I grew up in a forest at the edge of England and Wales; a borderland in the shape of a heart, isolated between two rivers, with its own unique dialect. Local playwright Dennis Potter called the Forest of Dean a “strange and beautiful place”, and JRR Tolkien is said to have found inspiration here for Middle-earth; today it remains drenched in myth and legend, with tales of faeries, witches and ghosts commonplace.
But the forest is also a place full of music. I remember the sound of brass bands drifting across the canopy from every direction as they rehearsed in their tiny, purpose-built practice rooms. Female-voice choirs would sing from tree-shrouded churches. As a child I would fall asleep to the noise of foxes and deer, while enormous sound systems from illegal raves which would pop up from time to time blared out techno and rave music. For me, nature and music – particularly brass music – are intrinsically linked.
Brass music is in my blood. At age three, a cornet was thrust into my hands and I was taught by my grandad, who conducted the local band. Once I was able to play enough notes, I joined the band and, along with almost every other member of my family, we made music.
Those early musical influences have stayed with me and found their way into my own compositions in a multitude of ways that are hard to define. The unmistakable sonority of those euphoniums, tenor horns and cornets is such a physical sound world, you can almost feel it in your bones – perhaps it’s all that air moving around from so many people breathing and blowing in unison. It’s a sound that inspires deep emotions in me and speaks to a sense of belonging – what the Welsh call hiraeth – and it’s why brass music is so important to me: it’s home.
At 15 I won a scholarship to study at Chetham’s School of Music on the condition that I transition to the french horn as my main instrument, since there wasn’t much for me to do on a brass-band instrument in a symphony orchestra. As a horn player I was able to experience Mahler, Strauss, Shostakovich, Mozart and Tchaikovsky, among others, for the first time. But the horn is a completely different beast to the instruments I’d grown up with: it is played with the left hand instead of the right, has a tiny conical mouthpiece, and is one of the most challenging instruments to master. Essentially I had to learn to play from scratch all over again.
I couldn’t afford my own instrument and so hired one from Chetham’s. It barely worked: a Frankenstein’s monster held together with elastic bands and Blu Tack that was bent and dented out of shape. The all-too-evident talent of my schoolmates made my limitations all the more apparent. The following two years were challenging – I knew I had the ability but was endlessly fighting with my useless instrument and my own self-belief.
Things improved when I began studying at the Royal Northern College of Music. With help from Awards for Young Musicians, I bought my own horn and my technique improved. I had a great teacher and finally started to fall in love with the instrument. But a fractious relationship with a new teacher in my final year set me back and once again the horn and I were at war. Eventually, I gave up playing and focused on becoming a composer.
My instrument now sits in the corner of my bedroom, gathering dust. My relationship with it might be complex, but it remains close to my heart. And yet, although I have written concertos for trombone, percussion, and even brass band and orchestra, approaching my 40th birthday I had still, remarkably, not written any music for the horn.
And so, when horn virtuoso Ben Goldscheider asked me to write him a piece (knowing I was once a player myself), I thought it was time to blow the cobwebs off the instrument and finally compose my first horn concerto.
Despite its versatility, there are surprisingly few concertos written for the instrument. Mozart and Strauss clearly knew the horn very well when they wrote their masterful concerti. There are a few other fantastic works that deserve more attention, such Ruth Gipps’ Horn Concerto or Oliver Knussen’s brilliant but short concerto, but we are crying out for more music. The instrument remains notoriously difficult to master (split notes are a hazard of the job), but with a host of virtuosic players who can play anything, and the horn’s ability to play the most beautiful melodies and then soar over the orchestra with great power, it is a perfect instrument for the concerto.
But where to start with my new piece? Thinking of the origins of the horn as an instrument of the forest, used to communicate while on the hunt, I went back to my own roots – and into the woods – for inspiration.
When you grow up around trees, you pine for them when they’re not there. When I’m in the city I hunt out trees and woodland. When I’m back in the forest I feel I can breathe again. This piece is an evocation of the forest of my childhood: twigs underfoot, dirt, insects. It’s full of wooden sounds (marimba, temple blocks, log drums, wooden wind chime) and harks back to horn concertos of the past with fanfares and call-and-responses. It begins with a chorale in E flat – reminiscent of the opening of the Ring Cycle, Wagner’s great evocation of nature – and ends, like all good horn concertos (practically all of them!), with a rondo, called Mycelium Rondo.
A mycelium is the fungal network connecting all plant life. It’s how trees communicate with each other. When a tree is ill, healthy trees in the area pass on nutrients to it through mycelium. It’s a model for a socialist society – those that have helping those that don’t. So there is a sense of optimism inherent in this final movement. The piece finishes, once again, in the key of E flat – Wagner’s key of nature.
At its core, however, this is a piece about loss. Britain was once covered in woodland and temperate rainforests stretching from Cornwall to Scotland, until humans started to clear trees for agriculture and boat-building. We currently have a mere 13% coverage. The country is now littered with “ghost woods”: landscapes that have been emptied of trees, with the only hints of their past found in old placenames, such as Birch Tor, Okehampton, Thornworthy Down. The story of Britain’s woodland is really one of loss – one I feel personally when I return home. Local people are constantly fighting plans that would sell off parts of the forest to private investors. Ancient trees are felled to prevent the spread of disease. Our ponds are at threat of being emptied. The forest I knew is now littered with holes in the canopy where trees once stood. I remain hopeful, however. Measures to rewild our forests – the reintroduction of beavers and wild boar – are starting to have a positive impact on the health of our woodlands. Perhaps the country might become a nation of forests once again?
The horn links me directly to my roots in the brass music and forests of my youth. But writing this piece for Ben Goldscheider, with his impeccable musicality and technique, has allowed me to express myself better than I ever could as a horn player myself. It’s a full circle moment, a work that explores my lifelong relationship with forests and my love of woodlands and trees. And I have also rekindled my love for the horn – the instrument of the forest – all over again.
• Gavin Higgins’ Horn Concerto is premiered by Ben Goldscheider and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at Brangwyn Hall, Swansea on 13 January, and at Hoddinott Hall on 14 January; then at Cadogan Hall, London (with the London Chamber Orchestra), on 7 February; and in Eindhoven, Maastricht and Aachen (with Philharmonie Zuidnederland) on 1, 2 and 3 March.
