David Lancaster is Head of Department: Performance at York
St John University, managing Dance and Theatre degrees along with the Music and
Music Production programmes. He is
composer-in-residence with Vox Aurum 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. Around 2007 he returned to composing
after a long period of silence and has since produced a series of works which
again attracted performances around the UK.
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; more recently he has produced an
electronic version of this piece as part of a collaborative arts installation
project ‘Vestiges of Spirituality’ which has been presented to critical acclaim.
In November his new orchestral
work ‘Strata’ will be performed by the Orchestra of Opera North under the baton
of Elgar Howarth and the sax quartet ‘Swan’ – first heard at Late Music in 2010
– will be included on a national tour by the Delta Saxophone Quartet.
David’s choral pieces Fallen
and Hush will
be performed at the next LM concert (Saturday 5th October) by the
Manchester Chamber Choir.
Steve Crowther: Can you
describe the works to us?
David Lancaster: If I could do that I probably would
have become a writer or a poet and not a composer! There are two short pieces, ‘Hush’ which is new, and
‘Fallen’ which was premiered in Canterbury Cathedral three years ago. It was used in a documentary for Sky TV
(about football, but I don’t normally tell people that). Both make use of texts by Rumi so they
work nicely as a pair, and both deal with ‘being in a state of music’.
SC: Do you write at the piano, do you pre-plan? Can
you describe the compositional process?
DL: I do own a piano but
only use it occasionally when composing. I think of my music in terms of linear, lyrical lines and I
fear I might lose that if I concentrate too much on the vertical, as I might do
playing chords at the piano. I
compose everywhere: on the train, sitting at my PC, in the shower – so a piano
isn’t always practical. And I’m a terrible pianist in any case! There isn’t a great deal of formal pre-composition
these days, but I do keep sketchbooks - Beethoven-style - and ideas evolve
gradually and deliberately. In
fact there is more post-compositional work in my process: I can write quite
quickly and then spend time reflecting on what I’ve done, then refining the
work in terms of shape, pacing, consistency and so on.
SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you
write with a sound in mind?
DL: I do like to write for
specific performers but it’s often the context which is more influential at the
point of composition. How much
detail will be audible, what will the atmosphere be like, how intimate will the
performance be, will it be a warm tone, will the sound distort at high
volume? But when the music is
finished I hand the copies over to the performers, whoever they are, and I’m
happy for them to interpret it as they think fit; I like them to take ownership
of my work and show me things I didn’t know about.
SC: How would you describe your individual ‘sound
world’?
DL: I think it reflects the down-to-earth grittiness – the
bleakness at times – of the place I was brought up, but also the warmth of the
people around me. I’m a little bit
schizophrenic: my music often inhabits extremes of calm/desolation or energy/violence
but I see them as different aspects of the same thing: I’ve recently completed
an orchestral piece where the two are starkly juxtaposed. Some people tell me that my music
inhabits a very dark sound world, others tell me that they hear a black humour
– and they’re probably both right!
SC: What motivates you to compose?
DL: Performances: I love the act of musical performance –
its inherent ritualistic theatricality - and I particularly enjoy hearing my
work come to life in rehearsal.
When I don’t have a performers’ deadline in my diary I can sometimes
find it quite difficult to finish pieces.
SC: Which living composers do you identify with or
simply admire?
DL: Oh
that’s difficult! John Adams and
Harrison Birtwistle, Gavin Bryars and Arvo Part. Very different musicians but all seeming more concerned with
clarity than with decoration. But
I like to discover ‘new’ composers and at Late Music concerts often find myself
more drawn to the work of young or local composers which speaks with unadorned
immediacy: I have a low tolerance threshold for anything that smacks of
pretentiousness.
SC: If you could have a beer and a chat with any
composer from the past, who would it be and why?
DL: And that’s an even harder question – there are so
many to choose from and their beer drinking preferences are not always well
documented. I’d love to meet
Thomas Tallis, or JS Bach, Varese, Webern or Stravinsky but I can’t imagine
they’d be the best drinking partners, and Gesualdo might be risky too. I’m going to pick Bernard Herrmann who
was a fabulous composer of concert music in addition to his film scores. I’ve always had a high regard for his
music and would be fascinated to talk about his many collaborations.
SC: Now for some desert island discery – please
name eight pieces of music you could not be without, and then select just one.
DL: Must I?
I don’t particularly like lists of pieces. There was one in The Times last week – ‘20 classical pieces
you must hear’ – and they missed out Purcell, Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius,
Messiaen and so many other important composers and in fact everyone since
Britten. The elitist notion of a ‘canon’ of ‘great works’ is surely discredited
by now, since by definition it relegates everything else to some sort of
artistic ‘second division’, which is ridiculous. If we all thought like that there could be no Late Music and
probably nothing this side of Classic FM.
So there are very many pieces I wouldn’t want to live without, and here
are eight of them:
1.
Stravinsky:
Symphony of Psalms;
2.
Herrmann:
Vertigo soundtrack;
3.
John
Adams: Lollapalooza;
4.
Arvo
Part: Fratres (for string quartet);
5.
Bruckner:
Os Justi;
6.
Sibelius:
Tapiola;
7.
Birtwistle:
Grimethorpe Aria,
8.
Webern:
Six Bagatelles.
And if I need to choose just
one I will pick the Birtwistle, since that was the piece which first fired my
passion for new music and composing, sending me on this exciting journey.
SC:
…and a book?
DL: My
reading this week is probably going to be confined to ‘The Idiots’ Guide to
Excel Spreadsheets’ to help with my new job, but I’m also working my way
through ‘The Bridge’ by Iain Banks, one of my favourite writers who sadly died
recently.
SC: That's a coincidence, I'm reading Crow Road.. and a film?
DL: Pandora’s Box, the film
of Wedekind’s plays made by GW Pabst in 1929, famously starring Louise
Brooks. One of my long-term
project ideas is to compose a new score to perform live, so extended exposure
to the film on your desert island would be useful.
SC: … and a luxury item?
DL: I’m assuming that
manuscript paper/pen is a necessity rather than a luxury item, therefore
automatically included! In that case I’m torn between my camera, my bike and my
box of ‘Oblique Strategies’ cards.
On reflection I think I’ll take the cards since they would offer some innovative
suggestions to help tackle all of the problems I would encounter on the island,
and there would be one for each day of the year so they would hopefully sustain
my interest until I am rescued.
