Why 'Rugged Peace Horizon'?

The heading at top left on each page on this site did say just 'Music Compositions'. While accurate, it was a missed opportunity because of its sheer uninformativeness. Numerous people write music compositions, but only one person composes music with the content, 'message' and urgency of the music presented here. The challenge, then, was to find an up to three word motto which would tell people something significant about the nature of this music, and which would fill the space occupied by 'Music Compositions'. And so...

became 

There is no point in writing here about how 'Rugged Peace Horizon' relates to this music, for the music itself can tell you much better than any verbal explanation.

On this site are full details and downloadable / playable excerpts of major new classical music compositions which demonstrate clearly that true originality can still thrive in an accessible, modal idiom.

While the Composer never shuns dissonance for the sake of shunning it (in any misplaced conservatism or populism), neither does he use it anywhere for the sake of using it (in some misplaced striving to sound 'modernistic' or 'with it' or to be cheaply 'theatrical' in the way that so many fashionable contemporary composers do). In Philip Goddard's works, the presence of every dissonance has to be 'earned'. That is, for it to appear at all, it must occur as an essential part of what is an overall 'thing' or process of beauty and harmony even in the course of its difficulties and conflicts.

A striking example of this is the Composer's 7th Symphony (Ancient Chants of Compassion), which must contain something like the highest proportion of dissonance in his whole oeuvre - yet the overall effect is of an immense beauty, harmony and dignity - the masses of inner clashes in the sound simply creating an 'electric' intensity in the experience. Similarly, what is surely the Composer's most conflict-riven musical utterance - the 3rd movement of the 6th Symphony (K2 - A Song of Enlightenment) - is memorably melodious despite its no-holds-barred intensity, its many clashes and the three great waves of tumultuous 'battle' between humans and the tremendous might of the natural forces which threaten to overwhelm them.

You can find here symphonies, symphonic poems and other orchestral works, and works for choir, organ, saxophones (with piano), tuba, clarinet, flute... All have a particular quality in common - a certain intensity and vividness of colour resulting from the Composer's particular use of his open and flexible modal idiom and his particular outlook as a self realized and indeed enlightened person who vividly perceives not only the light but also the shadows cast by the light, and weaves the interaction of these, together with an exceptionally deep attunement with nature, into uniquely 'natural' and compelling works, such as Music From the Mountain Waters and The Unknown.

What's this?

The above musical motif, which appears on the masthead of all the main pages on this site - superimposed on an image of part of the summit ridge of An Teallach in the north-west Scottish Highlands - is actually the opening motif of The Unknown. It has there a strangely haunting timbre (on the organ), and it sounds quite a bit higher than it looks on the staff. It is like a clarion call - a call to attention - for one to listen intently to what is about to follow, its reverberations receding mysteriously into a pregnant pause before the 'journey' of the work starts unfolding in earnest - and so also it is a very fitting initial 'call to attention' for this website, as it were, to initiate your own unfolding experience as you explore the works.

That motif doesn't actually play upon loading this or any other page, however, because automatically playing music on web pages is a very contentious issue and can be inconvenient if not downright vexatious for many website visitors who want to load pages quickly, and who want to choose what they do and don't listen to.

This music will lovingly challenge and stimulate the listener and open new horizons of awareness. Those looking for 'easy listening' or bland 'New Age' music will not find it here - though there is never any telling what the Composer might come out with next... ...And in the meantime, if you like anything you hear of this music you can actually obtain an audio CD containing it or/and a CD-ROM of all the works in their entirety in MP3 format. Yes, the recordings are of simulated performances, but they are very much above-average in their realism for MIDI renderings of musical works, making for authentic musical experiences despite the inevitable shortcomings, like mono-reduced choir sections which can sing only 'Ahh' - and similarly mono-reduced string sections.

World premiere performance of the final movement of Nordic Wilderness Journey, 15th November 2005.
••• Contrabass sax - Jay Easton ••• tenor sax - Scott Granlund ••• piano - Jerrod Wendland.