During the first half of 2021, I embarked on a composing project, setting some of poet Ian McMillan’s Early Stroll Tweets to music for The Bridge Singers. Ian McMillan is a well-known poet and broadcaster, and is from near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. Every morning he goes for a walk in his neighbourhood and when he gets back he writes a few sentences about what he’s noticed and posts them on Twitter. I’d enjoyed these nuggets of poetic observation for a a few years and decided to ask him if I could set one or more of them to music. He said I could use as many of them as I liked – I ended up using seven, each of which contained the word “silent” or “silence”!

You can find out more about Ian McMillan here: Ian McMillan – Home

My initial idea was to create some songs that The Bridge Singers could learn over Zoom and would suit the unhelpful foibles of that particular means of getting together without meeting up in person …i.e. the songs lent themselves to getting out of synch, and allowed for a very few voices at a time! I made a learning track for each of the songs to help the choir get to grips with it on their own in between our on-line practices.

Each of the seven songs has different characteristics, and I used a variety of composing approaches and techniques.

Even A Subdued Sky

The inspiration by Ian McMillan:
Early stroll. Even a subdued sky can reach to the horizon. A tiny cube of snow by a gate. A silent flickering burglar alarm blinks and blinks again. An orange glove holds tight to double yellow lines. A round drain cover like the dark side of a metal moon. (5th Jan 2021)
Outside, the birds are somersaulting silence into song. (25th March 2020)

The music:
It can be sung as a round and is catchy, with plenty of silences.

This was first one I wrote, and we did indeed learn it over Zoom and the world premiere was at our “live” Zoom concert at the end of March 2021. We certainly got out of synch with each other as you can hear!

We also made a Zoom recording in which several members of the choir sang one line each. This meant that for a few seconds at least, each member could feel as though their voice was being heard. Here’s that version with some images of our Zoomy, choiry lives from those days.

If you would like to purchase scores of Even A Subdued Sky, click here!

The Light On The Leaves

The inspiration by Ian McMillan:
Early stroll. The light on the leaves makes me feel like I’m walking in a Japanese print. Roses tremble in a vaguely assertive breeze. A car horn knocks three times on silence’s window. The sky seems to be wearing too many layers of clothing. (7th October 2019)

The music:
Each sentence of Ian’s tweet is set in a completely different way, but the pentatonic harmonies and improvised (optional) percussion patterns provide unity. I don’t think this song sounds particularly Japanese, but I did base a lot of the musical ideas on those in a workshop I gave to some history and geography teachers once upon a time, with historian and poet Dave Keen, entitled “Accessing Japanese Culture through Music and Poetry”. To illustrate our approach he wrote a haiku and I set it to music using some characteristics of Japanese music that could be re-interpreted by those teachers’ students, no matter what their skills and musical confidence.

You can find scores of The Light On The Leaves to buy here!

Fallen Leaf Runes

The inspiration by Ian McMillan:
Early stroll. Fallen leaf runes tell shifting stories. Streetlight turns a parked white car into an artificial iceberg with wheels. Shredded clouds scattered on the sky’s floor. A man in a bus shelter yawns a vast silent vowel. A breeze rushes breathlessly up the hill. (24th November 2020)

The music:
A much-repeated pattern is occasionally broken by gradually evolving harmonies. This rather ethereal one lends itself very well to being sung slightly out of synchronization (as in our initial Zoom rehearsals of it!) or perhaps in a very resonant space (as we later tested successfully in Brinkburn Priory).

To purchase scores of Fallen Leaf Runes, click here

Tiny, Temporary Pop-Up Puddles

The inspiration by Ian McMillan:
Early (ish) stroll. Tiny temporary popup puddles. A blackbird shatters silence and carries the pieces across the road. A passing motorbike like a locum lighthouse on call. A man walks briskly; his lanyard dances. An old leaning fence finally accepts gravity’s attractions. (28th March 2021)

The music:
This soundscape is inspired by the calls of blackbirds, mentioned by Ian, and witnessed by me on my own early morning strolls. It is perhaps the most contemporary sounding of the set as it uses voice percussion sounds combined with the singing, and some aleatoric or random elements. It also includes some improvisation in the timings, and can include ping pong balls, if you like.

There are scores for Tiny, Temporary Pop Up Puddles behind this link!

No Birdsong…

The inspiration by Ian McMillan:
No birdsong
In the silent air;
The coos uncooed,
The caws uncawed.
Then suddenly
The feathered choir is there;
It’s like a penalty saved
And the rebound scored.
(8th July 2021)

The Music:
This one was composed on the day Ian wrote the tweet. It was the day after an England win in the 2021 Euros. I was walking along Warkworth Beach in Northumberland and logged in to Twitter to share one of my sunrise photos. Up popped this tweet poem by Ian and I spent the remainder of the day composing the song. It starts quietly and then livens up…just like the poem itself!

There are No Birdsong… scores to purchase here.

The Stars Hand Me Their Light

The inspiration by Ian McMillan:
Early stroll. The stars hand me their light from the distant past. A blackbird sharpens its beak on silence’s hard stone. An unruly hedge looks like it has been dragged through itself backwards. Far away, a plane grumbles and chunters across the sky. (25th February 2020)

The Music:
I was going for serene in this one, with each line of text being given similar floating music. This is another that I think would sound perfect in a very resonant setting.

If you’d like to purchase scores for the sublime “The Stars Hand Me Their Light”, click here!

Under The Masks

The inspiration by Ian McMillan:
But listen:
Under the masks
On the buses and trains
Under the masks
In the streets
And town squares
Under the masks
In the crowded
And fearful places
We are singing.
We are singing
The loud songs
Of being human
A pandemic of singing
That nothing
Can silence
Nothing will cure.
(27th Feb 2020)

The Music:
The liveliest of the set with much use of dancing rhythms and exuberant melodic lines. This is one of the first ones the choir mastered and performed and is the one that just about sums up precisely our eighteen months from March 2020 to September 2021, during which we kept on singing in whatever ways we were allowed, in spite of everything.

Scores for Under The Masks can be purchased here…

And if you’d like the whole lot, that booklet is here!

Later, in 2024, Ian McMillan wrote some more lyrics for The Bridge Singers, I set them to music and we performed this new song, A Takeaway Sunrise, later in 2024. You can read all about that here!