Books

Michael Tippett, An Introductory Study

Faber & Faber, 1980, 112 pp.

Landscape into Sound (the 1st Peter Fuller Memorial Lecture)

Claridge Press, 1992, 45 pp.

Britten

Haus Publishing, 2003, 182 pp.

Programme Notes on Works by Other Composers

David has written over 50 programme notes on works by composers including Britten, Elgar, Mahler and Tippett. Click here to request programme notes from David.

Articles

Birdsong and Music

Many composers have been influenced by birdsong. Mozart treasured the songs of his pet starling, even giving the bird a ceremonial funeral. David has always been interested in the incorporation of the natural world into his music, even including birdsong in some recent compositions. This lecture will reflect on the relationships between music and the natural world and how a composer can be brought closer to one through the other and vice versa.

Read full text

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Review of the book by Alex Ross.

Musical Opinion, July-August 2009 ... Read full text

Renewing Musical Tradition

Paper given at the conference 'Redefining Musical Identities' in Amsterdam, 31 August 2002.

pp.79-86, Redefining Musical Identities, edited by Rokus de Groot, Albert van der Schoot, ArtEZ Press, 2007 ... Read full text

The Art of the Fugue

Expended version of a review of 'The Art of Fugue' by Joseph Kerman.

London Review of Books, 2006 ... Read full text

Renewing the Past, some personal thoughts

pp.199-212, Reviving the Muse: Essays on Music After Modernism, edited by Peter Davison, Claridge Press, 2001 ... Read full text

Landscape in British Music

Towards a new Landscape, edited by Bernard Jacobson, 1993

The Rehabilitation of the Vernacular

Music and The Politics of Culture, edited by Christopher Morris, Lawrence and Wishart, 1989

The Music of English Pastoral

pp.81-90, Town and Country, edited by Anthony Barnett, Roger Scruton, Jonathan Cape, 1988

Act II Scene 1: An Examination of the Music in Peter Grimes

Cambridge Opera Handbooks, edited by Philip Brett, 1983