The Music of Thomas Wilson: A Symposium

Thomas Wilson (1927-2001) is widely considered to be the leading Scottish composer of his generation. He composed a substantial catalogue of symphonic, chamber, instrumental, choral and operatic works.

The current volume is a collection of essays on his output by musicologists, composers and performers, together with personal and biographical perspectives from former colleagues, family and friends. However, it is more than a 'tribute' volume. For the first time, an extended, considered, synoptic view of Thomas Wilson's life work is offered here. It presents Wilson's music in a degree of detail and at a depth which general books on the history of Scottish music and casual journalistic criticism during his lifetime inevitably could not achieve, for a public beyond that which academic theses and the like are intended to reach.

Contents:

• Editor's Preface

• A Handlist of Thomas Wilson's Principal Works

• Innocence and Innovation: A Personal Insight into the Brass Band Repertoire of Thomas Wilson (Nigel Boddice)

• The Confession of a Justified Sinner: A Neglected Masterpiece Revisited (John Currie)

• Tender, Troubled Sequences (Martin Dalby)

• The Language of Thomas Wilson (John Maxwell Geddes)

• The Fantasia for Solo Cello: A Close Reading, with Reference to the Sketches and the Compositional Process (Graham Hair)

• Thoughts on Some of Thomas Wilson's Chamber Music (Edward Harper)

• Confitemini Domino (John Hearne)

• A Note on the Solo Piano Music (Jack Keaney)

• The Violin Concerto (Ernst Kovacic)

• 'Perfection of Form within Simplicity of Substance': An Analysis of The Willow Branches for Mezzo-soprano and Piano (Vivienne Olive)

• 'In Beauty Dangerously Poised': The String Quartets (John Purser)

• Symphonic Form and the Antisyzygy: Symphony No 3 (Rondeaux...) (William Sweeney)

• The Guitar Concerto (Philip Thorne)

• The Piano Concerto (David Wilde)

• A Personal Memoir (Martin Baillie)

• Tom as Composers' Ambassador at Home and Abroad (Sarah Rodgers)

• A Life in Music (Margaret Wilson)