Nikita Khrushchev, Acker Bilk, James Brown, B.B. King. 

Who’s the odd one out?

Clue: it’s all about things we’ve seen on television.

The characters:

 

Nikita Khrushchev was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the man who played nuclear bluff with U.S.A. President Kennedy. 

Acker Bilk is best known for his elegaic, mournful tune “Stranger on the Shore” which used as the theme tune for a BBC children’s TV show.  

James Brown was “The Hardest Working Man in Showbusiness”.

B.B. King is a Blues legend who plays a guitar called “Lucille”.

The incidents:

Nikita Khrushchev is also well known for banging his shoe on his desk at the United Nations to disrupt proceedings – an image seen throughout the world. Oh, he banged.

Acker Bilk’s band were featured on BBC TV in a London highlights segment of a Miss World show playing up a swinging storm. I kid you not – they were stonking.

James Brown started out as a street dancer and his flying feet led the way for many future artists in the same way that his funk rhythms defined subsequent black music. He demonstrated several popular 60s dance steps in about a minute during an interview with Jools Holland on Channel 4 (“The Tube”?). He flowed.

B.B. King appeared several times at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. During one concert – shown on BBC (2?) – his band played a gospel song which showed the links between secular and religious black music, but which was clearly the great bluesman celebrating gospel music.

The answer:

The odd one out is Nikita Khrushchev. There are lots of clips on the Web and all show that he never did bang that shoe, except the clip that’s been doctored. 

The other incidents are all locked in my mind but, as the bureaucrat said: “If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen”.

So my plea is Please, Please, Please, do try to find anywhere on the Web (or anywhere else so that it can be posted) evidence of Acker swinging, James throwing out his feet and B.B. going home.

Thoughts on the Wind Quintet

Now here’s a question: what, in my opinion, is the dullest piece of music ever written?

Here’s a clue: it’s scored for a wind quintet.

Here’s a second clue: The Souza Winds are performing an exciting, innovative programme at the next Late Music concert (Saturday 1^st September), but would have been unable to play this work as the composer is no longer with us.

What I found striking when trying to programme this concert was how little contemporary repertoire there is for this ensemble. There are quintets  by Arvo Part, Colin Matthews and James MacMillan (included in the concert), there is Harrison Birtwistle’s striking Refrains & Choruses (not included) and I’ll bet there will be one by Richard Rodney Bennett…So we decided to create one, and here’s what we came up with -

James Williamson: The Fith Element scored for the oboe (solo)

James Else: Forgotten Notes scored for flute & horn (duet)

Steve Crowther: Peter's Star scored for oboe, clarinet & bassoon (Trio)

Clive Wilkinson: Boats and Sheds scored for flute, oboe, clarinet & bassoon (quartet)

David Lancaster: Mosquito scored for the complete ensemble.

We also invited Michael Parkin to think outside of the box and he came up with  arrangements of Pink Floyd's Money  and Us and Them and The Great Gig in the Sky from The Dark Side of the Moon.

Anyway, back to that dullest of pieces. The first correct comment response will get a free ticket to the Souza Winds concert paid for by…me.

Steve

Composer of the week: James Else

James Else is a composer and filmmaker.  He currently works as a lecturer in contemporary music and film at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, as well as being a TV producer creating programmes for the BBC.

James studied music at the University of Glasgow and King's College London, before completing a PhD in composition at the University of York with Nicola LeFanu.  In recent years he has collaborated extensively with choreographers from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance as well as composing for Late Music and having his works performed throughout the UK and Ireland.  

James’ Forgotten Notes (for Flute & Horn) will be premiered at the next LM recital (Saturday 1^st September) by the wind quintet, Souza Winds.

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the new work to us?

James Else: Having tried to write a programme note, I can honestly say that I can’t describe the new work – I always try to write something that enhances the work, but seldom do I feel I achieve this.  I also find that my connection to a work is very vague until after a performance.  I could offer a few words – wistful, intertwining, and distant in places.

SC: Do you write at the piano, do you pre-plan? Can you describe the compositional process?

JE: I am increasingly writing at the piano these days, possibly because I am getting less time to play it generally – so it’s really nice to sit down and just feel my way round the keys again.

I normally start by trying to create a fragment of music that excites or entices me, and then think about how that can work structurally.  The best of my pieces, however, are probably the ones where the rules are intuitive rather than prescriptive by the end of the process

SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you write with a sound in mind?

JE: I feel that it can work equally well both ways.  I tend to write for the instruments more than the players, but I am curious to find out what a long-term relationship with a specific musician could bring.

SC: How would you describe your individual ‘sound world’?

JE: I don’t think I can.  In this piece I took a few month’s break and found I no longer liked the sound world I had started writing it in, and changed it accordingly.

SC: What motivates you to compose?

JE: 1000 reasons, but possibly because it is (hopefully) my best method of communication.

SC: Which living composers do you identify with or simply admire?

JE: A cliché I’m afraid, but I do greatly admire Arvo Pärt, and in particular the relationship he creates between the mathematical and the spiritual.

SC: If you could have a beer and a chat with any composer from the past, who would it be and why?

JE: I don’t feel I could miss the chance to talk to J. S. Bach.  Might need to brush up on my German.  As in learn German.

SC: Now for some desert island discery – please name eight pieces of music you could not be without, and then select just one.

JE: I actually find choosing one the easiest – it’d be the Goldberg Variations played by Glen Gould.  Choosing eight – I don’t think I can do that!

SC: …and a book?

JE: The Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb – or if I’m trying to look educated, maybe Catch 22.

SC: Film?

JE: I’m sometimes worried that as a film-maker I don’t have a favourite film.  Again if I’m trying to look educated 12 Angry Men.

SC: … and a luxury item?

JE: Probably a trampoline.  Bounce!

Composer of the week: David Lancaster

Composer of the week: David Lancaster

David Lancaster is Head of Music at York St John University and composer-in-residence with Laudamus Chamber Choir and with the EYMS Band.

David first encountered contemporary music when as a young cornet player he took part in a performance of Harrison Birtwistle's 'Grimethorpe Aria' at a brass band summer school. Music studies at York and Cambridge Universities and at Dartington Summer School (with Peter Maxwell Davies) followed, along with a period as Composer-in-Residence at Charterhouse. He gained a number of important awards including Lloyds Bank Young Composer Award, Michael Tippett Award, LCM Centenary Prize and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival Composer Award; the Parke Ensemble presented a London concert series of his work and in May 2011 there was a retrospective concert devoted to his work at York St John University.

David’s recent work includes music for choir, string quartet and several song cycles, such as Memory of Place (which sets poetry by the York-based poet Daniela Nunnari and which has recently been issued on CD on the Meridian label).  David’s choral work Fallen, originally composed for Canterbury Cathedral, was used in a documentary made for Sky Television and his band piece On Ilkley Moor – based on the grisly tale of Yorkshire’s famous folksong – was first performed in November 2011 in Ilkley and has since been recorded.

In August 2012 City of Kings will receive its first performance as part of the York 800 celebrations, and in September Mosquito for wind quintet will receive its premiere performance as part of the prestigious Late Music concert series by Souza Winds.

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the new work to us?

David Lancaster: It is called Mosquito, not after the buzzing insect (which I’ve learnt to avoid when I work in Malaysia) but after the device which emits ultrasonic noise to disperse young people – you find them outside shops, giving out a signal that only people under the age of around 23 can hear. I collaborated with conceptual artist Rory Macbeth a few years ago for an exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery which was all about how art has been used to portray class distinction in British culture; Rory asked me to transcribe the sound of the Mosquito – very much slowed down and lowered in pitch – for live performance.  Since then I have often thought about turning this simple transcription into a fully-developed composition but when I discovered that the manufacturer of the Mosquito also produces a device which emits ‘royalty-free classical music’ as a weapon against young people that the idea came to full fruition.  The piece begins with the sound of the Mosquito transcription juxtaposed with the opening of Tallis’ ‘Lamentations’ and the music simply unfolds out of that stark alternation.

SC: Do you write at the piano, do you pre-plan? Can you describe the compositional process?

DL: No I don’t tend to use the piano.  I suppose because I started as a brass player I tend to think more in horizontal terms: lines and phrases.  I used to do much more pre-compositional planning than I do now but I suppose that with experience and confidence I have come to trust my instincts much more.  The process usually involves one big idea, lots of scribbled notes (both musical and text) on scrap paper and any number of long walks or cycle rides.  Actually ‘post- composition’ has become more important to me; I like to finish pieces long before the given deadline so that I can mull over the score, do lots of fine editing and move things around if necessary before it goes off to the performers.

SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you write with a sound in mind?

DL: Not necessarily.  I don’t believe that there is only one ‘correct’ interpretation of a piece of music but rather that there are very many possibilities, so I enjoy writing for people I don’t know and discovering what they make of my scores.  And also I like hearing second performances of my pieces which differ from the first since each different performer brings a fresh perspective.

SC: How would you describe your individual ‘sound world’?

DL: I think it is quite a dark world but there is scope for black humour too!  My over-riding preoccupation is to achieve clarity of idea so my ‘sound-worlds tend not to be dominated by textural effect or excessive decoration.

SC: What motivates you to compose?

DL: I’ve always done it, since I first started playing an instrument – it seemed the natural thing to do.  There’s an element of problem solving: setting challenges for myself then finding ways to overcome them.  But it is also very reciprocal and iterative: I teach student composers at York St John University and find myself immersed in their ideas as well as in my own preoccupations and obsessions, so one piece just leads to another…

SC: Which living composers do you identify with or simply admire?

DL: Birtwistle, above all others.  It was his music that first jolted me into an awareness of contemporary music and taught me to follow my own path.  There’s so much in his approach to music, landscape, theatre and visual art which mirrors my own thought and practice; he seems to think the way I do.  He knows how to write for performers and audiences but without ever compromising to either, and his music still has the capacity to move me emotionally.

SC: If you could have a beer and a chat with any composer from the past, who would it be and why?

DL: I discovered a couple of weeks ago that my music teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher was Mozart!  So it would have to be Wolfgang Amadeus since we have so many people in common!  I suspect he would have been a good drinking companion although it would probably always be my round.  I’ve been round to his houses in Salzburg and Vienna but he wasn’t there…

SC: Now for some desert island discery – please name eight pieces of music you could not be without, and then select just one.

DL:

Mask of Orpheus – Birtwistle (I worked on the original production at ENO, playing the voice of Apollo on sampler keyboard).

Symphonies of Winds – Stravinsky

Six Bagatelles for string quartet Op 9 – Webern (who died on 15^th September 1945, exactly 15 years to the minute before I was born).

Lollapalooza -John Adams

Fix You – Coldplay

Year of the Dragon – Philip Sparke

Soundtrack to ‘Draughtsman’s Contract’ – Michael Nyman

Memory of Place – David Lancaster (if only for ‘If Wishes are Willows’ and Daniela Nunnari’s wonderful poetry).

If I really must choose one, then let it be the Stravinsky please.

SC: …and a book?

DL: Topology of a Phantom City – Alain Robbe-Grillet (the nearest I’ve come to reading one of my compositions expressed in words!)

SC: Film?

DL: Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann at their very best.

SC: … and a luxury item?

DL: I’m torn between my Nikon DSLR and my trusty racing bike, neither of which would be especially useful on the island.  But since I don’t want to get sand in my camera I’ll go with the bike, which might at least help me to keep fit.

Composer of the week: Richard Whalley

Richard Whalley lectures in composition at the University of Manchester, where he is the founder and director of new music ensemble, Vaganza. As a composer, he was a finalist in the 1992 BBC Young Musician of the Year Composers’ Award, and has had works selected for Gaudeamus Music Week in Amsterdam (2001), Ensemble Aleph’s Forum for Composers in France (2003), and the International Society for Contemporary Music’s World Music Days in Flanders (2012). He is also active as a pianist, and has premiered works by Camden Reeves and Kevin Malone. He teaches composition and performs chamber music at the ARAM-Poitou Summer School in France each summer. He studied at University of York with Roger Marsh and Nicola Lefanu, and at Harvard University with Mario Davidovsky and Joshua Fineberg.

His Six Songs of Old Japanese Wisdom will be performed in the next LM recital (Saturday 4^th August) by Paul Carey Jones (baritone) and Ian Ryan (piano).

Steve Crowther: Richard, I am assuming that Six Songs of Old Japanese Wisdom draws its inspiration from the East and Zen in particular?

Richard Whalley: It was mainly to do with the fact I was exploring poetry at the time, and found myself discovering Haiku. I came across these wonderful texts by Issa, a Japanese poet who lived in the late 18^th / early 19^th century. He had a very difficult life, but found solace in nature, and I find the way he captures details very poignant. I also liked the idea of setting miniatures to music, because they allow so much space for reflection.

SC: Can you describe the songs to us?

RW: There’s six short songs, the last one of which comes back (more or less) at the end. There’s a sort of arch-like form overall, whereby certain songs in the second half allude to those in the first half.

SC: Can you describe the process of setting them?

RW: Tricky to remember that far back, though I remember I got a lot of enjoyment out of writing these because the previous piece I had written was a huge piece in which I got terribly stuck! It was fun choosing the texts, and organising how they might fit together in a cycle. I was exploring a lot of ninth-based harmony at the time, and also ways of getting bits of material to cycle round and round, sometimes in layers that go at different rates. Like much of my music, melody is often prominent, and I rely a lot on my ear and intuitions.

SC: Do you write at the piano, do you sing during the compositional process?

RW: Indeed – my fingers can be more spontaneous than my head. I’m a hopeless singer, but when setting words then of course I sing the vocal line to myself to know how it feels.

SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you write with a voice in mind?

RW: It’s a huge help, but in this case I didn’t really have a specific voice in mind, so focused on writing what I thought would work. As for the piano I can’t help writing for the way I play – I think that’s inevitable. I wanted – and failed – to write music that isn’t too difficult to play, but I think Ian and Paul are doing a wonderful job. It’s such a joy when performers know the music well enough to make it their own.

SC: How would you describe your individual ‘sound world’?

RW: That’s a difficult question! I wish I had a snappy answer to it, as it’s what people always want to know. What makes it even harder to answer is the necessity of change from one piece to another, as none of the composers I admire most stood still.

What’s fundamental is that composition is so darn difficult that it’s important to find ways of making it fun. For me that means finding fresh challenges, different situations and constantly changing. That’s not to say there aren’t consistencies - perhaps certain melodic turns of phrase, certain types of gesture a certain harmonic richness, but I think the colours and moods of different compositions are very different. One thing I can say is that I’m very interested in writing music that is intimate, and music that is slightly wacky, and I enjoy the creative tension between these two qualities.

Actually, a much better answer to this question than hearing me ramble on, is to listen to the actual music: there’s a number of extracts on my website, and some of my music (including these songs) is available on CD.

SC: What motivates you to compose?

RW: Essentially, I have to, otherwise I get frustrated. My love of great music is an important part of this, along with the desire to express something unique. The world doesn’t need any more mediocre music, so there’s only any point in composing if the music is distinctive or innovative in some way… But just think how grey the world would be if it weren’t for Beethoven, or Ligeti (etc. etc….)

SC: Which living composers do you identify with or simply admire?

RW: Above all, I admire Lachenmann. He’s just such an original thinker, and his music is completely unlike anyone else’s on the planet. For the sake of answering this question, it’s a shame that Ligeti, Xenakis, Nancarrow, Nono and Stockhausen are no longer alive, as I get so much inspiration from their ideas. I expect (and hope) that there’s younger composers alive now whose creativity is in the same league as above, but I don’t know who they are. I hope that composers continue to innovate as they did in the twentieth century, even though their concerns now are so different. There’s a lot of focus nowadays on expanding the definition of music to be more all-encompassing, which is potentially exciting, as long as the music itself is innovative. The twenty-first century has a lot to live up to in comparison with the previous one

SC: If you could have a beer and a chat with any composer from the past, who would it be and why?

RW: To tell the truth, composers I’d like a beer with aren’t necessarily the same as composers whose music blows me away. That said, I’m very lucky because I did once have a beer with Lachenmann! He made me feel like I know very little, but in the best possible way. From the past, of course it would have been amazing to have met Beethoven, but it might have been more entertaining to have a beer with Berlioz!

SC: Now for some desert island discery – please name eight pieces of music you could not be without, and then select just one.

RW: Ok, first the disclaimers. Ask me a different day, you’ll get a different set of answers. I’m also conscious most of what’s below are big works, when in reality I also love miniatures. I also love hearing music I didn’t know before, so a desert island would be torture from that point of view. This is hard, but let’s say:

1. Bach Goldberg Variations

2. Beethoven Op. 130 quartet (with Grosse Fuge).

3. Schubert G major quartet

4. Schumann Dichterliebe

5. Nielsen Symphony no. 5

6. Sibelius Symphony no. 7

7. Ligeti Chamber Concerto

8. Nancarrow Player Piano Study no. 7

If only one, I guess the Beethoven.

SC: …and a book?

RW: As above, would hate to be restricted to one book. I can’t decide between David Mitchell ‘Cloud Atlas’, Margaret Atwood ‘The Blind Assassin’ or Iris Murdoch ‘The Sea, the Sea’

SC: Film?

RW: Am so out of touch with cinema since my children were born. Maybe Pulp Fiction?

SC: … and a luxury item?

RW: Somewhere warm and sunny to live, with a good stock of Belgian beer. Is that allowed?

Composer of the week: Timothy Raymond

Timothy Raymond is the former Head of Composition and Contemporary Music at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where he taught for 15 years. His work has been performed both in the UK and overseas and broadcast by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Based in Ilkley, he is currently pursuing his own independent projects together with work stemming from his recent appointment as Director of Music at the Priory Church of Bolton Abbey.

From dark to dark will be premiered at the next LM recital (Saturday 4^th August) by Paul Carey Jones (baritone) and Ian Ryan (piano).

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the songs to us?

Timothy Raymond: Each of these three ‘pieces for baritone and piano’ pursues a different approach to the setting of texts that relate to Bede (673-735), his work and the notion of ‘from…to…’, of (spiritual) journeying. The central narrative, The flight of the sparrow, is literally that, from out of the darkness, across the banquet hall and out again the other side. The first ‘piece’ sets Bradford-born poet Chris McCully’s translation from the Old English of Bede’s Death Song in a quite intense and expressionistic way. The last song sets one of McCully’s original poems – a short, beautifully crafted two verse meditation put into the mouth of Bede’s Copyist on the transitory nature of their work (‘..we work between space and space – And both are dark’). It’s the nearest I’ve ever got to writing a ‘straight’ song. It’s even got a constant pulse – well…almost! The other thing I should mention is that the piano part is quite elaborate (almost orchestral) and on an equal level with the voice.

SC: Can you describe the process of setting them?

TR: The ‘process’ overlaps with my answer to your first question and with the discovery of the texts. It’s seamless and osmotic. If I had to sectionalise, It could be described as an initial period of research - including a visit to Bede’s ruined monastery in Newcastle; next: some thought about the central sparrow episode and a decision to use Wordsworth’s poetic paraphrase of Bede’s book; then research into Old English poetry and, through that, my discovery of the work of Chris McCully (which deeply impressed me as a whole) and plainchant sung while Bede was dying (later subsumed into the fabric of the piece); after that, the amassing of musical ideas and material (effectively, the mapping of a particular musical world); and finally the conception and structuring of three essentially different bits of that world, the third being something very like a song!

SC: Do you write at the piano, do you sing during the compositional process?

TR: I don’t use the piano at all during the initial notating of musical ideas and I only use it as a check to the ear at an advanced level of the composing process. I’m a relatively fluent pianist and can improvise – both skills that I’m keen to dissociate completely from my composing, where musical thought, its structuring and symbolic representation is, for me, the key to a degree of control and precision which would otherwise be unavailable. I sing – especially where voices are involved. The traditional nomenclature and identification in harmony and counterpoint of ‘voices’ with ‘lines’ remains supremely relevant and continues to be a creative spur to cultivated music. Thus, singing takes on a permanent symbolic rôle in a lot of music. As Frost says, ‘The aim was song…’

SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you write with a voice in mind?

TR: Very important for me. Composition tends to be an appropriately isolated activity of the mind. It benefits immensely from the empirical and practical input of performers at any and all stages. In this case, Paul’s advice regarding aspects of his ‘instrument’ and some knowledge gleaned from people who knew his and Ian’s performing work, together with clips of Paul’s singing on the web, were very helpful in helping to determine the nature of the writing.

SC: How would you describe your individual ‘sound world’?

TR: I approach the composition of a new piece as an imaginative/musical adventure as far as possible peculiar to that piece alone. I don’t regard stylistic consistency from piece to piece as an ideal but, that said, it’s obvious (to me, at least) that certain characteristics have remained constant in my work: a concern with harmonic consistency together with full integration and inter-reliance of all the compositional parameters both in controlled flow and direct contrast of ideas. This is informed by the conviction that systems don’t guarantee any interest whatsoever but also that on no account should they be allowed to inhibit fantasy and imagination. I have an abiding interest in the necessity of anarchy in all walks of life (if you can forgive that paradox). I don’t believe that music has to be anything at all. The moment someone pontificates that music has to contain this, that or the other in order to be significant, it’s in my nature to try very hard to exclude that ‘this’, ‘that’ or ‘other’ from my next piece! For that reason, I prefer people to keep their opinions to themselves! However, I have to say that for certain types of musical expression and certain types of musical discourse to become viable, hierarchies of values need to be established amongst the elements of the composer’s musical meta-language.

SC: What motivates you to compose?

TR:  It’s the only thing I think I can do which I believe defines me as a worker. I’m absolutely fascinated and enthralled by composing and I like solitude.  Composing’s an act, like playing an instrument, a performance which you need to develop skills – technique – to bring off. It isn’t a branch of academe or a set of tricks or dodges but a superb form of thought in action – one which doesn’t mean anything in a strictly linguistic sense but one which I think we’d be poorer without. It’s capable of many types of power and expression ‘[w]hereof one cannot speak…’.

SC: Which living composers do you identify with or simply admire?

TR: I find it hard to identify with anybody now – least of all my self - but I’ve loved and admired the music of Boulez, Carter, Dutilleux and Jonathan Harvey for 40 years or less – together with the music of my teacher, John Lambert (now sadly deceased). Somewhat younger composers such as Bainbridge, Anderson and Manoury also come to mind. They all write the most extraordinarily beautiful music. Reich is the only one of the minimalist and post-minimalist generation whose music held any interest for me (but, for me, nothing much later than the mid-1980s when his baseball cap became inseparable from his head).

SC: If you could have a beer and a chat with any composer from the past, who would it be and why?

TR: Charles Ives, simply because you probably could have had a beer and a chat with him. And you could probably avoid talking about music with him too, if you wanted. He is, in fact, one of my very favourite composers.

SC: Now for some desert island discery – please name eight pieces of music you could not be without, and then select just one.

TR: This is hard (because I can’t get many composers mentioned above or Sibelius 5, Bartok’s 4^th Quartet, Varèse (anything) or another Carter piece or really anything much in there) but I love being pretentious as you can tell, so here goes: 1) something from the Netherlands polyphonists: let’s say Obrecht, Missa Maria Zart, primarily because it’s beautiful and, then because its structural complexities are so fascinating and absorbing; 2) J.S. Bach – almost anything, but the B Minor Mass will certainly do; 3) Wagner, Götterdämmerung; 4) Brahms, 4^th Symphony; 5) Fauré, 2^nd Piano Quintet in C minor; 6) Dutilleux, Métaboles; 7) Ohana, 2^nd String Quartet; 8) Carter, Duo (for violin and piano).

First choice (er…): Fauré, 2^nd Piano Quintet in C minor because of its profound beauty; the first movement’s journey into blinding light; its modernity, subtlety and poignant expressivity.

SC: …and a book?

TR: Robert Frost,The Poetry of Robert Frost.

SC: Film?

TR: A Sunday in the Country (Un dimanche à la campagne, Bertrand Tavernier, 1984).

SC: … and a luxury item?

TR: A massive, well-stocked wine cellar containing good French reds for the most part (though I wouldn’t say no to a few hundred assorted Belgian beers too) and a bottle-opener. That should keep me going.

SC: Timothy Raymond, thank you.