Fin de Siecle

Fin de Siècle was commissioned by the English Northern Philharmonia with support from Yorkshire and Humberside Arts and was completed in the autumn of 1996. Cast as a seven-minute prelude for orchestra, it is largely slow, lyrical in tone and is built in simple, circular melodic fragments. Intended neither as a lament nor a eulogy for the end of our own century, Fin de Siècle is, rather, a response to the flavour and character of fin de siècle music and art of a century ago: a quiet remembrance of things almost too long past to be remembered at all.