How I came to compose the music

I did not set out originally with the idea of writing the Musical Remedies. Back in March 2004 I simply felt compelled to get up early in the morning and go to the piano. New melodies and harmonies arrived very fast, nine new pieces altogether in less than two weeks. I had no idea what they were part of or where they might be pointing. Then suddenly I saw the chart of the Bach Flower Remedies lying flat on top of the piano. There was a moment of intuitive realization – this is what it was all about!

Within a very short time, I had associated the nine new embryonic pieces of music with nine of the Flower Remedies. I began to read more about the Remedies, about how they can be grouped in different ways. The chart divides the remedies into seven areas :

Remedies for fear
Remedies for uncertainty
Remedies for lack of interest in present circumstances
Remedies for loneliness
Remedies for oversensitivity to influences and ideas
Remedies for despondency and despair
Remedies for overcare for others’ welfare

Julian Barnard, who I first met some months later, traces a simple threefold division based on the chronological discovery of the Remedies by Dr Bach :

The initial Twelve Healers – which help different temperamental types
The Seven Helpers – which help all types to overcome common blockages
The Second Nineteen Remedies – which all help with more specific difficulties on the path through life.

I began to realize the scale of the project – creating a new piece of music to match the mood of each of the thirty-eight Remedies.

Some of the Remedies seemed quite easy for me to ‘tune into’ and I wrote new pieces for these on a sporadic basis throughout the next few months. Meanwhile I refined the pieces I had already sketched. I worked out the chords and structures more carefully, and put the music onto Sibelius in the form of lead sheets. I realized that I didn’t want to define every aspect of these pieces, but rather leave them open in the way of traditional jazz standards.

The first performances of some of the Musical Remedies took place in July 2004 in a couple of concerts in Hereford and Leominster. At this stage, the Remedies were realised and performed simply by flute and piano. At Dartington Summer School that year, some other Remedies were performed in a workshop concert and involved other instruments for the first time – clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, bass and drums.

I continued writing new Remedy pieces throughout the year, until there were only a handful left to do. I found it very difficult to connect with some of the Remedies simply by reading, and began to start taking the Remedies themselves. The final five Remedies in my composition were completed in outline form just before the end of the year.

A few days later – in response to an urgent request – my friend Harriet Edwards came to visit with the intention of turning a selection of the Remedies into songs. We worked very hard together for two days and produced seven new songs. Harriet wrote three more subsequently, so that there are altogether ten songs amongst the thirty-eight Remedies. Six of these songs feature on the CD which has just been issued in May 2009.

In September 2005 there was a major presentation of the Musical Remedies in an evening concert in Leominster. Around half of the Remedies were performed that evening, and eleven of the performances form the CD that was issued in December 2005.

In 2006 there were further major presentations of the Remedies at the Fringe of the Hereford Three Choirs’ Festival and at the Bach Flower Remedies conference in Cromer, Norfolk, one of the places where Dr Bach himself had lived and worked.

Since then, there have been several small scale presentations, mostly in Leominster, but at the time of writing there are still eight of the thirty-eight Remedies which have never been realised in performance.