About
What is Dawnings?
Dawnings is an ongoing series of poetry, prose and music by Nicholas Hooper, the BAFTA-winning film composer known for scoring Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. He began it in October 2023 to keep his own writing and composing going, and it has since grown to hundreds of pieces that have reached more than 150,000 readers and listeners around the world.
Topics range from the state of the modern world to nature and the environment, spirituality, and life and what may lie beyond it. The mood moves from the deeply personal to the whimsical. Each Dawning is made fresh in a single morning and left largely unedited: a snapshot of the moment it was written, and a step away from the polished world of film scoring toward the magic of a first attempt.
Nicholas HooperComposer & author
“Every morning at around 5am I get up and go down to my studio. After a short meditation I write down whatever is in my head, giving myself fifteen minutes to do so.
Then moving over to the piano (or a more portable instrument like my ukulele when I’m away), I improvise and record a piece of music inspired by whatever words I just wrote. It is a great way of keeping both my writing and my composing going, and I call these small creations Dawnings.
They are mostly unedited, like sketches, so that they keep that fresh feeling of an early morning discovery.”