The Petrified Falcon is a work for brass band written in memory of my father and recalls many happy Sunday afternoons spent together watching films from the 1940s and 1950s, particularly those in the film noir, crime and mystery genres. Its title is itself a playful amalgam of two films closely associated with that world: The Petrified Forest and The Maltese Falcon.

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The music draws on the familiar imagery of those films: shadowed streets, furtive movement, smoky nightclubs, danger, pursuit and sudden violence. It also recalls the distinctive presence of actors such as Humphrey Bogart, George Raft and Dick Powell, together with other favourites, such as Gloria Grahame, Edward G. Robinson, Richard Conte, John Garfield and Alan Ladd. At times the atmosphere tips towards the more playful world of the old Abbott and Costello films, where suspense, confusion and menace could suddenly become comic or absurd. Episodes of stealth, swagger, chase and confrontation emerge and disappear, but there is no fixed narrative behind the piece, and none of these images is attached to a particular passage of music.

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Towards the end of his life my father lost his sight but continued to enjoy films by listening closely to the music and dialogue and constructing his own pictures, and sometimes plots, to accompany them. In something of the same spirit, I would encourage the listener to allow the musical clues in The Petrified Falcon to suggest their own characters, locations and sequence of events — and, ultimately, to create their own film.