Corpus was written as part of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's 2018 - 2019 Young Composers scheme to be first performed by members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, alongside players from the LPO's Foyle Future Firsts scheme, conducted by Sir James MacMillan in July 2019.

 

It takes inspiration from Salvador Dalí's 1954 painting Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), and uses Hypercubus, for solo clarinet, for its melodic and harmonic basis. 

 

The brief for the project, set by James MacMillan, was to use a pre-existing melody, or cantus firmus, to create, inform or inspire the piece of music. Corpus follows the model established by Luciano Berio, who converted a number of his works for solo instruments, Sequenzas, into stand-alone pieces for ensemble or orchestra, his Chemins. I have used the essence of all the gestures, melodies and phrases in Hypercubus to create every line in Corpus.