Jonathan Shaw

     The earliest date I have for the start of this piece goes all the way back to 16th October 2014. Some years ago, following the months after I stopped working on “C.56 – The Rise of the Machines”, I had started experimenting with video game themes. One of these themes, as is typical for video games, was an RPG boss battle. It is this theme here that was to become my first ‘Boss Battle” theme. I started it on 16th October 2014 and finally finished it two years later on 23rd October 2016.

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     The main culprit for my lack of finishing this piece was writer’s block – back then (and certainly still now!) I was horrendously inexperienced with composition. You can see this within this piece itself, as nearly the entire first minute was written towards the end of 2014 – which consists of far too many ‘I – V – I’ progressions and absurd instrumentation. It would not be until nearly two years later, in September and October of 2016 that I would finally return to this piece and finish it off. This is when I wrote the final minute.

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     Due to this 2 year gap, there is a very obvious example that demonstrates the development in my compositional style, as right from bar 38, there is a dramatic shift in complexity that continues to the end of the work. I find this comparison very fascinating to reflect on, as there is no other composition that I have yet finished that demonstrates this development as vividly.

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     As for where the title ‘Facta, Non Verba (“Deeds Not Words”)’ derives from is due to my involvement in a choir. In an effort to make the piece more “authentic” (bah, hate the word!), I decided to add Latin text. The phrase, ‘Facta, Non Verba’ was one that particularly struck me, and it just so happened to fit the syllables of the opening chorus phrase. Thus, this was the text I chose. It is an interesting coincidence that 2 years later, I would work on a University commission relating to the 'Representation of the Peoples Act 2018', in which the motto of the suffragette movement was also, "Deeds Not Words".

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     Ultimately, when creating a sampled recording of this piece, I did not have the time to translate the entire choir part into Latin using a ‘WordBuilder’ generator, so I used a generic choir vowel shout instead. Though I am still keen on using Latin text whenever I get around to creating a final recording (… eventually!)