Nocturne

Nocturne for clarinet in B-flat by Freya Waley-Cohen.

Commissioned by the Ryedale Festival for Joseph Shiner.

This work was composed in 2015 and first performed on 2 July 2015 at Ryedale Festival, St Mary's Church Lastingham, North Yorkshire by Joseph Shiner.

Programme Notes

Up until fairly recently, it was thought that when we sleep, our brains somehow switch off. In the last hundred years, scientists have discovered that, in fact, our brain is often even more active during our sleeping hours than our waking ones. Different wave patterns occur during different parts of our sleep cycle. On the journey towards our deepest moments of sleep, bursts of brain activity consolidate our memories and protect our sleep from non-dangerous disturbances. After the deepest moments of sleep, we begin to dream, and our brain wave pattern changes again. Each time the cycle happens during the night, we go less far into our slow-wave deep sleep, and dreaming takes up more of the cycle. Nocturne is my exploration of the world of the sleeping mind.

• Freya Waley-Cohen

Duration: 10 minutes