The London Citizen Exceedingly Injured

The title originates from a pamphlet by Alexander Cruden, a 18th century Scottish author of an early Bible concordance and self-styled Corrector of the nation's morals, detailing his unjust confinement in a madhouse in London. With such unhinged notion in its name and a subtitle of ‘symphonic game’, the premises of this quasi concerto for orchestra is a playful, cosmopolitan stream of consciousness re-imagining of Elgar’s Cockaigne. The nobilmente melody once known as the ‘citizen’ theme is broken down into small building blocks, then reconstituted into a melodic backbone on which London-related musical references are deposited and combined. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four provides an extra dramatic framework.