactive. In choral music, I like to slow down the harmonic movement, not that it’s static but so that it’s gradually evolutionary. I like the effect of suddenly finding yourself in new harmonic territory without quite realizing how you got there.

As a minimalist, Bryars (a long-time follower of Zen Buddhism), is more like La Monte Young than Philip Glass: his music seems to discretely expand time.

Another point Bryars shares with Silvestrov, as well as with Arvo Pärt, is the large proportion of vocal music in his catalog. Bryars has been writing for voice since his 1988 piece Glorious Hill, composed on a text by the Italian philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and for the staging of Summer and Smoke by playwright Tennessee Williams; this piece marked the beginning of his close collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble. After his six operas, choir pieces occupy a central position in his oeuvre: highlights include Cadman Requiem (1989), which uses the text from Pärt’s Stabat Mater and which was composed in memory of his friend Bill Cadman, killed in the Lockerbie attack, as well as Mistral (2019), premiered by the chamber choir Les Eléments, and A Native Hill (2019), a magnificent piece written for the American choir The Crossing using excerpts from eponymous essay by Walter Berry (1968). In an interview with Tallon, Bryars declared, “In an ideal world where I could compose whatever I wanted, I would only write for the voice […] I would be totally satisfied to base all my music on Petrarch sonnets for the rest of my life.”¹⁴ Two cycles stand out in his production. First is the Madrigals, which he began writing in 1988, commissioned by Cadman’s parents. They now comprise six books; the first is on poems by Morrison, and the others on Petrarch sonnets. The Madrigals demonstrate Bryars’s interest in constraints: after he realized he had composed the first three Madrigals on a Monday, he decided to compose seven books, one for each day of the week. The second cycle is his Laudes. These fifty-four pieces were commissioned in 2002 by the choreographer Carolyn Carlson and finished in 2020.

This interest in choir music is intimately linked to text, which, like in Pärt’s music, functions as a structural base for the musical composition. As it relates to Bryars’s approach using justification, the text thus justifies the music, in more mature works. In the liner notes for the Second Book of Madrigals (GB Records, 2010), Massimiliano Pascucci, leader of the Vox Àltera Ensemble, writes,

The way of emphasizing the meaning of a word, a concept or an image is still for Bryars one of recreating it musically, suggesting it and synthesizing it; summing it up with musical metaphors to enrich the original poetry with new semantic value. The compositional technique is still that of durchkomponiert — letting the form compose itself, with no prior formal planning, so that the musical sections are created independent of each other and characterized exclusively by their expressive adherence to the text. This continuous and flexible adherence to the text is the basis of Bryars’s compositional language, seemingly austere and restrained, but actually with a daring use of a wide range of styles, from late Romantic tonal chromaticism, to a modal system reminding us of Gesualdo, Debussy or Martin, to dreamy jazz harmonies. […] Bryars’s deep, though not obvious, modernity lies in juxtaposing and blending seemingly incompatible musical worlds, in order to create a third reality, derived from a fusion of the stylistic and expressive features of such different languages.

In his late works, Bryars composes in an increasingly spontaneous, empirical, and almost improvised manner. For his first Laudes, he wrote the vocal line in just under an hour and, like a Japanese calligrapher, “never reworking what had been written,” he said.¹⁵ He has become confident to let his music evolve without a pre-established plan. Ralph van Raat, the dedicatee of his piano concerto The Solway Canal, underlined how Bryars showed a growing interest in “a more improvisatory way of composing.”

An essential dimension of Bryars’s approach to composition — and perhaps the most paradoxical — is his spontaneity. Throughout his career, his spontaneity has been sparked and encouraged by his collaborations with performers (“according to me, performers are the real authors of the musical work”¹⁶), with composers and artists in other fields, and with writers, stage directors, visual artists, and choreographers, as well as by the way he experiences physical places and landscapes. Particular examples of his spontaneous approach include Four Elements (1990), a piece for choreography by Lucinda Childs, and BIPED (1999) for choreographer Merce Cunningham, which surprisingly juxtaposes the music of Richard Wagner and Brian Eno. In 2003, Bryars wrote an article about Lord Berners for the The Guardian; its title, “The Versatile Peer,” could very well suit Bryars himself.¹⁷ Both well-read and spontaneous, rational and emotional, Bryars is fundamentally dialectical and “one of the few composers who can put slapstick and primal emotion alongside each other.”¹⁸

---

<sup>1. See “‘Farewell to Philosophy,’ concerto pour violoncelle d’un musicien inclassable – Gavin Bryars, musicien pataphysicien,” in Libération, 21 October 1996. https://www.liberation.fr/culture/1996/10/21/musiques-nouvelles-farewell-to-philosophyconcerto-pour-violoncelle-d-un-musicien-inclassable-gavin-b_183986/ ↩
2. Jean-Louis TALLON, Gavin Bryars: En paroles, en musique, Marseille, Le Mot et le Reste, 2020. ↩
3. Keith POTTER, “Just the Tip of the Iceberg: Some Aspects of Gavin Bryars’s Music,” in Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music vol. 22, 1981, pp. 4-15. https://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/contactjournal/article/view/contactjournal22_p4-15 ↩
4. See the interview with composer Derek Bailey published in 1980 in his book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music, quoted in ibid., p. 5. ↩
5. In TALLON, Gavin Bryars, p. 125. ↩
6. Daniel CAUX, “Les ready made ‘aidés’ de Gavin Bryars,” Le Monde, 24 November 1979. ↩
7. “Gavin Bryars, The Sinking of the Titanic”, duuuradio.fr, 30 April 2020. https://duuuradio.fr/archive/matthieu-saladin-precipites-de-lenteur-gavin-bryars-the-sinking-of-the-titanic ↩
8. Gavin BRYARS, “Berners, Rousseau, Satie,” in Studio International vol. 192, no. 984, 1976. ↩
9. POTTER, “Just the Tip of the Iceberg,” p. 5. ↩
10. Ethan IVERSON, “Interview with Gavin Bryars,” Do the M@th, 30 May 2017. https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-gavin-bryars/ ↩
11. Michael NYMAN, Experimental Music, Cage and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 157. ↩
12. “What John and Chris and others were doing was nearly always referential. There was always some outside reference to other music: to Elizabethan music or piobaireachd or something. They were playing games with musical structures and reworking them. It was not just some sort of [Bryars sings a parody of quaver-based process music]; it would actually come from somewhere else and have a different resonance, which for me always gave it greater depth.” In Keith POTTER, Kyle GANN, and Pwyll ap SIÔN (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music, Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 87-106. ↩
13. TALLON, Gavin Bryars, p. 245. ↩
14. Ibid., p. 222. ↩
15. Ibid., p. 241. ↩
16. Ibid., p. 302. ↩
17. Gavin BRYARS, “The Versatile Peer,” in The Guardian, 22 February 2003. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2003/feb/22/classicalmusicandopera.artsfeatures ↩
18. Michael Ondaatje, cited in the front matter of TALLON, Gavin Bryars. ↩</sup>

© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2023

• Solo (excluding voice)
  • Tre Laude Dolçe for solo double bass (), 12 mn, Schott
  • The Ride Cymbal And The Band That Caused The Fire In The Sycamore Trees for one or two prepared pianos (1970), 25 mn
  • After Handel’s Vesper for harpsichord (1995), 11 mn, Schott
  • A Time and a Place for organ (1999), 5 mn, Schott
  • Gutenberg’s Farewell for organ (2001), 7 mn
  • Tre Laude Dolce for cello (2006), 12 mn, Schott
  • Lauda Dolçe II from Tre Laude Dolçe, arranged for solo viola (2007), 5 mn, Schott
  • Ramble on Cortona for solo piano (2010), 10 mn, Schott
  • Dancing with Pannonica for solo piano (2012)
  • Half-Time for bowed vibraphone (2015), Schott
  • Goldmark Variations for solo violin (2018), Schott
  • The Pataphysical Calendar for solo piano (2019), 7 mn about
  • Lauda col legno III for unaccompanied solo bass clarinet (2020)
• Chamber music
  • Pictured Within (variation 11) music for the ballet Trick Cell Play ()
  • The Squirrel And The Ricketty-Racketty Bridge for one player, 2 guitars (or multiples of this) (1971), Schott
  • Long Player up to 3 strings and piano (1975), 10 mn
  • Ponukelian Melody for cello, tuba, reed organ and tubular bells (3 players) (1975), 10 mn
  • elec Tra-La-La-Lira-Lira-Lay (formerly entitled Detective Fiction and Related Subjects) for cello, tuba, reed organ and tapes/slides (1976), 15 mn
  • White To Play (And Win) for percussion trio (1976), 12 mn
  • First Suite from ‘Irma’ for two pianos (1977), 15 mn
  • Out of Zaleski’s Gazebo for two pianos (6 ou 8 hands) (1977), 12 mn, Schott
  • Poggioli in Zaleski’s Gazebo for piano, tuba, vibes, xylophone and bells (1977), 12 mn
  • R + 7 for percussion duo (1977), 10 mn
  • elec The Perfect Crime for two pianos, tape, percussion, optional slides (1977), 20 mn
  • White’s SS for two pianos (1977), 18 mn
  • Danse Dieppoise (also called Danse à la Talouienne) for horn, tuba, piano and vibes (1978), 10 mn
  • My First Homage for two pianos (1978), 15 mn, Schott
  • Ramsey’s Lamp for 2 pianos (6 hands) (1979), 10 mn
  • Sforzesco Sforzando for four pianos (1979), 20 mn
  • After Mendelssohn piano duet (1980), 59 s
  • Hi-Tremolo for vibes, marimba and two pianos (1980), 10 mn
  • The English Mail-Coach for 2 vibes and 6 roto-toms (1980), 6 mn
  • Allegrasco for soprano saxophone or clarinet and piano (1983), 20 mn, Schott
  • Between the National and Bristol string quartet n°1 (1985), 23 mn, Schott
  • Eglisak for 2 pianos, 2 violins and percussion (1985), 23 mn
  • Homage to Vivier for flute, clarinet, vibes and piano (1985), 10 mn
  • Pavane for French horn, violin, 3 percussion and double bass (1986), 12 mn
  • Sketch for Sub Rosa for 2 pianos (version made only for recording) (1986), 10 mn
  • Sub Rosa for clarinet, recorder, vibes, violin, piano and double bass (1986), 10 mn, Schott
  • Alaric I or II for saxophone quartet (1989), 15 mn, Schott
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1990), 25 mn, Schott
  • The Corinthian Middle for two violins (1990), 7 mn
  • Aus den Letzten Tage for 2 violins, clarinet, electric keyboard and 2 percussion (1991), 15 mn, Schott
  • Alaric III for basset-horn, violin, piano, electric keyboard and 2 electronic percussion (1992), 15 mn
  • Die Letzten Tage for 2 violins (with optional Korg M1 keyboard) (1992), 27 mn, Schott
  • The North Shore for cello and piano (1993, 1995), 12 mn, Schott
  • One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing for 5 percussion (1994), 15 mn, Schott
  • The North Shore for viola and piano (1994, 1993), 12 mn, Schott
  • Wonderlawn for electric guitar, viola, cello and double bass (with pedals) (1994), 58 mn
  • elec stage "2" music for dance performance, for 2 amplified harpsichords (1995), 1 h 30 mn, Schott
  • Les Fiançailles for 2 pianos (4 or 8 hands), string quintet, optional 2 vibes and sizzle cymbal (1996, 1983), 20 mn, Schott
  • After the Requiem (Septet) (1998), 25 mn
  • Intermezzo for clarinet, cello and piano (1998), 10 mn
  • String Quartet No. 3 (1998), 21 mn, Schott
  • elec stage Biped for violin, cello, electric guitar, double bass, electric keyboard and pre-recorded tape (1999), 45 mn, Schott
  • Unless The Eye Catch Fire for bass clarinet, piano, 2 violas, cello, double bass and percussion (1999), 30 mn
  • Toru’s Mist for shakuhachi, violin, piano and Japanese untuned percussion (2001), 12 mn, Schott
  • With Miriam by the river for cello and piano (2001), 5 mn
  • “I send you this Cadmium Red” for bass clarinet, electric guitar, viola and double bass (2001), 40 mn
  • The South Downs for cello and piano (2003, 1995), 15 mn, Schott
  • Lachrimae Crepusculae (after Dowland) for viol consort and lute (2004), 5 mn, Schott
  • Non la connobbe il mondo mentre l’ebbe for flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin and cello (2006), 15 mn, Schott
  • stage Amjad dance by Edouard Lock, after Tchaikovsky, for two violas, cello and piano (2007), 1 h 20 mn, Schott
  • Two Lines for tenor and bass recorders (2007), 4 mn, Schott
  • A Family Likeness for recorder consort (2008), 8 mn, Schott
  • At Portage and Main for percussion quintet (2009), 17 mn, Schott
  • Lauda: The Flower of Friendship for viola, electric guitar, cello and double bass (2009), 13 mn, Schott
  • Room 42 for double bass and piano (2009), 3 mn
  • stage Dido and Orfeo (after Purcell and Gluck), for ensemble (2010-2011), 1 h 30 mn, Schott
  • It Never Rains for electric guitar, viola, cello and double bass (2011), 5 mn, Schott
  • stage 11th Floor for ensemble (2014), 40 mn, Schott
  • Lauda Rubata a Tre a work in lauda form for electric guitar, cello and bass clarinet (2014), 5 mn, Schott
  • stage The Seasons for two violas, two cellos and double bass, originally written for a ballet choreographed by Édouard Lock (2014), 40 mn, Schott
  • On Lassus pataphysical chamber music (2015)
  • The Other Side of the River for percussion quartet (2015), 22 mn, Schott
  • Grainger's Woggle for four pianos 16 hands (2016), Schott
  • Jimmy Smith in Paradise for cathedral organ and solo percussion (2016), 15 mn, Schott
  • Zaleski’s Perfumed Garden for four pianos 16 hands (2016), 12 mn, Schott
  • stage The Heart of August ballet in two acts (2017), 45 mn, Schott
  • Extra Time for bowed vibraphone and electric guitar (2018), 5 mn, Schott
  • stage After the opera music for the ballet Trick Cell Play (2019), Schott
  • Altissima Luce trio for bass clarinet, viola and cello (2020)
  • String Quartet No. 4 (2019-2020), 20 mn, Schott
• Instrumental ensemble music
  • Dancing with Pannonica for ensemble (), Schott
  • elec Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet for pre-recorded tape and ensemble (1971), 35 mn, Schott
  • The Vespertine Park for 1 or 2 pianos, 2 vibes or 1 vibes and 1 marimba or bass marimba/bells, optional steel drums/sizzle cymbal and optional bass clarinet (1980), 10 mn
  • Prolegomenon to ‘Medea’ for clarinet, bass clarinet, marimba, bass marimba, cello, double bass, 2 keyboards and timpani (1981), 20 mn
  • Three Studies on Medea for 2 pianos, marimba, 2 vibes, bells, cymbal, clarinet, tenor horn and strings (1983), 35 mn
  • The Old Tower of Löbenicht for ensemble (1987), 15 mn, Schott
  • elec stage Four Elements for alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flugelhorn, horn, trombone, piano, electric keyboard, bass, taped voice (or male alto), 2 percussion (1990), 30 mn, Schott
  • The Archangel Trip for 2 pan-pipes, 2 alto saxophones, bass clarinet, 2 sampling keyboards, octopads (with sampler), 5-string violin, 5-string cello, electric guitar and electric bass (1993), 17 mn, Schott
  • Three Elegies for Nine Clarinets (1994), 19 mn, Schott
  • In Nomine (After Purcell) version for string orchestra (1995, 2002), 10 mn, Schott
  • Revision to Medea Act 1 scene A (new opening scene) (1995)
  • The Porazzi Fragment for 21 strings, on a theme by Richard Wagner (1999), 14 mn, Schott
  • Creamer Etudes for ensemble (2005), 17 mn, Schott
  • The Church closest to the Sea for string quartet, double bass, piano and percussion (2007), 18 mn, Schott
  • The Porazzi Fragment version for thirteen basses (2007)
  • Leeds Fuse for peal of 13 bells (2009), 50 mn
  • Reverence for string orchestra (2010), 21 mn, Schott
  • After the Underworlds for brass band (2012), 8 mn, Schott
  • Burroughs for ensemble (2014), 40 mn, Schott
  • stage Peer Gynt ballet music based on Grieg's Peer Gynt, for orchestra (2014), 60 mn, Schott
  • stage Pneuma ballet music, for orchestra with interludes by Philip Jeck (improvised electronics) (2014), 1 h 20 mn, Schott
• Concertant music
  • Liverpool concerto for harpsichord and orchestra ()
  • 2nd Suite From ‘Irma’ for piano and string orchestra (1978), 20 mn
  • Viennese Dance No 1 (M.H.). for solo French horn, 6 percussionists and optional string trio (1985), 18 mn, Schott
  • By The Vaar for double bass and ensemble (1987), 20 mn, Schott
  • After The Requiem for solo electric guitar, 2 violas and cello (1990, 2003), 16 mn, Schott
  • The Green Ray for soprano saxophone and orchestra (1991), 20 mn, Schott
  • Epilogue from Wonderlawn for double bass ensemble (1994, 2006), 7 mn, Schott
  • Epilogue from Wonderlawn for viola and ensemble (1994), 7 mn, Schott
  • The East Coast for bass oboe and chamber orchestra (1994), 15 mn, Schott
  • Cello Concerto (Farewell to Philosophy) (1995), 35 mn, Schott
  • The North Shore for cello and chamber orchestra (1995), 15 mn, Schott
  • Violin Concerto (The Bulls of Bashan) for violin and strings (2000), 18 mn, Schott
  • Introit for piano and strings (2002), 8 mn, Schott
  • Lauda (con sordino) for solo cello, piano and optional electric guitar (2002), 10 mn, Schott
  • New York concerto for tuned percussion quintet and chamber orchestra (2004), 25 mn, Schott
  • Silva Caledonia for double bass ensemble (2006), 6 mn, Schott
  • stage The Third Light music for David Dawson's ballet, for strings (2010), 27 mn, Schott
  • Viola Concerto (A Hut in Toyama) for viola and chamber orchestra (2020), 30 mn, Schott
• Vocal music and instrument(s)
  • stage Irma opera (1977), 38 mn
  • On Photography for mixed choir, harmonium and piano (1983), 20 mn, Schott
  • (Effarene) shorter version, for soprano, 2 pianos, 4 percussion (1984)
  • Effarene for soprano, mezzo-soprano, 2 pianos and 6 percussion (1984), 38 mn, Schott
  • stage Medea opera for solo voices, mixed choir and orchestra (1984, 1982, 1995), 2 h 45 mn, Schott
  • Pico’s Flight for soprano and orchestra (1986), 18 mn, Schott
  • Dr Ox’s Experiment (Epilogue) for soprano, solo piano and ensemble (1988), 22 mn
  • Invention of Tradition for two cathedral organs, female choir and ensemble (1988), 45 mn
  • Cadman Requiem version for voices, two violas and cello (optional double bass) (1989), 30 mn, Schott
  • Cadman Requiem version for voices and viol consort (1989), 30 mn
  • Incipit Vita Nova for solo alto, violin, viola and cello (1989), 7 mn, Schott
  • The Black River for soprano and organ (1991), 15 mn, Schott
  • A Man in a Room, Gambling for speaking voice and string quartet (1992), 50 mn, Schott
  • The Leiden Riddle for male voices, two violins and organ (1992), 10 mn
  • The War in Heaven for soprano, alto, half choir, choir and orchestra (1993), 45 mn, Schott
  • From Mina Harker’s Journal for baritone and viola (1994), 22 mn
  • 2 Songs from the Adnan Songbook for soprano, bass clarinet, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and double bass (1995), 9 mn
  • Adnan Songbook for soprano, bass clarinet, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and double bass (1996), 30 mn, Schott
  • elec stage Doctor Ox’s Experiment opera for 12 solo voices, choir and orchestra (1997), 2 h 10 mn, Schott
  • The Island Chapel for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra (1997), 17 mn, Schott
  • Duets from Doctor Ox’s Experiment for soprano, counter-tenor and ensemble (1998), 37 mn
  • Planet Earth for contralto voice, bass clarinet, bassoon, two horns, percussion, timpani, piano and strings (1998), 10 mn, Schott
  • The Apple for contralto voice, 6 cellos, 4 basses and percussion (1998), 4 mn, Schott
  • Creation Hymn for choir and orchestra (1999), 18 mn, Schott
  • When Harry Met Addie for off-stage soprano and ensemble (1999), 7 mn, Schott
  • stage G, Being the Confession and Last Testament of Johannes Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, Master Printer, formerly of Strasbourg and Mainz. opera in two Acts, with prologue and epilogue (2001), 2 h 30 mn, Schott
  • Double Bass Concerto (“Farewell to St Petersburg”) (2002), 27 mn, Schott
  • elec I have heard it said that a spirit enters for contralto jazz voice and orchestra (2002), 4 mn, Schott
  • Psalm 132 (133) for mixed choir, trumpet and organ (2003), 8 mn, Schott
  • Eight Irish Madrigals for soprano, tenor, two violas, cello and double bass (2004), 26 mn, Schott
  • stage From Egil’s Saga opera for bass voice, optional choir, French horn, bass clarinet, percussion and strings (2004), 32 mn, Schott
  • elec Psalm 126 (127) for mixed choir and lightly amplified double bass (2004), 5 mn, Schott
  • Third Book of Madrigals for soprano, tenor, bass and lute (2003-2004), 25 mn, Schott
  • Lauda 30 “Stella nuova” for three sopranos, bass clarinet and double bass (2005), 4 mn
  • Third Book of Madrigals nos. 10-17 for soprano, tenor, bass and lute (2005), Schott
  • Cadman Requiem version for male choir and organ (2006), Schott
  • Nine Irish Madrigals for soprano, tenor, viola, bass clarinet and double bass (2006), 30 mn
  • The Paper Nautilus for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two pianos and six percussions (2006), 1 h 10 mn, Schott
  • The Stones of the Arch for four voices, string quartet and optional improvising turntablist (2006), 20 mn, Schott
  • Ian in the Broch for male choir, solo double bass, solo baritone and strings (2007), 10 mn, Schott
  • Nothing like the Sun 8 Shakespeare sonnets for soprano, tenor, speaking voice and ensemble (2007), 1 h 60 s, Schott
  • stage To Define Happiness theatre work for soprano voice, horn, bass clarinet, kantele, percussion, 2 violins, viola, cello and bass (2007), 1 h 20 mn, Schott
  • Two Billesdon Christmas Carols for choir and organ (2007), 8 mn, Schott
  • Anáil Dé (The Breath Of God) 11 pieces for tenor, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and bass (2008), 35 mn, Schott
  • Lauda 35 L’alto prence archangelo for tenor, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and bass (2008), 4 mn
  • Lauda 36 Gloria in cielo for soprano, tenor, viola, bass clarinet and double bass (2008), 5 mn
  • Lauda 37 Ciascun ke fede sente for soprano, tenor, solo trumpet, viola, cello, bass and electric guitar (2008), 6 mn
  • Old Man and Sea for tenor and harp (2008), 3 mn
  • Tróndur I Gøtu (Thrand of Gotu) for soprano, bass, mixed choir and chamber orchestra (2008), 30 mn, Schott
  • Tuirimh Mhic Fhinin Dhuibh for tenor and ensemble (2008), 8 mn, Schott
  • Five Songs from Northern Seas for tenor and piano (2008-2009), 15 mn, Schott
  • Lauda 38 Ben è crudele for mixed choir, viola, electric guitar, cello and double bass (2009), 6 mn
  • Lauda 39 Magdalena degna da laudare for tenor, viola, cello, electric guitar and double bass (2009), 5 mn
  • St Brendan arrives at the Promised Land of the Saints for mixed choir, violin and organ (2009), 8 mn, Schott
  • Piano Concerto (“The Solway Canal”) for piano, male choir and orchestra (2010), 28 mn, Schott
  • The Morrison Songbook a group of 7 songs for tenor, soprano, electric guitar, viola, cello and double bass (2010), Schott
  • Four Battiferri Madrigals (2011)
  • Lauda 40 “Madonna Santa Maria” for four voices and four instruments (2011)
  • Lauda 41 “De la crudel morte de Cristo” lauda for soprano, tenor, electric guitar, viola, cello and bass (2011)
  • Lauda 42 lauda for soprano, tenor, electric guitar, viola, cello, double bass (2012)
  • The Beckett Songbook for soprano, alto and ensemble (2012), 8 mn, Schott
  • The Open Road for voices and ensemble (2012), 4 mn, Schott
  • The Pythagorean Comma radio play by Gavin Bryars and Blake Morrison, for organ and children's choir (2012)
  • The Voice of St Columba for four voices and string orchestra (2012), 15 mn, Schott
  • stage Marylin Forever chamber opera in one act (2010-2013), 1 h 15 mn, Schott
  • The Fifth Century for choir and saxophone quartet (2014), Schott
  • De Profundis Aquarum for choir and a group of early music instruments (2015), 10 mn, Schott
  • So Djupt (So Deep) for choir and organ (2015)
  • The Stopping Train for narrator and ensemble (2016), Schott
  • Winestead for voice and ensemble (2017), 20 mn, Schott
  • Words for Music for vocal ensemble and double bass (2017), 10 mn, Schott
  • Le Ha Ha Platonique for baritone, mezzo-soprano, viola, electric guitar, cello, piano and double bass (2018), 10 mn
  • stage Requiem in ten movements for full orchestra, chorus and 4 soloist (2018), 50 mn, Schott
  • stage The Collected Works of Billy the Kid chamber opera in one act (2017-2018), 60 mn, Schott
  • Mistral vocal work for 12 voices and 5 tuned percussion (2019)
  • The single creation of one soul for choir and organ (2020)
• A cappella vocal music
  • stage Ouse theatre piece for 2 singers (1970)
  • elec Serenely Beaming And Leaning On a Five-Barred Gate for speaking voices and tape (1970)
  • Glorious Hill for four voices (1988), 15 mn, Schott
  • elec The White Lodge for low mezzo-soprano voice, electronics and digital tape (1991), 16 mn 30 s, Schott
  • And so ended Kant’s travelling in the world for unaccompanied voices (1997), 7 mn, Schott
  • Expressa Solis for unaccompanied voices (1997), 7 mn, Schott
  • First Book of Madrigals for three, four and five voices (2000), 35 mn, Schott
  • Super Fluminem for four voices (2000), 8 mn, Schott
  • elec Marconi’s Madrigal (“Se ‘l sasso ond’ è più chiusa questa valle”) for soprano, tenor and tape (2001), 7 mn
  • 3 Laude for solo voice (2002), 12 mn
  • Oi me lasso (Lauda 4) for soprano and tenor (2002), 6 mn
  • Second Book of Madrigals for six voices (2002), 1 h 10 mn, Schott
  • Psalm 83 (84) for mixed choir (2003), 8 mn, Schott
  • Fourth Book of Madrigals (2004-) No.1 “A qualunque animale”, for eight voices (2004), 10 mn
  • Bibe Aquam for three sopranos (2005), 4 mn
  • A la dolce ombra de le belle frondi (Fourth Book of Madrigals No. 2) for choir (2006), 10 mn, Schott
  • Glorious Hill version for male choir (2006)
  • Lauda 31 “Ogn’om canti” for male choir (2006), 4 mn
  • Lauda 32 “Omne homo” for male choir (2006), 4 mn
  • Lauda 33 “Spirito sancto” for two sopranos, counter tenor, tenor and bass (2006), 4 mn
  • Silva Caledonia for male choir (2006), 6 mn
  • Lauda 34 Faciamo laude a tutt’i sancti for three sopranos and tenor (2007)
  • Memento for male choir (2007), 3 mn, Schott
  • The Summons for male choir (2007), 6 mn, Schott
  • A Golden Age for male choir (2008), 5 mn
  • Credo and Benedicamus Domino for three female voices (2008), 6 mn, Schott
  • Post-Glacial for male choir (2008), 5 mn
  • The Mirror for male choir (2008), 5 mn
  • Four I Tatti Madrigals for six voices a capella (2009), 14 mn
  • The “Solitude” Madrigal short madrigal for seven voices (2010), 2 mn, Schott
  • Two Love Songs two madrigals for three female voices (2010), 6 mn, Schott
  • Psalm 141 put to music for a cappella voices (2012), 7 mn, Schott
  • Fifth Book of Madrigals (“I Tatti”) eleven madrigals for six voices (2013), Schott
  • Gallus et Agnus (after Demantius) for unaccompanied solo bass voice (2014), 4 mn, Schott
  • Sixth Book of Madrigals for a cappella voices (2015), 15 mn, Schott
  • Dido’s Lament (Purcell arr. Bryars) arrangement for four a cappella voices and mixed choir (2016), 3 mn, Schott
  • A Native Hill a cappella choral work for 24 voices (2019)
  • Lauda 48 for unaccompanied solo soprano (2019)
  • In Glasgow for chamber choir (20-24 voices) (2020), Schott
  • Lauda 54 “Stella Nuova for three female voices (2020)
  • Laude 49-53 for unaccompanied solo soprano (2020)
• Electronic music / fixed media / mechanical musical instruments
  • elec A Must For All Sibelians tape music (1/2 track stereo) (1969), 30 mn
  • elec To Gain The Affections Of Miss Dwyer Even For One Short Minute Would Benefit Me No End for electronics (1970)
• Unspecified instrumentation
  • Pre Medieval Metrics for unspecified ensemble ()
  • Mr. Sunshine for any number of keyboards, including one prepared piano (1968)
  • stage Marvellous Aphorisms Are Scattered Richly Throughout These Pages. theatre piece (1969)
  • Private Music (1969)
  • The Sinking of the Titanic indeterminate instrumentation (possible materials include stereo tapes, string ensemble, percussion, low brass, brass quartet, bass clarinet, cassette tapes of speech, keyboard, 35 mm slides, visible sound effects, music box) (1969, 1996), 15 mn, Schott
  • A Game Of Football environmental piece (1970)
  • The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls recording piece (1970)
  • 1,2,1-2-3-4 (1971), 20 mn
  • A Place In The Country (1972)
  • Far Away and Dimly Pealing environmental piece (1972)
  • The Heat Of The Beat (1972)
  • Sidescraper for piano(s) (1979), 15 mn
  • The Cross-Channel Ferry 'elastic' scoring, for ensemble (1979), 12 mn, Schott
  • stage CIVIL WarS opera (incomplete), collaboration with Robert Wilson (1983)
  • Hymne à la Rrose for French ‘village’ band (fanfare) (1984), 6 mn
  • Le Chateau d’Oiron for mixed instruments, 3-4 players, plus 2 works for village band from their own repertoire (1993), 58 mn
  • Three Poems of Cecco Angiolieri (1997), 12 mn, Schott
  • Laude Cortonese for variable ensemble (2002), Schott
  • elec Overworlds and Underworlds an installation and series of performances devised by the Quay Brothers for various locations in Leeds (2012)

• 2020
  • Altissima Luce trio for bass clarinet, viola and cello
  • In Glasgow for chamber choir (20-24 voices), Schott
  • Lauda 54 “Stella Nuova for three female voices
  • Lauda col legno III for unaccompanied solo bass clarinet
  • Laude 49-53 for unaccompanied solo soprano
  • String Quartet No. 4, 20 mn, Schott
  • The single creation of one soul for choir and organ
  • Viola Concerto (A Hut in Toyama) for viola and chamber orchestra, 30 mn, Schott
• 2019
  • A Native Hill a cappella choral work for 24 voices
  • stage After the opera music for the ballet Trick Cell Play, Schott
  • Lauda 48 for unaccompanied solo soprano
  • Mistral vocal work for 12 voices and 5 tuned percussion
  • The Pataphysical Calendar for solo piano, 7 mn about
• 2018
  • Extra Time for bowed vibraphone and electric guitar, 5 mn, Schott
  • Goldmark Variations for solo violin, Schott
  • Le Ha Ha Platonique for baritone, mezzo-soprano, viola, electric guitar, cello, piano and double bass, 10 mn
  • stage Requiem in ten movements for full orchestra, chorus and 4 soloist, 50 mn, Schott
  • stage The Collected Works of Billy the Kid chamber opera in one act, 60 mn, Schott
• 2017
  • stage The Heart of August ballet in two acts, 45 mn, Schott
  • Winestead for voice and ensemble, 20 mn, Schott
  • Words for Music for vocal ensemble and double bass, 10 mn, Schott
• 2016
  • Dido’s Lament (Purcell arr. Bryars) arrangement for four a cappella voices and mixed choir, 3 mn, Schott
  • Grainger's Woggle for four pianos 16 hands, Schott
  • Jimmy Smith in Paradise for cathedral organ and solo percussion, 15 mn, Schott
  • The Stopping Train for narrator and ensemble, Schott
  • Zaleski’s Perfumed Garden for four pianos 16 hands, 12 mn, Schott
• 2015
  • De Profundis Aquarum for choir and a group of early music instruments, 10 mn, Schott
  • Half-Time for bowed vibraphone, Schott
  • On Lassus pataphysical chamber music
  • Sixth Book of Madrigals for a cappella voices, 15 mn, Schott
  • So Djupt (So Deep) for choir and organ
  • The Other Side of the River for percussion quartet, 22 mn, Schott
• 2014
  • stage 11th Floor for ensemble, 40 mn, Schott
  • Burroughs for ensemble, 40 mn, Schott
  • Gallus et Agnus (after Demantius) for unaccompanied solo bass voice, 4 mn, Schott
  • Lauda Rubata a Tre a work in lauda form for electric guitar, cello and bass clarinet, 5 mn, Schott
  • stage Peer Gynt ballet music based on Grieg's Peer Gynt, for orchestra, 60 mn, Schott
  • stage Pneuma ballet music, for orchestra with interludes by Philip Jeck (improvised electronics), 1 h 20 mn, Schott
  • The Fifth Century for choir and saxophone quartet, Schott
  • stage The Seasons for two violas, two cellos and double bass, originally written for a ballet choreographed by Édouard Lock, 40 mn, Schott
• 2013
  • Fifth Book of Madrigals (“I Tatti”) eleven madrigals for six voices, Schott
  • stage Marylin Forever chamber opera in one act, 1 h 15 mn, Schott
• 2012
  • After the Underworlds for brass band, 8 mn, Schott
  • Dancing with Pannonica for solo piano
  • Lauda 42 lauda for soprano, tenor, electric guitar, viola, cello, double bass
  • elec Overworlds and Underworlds an installation and series of performances devised by the Quay Brothers for various locations in Leeds
  • Psalm 141 put to music for a cappella voices, 7 mn, Schott
  • The Beckett Songbook for soprano, alto and ensemble, 8 mn, Schott
  • The Open Road for voices and ensemble, 4 mn, Schott
  • The Pythagorean Comma radio play by Gavin Bryars and Blake Morrison, for organ and children's choir
  • The Voice of St Columba for four voices and string orchestra, 15 mn, Schott
• 2011
  • stage Dido and Orfeo (after Purcell and Gluck), for ensemble, 1 h 30 mn, Schott
  • Four Battiferri Madrigals
  • It Never Rains for electric guitar, viola, cello and double bass, 5 mn, Schott
  • Lauda 40 “Madonna Santa Maria” for four voices and four instruments
  • Lauda 41 “De la crudel morte de Cristo” lauda for soprano, tenor, electric guitar, viola, cello and bass
• 2010
  • Piano Concerto (“The Solway Canal”) for piano, male choir and orchestra, 28 mn, Schott
  • Ramble on Cortona for solo piano, 10 mn, Schott
  • Reverence for string orchestra, 21 mn, Schott
  • The Morrison Songbook a group of 7 songs for tenor, soprano, electric guitar, viola, cello and double bass, Schott
  • stage The Third Light music for David Dawson's ballet, for strings, 27 mn, Schott
  • The “Solitude” Madrigal short madrigal for seven voices, 2 mn, Schott
  • Two Love Songs two madrigals for three female voices, 6 mn, Schott
• 2009
  • At Portage and Main for percussion quintet, 17 mn, Schott
  • Five Songs from Northern Seas for tenor and piano, 15 mn, Schott
  • Four I Tatti Madrigals for six voices a capella, 14 mn
  • Lauda 38 Ben è crudele for mixed choir, viola, electric guitar, cello and double bass, 6 mn
  • Lauda 39 Magdalena degna da laudare for tenor, viola, cello, electric guitar and double bass, 5 mn
  • Lauda: The Flower of Friendship for viola, electric guitar, cello and double bass, 13 mn, Schott
  • Leeds Fuse for peal of 13 bells, 50 mn
  • Room 42 for double bass and piano, 3 mn
  • St Brendan arrives at the Promised Land of the Saints for mixed choir, violin and organ, 8 mn, Schott
• 2008
  • A Family Likeness for recorder consort, 8 mn, Schott
  • A Golden Age for male choir, 5 mn
  • Anáil Dé (The Breath Of God) 11 pieces for tenor, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and bass, 35 mn, Schott
  • Credo and Benedicamus Domino for three female voices, 6 mn, Schott
  • Lauda 35 L’alto prence archangelo for tenor, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and bass, 4 mn
  • Lauda 36 Gloria in cielo for soprano, tenor, viola, bass clarinet and double bass, 5 mn
  • Lauda 37 Ciascun ke fede sente for soprano, tenor, solo trumpet, viola, cello, bass and electric guitar, 6 mn
  • Old Man and Sea for tenor and harp, 3 mn
  • Post-Glacial for male choir, 5 mn
  • The Mirror for male choir, 5 mn
  • Tróndur I Gøtu (Thrand of Gotu) for soprano, bass, mixed choir and chamber orchestra, 30 mn, Schott
  • Tuirimh Mhic Fhinin Dhuibh for tenor and ensemble, 8 mn, Schott
• 2007
  • stage Amjad dance by Edouard Lock, after Tchaikovsky, for two violas, cello and piano, 1 h 20 mn, Schott
  • Ian in the Broch for male choir, solo double bass, solo baritone and strings, 10 mn, Schott
  • Lauda 34 Faciamo laude a tutt’i sancti for three sopranos and tenor
  • Lauda Dolçe II from Tre Laude Dolçe, arranged for solo viola, 5 mn, Schott
  • Memento for male choir, 3 mn, Schott
  • Nothing like the Sun 8 Shakespeare sonnets for soprano, tenor, speaking voice and ensemble, 1 h 60 s, Schott
  • The Church closest to the Sea for string quartet, double bass, piano and percussion, 18 mn, Schott
  • The Porazzi Fragment version for thirteen basses
  • The Summons for male choir, 6 mn, Schott
  • stage To Define Happiness theatre work for soprano voice, horn, bass clarinet, kantele, percussion, 2 violins, viola, cello and bass, 1 h 20 mn, Schott
  • Two Billesdon Christmas Carols for choir and organ, 8 mn, Schott
  • Two Lines for tenor and bass recorders, 4 mn, Schott
• 2006
  • A la dolce ombra de le belle frondi (Fourth Book of Madrigals No. 2) for choir, 10 mn, Schott
  • Cadman Requiem version for male choir and organ, Schott
  • Glorious Hill version for male choir
  • Lauda 31 “Ogn’om canti” for male choir, 4 mn
  • Lauda 32 “Omne homo” for male choir, 4 mn
  • Lauda 33 “Spirito sancto” for two sopranos, counter tenor, tenor and bass, 4 mn
  • Nine Irish Madrigals for soprano, tenor, viola, bass clarinet and double bass, 30 mn
  • Non la connobbe il mondo mentre l’ebbe for flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin and cello, 15 mn, Schott
  • Silva Caledonia for double bass ensemble, 6 mn, Schott
  • Silva Caledonia for male choir, 6 mn
  • The Paper Nautilus for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two pianos and six percussions, 1 h 10 mn, Schott
  • The Stones of the Arch for four voices, string quartet and optional improvising turntablist, 20 mn, Schott
  • Tre Laude Dolce for cello, 12 mn, Schott
• 2005
  • Bibe Aquam for three sopranos, 4 mn
  • Creamer Etudes for ensemble, 17 mn, Schott
  • Lauda 30 “Stella nuova” for three sopranos, bass clarinet and double bass, 4 mn
  • Third Book of Madrigals nos. 10-17 for soprano, tenor, bass and lute, Schott
• 2004
  • Eight Irish Madrigals for soprano, tenor, two violas, cello and double bass, 26 mn, Schott
  • Fourth Book of Madrigals (2004-) No.1 “A qualunque animale”, for eight voices, 10 mn
  • stage From Egil’s Saga opera for bass voice, optional choir, French horn, bass clarinet, percussion and strings, 32 mn, Schott
  • Lachrimae Crepusculae (after Dowland) for viol consort and lute, 5 mn, Schott
  • New York concerto for tuned percussion quintet and chamber orchestra, 25 mn, Schott
  • elec Psalm 126 (127) for mixed choir and lightly amplified double bass, 5 mn, Schott
  • Third Book of Madrigals for soprano, tenor, bass and lute, 25 mn, Schott
• 2003
  • Psalm 132 (133) for mixed choir, trumpet and organ, 8 mn, Schott
  • Psalm 83 (84) for mixed choir, 8 mn, Schott
  • The South Downs for cello and piano, 15 mn, Schott
• 2002
  • 3 Laude for solo voice, 12 mn
  • Double Bass Concerto (“Farewell to St Petersburg”), 27 mn, Schott
  • elec I have heard it said that a spirit enters for contralto jazz voice and orchestra, 4 mn, Schott
  • Introit for piano and strings, 8 mn, Schott
  • Lauda (con sordino) for solo cello, piano and optional electric guitar, 10 mn, Schott
  • Laude Cortonese for variable ensemble, Schott
  • Oi me lasso (Lauda 4) for soprano and tenor, 6 mn
  • Second Book of Madrigals for six voices, 1 h 10 mn, Schott
• 2001
  • stage G, Being the Confession and Last Testament of Johannes Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, Master Printer, formerly of Strasbourg and Mainz. opera in two Acts, with prologue and epilogue, 2 h 30 mn, Schott
  • Gutenberg’s Farewell for organ, 7 mn
  • elec Marconi’s Madrigal (“Se ‘l sasso ond’ è più chiusa questa valle”) for soprano, tenor and tape, 7 mn
  • Toru’s Mist for shakuhachi, violin, piano and Japanese untuned percussion, 12 mn, Schott
  • With Miriam by the river for cello and piano, 5 mn
  • “I send you this Cadmium Red” for bass clarinet, electric guitar, viola and double bass, 40 mn
• 2000
  • First Book of Madrigals for three, four and five voices, 35 mn, Schott
  • Super Fluminem for four voices, 8 mn, Schott
  • Violin Concerto (The Bulls of Bashan) for violin and strings, 18 mn, Schott
• 1999
  • A Time and a Place for organ, 5 mn, Schott
  • elec stage Biped for violin, cello, electric guitar, double bass, electric keyboard and pre-recorded tape, 45 mn, Schott
  • Creation Hymn for choir and orchestra, 18 mn, Schott
  • The Porazzi Fragment for 21 strings, on a theme by Richard Wagner, 14 mn, Schott
  • Unless The Eye Catch Fire for bass clarinet, piano, 2 violas, cello, double bass and percussion, 30 mn
  • When Harry Met Addie for off-stage soprano and ensemble, 7 mn, Schott
• 1998
  • After the Requiem (Septet), 25 mn
  • Duets from Doctor Ox’s Experiment for soprano, counter-tenor and ensemble, 37 mn
  • Intermezzo for clarinet, cello and piano, 10 mn
  • Planet Earth for contralto voice, bass clarinet, bassoon, two horns, percussion, timpani, piano and strings, 10 mn, Schott
  • String Quartet No. 3, 21 mn, Schott
  • The Apple for contralto voice, 6 cellos, 4 basses and percussion, 4 mn, Schott
• 1997
  • And so ended Kant’s travelling in the world for unaccompanied voices, 7 mn, Schott
  • elec stage Doctor Ox’s Experiment opera for 12 solo voices, choir and orchestra, 2 h 10 mn, Schott
  • Expressa Solis for unaccompanied voices, 7 mn, Schott
  • The Island Chapel for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra, 17 mn, Schott
  • Three Poems of Cecco Angiolieri, 12 mn, Schott
• 1996
  • Adnan Songbook for soprano, bass clarinet, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and double bass, 30 mn, Schott
  • Les Fiançailles for 2 pianos (4 or 8 hands), string quintet, optional 2 vibes and sizzle cymbal, 20 mn, Schott
• 1995
  • elec stage "2" music for dance performance, for 2 amplified harpsichords, 1 h 30 mn, Schott
  • 2 Songs from the Adnan Songbook for soprano, bass clarinet, electric guitar, 2 violas, cello and double bass, 9 mn
  • After Handel’s Vesper for harpsichord, 11 mn, Schott
  • Cello Concerto (Farewell to Philosophy), 35 mn, Schott
  • In Nomine (After Purcell) version for string orchestra, 10 mn, Schott
  • Revision to Medea Act 1 scene A (new opening scene)
  • The North Shore for cello and chamber orchestra, 15 mn, Schott
• 1994
  • Epilogue from Wonderlawn for double bass ensemble, 7 mn, Schott
  • Epilogue from Wonderlawn for viola and ensemble, 7 mn, Schott
  • From Mina Harker’s Journal for baritone and viola, 22 mn
  • One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing for 5 percussion, 15 mn, Schott
  • The East Coast for bass oboe and chamber orchestra, 15 mn, Schott
  • The North Shore for viola and piano, 12 mn, Schott
  • Three Elegies for Nine Clarinets, 19 mn, Schott
  • Wonderlawn for electric guitar, viola, cello and double bass (with pedals), 58 mn
• 1993
  • Le Chateau d’Oiron for mixed instruments, 3-4 players, plus 2 works for village band from their own repertoire, 58 mn
  • The Archangel Trip for 2 pan-pipes, 2 alto saxophones, bass clarinet, 2 sampling keyboards, octopads (with sampler), 5-string violin, 5-string cello, electric guitar and electric bass, 17 mn, Schott
  • The North Shore for cello and piano, 12 mn, Schott
  • The War in Heaven for soprano, alto, half choir, choir and orchestra, 45 mn, Schott
• 1992
  • A Man in a Room, Gambling for speaking voice and string quartet, 50 mn, Schott
  • Alaric III for basset-horn, violin, piano, electric keyboard and 2 electronic percussion, 15 mn
  • Die Letzten Tage for 2 violins (with optional Korg M1 keyboard), 27 mn, Schott
  • The Leiden Riddle for male voices, two violins and organ, 10 mn
• 1991
  • Aus den Letzten Tage for 2 violins, clarinet, electric keyboard and 2 percussion, 15 mn, Schott
  • The Black River for soprano and organ, 15 mn, Schott
  • The Green Ray for soprano saxophone and orchestra, 20 mn, Schott
  • elec The White Lodge for low mezzo-soprano voice, electronics and digital tape, 16 mn 30 s, Schott
• 1990
  • After The Requiem for solo electric guitar, 2 violas and cello, 16 mn, Schott
  • elec stage Four Elements for alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flugelhorn, horn, trombone, piano, electric keyboard, bass, taped voice (or male alto), 2 percussion, 30 mn, Schott
  • String Quartet No. 2, 25 mn, Schott
  • The Corinthian Middle for two violins, 7 mn
• 1989
  • Alaric I or II for saxophone quartet, 15 mn, Schott
  • Cadman Requiem version for voices, two violas and cello (optional double bass), 30 mn, Schott
  • Cadman Requiem version for voices and viol consort, 30 mn
  • Incipit Vita Nova for solo alto, violin, viola and cello, 7 mn, Schott
• 1988
  • Dr Ox’s Experiment (Epilogue) for soprano, solo piano and ensemble, 22 mn
  • Glorious Hill for four voices, 15 mn, Schott
  • Invention of Tradition for two cathedral organs, female choir and ensemble, 45 mn
• 1987
  • By The Vaar for double bass and ensemble, 20 mn, Schott
  • The Old Tower of Löbenicht for ensemble, 15 mn, Schott
• 1986
  • Pavane for French horn, violin, 3 percussion and double bass, 12 mn
  • Pico’s Flight for soprano and orchestra, 18 mn, Schott
  • Sketch for Sub Rosa for 2 pianos (version made only for recording), 10 mn
  • Sub Rosa for clarinet, recorder, vibes, violin, piano and double bass, 10 mn, Schott
• 1985
  • Between the National and Bristol string quartet n°1, 23 mn, Schott
  • Eglisak for 2 pianos, 2 violins and percussion, 23 mn
  • Homage to Vivier for flute, clarinet, vibes and piano, 10 mn
  • Viennese Dance No 1 (M.H.). for solo French horn, 6 percussionists and optional string trio, 18 mn, Schott
• 1984
  • (Effarene) shorter version, for soprano, 2 pianos, 4 percussion
  • Effarene for soprano, mezzo-soprano, 2 pianos and 6 percussion, 38 mn, Schott
  • Hymne à la Rrose for French ‘village’ band (fanfare), 6 mn
  • stage Medea opera for solo voices, mixed choir and orchestra, 2 h 45 mn, Schott
• 1983
  • Allegrasco for soprano saxophone or clarinet and piano, 20 mn, Schott
  • stage CIVIL WarS opera (incomplete), collaboration with Robert Wilson
  • On Photography for mixed choir, harmonium and piano, 20 mn, Schott
  • Three Studies on Medea for 2 pianos, marimba, 2 vibes, bells, cymbal, clarinet, tenor horn and strings, 35 mn
• 1981
  • Prolegomenon to ‘Medea’ for clarinet, bass clarinet, marimba, bass marimba, cello, double bass, 2 keyboards and timpani, 20 mn
• 1980
  • After Mendelssohn piano duet, 59 s
  • Hi-Tremolo for vibes, marimba and two pianos, 10 mn
  • The English Mail-Coach for 2 vibes and 6 roto-toms, 6 mn
  • The Vespertine Park for 1 or 2 pianos, 2 vibes or 1 vibes and 1 marimba or bass marimba/bells, optional steel drums/sizzle cymbal and optional bass clarinet, 10 mn
• 1979
  • Ramsey’s Lamp for 2 pianos (6 hands), 10 mn
  • Sforzesco Sforzando for four pianos, 20 mn
  • Sidescraper for piano(s), 15 mn
  • The Cross-Channel Ferry 'elastic' scoring, for ensemble, 12 mn, Schott
• 1978
  • 2nd Suite From ‘Irma’ for piano and string orchestra, 20 mn
  • Danse Dieppoise (also called Danse à la Talouienne) for horn, tuba, piano and vibes, 10 mn
  • My First Homage for two pianos, 15 mn, Schott
• 1977
  • First Suite from ‘Irma’ for two pianos, 15 mn
  • stage Irma opera, 38 mn
  • Out of Zaleski’s Gazebo for two pianos (6 ou 8 hands), 12 mn, Schott
  • Poggioli in Zaleski’s Gazebo for piano, tuba, vibes, xylophone and bells, 12 mn
  • R + 7 for percussion duo, 10 mn
  • elec The Perfect Crime for two pianos, tape, percussion, optional slides, 20 mn
  • White’s SS for two pianos, 18 mn
• 1976
  • elec Tra-La-La-Lira-Lira-Lay (formerly entitled Detective Fiction and Related Subjects) for cello, tuba, reed organ and tapes/slides, 15 mn
  • White To Play (And Win) for percussion trio, 12 mn
• 1975
  • Long Player up to 3 strings and piano, 10 mn
  • Ponukelian Melody for cello, tuba, reed organ and tubular bells (3 players), 10 mn
• 1972
  • A Place In The Country
  • Far Away and Dimly Pealing environmental piece
  • The Heat Of The Beat
• 1971
  • 1,2,1-2-3-4, 20 mn
  • elec Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet for pre-recorded tape and ensemble, 35 mn, Schott
  • The Squirrel And The Ricketty-Racketty Bridge for one player, 2 guitars (or multiples of this), Schott
• 1970
  • A Game Of Football environmental piece
  • stage Ouse theatre piece for 2 singers
  • elec Serenely Beaming And Leaning On a Five-Barred Gate for speaking voices and tape
  • The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls recording piece
  • The Ride Cymbal And The Band That Caused The Fire In The Sycamore Trees for one or two prepared pianos, 25 mn
  • elec To Gain The Affections Of Miss Dwyer Even For One Short Minute Would Benefit Me No End for electronics
• 1969
  • elec A Must For All Sibelians tape music (1/2 track stereo), 30 mn
  • stage Marvellous Aphorisms Are Scattered Richly Throughout These Pages. theatre piece
  • Private Music
  • The Sinking of the Titanic indeterminate instrumentation (possible materials include stereo tapes, string ensemble, percussion, low brass, brass quartet, bass clarinet, cassette tapes of speech, keyboard, 35 mm slides, visible sound effects, music box), 15 mn, Schott
• 1968
  • Mr. Sunshine for any number of keyboards, including one prepared piano
• Date de composition inconnue
  • Dancing with Pannonica for ensemble, Schott
  • Liverpool concerto for harpsichord and orchestra
  • Pictured Within (variation 11) music for the ballet Trick Cell Play
  • Pre Medieval Metrics for unspecified ensemble
  • Tre Laude Dolçe for solo double bass, 12 mn, Schott

Liens Internet

• Site de Gavin Bryars : www.gavinbryars.com
• Schott : www.schott-music.com

(liens vérifiés en avril 2022).