Coming Home Stephen Dunstone

Coming Home Fairly Straightforward Three Part Harp Ensemble Please click the "About this work & Performance Notes" heading below for further details This book is supplied as a score and set of 3 parts   Buy this music now £8.00 +p&p

Artist Profile and catalogue of works - Stephen Dunstone

YouTube video coming soon

This player uses cookies in accordance with YouTube (Google) Privacy & Terms. They may collect usage data for analytics purposes.

---

This player uses cookies in accordance with Soundclouds Cookies policy. They may collect usage data for analytics purposes.

The opening melody of this piece first came to me when I was walking my dog on the edge of the C S Lewis Nature Reserve in Oxford (the location isn’t essential information, but these pages are quite large, so I thought I’d tell you anyway). What’s slightly more relevant is that as soon as I got back home I needed to go off to school to teach, so I had to keep humming the melody while I drove to make sure I didn’t forget it.

When I got to school, I had to teach it to all my pupils for the same reason (I don’t think they suffered unduly), and I rapidly became very attached to what I’d created. The title came to me almost immediately: there’s such a warm, reassuring feel to the undercurrent of Eb major, and the music really did feel like coming back to the contentment of home after a long time away. It seemed appropriate then to add the C minor section: it reinforced the comfort of home when Eb reappeared. Time passed. I turned it into a simple ensemble and used it in several schools.

More time passed.

Imagine my dismay then, when a colleague put his head round a practice room door one day and said “You’ve nicked that from Last of the Mohicans.” I hadn’t ever seen Last of the Mohicans, so I got the film and watched it all the way through, without once coming across anything remotely like my piece. “Hah,” I thought. “Fat lot you know, Mr Film-music-expert.”

Yet more time passed.

Then I watched the film Dances With Wolves. And there, in John Barry’s wonderful score, is a fragment of my piece. Or, rather, in my piece there’s a fragment of John Barry’s wonderful score. But it is only a fragment: it’s a tiny snippet of four notes in the melody, and the harmony is different, so I don’t think I’m guilty of the heinous sin of plagiarism. But the melodic rise and fall of the fragment in Coming Home is briefly reminiscent of John Barry’s music, and, if he were still with us (sadly he died in 2011), I would apologise for inadvertently echoing one of his ideas - and I would thank him for all the marvellous, varied music he has left us. We are all immeasurably richer for it.

Performers who are pushed for time and need to do a slightly shorter version of Coming Home can simply omit sections 3 and 4. Just playing sections 1, 2 and 5 will still give you the balance of Eb major / C minor / Eb major, and it will shorten the running time to about two minutes. However (and I don’t think this is just because I’m naturally prejudiced), the extra hearing of both the minor and major sections does reinforce that lovely reassuring coming-home feel by making the melody and the yearning harmonies that little bit more familiar, so it’s worth doing the full version if possible.

I have also arranged Coming Home for harp duet, which will suit slightly more advanced players, as they’ll have more notes to play...

Title:	Coming Home
Composer:	Stephen Dunstone
Instrumentation:	3 Lever or Pedal Harps
Level:	Fairly Straightforward
Format:	A4 stapled score and set of 3 parts
Weight:	95gm
ISMN:	--
Our Ref:	SD1016 Pink Edition
Publisher:	Stephen Dunstone
Distributor:	Creighton's Collection
Edition/Year:	2016
Origin:	UK