The Solent Way: Part Three

Portsmouth to Emsworth (16 miles)

It's some time since we last visited the Solent Way, the footpath that traverses a fairly diverse stretch of the coastline of southern England, so a two-post special dealing with two sections of the trail seems in order. This time, we're going to finish off the eastern end, from Portsmouth to Emsworth. I've put together a map of the route here.

It was not a particularly bright sort of day when I set out, the kind that suggests rain is moderately likely but may hold off long enough to avoid serious drenching, and presents the dilemma of whether to take the light raincoat or the serious monsoon-proof ski one that will end up being needless extra weight for most of the day.  Happily, the journey by rail from nearby Bitterne station is one I was looking forward to, not so much for the landscape (brief glimpse of the river, bland suburbia, trees, River Hamble, some fields, nearly a coastal view, dirty suburbia, city) but because I used to make this journey on several memorable occasions in order to get to the Isle of Wight.  This was for the Boys' Brigade Solent region summer jamboree-outing-thing (it wasn't called that really), a fun-filled day on the Isle of Wight involving building sandcastles and games such as trying to knock down piles of tin cans with a sandbag. The railway has changed a bit since then, not least with the withdrawal of the old slam-door rolling stock (and 'Please - shut the door!' notices) but also because it's no longer possible to go direct from Bitterne to Portsmouth Harbour on the hourly train without a change at Portsmouth and Southsea, a good-looking but strange split-level construction with the raised through tracks under a canopy, looking rather like the older elevated stations in Berlin.  Trundling out of the other end along the viaduct takes us past the Guildhall and two parks, a shopping centre and into the harbour station.  Portsmouth Harbour is a curious construction, for upon exiting the building one realises that it is actually a pier held up by wooden piles, with the sea lapping underneath the trains. There's HMS Warrior and the entrance to the historic dockyard, the masts of HMS Victory and the grey turrets of modern warships further inside, and the Gosport ferry still trundling across the harbour as when I came over last time.

The route of the Solent Way is a little vague (for which read  'completely and mercilessly unwaymarked') through the city, as paths often are in large conurbations, so I adopt the general principle of keeping as close to the shoreline as possible. This involves going under the railway and being carried along in a crowd to Gunwharf Quays, the shopping mall which was visible from the train. It's unusual in being open rather than a monolithic chamber like Southampton's effort, with shops arranged in 'streets' on the site and a large expanse of waterfront beyond. Here was at the base of the Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth's landmark sail-like white pillar, observation levels glazed between the upper ribs. I'd been up it some years ago on a better day than today (there's a glass floor to titillate the nervous) and, as on the last outing, intended to use it as a yardstick to see how far I'd come.  Setting off past what was surely an 'if you need to ask the price, you can't afford it' category of ocean-going motor yacht (and we mean it, the thing was bigger than most ships sailing to America in the fifteenth century) I passed by a sunken pond which was being used as a boating lake for children. If your little ones have ever dreamed of piloting a somewhat unconvincing six-foot replica of a Type 42 destroyer, this is the place to come.

Immediately to the side of the shopping centre were some modern apartments in a parallel avenue, with an equally contemporary glazed tower a short distance away, attempting to be a skyscraper. I spotted what seemed like a likely route onwards to the right, which took me between blocks and past the entrance to the Isle of Wight ferry terminal. Portsmouth's service, operated by WightLink, is shorter than Southampton's and more frequent, but is compromised by limited space both here and at Fishbourne on the island, where a river estuary in a village is the only water deep enough to land a car ferry. The Portsmouth berth is tucked between two promontories and necessitates a sharp turn to access the landing ramp, both factors which limit the size of the vessels. Still, traffic seemed to be healthy - at least judging by the length of time it took me to cross the access road. Next door is the home of a maritime activity one does not most readily associate with Portsmouth: fishing.  Yes, the town has a modest fishing fleet, almost all decorated blue with unique rust areas and mostly concerned with the Solent's oyster and clam stocks.  The boats are moored in an inlet to the side of the ferry port (using the same harbour entrance) which I walked along the edge of to reach the spit known as Portsmouth Point. Classical music aficionados (that's most of my readership, then) will most readily associate this place with the jaunty overture composed by William Walton in 1925,  which is quite appropriate given the history of the area. Also known as Spice Island, it was the oldest port area in the town and handled a swift trade in imported goods, sailors on leave and all the paraphernalia necessary for these articles to flourish.  Although it's today an estate-agent's Christmas list, the character of the promontory has been pretty well preserved as the eighteenth-century, and the pubs are the same as the two depicted in the famous cartoon of the town.  (It's also the very start/end of the A3, should you ever need to know that for a pub quiz).


View Larger Map

Doubling back past all the pubs and finally pointing eastwards brought me to another notable feature of Portsmouth's history - the town walls. They're not quite as unique as Southampton's but just as extensive, enclosing public parks that were once the site of gun emplacements and parade grounds, and you can climb over most of the towers and promenades on top. There are various other points of interest along the way including a half-ruined church as a memorial to the armed forces and a view back across the harbour mouth to Gosport, as well as all the marine traffic steaming in and out. The Isle of Wight ferries mentioned earlier were the most numerous in this respect, but there was also a huge cross-channel ferry bound for Spain (I know this because it was the exact vessel my family sailed on a year ago) and a multitude of yachts. A little further along is Clarence Pier, which is a somewhat creative use of the term given that the 'pier' is little more than a funfair on some decking, reaching only a few yards out over the water.

Trade didn't seem particularly brisk despite this being a public holiday, with only the minority of the cars on the Sky Ways coaster containing any screaming patrons and most of the carousels at standstill, owners stood around looking bored.  Next to the funfair is another 'ride' of sorts - the Southsea hoverport. This is one end of the only commercial hovercraft service in the UK, which in combination with a bus service to the station manages to maintain a trade in zipping across to the island every half-hour on an 'air-cushion vehicle'.  I stood on the shingle next to the ramp eating a sandwich but couldn't yet see the craft promised on the arrivals board.  My patience was eventually rewarded when I spotted a small area of spray several hundred yards out, closer observation picking out the flashing beacon light and then the blue and red superstructure.

Another clear indication a hovercraft is approaching is the considerable noise of the twin engines as the thing flies at you across the waves, not really braking at all until the last moment when the thing theatrically drives up the beach, flinging spray everywhere, and rolls to a halt by pointing the jet thrusters in the opposite direction. The skirts then deflate as the fans power down and staff push a set of aircraft steps up to the doors.  I must get round to travelling on this thing...


Moving along the shoreline opposite Southsea Common come more attractions: the D-Day Museum complete with 360" cinema and the Overlord Embroidery, which is intended to compliment to Bayeux Tapestry; the Pyramids swimming pool (you guessed it, it's in the shape of said cuboid, 80's plastic looking just a bit in need of refurbishment) and Southsea Castle, which dates back to Tudor times, although not the black-and-white lighthouse.  I happened to look back here and see that steaming out of port was a huge grey warship, which I was later able to identify by its markings as HMS Daring, a new destroyer. I presumed it was off to the Indian Ocean, either as support for the war in Afghanistan or else fighting Somali pirates, but the reality may have been more mundane, just a training exercise or official visit. It swept past, as much as several thousand tonnes of vessel can sweep past, and headed down the side of the Island.

Once Southsea Pier has been passed (more plasticky sideshows, but at least a proper pier) the shore becomes less interesting, shingle and hardy grasses on one side and apartments on the other, and presently the path has to turn off altogether to avoid a fort at the mouth of the bay. We now have to start heading north up the other side of the peninsula (technically an island, but only by virtue of the small channel cutting across the top) to get round Langstone Harbour, which is the tidal area cutting Hayling Island off from Portsea and the mainland.

The ten minutes it takes to walk between one shore and the other do not sufficiently convey the contrast between them. The broad shingle beach is left behind to traverse a park (nice tree-lined path, not-so-nice blocks of flats) and suburban residential streets before the Way rejoins the shore just next to a pub. Now the sea is in a shallow natural harbour between Portsea and Hayling Island, full of sandbanks and mud and all sorts of submarine features that the Coastguard would prefer you didn't get stuck in. The boating culture has changed from car ferries and warships to moored yachts and small fishing vessels, including further down the road the small passenger ferry across the harbour mouth to Hayling Island. I now have to walk all the way back up the side of Portsea Island, cross a road bridge at the top and briefly traverse a narrow waterside path by the A27 and A3M, which is not particularly interesting territory, the mud flats of Langstone Harbour to one side and marsh beds to the other with a skyline of flats, industrial units and scrubby plants.  At one point I have to backtrack and divert along a parallel driveway to avoid mud pools on a grassy path, such is the proximity to the water.  The road bridge, one of only two fully accessible entry points to the island (the others are a motorway and a railway) is windy indeed, being positioned over an open channel of water. It's then half a mile walking along the precariously narrow harbour wall, sans railings, until one reaches Farlington Marshes.

On the map, this area looks like an annoyance, two miles going round the edge of a peninsula to end up only slightly further down the path from where you started. It actually provides a fairly diverting change of scenery, an open landscape more like the flats of Norfolk or the Netherlands, with a sunken wetland at the centre and a path going round the edge on the sea dyke. Wading birds dip at the pools and reeds, or flock overhead, and even the noise of the motorway is lost to the fresh sea breezes.  The area was also used a decoy for German bombing raids in WWII, by blacking out Portsmouth and putting lights on the peninsula in order to fool pilots they were aiming at the city.  All this must offer some great photo opportunities given great patience, a good lens and a sunset, but none of these were forthcoming at the current moment. It is at about this point on a long walk - ten, eleven miles - when things start to get a bit achy and one has to force oneself to have a break and drink more, especially given my pace and the wind around here.  I could just make out in the distance the arch of the Hayling Island bridge, and tried to estimate the distance to it, reckoning if I could get there in 1 hour that would be achievable and would be sufficient motivation to get to the end and not cop out at one of the nearby stations. Looking the other way, Spinnaker Tower was a distant needle, appearing as far away as it had been at Lee-on Solent on the last leg.

The path now reaches the edge of Havant and takes on a rhombus-shaped detour that actually is genuinely annoying; up a dirty creek, over a road bridge and along the road past various industrial yards, through some woods and past a cement works to arrive twenty minutes later only a short way across the creek where this sentence started. Thankfully, from this point onwards it's a pretty straight line to the Hayling Island bridge road across some more shingle and marshes. The next signpost, stating that Emsworth is a mere two miles away (which I don't believe) happens to sit on the path of a long-gone railway to the island, now a cycle track  Actually, there still remain the stumps of the bridge that carried the 'Hayling Billy' across the strait parallel to the road bridge, which is not too unpleasing a construction either. At the other side of the Hayling road are some old-looking buildings including what was obviously once a windmill, and a duckpond.  Fairly desirable area, this. A little further on is a curious section of footpath so far unique on my travels - one which is only accessible at low tide. It traverses the shingle in front of a sea wall and as a result the ground cover is an expanse of damp pebbles rather than real footpath, although I had been fortunate to have arrived here when the tide was ages away. Hopping back onto terra firma takes one through a graveyard and some fields before a last bit of expensive real-estate seafront.


View Larger Map

By the time I arrived in Emsworth the sun was out - isn't that nice?  The town has a curved harbour wall around an area known as the mill pond which is wide enough to serve as a promenade, with little information panels about the history of the town (mostly relating to fishing and boats). The exact end point of the Solent Way is a little vague as the waymarking finishes before the promenade, so I chose the little information hut (a pleasant Victorian civic construction with a tiled roof, I should add, not some plastic horror) as the very eastern terminus, only a few yards inside Hampshire . One could easily continue walking from this point, for the Wayfarer's Walk and Staunton Way to the north and the Sussex Border Path to the east join here, and the E9 coastal path continues on to Dover via the South Downs.  I, however, had done seventeen miles already and headed for the station with the eastern half of the trail completed. Next time, the forest.

Langstone harbour and Portsdown

Gallery

Ryde, on the Isle of Wight

Portsmouth Point

The Isle of Wight ferries

Portsmouth fishing fleet

The Museum

Back in April, the centennial anniversary of the ill-fated voyage of S.S. Titanic put Southampton, if temporarily, at the centre of the world's attention. Unsurprisingly, myself and other friends and family members were most readily involved in musical contributions to the commemorations, not least the massive performance of A Sea Symphony in the docks on the actual anniversary of the sailing.  A more lasting result of all this was that the much-awaited SeaCity Museum opened its doors to visitors, finally furnishing the city with a maritime museum of suitable dimensions for it's historical significance. And today, I finally got around to making a visit - with the intention of publishing a review here, of course.

As much as anything else, the creation of such an attraction represents the city council finally getting off their backsides and actually making something happen with regards to getting some tourist footfall (and income) into the town, although it's a pity that, as has happened before, the (now defunct) Tory administration were claiming credit for it all when in fact the project was initiated during the years of a hung council.  There was a debacle on a national scale during the planning stage when the council tried to sell paintings and a sculpture from the city art gallery to fund the project, and only backed down when the Tate found some legal clause forbidding them from doing so (massive public opposition is much easier to ignore these days). An added contrivance is that all Southampton addresses are generously being sent a free ticket, except that to use it you have to visit together as a household, can only visit outside school holidays in 2012 and not during the first six days of opening. In other words, if you want to take your whole family, you have to have a free Saturday or Sunday or else an inset day which you take off work, and you won't be the first to get in. Typically for the ID Era, they'll also want proof of residence, so if you have a family of three and were hoping to sneak in Aunty Mabel from Whitstable when she came to visit, sorry, forget it; she'll have to pay.

Still, it's a huge leap forward from the little maritime museum that preceded it, housed in a medieval wool house opposite the ferry terminal.  It was interesting, filled with models of ships and bits of anchors and compasses and other delightful nautical clutter, but hopelessly outdated and greatly under-representing the port. Although the inside of the new museum is bespoke, only a little actual new building needed to take place.  The building housing the galleries was built in the 1930s as part of the Civic Centre, and used to contain the law courts and the police station as well as an elegantly thin tower with a four-face clock at the top.  In a wonderful gesture towards the city's heritage, the clock bells chime the first phrase of Southampton resident Isaac Watts' hymn O God, Our Help In Ages Past on the hour. The coppers moved out into a rather Orwellian monolith overlooking the docks in 2010 and since then the entire East Wing has been refreshed and refitted to contain the exhibition halls. The only bit of construction needed was a rather more angular gallery at the north end, replacing some flowerbeds with a series of triangular sections concertinaed into one another, presumably to suggest waves, sails or the bow of an ocean liner. This also forms the shape of the museum's logo, which looks like an upside-down factory with a chimney. They've at least tried a little to blend it into the existing structure with a nice façade of Portland Stone and some smoked glass.

Let's go inside...

The entrance lobby sets out the tone of the museum.  It's not huge, with today just a single attendant behind the ticket desk and a single staircase and lift to the first floor.  The wing is listed, and a lot of interest is in seeing how they've managed to change the building's function whilst maintaining the heritage features, something which has been done rather well. Other than the contemporary block-colour and sans serif style of inserted walls, the original Portland stone and marble is the main interior texture of the building.  The ceiling vaults of the upstairs atrium have a pleasing decorative pattern to them, and the signs directing entrances to the courtrooms have been retained.  One side of the floor, formerly Court Three, is on the general history of Southampton, and seems like a sensible place to begin. The false roof has been left open in places to show the ornate painted wood panelling of the original court, and one can see the coat of arms at the far end too. Space does not permit a full description of every exhibit in the room, suffice to say there were sections on most periods of history from neolithic to modern, and appropriate artifacts.  Beyond this room was a smaller one containing a huge model of the Queen Mary (from the old museum) and a series of displays on various immigrations to and through the city - more artistic than informative, it has to be said, preferring representative objects over things like statistics.

Unsurprisingly, the other half of the exhibition space is given over to the Titanic.  There was an immediate focus on the actual people on the ship rather than the vessel itself - it wasn't built or registered here, after all - and especially the crew, who were mostly Southamptoners.  This was done through following the situation of five individuals on the ship, from Captain Smith to a fireman, through the various stages of the voyage and sinking.  Notable were the wall listing all the items taken on board the ship at Southampton (did you know they carried horse hair and opium?) and the wireless operator's room.  The main part of local interest was the room dealing with the survivors. The floor was the now-famous map of 1912 Southampton with every residence that lost a crew member marked in red.  I also liked that the other courtroom had been used as a space explaining the Titanic disaster enquiry, still left as a court with jury benches, dock and judge's seat. Downstairs, in the new pointy-roofed bit was a special exhibition (presumably the first of many) on the legacy of the Titanic and the public's lasting fascination with it.  There was an interesting wall comparing five films from the 20th century about the ship, and another with a huge variety of objects essentially cashing in on the name, from beer to dolls.  Other areas dealt with the unanswered questions about the voyage - was the ship going too fast, could the lookouts see enough, and the morality of exploring the wreck. One wonders what future exhibitions might occupy this space.

Things to like:

 

The interactive stuff 

This was all very well-done, chiefly because all the touchscreens and videos were generally used for the most appropriate purpose, showing and explaining things that couldn't be done so well using static displays and information panels.  Some were more child-orientated than others (drive sail the Titanic using a real wheel and telegraph! Rub the screen to 'dig' for buried Saxon treasure!) but all were educational.  There were some other nice touches too, like the 'stained glass window' that was actually a subtly moving projection (watch long enough and you could see the bird dislodge an apple from the tree which fell on the medieval trader's foot) and the Roman video. I personally liked the circular table with an overview map, which cycled round every period of the city's history every ten minutes and allowed several different people at a time to zoom into the relevant areas and read little hotspots of information.

Size and content

 

I ended up spending about as much time in there as I wanted to spend (in fact I could have stayed longer but it was closing), which I count as a success bearing in mind I'm the sort of visitor who sets out intending  to read all the information and look at all the objects.  Everything in there was also interesting, relevant and objectively presented (although interestingly, a companion on this visit noted perhaps a slight left-of-centre tone, particularly the focus on ordinary working people and several mentions of trade union involvement, both of which accurately reflect the town's political direction for most of its modern history).  That said, see criticisms below.

Looks 

 

The conversion from law courts to museum has been carried out with great sensitivity to the building and as a result the whole place looks great.  One of the interesting features, which the architects may or may not have been aware of is the feeling, of being in a transient space, as if one is able to observe the different stages of history just by being there, and there is certainly no sense of having hidden or thrown out the previous function of the building - indeed, it is purposely left on show in places.  Full marks to the builders.

And a few things for improvement:

 

A bit perfunctory in places.

 

Although the exhibits manage to cover a fair chunk of Southampton's history, there are some significant omissions. At no point was it actually explained why the area became a port in the first place, nothing on the actual operation of the docks or the liner trade, nothing on other aspects of transport (the railway, the airport and flying boats), and nothing on important periods such as the Georgian spa industry or the Blitz. One appreciates that space was a little limited, and that the conservators had to pick and choose, but with the potential of interactive features physical room need not have been a hindrance in this respect. In particular, the business of the port operations would surely have been a publicity opportunity that an organisation such as ABP would have seized upon, yet there was no mention of the modern container port.  In a similar vein, several things that were featured were inadequately explained. Had I not some knowledge of early modern history I feel I would have been mystified as to who the Huguenots were and why they were fleeing from France - and even then it would have been nice to read more than a single excerpt from the digitised account book belonging to the businesswoman named Judith. Why the Romans and Saxons actually settled in this area was also barely explained.  Some of the Titanic section also felt a bit padded-out - display cases spaced just a bit further apart than they might have been, not quite enough detail. The only exception was the economic background to the era and its crew, which I didn't know about previously.

It's tempting to say that this was solely due to budget constraints: this is all we could afford; is a museum worth it when we have to cut front-line services, that sort of thing; but it is also perhaps symptomatic of a more general modern tendency to assume that people have short attention spans and won't appreciate detailed descriptions or masses of stuff to look at.  I don't think that's a good way of setting out on an entity like this - surely a good museum is one which caters for many people with different levels of interest about different things, each one of whom who will want to see some things in great detail but skip over others?  A museum should also be a starting-point for further private research into areas of particular interest, and as such ought to at least introduce as much as possible to the visitor.

English only

 

Given the international nature of the city - and the fact that this is a key feature of all the bits about immigration - it seems surprising that there was not a single sign, map, or other piece of information in anything other than English.  The city council publish documents in nearly every tongue under the sun, and rightly so when there are so many languages being spoken here, but not at the museum. One would at least have expected French and Polish. 

Would I recommend a visit? I would say yes, but not to expect the experience to be on same scale as the maritime museums in Liverpool or Belfast. It is more of an afternoon visit than a whole day's attraction. One thing I can't really judge is how interesting a non-Southampton visitor would find it  - I was not particularly impressed by Bristol's municipal museum recently due to finding it too 'localist' - and in fact also thought many of the same other criticisms about that as I have with SeaCity. The general impression of the place was that it was more concerned with people than systems or physical things, which might be less appealing to the outside visitor. However, the widespread appeal of the Titanic should at least provide a good level of familiarity.

Wallpapering

I tend to change my PC's desktop background (known colloquially as 'wallpaper') about every month. Almost always the image is a picture I've snapped on a recent trip, having got into the habit of trying to take a shot or two that contains a large area of the same colour suitable for displaying icons and a calender on top of. However, recently I had the nice idea to create a series of Great Composer wallpapers which could be easily made from 'found' objects on the internet (a la Berio) and knocked up in an hour or two using fairly simple tools in a graphics programme. Here I'm going to show you how it's done, should you wish to copy the concept yourself or just are curious.

The basic idea consists of using a portrait of the composer, their signature and a suitable excerpt of their music. All of these objects could be found from open-source websites, chiefly Wikipedia and IMSLP, and then with a little bit of experimentation arranged to fill the screen space. Depending on the images used and direction the portrait faces, there is scope for some variation with the composition.  The program I used for the project was Paint.NET, a free open-source raster graphics program that was initially developed by Microsoft as a replacement for the standard Windows Paint but then dropped and left in the hands of a community of internet users. It would be an excellent program even if it were payware - it does nearly everything that Photoshop or Coral Draw will, although if you want vector graphics you'll have to get the equally excellent Inkscape. The reason for not using this instead (vector graphics, should you be curious, are a system whereby the pixels become infinitely small as you zoom in and so images don't get blurred) is partly that file sizes will be much larger and that I have a much greater level of proficiency on Paint.NET. Also, it has a number of plugins included that we will be using for this project.

Setting up/Portrait:

The first stage is to set up the canvas for the wallpaper.  As I'm creating this background for a standard 17" flatscreen monitor, I will be using a resolution of 1024x468 pixels, so I create a new document in Paint.NET and alter the canvas size to these dimensions (choose Image - Canvas Size).  (If you are unsure how big your screen is, right click on your desktop, choose 'Properties' and look at the 'Settings' tab. There will be a slider half-way down which will show your current resolution - most likely this is already at 1024x468).  The next thing is to choose a subject for our wallpaper. The composer I settled on was Haydn: definitely one of the 'greats'; and with several portraits to choose from available in high-resolution. As we need to show both the portrait and some music, I intended to divide the space about half-and-half. This also means that when our background is 'in situ', desktop icons can all fit over one side or the other depending on what offers the best contrast and visibility. A little searching on Wikipedia Commons brought me to the Thomas Hardy portrait which I copied and pasted into Paint, and then resized to fit just the head into the frame.

At this point we need to introduce a new concept which is one of the best features of Paint.NET and similar programs: layers. In ordinary MS Paint, everything is on the same layer and only one colour can be displayed as 'on top'. If you draw over something, it disappears. Cut an area out and you cut down to the background. But with Paint.NET, we can have multiple layers of a drawing superimposed on top of each other. This means you can draw a background and then create another layer (or several) on top, on which you can draw, move, cut, paste and alter anything without affecting the layer(s) below or above.  We're going to exploit this feature in making our wallpaper.

The Haydn portrait I've just copy-pasted will sit on top of a background layer, which we'll create in a minute. What we need to do first is to 'cut out' his head so we can add a background to avoid an untidy difference between the square portrait and the rest of the screen (I experimented with stretching the painting's background to fill the space, and the result was some way from satisfactory).  There is no easy way of doing this other than to get out the eraser tool and carefully go round the edge of the wig and features with a small tip size. My tip is to release the mouse frequently; this means if you make a mistake and have to hit 'undo' you'll only lose a small amount of correct erasing.

The result of somewhat painstaking work with the Eraser tool.

I decided to leave 'Papa' Haydn's hand and pen in, as it makes a nice touch and would have looked a little odd otherwise.  I have also left in the painted background behind him as this serves our purpose quite well already.  Once all this is complete, I name the layer 'Portrait' or something similar for clarity (select the layer and choose 'Layer Properties' from the small menu at the bottom of the Layers window) and save. We're not quite finished with this layer yet, but for now let's move on to creating the background.

Background:

Create a new layer from the window and name it 'Background'. Then - and this is important - move it down using the arrows to below the portrait layer we already have. Anything we draw in this new layer will be visible only where the portrait layer is transparent - the chequered space in the screenshot above. (This is possible due to the file having something called an 'alpha layer', but we don't need to worry too much about the workings of this for our current project).  Rather than a single colour background, I wanted something slightly mottled that matched the oil paint of the portrait. To get this, in the background layer I stretched a rectangle over the entire canvas (make sure it's set to 'Draw filled shape' at the top when the polygon tool is selected) and then in the visible area scribbled a load of wiggles over it in green, brown and tan.  Making sure only this background layer was selected, I then used the Gaussian Blur tool (Effects-Blurs-Gaussian Blur) on this layer in two separate passes, turning up the blur radius until the wiggles were very subtle. I also ran the 'Oil Painting' effect on this layer, although I'm not sure how much difference this actually made after all the blurring.  The finished effect is very subtle but looks much more classy than a plain colour.

The next thing to do is to return to the portrait layer and run another plugin from the Blurs tab called 'Feather'. It may appear at first glance that this has done nothing, but look again at the edges with the background layer displayed. They will have been blurred outwards a little, removing the 'hard' join between layers. We're done with the portrait layer now.

Music:

Create another new layer and name it 'Music'. It needs to be moved down between the two existing layers - it will be on top of the background but beneath the portrait. At this point I needed to choose a suitable excerpt form the literature to represent the composer. I settled on a passage almost immediately - The Heavens are Telling from The Creation, which is possibly his most famous and masterly work.  I decided just to use the vocal lines rather than including the orchestral accompaniment, but this is a personal judgement.  The staves can be captured by taking a screen shot of the vocal score from IMSLP and pasting it into a new document. To get the music to sit on top of the background we're going to need to cut out all the spaces. Trim using the 'Crop to selection' tool and then get to work with the Magic Wand tool to remove anything that isn't ink. The Wand selects any area bounded by the same colour and will allow us to erase the 'holes' between ledger lines and notes far neater than we could ever do by hand.  Again, there is no quick way of doing this: we're going to have to just keep clicking until all the white on the page is removed and we can see the chequers of the alpha layer.

Having done this, there was one little addition I wanted to make: the score only showed the words in English, and I rather wanted to have the German text as well. Apart from personal satisfaction and an acknowledgement of Haydn's nationality, this would also better make the staves fill the space. The German text was copied from another score and then typed in Paint.NET using the text tool, getting the font as close as possible to the existing type. I also put it into italics just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately the program's text editor does not not seem to have any provision for special characters, so to get the umlauts in 'erzählen' and 'Hände' I had to manually draw pairs of dots and position them over the letters. They've come out rather faint but they're there. I also had to move the existing staves to fit the new lines of text in. This was done by moving all the text to a new drawing, then very carefully selecting each part with the lasso tool and copy-pasting it into a new layer.  I then moved this selection up a few pixels and copy-pasted the German text (already aligned with the notes) into the layer before manoeuvring the whole lot in position so it was aligned above the rest of the staves. This was done separately for each voice until I had four layers which could be merged back into one (we'll cover merging at the end). The only problem that now remained was to fill in the gaps in the stave brace: this was done by selecting the existing area and stretching it over the gap from each side like elastic. Done!

Having added the additional text, the lines of the staves were manoeuvred back into position.

As the wallpaper has a dark background we need a light image on top. To do this for the music I selected the image and used the 'Invert colours' tool to turn the black to white, then copy-pasted the whole lot back over to the 'Music' layer of the original file. I also reduced the transparency of this layer a little and added a very slight blur to avoid the harsh contrast created by sharp pure white. It serves as a sort of 'semi-background' and also seems to match the colour of Haydn's wig...

The result is very satisfactory. I enlarged the layer and moved it across to position the music tucked slightly behind the portrait - again personal taste.  The inclusion of the line 'The wonder of his work/displays the firmament' seems particularly fitting, and I would like to think this could be seen as alluding to the mastery of Haydn's music as well as the creation text. All that remains now is to place Haydn's signature and dates in a new 'Text' layer. The signature (there are two different Haydn signatures, I chose the one with his initials in) was found on IMSLP and adapted in much the same way as the music: white background cut out using Magic Wand, then the colours inverted and moved into position at the bottom left on Joe's shoulder . The name and dates were done in Paint.NET's own text tool and positioned top right.

Finishing:

The final stage is to make this into a usable picture file by flattening it. If we've been saving our work regularly, as wise precautions advise, the default file type will be one with a .pdn extension. This is Paint.NET's own file format, one which supports the layering we've been using. However, we can't use a file like this as a normal picture because no other program can actually display a Paint. NET file with layers, so we need to change it into a .png, .jpeg, .gif or similar format.  To do so, we need to merge all the layers together into one. Paint.NET makes this easy for us by including a 'Merge layers down' tool in the Layers window, but first we need to double-check what goes on top of what and move them up or down if necessary. The order of layers in the window should be Text- Portrait- Music-Background. Starting with the top layer, hit the 'Merge down' button and the two layers will combine into one. When you've finished, the drawing will be a single-layer image that can be saved in any picture format. I would recommend using a png or a jpeg to keep the file size down, but check the quality is turned up to maximum. I saved it as 'Haydn desktop'.

All that remains is to navigate to the new file, right-click and choose 'Set as Desktop Background'. Give the cogs a moment or two to whirr and you should have Haydn sitting as your background screen.

The finished article in use.

A few concluding thoughts:

• This concept is highly versatile as long as one has a portrait image and another work example to use. It could easily be adapted for any figure or object of history. As mentioned, there is scope for variation of the basic idea: the portrait could be bigger, smaller, face the other way, the signature could be elsewhere, different fonts, etc.
• Oil paintings will probably produce a more satisfactory result than colour photographs, as they are easier to merge with other colours and avoid overly sharp edges when cut around.
• Using a fairly dark colour scheme seems to have worked well with the bright icons and calendar that sit on top of it. All are still legible and easy to locate, one of the design principles of desktop wallpaper.
• Be aware that with a system tray at the bottom of the screen, some of the image will be obscured. Luckily, this doesn't seem to create any adverse effect in this case.
• The next one of these will probably be Mozart. I plan to offer these as free downloads from this blog once I have a small collection.

A Child of the Snows: Progress

You'll be wanting an update, no doubt, on how my cantata A Child of The Snows is progressing.   I'm currently just over half way through getting the notes down on paper/Sibelius, and have only a few small corners to decide what to do with. As I've been trying to convey in this series, the composition process is one of working from both the 'inside outwards' and the 'outside inwards', by which I mean that the surface of the music, that which the listener actually hears, is meant to be the logical meeting point of the overall grand structure and the small detail.

I've reached a point where work starts to pick up as things fall into place (despite taking a little time out to write another piece in the last two weeks). My (quite achievable) aim is now to write two fairly finalised minutes every week, meaning that potentially the work could be done by the end of June. This allows two months for polishing, finishing orchestral parts, proofreading, making a piano reduction and printing before rehearsals starts. I'm boosted by the fact that most of the sections left to write are the most lively and optimistic ones, which are rather easier to spin out that the chromatic angst that makes up the rest of the music.

In brief:

• The opening 6-7 minutes of the piece, apart from the introduction, are pretty much complete and now 'run' together, at least in draft form.  
• The above included, almost all of the choral passages in the outer sections are complete or nearly complete.
• I have either written or have a clear idea for the important transitions in the piece: linking the entries of the chorus and the baritone, and moving into the faster section and out again.

What remains to be written is thus:

• The instrumental introduction, which I intend to be an under-the-breath re-imagining of a baroque 'French overture' with trills, grace notes and the short-long rhythm that will permeate the piece. This will last perhaps 3-4 minutes at fairly moderate tempo.
• About half of the central fast section. I've got the end of the first stanza, an instrumental passage and most of the darker second stanza (in which the baritone makes a brief appearance) down.  What will be really crucial is a convincing central peak, for this will form the climax of the entire work.
• I propose to include an extended violin solo between the faster section and the last two stanzas. It makes sense both musically (a texture not yet fully exploited, a mirror to the instrumental introduction at the opening, and a convincing transition between sections) and practically (the choir get some recovery time after a lot of loud and vigorous singing)
• The ending. Probably fading away into the ether to bring us back to where the piece started from.

Two interesting phenomena occur around this stage in the composition process. The first is that enough of the piece now exists that when even casually thinking about the music, it becomes much easier to imagine new evolutions from the existing material. Many theoreticians have proposed that all through-composed music is essentially a version of 'variations on a theme', even if the 'theme' is as small as a motif or even a gradual harmonic progression. I don't usually have to try very hard to come up with new material that fits its intended function or within the overall landscape of the piece, nor do I have to consciously try and use the motifs already present. The second is a related activity: already-composed passages start to get moved around as better uses for them start to become apparent.  One example is a quiet but tense little figure for semi-chorus, leading into an instrumental passage, which was originally to finish the big climax at the end of the second stanza. I have now considered it to be much more effective after the first stanza, leading into the already-written second entry of the baritone, as the choral lines match up to what precedes it and the string texture leads nicely into what follows. Similarly, certain ideas begin to be discarded for various reasons - a better solution becomes apparent, using the passage would be too unwealdly or tautological, or too difficult to integrate.

As an afterthought, I'm still surprised even after writing a number of choral pieces how much music it actually takes to set a text, even one that seems apparently short. My original target of 20-25 minutes of music is probably going to be accurate, and indeed, consciously or not, the cantata has suggested itself in such a way to fit this length. This may partly be the result of using at least a moderate amount of counterpoint, as a canonic series of entries will obviously last for a longer duration than a homophonic texture. But I think it is also evidence that I am going about the business of writing for singers in an effective way; supplying sufficient places to breathe, allowing the voices to contrast with the orchestra, repeating words and lines where appropriate, writing a mixture of fast and slow music.In the end this all contributes towards the pacing and detail of the music at the listener's level that determines how engaging the experience is.

The Solent Way: Part 2

Hamble to Portsmouth (14 miles)

After deciding that it was too nice a weekend to waste indoors, I set out on the Solent Way again.  Continuing down the eastern side of Southampton Water, this stage will take us from where we finished last time in Hamble right into the city of Portsmouth.  Having prepared a packed lunch, I was duly down at the station at 9.45 to catch the slow train a few stops down the line to Hamble.

Hamble station (Street View) has the charming attribute of being in the middle of a field.  It's pretty basic, to be honest, just a pair of concrete platforms and a ticket machine next to the road bridge leading into the village. This will mean I have to walk about a mile to reach the quayside and pick up the Solent Way, but I don't particularly mind as there's enough of interest along the main street.  Hamble has plenty of history before new-money sailing businesses came along, and was for most of the last century an important area in the development of aviation. There were not one, but two, airfields in the town; one which just about clings on as a plant for General Electric aviation, and another which is buried under an 80's up-market housing estate.  There's plenty of evidence about though, firstly the Folland Gnat replica serving as a gate guard to the GE site, then further on some information panels with pictorial histories of the various planes and seaplanes built and tested here, and finally a silver miniature Spitfire mounted on swoopy poles as if turning a steep bank over the road.

The rest of the architecture bar the church is typical Georgian brick houses lining the steep lane down to the water (Street View).  The town of Hamble today (or, properly, Hamble-le-Rice, (Street View)) is largely concerned with the construction, maintenance and excise of boats and their accessories.  All kinds, although on the basis of the many vessels moored in the river, it's mostly private yachts that are most at home here. The Hamble River is only about half a mile from ending its modest course into the Solent, so it's fairly deep and allows a convenient base from which to launch one's forty-foot status symbol for a jaunt around the island.  Appropriately enough, I'm heading for a boat trip right now, but not one involving hoisting sails or leaning backwards over the side.  Instead I'm going to take one of the non-walking bits of the Solent Way, the ferry.

On the Hamble-Warsash ferry

I like the Hamble-Warsash ferry. It has a pleasing feeling of being a service rather than just a business enterprise.  To reach it you have to go down onto a gated jetty which looks a tiny bit not-public (with walking boots and a bag I got a funny look from four muscular waterproofed blokes leaving the pontoon), step onto the ferry via an ungated 'people scoop' opening at the front, and give the ferryman £1.50. The boat is pink (apart from the rusty bits) whereas the last time I rode on it, which must have been at least fifteen years ago, it was a more sober white. The captain, though, looks like a real proper sailor in the Captain Birdseye vein, with a white beard, an Arran sweater and a nautical cap. I am the only passenger and he sets off immediately I am aboard.  The passage across the river takes about five minutes, although this is variable depending on the number of yachts gong down the main channel rather than across it, and the number of parked boats it is necessary to weave through, including another similarly pink vessel used for dredging (according to the sign painted on the side). We seem to come alarmingly close to many of them, but the captain's been doing this since he was in short trousers and with a deft hand steers the Emily across the deep water channel and up to a jetty on the Warsash side without anything unfortunate involving anchor cables and the propeller.  There's quite a crowd gathered over here, Saturday traffic clearly being enough to justify getting out the largest vessel in the fleet, with the patronage mostly consisting of families returning from a stroll or dog-walking.  At the end of the jetty is a charming little ferry shelter (also in pink), with a confusing notice informing passengers they'd be better off not using it but instead waiting at the end of jetty, just so the ferryman can be sure they actually want the boat and aren't just resting their legs.

The Hamble River

Off the ferry, the trail goes down a shallow slope to the small quayside at Warsash (Street View). There's a nice pub here as well as a monument noting the area's involvement with D-Day in 1944 - in fact the first of several I'll pass on this walk.  A bit further on at the mouth of the Hamble River is the College of Maritime Studies, with its distinctive jetty and practice scaffold full of orange lifeboats extending out from the land. There's a salt marsh a little way inland, Hook Lake, which looks very tranquil. By contrast, the Solent is buzzing, with ferries, container ships, yachts, jet-skis and freighters punting up and down on voyages of various distances.  Fawley once again looms large across the water, although as I move on the flare stack will become a useful marker to determine how far I've come.  It's a warm day, with a breeze just strong enough to cool without being a problem.

Appropriately enough to lead on from the last paragraph, the next feature we come to is the Solent Breezes holiday park. The Solent Way used to follow the shoreline across the front of the static caravans, but that's not the case now because a lot of the shoreline isn't there any more. It's a cliff top, you see, and cliff tops have a habit of getting undercut by the waves and falling into the water, such that the trailers with the best view are now the ones most in danger of disappearing over it. The authorities realised that it was probably sensible to take walkers somewhere else than over a crumbling bit of sandstone, so there's now a detour round the back of the caravans and past a National Grid transformer station to join the rest of the cliffs which are holding up a bit better. You can still get through the bushes where the path would originally have come out, and see just how precarious it is.  Whilst the caravans are still at a safe distance, for now, there's at least one section of fence which hasn't long for this world.

Carrying on along the cliff-top, the view of the surrounding landscape becomes notably more expansive. The Isle of Wight's quite clearly outlined even in today's hazy air, a reminder that I'm reaching the point where the shoreline starts to turn to meet up with the English Channel.  Across the water the New Forest gradually recedes as the estuary widens away from the drum of Calshot castle perched at the end of its eponymous spit.  From this point onwards I start to scan the eastward horizon periodically for an important landmark indicating journey's end - the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth. No sign yet, but sooner or later the slender white spire will appear in the distance. After a mile or two, the path descends past a small beach, goes up another modest hillock and then becomes flat again at sea level and a row of small buildings appears. They're technically beach chalets, but most are half-way to being proper bungalows, with double-glazed verandas, solar panels or wind turbines for power (not in short supply here) and most with an upturned dinghy outside.  I join the various hand-holding couples, surfers, kite-flyers, paddlers and dogs flagrantly ignoring the 'private beach' notice and carry on around the curve of the bay (not missing the opportunity to use a thoughtfully-placed toilet stop) towards Hill Head.  This is another geography that's changed a lot over time, being the mouth of the River Meon. The sandbanks that gave this its original name of Hell Head have been tidied up along with the construction of a harbour and sluice gate for the river channel.  The other way, inland, everything's rather special. The river now ends in a giant reed bed, Tichfield Haven. which means that local twitchers have the chance to spot. It's quite a striking contrast between the colourful harbour behind and the serenity of the brown estuary before.

View Larger Map

All the beach huts here are green, and a few are open with their tenants inside enjoying the weather.  There's still not really a proper beach but this hasn't tempered the availability of watersports, chiefly sailing in small one-man boats and kite-surfing.  I haven't the faintest idea how to sail a dinghy but it looks highly diverting - at least nearly as good as walking. I always wonder whether anybody else is going the same way as me or as far.  It's remarkable, given the reasonable probability that somebody else may be walking a particular stretch of a particular footpath, that one never follows or engages in swapping places with another hiker, the way that you keep up with another car on a motorway.  Clearly everybody must have a sufficiently different pace or timing that no two path-followers run together. I keep stopping to take pictures too, which mixes things up a bit.

Presently there's a village and the Solent Way diverts a little round beach-front properties. The more urban section brings more people to share the footway with and I have to weave around pushchairs, dogs and wobbling teenage scooters. Horse riders hold up the traffic going the other way.  Periodically, an unidentified engine noise from the other side of the embankment is followed by the appearance overhead of a little yellow glider, which nervously turns over the sea and heads back to the landing strip before it runs out of sky. A mile or so further along the shore is the first proper town on this walk, Lee-on-the-Solent.  Lee (Street View) looks like a proper seaside town from the start, with a long straight road parallel to and slightly above the shore, neat grass and conservatively-styled apartments.  In the centre of the town are some nice quasi-Art-Deco shop fronts and a raised promenade area which add to the ambiance.  There used to a be a pier too, although that's long since vanished.  The amusement arcade on the beach front and the car park behind it used to be the terminus of the little-used Lee-on-Solent railway, which was a distinctly unprofitable entity and soldiered on as little more than a parliamentary service until 1931, with six men and a dog on the last passenger train. There's also a slipway, which is handy for the jet-skiers to launch from, although it's size seems to suggest some greater purpose. It's really very large indeed. Mysteriously large - in fact it's big enough to be used a car park. Oh...

Looking through the resulting break in the embankment I realise why. At the top of the slope, across the road, two huge propellers and a cabin with a radar assembly on top tower over a huge white superstructure. There's a sort of drawbridge-like door at the front of this massive machine, on which its name is written: hovercraft.

Several 'air-cushion vehicles' at Lee

I like hovercraft. They have an endearingly eccentric character about them; slightly cobbled-together from unlikely combinations of components like an assorted Lego set, as if nobody has quite worked out how to neaten it all up yet, a mad idea that has not yet realised quite how excessively complicated it has become. They are the only machines I know which have floppy bits as part of the design and make an amazing racket even before they move anywhere. One can only imagine the joy of test-driving  - or more accurately, test-flying - an early model and finding that not only did your bizarre invention actually work, it also went like the clappers on both land and water.  This corner of the military airfield at HMS Daedalus is the world's only Hovercraft Museum and houses seventy different 'air cushion vehicles' of diverse sizes and designs, some in working order, others still under restoration. I particularly like the craft I first spotted, the giant SR.N4 The Princess Margaret, mostly for the four massive propeller towers mounted on top that look like they were just put there to impress, like the tail fins on 1950s American cars.  This is a machine that can carry sixty cars, 170 passengers and still exceed 70mph! - which in 1969 was almost as exciting as putting a space rocket on the moon, especially when the whole project was a British endeavour.  This site is closed to the public most of the time (apart from visits by special arrangement) but there is a poster advertising open days in the forthcoming months.

Much danger lurks at Browndown.

After the crowds (and it really is crowded, everyone's outside this afternoon) of Lee the Solent Way comes up against a sturdy-looking fence and a gate with warning notices, which luckily happens to be open. Sometimes you have to divert around the next two miles, for Browndown is an irregularly-used military range, although they no longer use live fire here. The landscape is lonely and bleak in the extreme. Civilisation, houses and streets and yachts are not far away at all, yet all are hidden beyond the shingle and the scrubby, arid sandbanks behind. After an indeterminate period of time struggling across the millions of pebbles I come across the ruined remains of some small buildings, not knowing whether they were once complete or whether they were built this way to simulate the effects of bombing and shelling.  The place is entirely a desolate military landscape, parched and barren even when warfare is absent from it.  I imagine this is what it must be like in a nuclear winter; only the stones and the hardiest of grasses survive.  Actually, my pontificating on the desolation of war is some way from the truth: if you know where to look there's life here that you won't find elsewhere precisely because the area is less well-trod: birds, lizards, grasses and algae unique to the Solent coast. It you look a little further, the place offers the first sight of a landmark I'd been looking out for all day: Spinnaker Tower, where I'll end, in the centre of Portsmouth.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to leave and rejoin Stokes Bay on a tarmacked promenade with families and dogs and ice-cream. I pass an old fort which is now a museum of diving: as if to prove this, there are old iron minisubs on plinths outside, slightly rusted and with fogged glass.  A while further on, at the lifeboat station (entirely funded by the local community), the coastguard tractor sits ready to tow a lifeboat out of the water, but clearly nobody needs rescuing right now, firstly as the sea's so calm and secondly because the crew are in a staff meeting, audible through the open shutters.  After this the landscape turns back to grass (again very neat and Windows XP, must be something in this area) and reaches the southernmost point of this walk - indeed, the entire Solent Way this side of Southampton.  It's a location offering a more-than-decent view of Portsmouth, which made it an idea location for defending the city from the French/Spanish/French/Germans/Germans depending on in what period of history it was deemed necessary. To this effect the army built Fort Gilkicker, a curiously-shaped structure which formed part of the chain of brick blockhouses in this area.  In the nineteenth-century a huge earth bank was added to the front which it's possible to climb (I didn't spot the steps until after getting back down on hands and knees and picking up several thorny plants in the process) although you won't see much inside other than the modern radar installation and a lone guard, indifferent to the teenagers on the other side of his fence.

Fort Gilkicker

It's reminder of the importance of the armed forces to this area, chiefly the Navy, but all the services have a presence here and have done for the last few centuries.  The next section of shore is completely taken up with military properties, including the controversial Haslar Immigration Removal Centre and the hospital next door.  Because of this, the Solent Way has to divert and crosses a golf course with the wearily familiar 'Private land - keep on path' notices (which always translate as 'We wish we could prevent you walking right next to our exclusive lawn but legally we can't, so we'll just make you feel as unwelcome as possible'), then some suburban avenues, then a tunnel-like road closed in by the high walls of military barracks and whatever else they have here (Street View).  At the end of the road there's a slender arched bridge (Street View) over Haslar Marina and its thousands of yachts. Over the water is the one military installation you can visit - HMS Alliance, which forms the greater part of the Submarine Museum. After a career sneaking around underwater and subsequently sitting on the quayside it's in need of some restoration work, and looks it too, certainly not the shade of black it started out in.

I've very nearly at the end of my journey but as there's a ferry across the harbour every six minutes there's time for a short detour to get a picture of Holy Trinity Church.  It's an attractive building in dark brick with narrow square tower, more like German or Italian ecclesiastical architecture than the usual British block.  It's also where my trio gave a concert two weeks ago (the whiff of incense is still in the air). Arriving at Gosport waterside there's a magnificent view of Portsmouth in the late afternoon light.  I've never had a chance to ride the Gosport Ferry and am pleased to find it a very efficient way to cross the water (although I wasted half my ticket as they only issue returns). It's by far the best way to enter Portsmouth, what with a superb view of the Spinnaker Tower, HMS Warrior and all the various categories of naval ships and ferries steaming in and out of port. The green and white vessel only requires four minutes to leave Gosport and dock again at the Harbour station, which puts me neatly finishing underneath the tower I'd been using as a guidepost throughout the afternoon.

Panorama of Portsmouth from Gosport

And that's it for now. Suffice to say I returned to Southampton, after waiting 40 minutes to change trains, to find the city in jubilant mood after a 2-0 victory over Doncaster.

A Child of the Snows: Growing an idea

In the last post I promised some insights into the business of working a small amount of material into a longer section. As I've been working on the piece today, I have just such a scheme fresh in my mind, so let's take a look:

The particular place is in the central section and sets part of the Field poem; the lines are 'Burn on, O star, and be the light/To guide us all to Him this night'. The first thing to note is that we've already got some parameters set out:

• The music will be in a moderate to fast tempo, as it constitutes part of the middle section of the piece
• The chorus will sing the text as the baritone soloist is resting in between entries (I've already divided up who sings what)
• The orchestra will probably be accompanying for some or all of the music, meaning the chorus cannot be at extreme quiet dynamics whilst this occurs.
• The text is optimistic and exuberant, suggesting a lively character and primarily tonal flavour to the harmonies.
• The speech-rhythms of the text will have to be considered when writing rhythmic elements, as well as which vowel sounds will be advisable at extremes of register.
• The music needs to have 'order of intensity' as discussed in the last post, i.e. it needs to  'go somewhere', and illuminate the words.

The last two are, of course, more general and can be applied to most parts of the composition.

Reading through this text was one of the happy occasions when a setting suggested itself immediately.  Here is my original sketch for the soprano and a bit of harmony, scribbled at the piano:

(Click on any graphic to enlarge)

5/4 time gives a pleasingly natural phrase shape to the line.  The upwards leap on the word 'light' seemed to be the best way of highlighting this word, as well as providing contrast with the mostly step-wise motion that precedes it (I trust it will not be too difficult to find this pitch if the rest of the harmony suggests it).  Rising thirds, indeed thirds in general, feature prominently in this extract and as such it would be a good idea to use them in the remainder. The next thing that I write down is the rest of this chord. At this stage, I'm not overly concerned about what voice sings what when writing down a chord in isolation, as voice-leading can be refined later on. I already have a rough idea of the the harmonies which I can 'hear' in my mind, though.

It then occurs to me that it would be interesting and add to the OoI to have the male voices enter in canon a little after the female. Since the original phrase begins on a half-beat this needs to be replicated here too.

Now I fill in the rest of the harmony as well as possible. This mostly involves repeated stabs at the keyboard, changing one note at a time if the chord doesn't sound right. A fortunate occurrence is that often what looks like good voice-leading on the page will be what sounds the best as well. The harmony is quite sevenths-based, which adds a more interesting flavour than simple diatonic chords without placing unreasonable demands on the choir's pitching skills. Possibly my liking of luscious 1930s film-score harmonies is an influence here - Poulenc's Gloria also comes to mind.

The first phrase seems complete for now.  I already have an idea for the second, and, keeping the female voices each divided in thirds, I experiment with how this might produce harmonies before settling on the following:

Again the phrase shape just suggested itself, but it came from a part of my imagination that clearly recognised the classic anticendant-consequent pairing. This phrase mirrors the first, leaping up and then coming down a little.  The triplets keep the rhythmic vocabulary fresh as well as being pleasant to sing the word 'all' to. I fill in the harmonies again, adding a second splash of counterpoint to the male voices to maintain the symmetry and rhythmic motion.

Now to decide how to end it all. I could bring it to a neat finish on G major, which seems to be the underlying tonality of the phrases, or a slightly more exotic version of it, but I want something more interesting and less closing. I work out that by keeping the altos on G (thus also avoiding them having to leap up to close to the top of their range) I can actually lead the whole choir into this:

F minor 7 - you didn't see that coming, now, did you?  I play through it all and perhaps add/remove a few pitches.  Taking a few paces into the other room where Sibelius is open and waiting, I enter it all into the program on full score and listen to the playback before making a few other tweaks to the writing.  But something isn't quite right (other than the MIDI playback). The climax seems to arrive too early. The music needs another phrase, which will have to be a repetition of 'Burn on, O star' to avoid the same problem in the text.  I don't want to push the existing harmonies around much to achieve this, so have to work out how to 'lift' the OoI in this new segment without spoiling the already-written ending. Back to the piano to note down, sans text:

And back to Sibelius again.  After quite a lot of experimentation and tweaking, I come up with this as the (for now) finished product:

There are some substantial changes from the previous incarnation. The male voices now enter separately in two canonic entries (same pitches) whilst the sopranos enter with the tenors to avoid the low B; the one-beat of the word 'Him' is now two as it provides better proportions to the phrase, and as a result of this the male voices extend their rhythmic canon for another two beats. I wasn't sure about this to start with, but I then realised it results in a nice parallel with 'guiding' in the text by having the singers join up again at the end of the phrase. The latter half is now in 3/4 to accommodate these changes. A few divisis are re-allocated to pre-empt having a tenor section smaller than the others.  Dynamics and placing of words are added and refined.

It probably took the best part of forty minutes to develop and refine this little section of less than twenty seconds. I may tweak it again in future, but for now I am happy. Later orchestral material will be added and I will think about what comes before and after, but I now have a 'strong point' in the score to work around.