The Resurrection of the Soldiers
- Submitting institution
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University of Oxford
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 1919
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- April
- Year
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The Resurrection of the Soldiers was performed at the 2016 Presteigne Festival (for which it had been written) in Hereford, at the Aldeburgh Festival and in Oxford.
The overall form is ternary (ABA), reflecting Saxton’s interest in the synthesis of cyclical and teleological forms. This is primarily achieved rhythmically, but also through carefully controlled modal harmony. Globally, this is expressed by moving away from and back to an E pitch-centre. On a more detailed level, this articulates a classic ternary-form harmonic argument, with the first section moving from E to B (‘I’ to ‘V’) and the central fugal section much more harmonically active. The final section is more unusual, beginning in Bb, as far as possible from E, and then progresses through an ascending cycle of fifths to culminate in E, thus carefully directing the harmonic motion of the work.
Canon is a constant preoccupation. The opening passage was composed through an altered prolation canon, which gradually reveals new pitch classes. This canon was supported by consultation with John Morehen and Margaret Bent, who advised on sixteenth-century canonic practice, particularly Ockeghem. The central fugue expresses canon in its most developed form. Whilst Saxton eschews specific models for his works, the strictness of the fugue was influenced by his work teaching fugal writing to undergraduate students, and recalls the English string tradition, particularly Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. The final section then considers canon more loosely, through heterophony.
The title of the work comes from the final panel from Stanley Spencer’s Sandham Chapel series. Saxton refers to this as a ‘resonance’ rather than an ‘inspiration’ or ‘model’. Nonetheless, the similarity of Spencer’s masterpiece, drawing on Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel frescoes, to Saxton’s work, with links both to earlier English string music and the polyphonic techniques of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, are unmissable.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
