Compositions by Charles M Lines

Here are the compositions I have written. They are presented in chronological order, from most recent to earliest.

If you would like to perform any of these pieces, please leave comment here or contact me via Facebook or any of the other addresses provided. 

Tsurara: A Tone Poem for Small Orchestra and Soprano Chorus

Tsurara is inspired by the Tsurara Onna, the icicle woman of Japanese folklore: a figure who appears in winter and vanishes with the thaw.

Rather than retelling the myth, the piece explores the emotional climate she suggests: beauty held in tension, intimacy edged with cold, presence always on the verge of disappearance.

The music unfolds within a world of suspended breath. The orchestra plays sempre non vibrato and at the softest of dynamics, creating a soundscape that feels frozen, fragile and foreboding. Bright percussion glints through the texture like light catching upon ice.

Eventually, a brief, brittle quickening skates upon the stillness: bright, pointillistic, unstable; it threatens to slightly crack the frozen surface of the music.

Then the work’s most intimate moment emerges: a passage where something a little warmer, melting and more vulnerable reveals itself.

Later, like voices heard through falling snow, a soprano chorus begins to sing: bright, insistent, then distant.

They deepen the hypnotic song of Tsurara.

Then the song fades, slowly rising and dissolving into the cold night air.

What remains is a feeling of something glimpsed and too quickly lost: an ethereal beauty of frost, longing, and gentle breath.

 

Demo Recording

Score

Tsurara Onna

Tree withering cold

Frost fingers tap my window:

Light, light, so lightly;

I feel your ice mist stir me…

Strangely welcome in the night.

 

In winter you come,

To stay with me in the dark:

Feeding on my warmth,

Sharing your seductive cold;

We entwine and slowly merge.

 

Skin withering cold

Lips finding and kissing me

Through the night softly;

I feel my hot life flowing

Toward your rime-crusted heart;

 

Soul withering cold;

Your arms are the freezing clouds

That carry me up,

Up toward the aloof stars,

Where you and I disappear.  

                                                                    CML

 

Hymn to Ignorance (A Tone Poem for Choir and Orchestra)

Demo Recording

Score

Hymn to Ignorance by Thomas Gray

Hymn to Ignorance is a tone poem for orchestra and choir, inspired by Thomas Gray’s satirical poem of the same name. Though tone poems are most often orchestral, this work expands the tradition by weaving the human voice into the orchestral fabric.

The choir serves as a Collective Narrator: at times it carries the text directly, guiding listeners through Gray’s words; at other times it merges with the instrumental textures, becoming another timbral color in the symphonic palette. Audiences need not catch every word to grasp the meaning: key phrases and the expressive interplay of voices and instruments are enough to illuminate the narrative.

Rather than adopting the sectional form of a cantata, Hymn to Ignorance unfolds as a continuous arc, portraying the irony, grandeur, and philosophical bite of Gray’s poem in musical terms. The orchestra and choir together embody both the voice of ignorance and the forces surrounding it, creating a sound world that is by turns pompous, playful, and haunting.

This is not a ritual or liturgical work, but a programmatic journey: a meditation on folly and wisdom, expressed through the tonal mix of human and instrumental sound.

Cherry Blossom ချယ်ရီ ပွင့် for Small Orchestra and Piano

Demo Recording

Score

I have a friend who, when she wants time alone to relax, goes to stand near or under plants and trees, occasionally reaching out to gently touch the flowers and twigs and branches. 

This piece captures these moments, and a little more...

Mae'r Mari Lwyd Yn Curo (A Symphonic Poem for Orchestra)

Mae’r Mari Lwyd Yn Curo is a symphonic poem that reimagines the Mari Lwyd, the spectral horse‑skull figure of Welsh winter tradition, as an elemental presence arising from the sea. 

The work begins within a submerged watery sound‑world: slow tidal movements, distant glimmers and glints, hints of half heard or remembered sea shanties, 

and a slow low murmur that suggests something ancient stirring beneath the waves. 

As the Mari Lwyd awakens from her slumbers, gradually takes form and moves toward the land, the music gathers momentum...

The scene shifts: a gallop through an eerie forest under a full moon, the rush of cold night air, wind gusting through bare branches, and the unsettling rattle of bones sounding from somewhere unseen. 

The landscape is alive, watchful, and charged with silvery strange nocturnal energy.

Eventually, the Mari Lwyd arrives at a grand, warmly lit gothic manor. She knocks loudly upon the door, and the music becomes a dance; a medieval dance transforms into a frenetic waltz, which in turn fragments into music upon the edge of chaos. The knocking persists within the tumult, as if the Mari Lwyd is everywhere at once: both outside the door in the frozen winter night and inside within the heat of the dance.

Score

Demo Recording

"I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but to me, transparent." 

From Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu 

Mari Lwyd, Lwyd Mari:

 

A sacred thing through the night they carry.

Betrayed are the living, betrayed the dead:

All are confused by a horse's head.

From The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd by Vernon Watkins

For know there are two worlds of life and death:

One that which thou beholdest; but the other

Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit

The shadows of all forms that think and live

Till death unite them and they part no more....

From Prometheus Unbound by P. B. Shelley   

Pared Pen-Blwydd: A Short Piece for Concert Wind Band

This piece is a short tone poem in the style of a march. It was written for the St Alban's Concert Band's 130th Anniversary. 

A time traveller travels along the timeline of the band's history, from its beginning as a flute and drum band, through its time as a brass band, towards its final incarnation as a concert wind band.

Demo Recording

Score

Ka Wahine `Ai Honua

 I hear your prayer:

Stand! Breath! Listen!

Score

(Please take a look at the score as it contains vocal effects that are not possible to replicate in a demo recording.)   

Demo Recording

Hear me night march down the mountain towards you;

See me flame trees to light my way.

Feel my smouldering song flame within your ears;

Feel the scorching as I kiss your bare feet;

Feel the blistering heat of my bright hot deadly body;

Feel me pour in and burn away your heart.

Comer, come, come:

I lift you from the drift of time;

You catch fire and I burn away your soul;

I breath in the smoke from the embers of your dying.  

  

Amama ua noa:

Your prayer is done.

Anicca: An Adagio for Orchestra

Within a petal's fall is a whispered refrain:

Enjoy life's fleeting beauty; never dwell on pain.

Demo Recording

Score

    

Echoes of an Irish Epitaph

 

Loss leaves heartaches no one can heal.

Love leaves memories no one can steal:

Comforting echoes of echoes of echoes...

Demo Recording

Score

I see your outline upon the hard rocky shore,

Before the waves roll in, roll in... 

I see your shadow beneath the cold silver moon,

Before the clouds glide in, glide in...

Now I keep you safe in my warm memories:

Within, within, within...

Comforting echoes of echoes of echoes...

Loss leaves heartaches no one can heal;

Love leaves memories no one can steal. 

жаль (Pity)

 

Death-chilled by the cold tears from grieving willows,

I shiver within a lake of sadness.

 

Soul-burnt by the fierce heat of unforgiving flames,

I writhe within a fire of madness.

Demo Recording

Score

 

Dreams of my brother float far above me,

Tracing ever-changing patterns of regret.

 

I search for my sister who lies far below,

But her gaze I begin to forget.

 

A rose scented songbird stole my brother away…

 

But, unknown, I returned as her lover.

 

Our ignorance was bliss on our wedding night,

But then fate the truth did uncover.

 

I was drowned;

 

I was burnt;

 

Our souls hid away:

Tormented and shunned by the world.

 

Then God took notice, paused fate, and took pity,

And a yellow blue flower unfurled.

I am the yellow of the sun;

 

I am the blue of the lake;

 

And once more the world grants us room.

 

I am Kostroma;

And I am Kupalo;

And together, as one, we bloom.

Nøkken Begynner

Striding, sliding, slipping down;

Groping for, grabbing at, grasping Hlin’s hand…

Then failing, flailing, falling through the frozen road;

Spinning and splaying, spiralling down Hel’s glistening mouth,

And feeling, fearing, feeding her ravenous cold:

Snap!

My frigid soul shifts sullenly over her river-boned depths,

And I suffer as her Shepherd of Sins.

Score

Demo Recording

Aadizookaan: the wind snake’s dance

 

Wind dancing through the hollow bone of an eagle’s wing:

Alone…

Score

Demo Recording

 

Wind dancing through the hollow bone of an eagle’s wing:

Searching…

 

Wind dancing through the hollow bone of an eagle’s wing:

Seeing you…

 

Wind dancing through the hollow bone of an eagle’s wing:

Beside you…

 

Wind dancing through the welcome hollow of your open ear:

Whispering…

 

Wind dancing through the sweet tasting flow of your thoughts and dreams:

Within you…

 

Wind dancing through your empty skull and hollow bones:

Alone…

 

Wind dancing through your empty skull and hollow bones:

Searching…

Ma Phae Wah

 

Killed in winter

By bitter hands:

Sister betrayed!

Careless laid: cursed.

I paid a price unfair – and the worst.

Score

Demo Recording

Then, gold leaf cast

On my vast pain

At last did ease

And then please me.

Burmese blessings sought me – made me free!

 

Now graves I guard,

But none barred rest;

The scarred or whole:

Each one’s toll paid.

Your soul will have a place – ready-made.

The ghost ship's last song

 

Rocking and dreaming, surrounded by sea;

Soon nothing left here: nothing of me.

Score

Demo Recording

The sea was wide and my journeys were long:

At first half remembered, now forgotten and gone.

 

Rocking and dreaming, surrounded by sea:

Soon nothing left here: nothing of me.

 

Brocken by wind and bleached by the sun:

Time’s hammers and pains could not be out run.

 

Rocking and dreaming, surrounded by sea;

Soon nothing left here: nothing of me.

 

My memories are mist cast out on the tide;

I have nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

 

Rocking and dreaming, surrounded by sea;

Soon nothing left here: nothing of me.

 

I sleep now through the waves’ twilight glimmer,

As the dark depths below reach up ever nearer.

 

Rocking and dreaming, surrounded by sea:

Soon nothing left here: nothing of me.

 

The sea, in time, will swallow me whole,

And then, in time... 

Will reach for your soul…

 

Rocking and dreaming, surrounded by sea:

Soon nothing left here: nothing of me. 

Fuyu no Hōmon

Tree withering cold

Snow fingers tap my window:

Soft, soft, so softly;

I feel frost breath beside me…

Strangely welcome in the night.

 

Score

Demo Recording

                                       

In winter you come,

To stay with me in the dark:

Feeding on my warmth,

Sharing your seductive cold;

We entwine and slowly merge.

 

Skin withering cold

Lips finding and kissing me

Through the night softly;

I feel my hot life flowing

Toward your frost crusted heart;

 

Soul withering cold;

Your arms turn to freezing mists

That carry me up,

Up toward the aloof stars...

Where you and I disappear.  

"Cysuro" for Flugelhorn or Trumpet, Woodwind Ensemble and Double Bass

"Cysuro" is a six minute piece that is inspired by the Baroque Prelude and Fugue.

The first half of the piece is harmonic and develops repeating rhythmic and melodic figures; the second half is a fugue, which develops its melodies contrapuntally. 

The piece is influenced by the past but belongs to now. 

When you listen to it, you will hear what I mean.

The piece was written for a trumpet player who was celebrating over 60 years of playing with St Alban's Concert Band.   

        

Cysuro Demo Recording

                                                                   

Score

Atgofion o Golled

Lle mae cysgodion cymylau yn aros ar laswellt y dyffryn: sefwch, arhoswch a gwrando...

Gallwch glywed adlais o'r hyn a fu unwaith.

Atgofion o Golled Demo Recording

Atgofion o Golled Score

Where shadows of clouds linger upon the valley's grass: stand, wait and listen...

You can hear echoes of what once was.

"Flying to Venus!" A New Piece for Concert Wind Band

Flying to Venus Demo Recording

Score

This piece describes a flight to Venus, beginning with the feelings and preparations of the astronauts and ending with the final orbit around the planet.

Ten ghost songs for choir and piano

                                                                                                             

Here are "Ten Ghost Songs" for SATB choir and piano.

Click on the links to see and download the scores...

The Druid's Gift Demo recording: (Druid)

The Ghost Ship's Last Song Demo recording: (Ghost Ship)

Echoes of an Irish Epitaph Demo recording: (Echoes)

Aadizookaan: The Wind Snake's Dance          Demo recording: (Wind Snake)

Fuyu no Hōmon          Demo recording: (Fuyu)

Ma Phae Wah          Demo recording: (Ma)

Sing My Song

жаль (Pity)          Demo recording: (Pity)

Ka Wahine `Ai Honua

Nøkken Begynner

Most of the above have been previously listed, but one or two use techniques that cannot be replicated by a demo-recording.