Finally, after many delays, this website is up and running! The aim of this site is simply to make my music known and available to more people. I’ve been writing music for many years and a few of my compositions have been performed in public, but until now they have not been available to a wider audience. This site and my CD Baby page (link below) now make my music available to listeners anywhere, and to any musicians or singers who want to perform it.
There is another aim to this site though. Many people think modern classical music is obscure, difficult, elitist, or just plain unpleasant. I want to promote the idea that contemporary classical music can be accessible, tuneful and user-friendly, and that it can do this without being dumbed-down or simplistic. I’ll be doing this partly by presenting my own music, and also by writing blogs that discuss different aspects of music, using examples from other composers’ music as well as my own. The next blog looks at melody and what that word actually means – what is a tune? what makes a melody memorable?
A guide to this site: if you hover over or touch the Compositions tab, a menu appears showing different musical genres: Orchestral Music, Choral Music, Chamber Music, Solo Vocal Music, Solo Instrumental Music and Arrangements. Choose one, and a list appears of my works in that genre, with audio samples, descriptions and timings. On the Bio & Info page, apart from biographical details, you’ll find some illustrations, the lyrics of my songs and choral pieces, detailed background notes for a few of the longer compositions, and the text of The Lay of the Last Survivor in David R. Evans’ beautiful calligraphy, with the original Old English and his modern English translation in parallel. The Free Music page has free sheet music of my arrangements and some music by other composers that you can download. (The remaining pages pretty much speak for themselves.)
If you’d like to hear more of my music than the 30 second snippets on the Compositions page, some pieces can be heard in full on Youtube (links below) and there are five albums of my music on CD Baby, where the full mp3s can be downloaded (link below).
If you like what you hear, please recommend my music to friends. If you have time, give me some feedback (either here or on my Facebook music page). And if you know any singers or musicians looking for new music to perform that is accessible and a bit different, please ask them to have a look – I’m also hoping to get more live performances of my music, and more recordings of it.
Some suggestions for further listening:
- the dreamy orchestral piece, Lucid Dreaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU9JTCjYtWI&t=23s
- the lively finale of my Clarinet Concerto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiOFdsi0HSc
- the grand but quirky choral and orchestral piece, Musick, the Mosaique of the Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BGaU0RBXTA
- my setting of the great lament from Beowulf, The Lay of the Last Survivor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38YNQ_babE
- the wistful Siciliano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrbnPD78rqU
- the atmospheric orchestral piece Parables of Sunlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnlnJk6P3no.
For my albums and to purchase mp3s: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/neilbuckland
If you’d like to contact me: CONTACT.
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