Tim Benjamin

The Dividing Line was commissioned by Todmorden Orchestra and Todmorden Town Council for the 150th anniversary of Todmorden Town Hall, in 1875, where the orchestra has performed many times a year from 1875 to the present day.

Programme note (from the world premiere performance)

It’s an honour to have been asked to write this music to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Todmorden Town Hall. I’ve made my home here, like many others, so it means a great deal to contribute something to mark this milestone.

How do you celebrate a building? Especially one like this, with such a unique feature: it was deliberately built across a border – between Yorkshire and Lancashire. Public buildings straddling borders are rare; Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, the Peace Arch and the Haskell Free Library & Opera House on the US-Canada line: and Todmorden Town Hall! It’s a fascinating idea to explore in music. What happens when you draw a dividing line? Does it split things apart, or bring them together? In this piece, that idea plays out in different ways—perhaps in the orchestra itself.

But Todmorden isn’t just about the Town Hall. It’s also about the landscape, and the weather—the way rain and wind shape and sometimes hide everything. Unlike in a city, you can’t ignore the elements here. The sky meets the hills in an intangible, shifting, and frequently wet boundary, an invisible dividing line between water and air, cloud and ground. I wanted to capture that too.

So as you listen, imagine the story behind the music. A day in Todmorden. Perhaps a rainy one. But there’s more to it than that… Enjoy the piece.