Ceres was composed in 1972 while I was teaching at the University of Sussex, where it had its first performance. Its title refers both to the folksong material on which it is indirectly based (‘John Barleycorn’), and also, as a play on words, to the ‘series’ derived from that folksong. But it’s really an ‘anti-series’, since at the time I was reacting very strongly against serialism, and had recently discovered the delights of process music. Ceres is, essentially, a pure process piece in which a mosaic of melodic fragments is built up and taken apart, with a simple melodic centre. The work (which lasts about 11 minutes) is virtually static, thoroughly diatonic, and very quiet. For a performance which I directed at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1985, it was slightly renotated, but not recomposed.
Categories: Ensemble