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I've just come back from a few days in Holland, some of it in another watery city - Amsterdam - where I spent happy hours with a composer friend, , discussing these things. And I studied in fact in Holland too, long ago, with , where I came face-to-face, as the rather Romantically-inclined young Brit I was, with ideas about objectivity - how to control and limit my materials, how to focus on clear images. Yet I know I will always be in the spirit of rather than , if you like - and so will always have to strive all the harder to keep my material reined in than my more coolly-oriented Dutch colleagues.

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In this Venetian case what I've been focussing on is one tiny little musical pattern - a short-long rhythm at various different speeds. And I had the idea that when very slow this would be like deep waters, when very fast more like the glint of light on the surface. But I also wanted to put the figures together, have depth and surface simultaneously - and I had the idea that brief, more melodic material with gondolier-song dotted rhythms should push through this ebbing material. As I've written more and more of the piece, melodies have persistently wished to push through, and the piece has reached a big, clashing climax - much bigger than I had originally intended.

So what have been my solutions to allowing elaboration and richness and not getting totally clogged down by it? Often in the act of composing, things feel very 'hand-made', and one feels vulnerable because of that. But looking even from the distance of this blog, the principles are a little clearer. From the point-of-view of rhythm, I'veÌýcountered complex moments with simpler ones - and so there is a kind of drama of rhythm; with texture I always try to remember 's golden rule of having more space in the lower regions of the orchestra, so following the natural harmonic series; with pitch - much the hardest thing - it's a continual search for a balance between the rich expressive chromatic and the sweeter, gentler diatonic, looking for sounds that hover or push on depending on the moment, to be guided by one's ears.

But what does it mean to be guided by one's ears?! I think for me it's spending much time listening in to what the 'deep' harmony of a piece is. In this case it's the realisation that only came as the piece slowly came into focus, that the piece was made of many kinds of 3rds - major, minor, augmented, diminished. I had to stick with these - Dutch-like - to maintain the image, but give room for unpredictable change too - to allow my Romantic tendency to expand.

There are indeed two other Romantic sources here:Ìý the sounds of the harp accompaniment (also 3rds and 6ths) from the start of the . However imaginary, the sound of that music in will always connect it to me with the city and with a marvellous feeling of loss and nostalgia. And then, three short quotes from the start of a Baroque oboe concerto - by the Venetian composer . Not stylistically Romantic, but absolutely in its spirit - and full of extra expressivity for me because I once played the piece in my oboe-playing youth, and because of the effect it has in a very unlikely place - in , just when Woyzeck drowns himself. This piece is even a kind of self-quotation, as I extensively used the piece in my Oboe Concerto.

SoÌý- many layers! But as I refine again and again - I still am - trying to give room for lightness too. For at all costs, music must breathe.

• Find out more about here.
• Read his fifth post: Found Objects
• Read his fourth post: Lost Worlds
• Read his third post:Time Travel.
• Read his second post: The composer's dilemma, what to call the piece?
• Read his first post: Composing as it happens.

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