Composer of the month: Eve Harrison

“A sensitive and refined imagination” Eve’s music features in Michael Hall’s forthcoming book British Music Theatre. John Casken and Anthony Gilbert supervised her MusB (Hons) and MMus respectively. Eve’s critically acclaimed chamber opera Hera’s List toured to Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2012 and she was awarded first prize at Heriot Watt Composer Competition. Shapeshifters was premièred by the Hebrides Ensemble as part of the prestigious composers’ course at St Magnus International Festival, Orkney in 2013. Recent commissions include National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, Big Noise - Sistema Scotland, Durham Brass Festival and Phoenix Clarinet Quartet with vocal sculptor Jason Singh (PRSF). Eve co-directs performer and composer collective Sounds of the Engine House who recently toured the north of England, co-produced by Sound and Music. Her new piece of music theatre, commissioned by the Bridgewater Hall, was part of this touring programme of music by living composers. This year, in collaboration with BREAD Arts, Eve was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta as part of Blue Touch Paper to develop an engaging piece of contemporary music and light artwork that invites an audience to interact and participate using their smartphone.

In addition to her own composition Eve is a passionate educator and leads composition and song writing workshops for Opera North’s Youth Company, In Harmony Liverpool, Manchester Camerata and Yorkshire Young Musicians, amongst others. She is also a keen trumpet player, performing both orchestrally and with Balkan Stomp band The Rubber Duck Orchestra.

www.eveharrison.co.uk

Eve Harrison’s New Work will be premiered by the Ebor Singers, conductor Paul Gameson, at the next Late Music concert, Saturday 4^th October.

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the work to us?

And Now, Exhale… responds to an evocative text by my collaborator Bruce Arthur and has inspired a colourful palette of vocal textures and resonances to heighten the poets’ response to an experience with nature. When discussing his text Bruce describes a huge sense of relief  and unburdening whilst walking along the coast in Sunderland. I'd like to find some of that lightness in contrast to the dark and percussive weight of an oppressive figurative and literal ocean. I hope to provide the audience an immersive and spacial journey, bringing to life both the emotional and aural sensations captured in the text.

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

EH: I usually plan an harmonic outline, often graphically representing dramatic tension and texture. I’ll do some work at the piano during this stage until I’ve established my framework then work away from the piano, writing by hand at first and once I feel I have a good grasp of my material I’ll move to notating on Sibelius.

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

EH: I think it’s extremely important to be familiar with the skills and strengths of the performers to get the most out of the opportunity to write for them and to give them the opportunity to communicate what you’ve written. In addition, as a trumpet player, I’ve always valued enjoying playing the music put in front of me and this stays with me when composing, but there are always exceptions…

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

EH: I’m interested in colours/timbre, spacial placing of sound, modes,  transcribing birdsong and the phoenetic sound of text, non-Western rhythmic patterns and harmonic fields. I find it a difficult thing to describe so here are some words that other people have used:

“witty” “vivid” “imaginative” “impressive instrumental colours and dramatic pacing” “meticulous”

SC: What motivates you to compose?

EH: As a child I painted and worked with clay a lot: my dad is an abstract artist and I think I soaked up that kind of experimentation and curiosity in building layers. There is something of this in my love of composing. I also love telling stories but am not very good at doing so verbally! Through music I have a way and this comes through increasingly in both my vocal and instrumental writing.

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

EH: Harrison Birtwistle, Charlotte Bray, Mira Calix, Gary Carpenter, Anthony Gilbert, Roger Marsh, Anna Meredith, Matthew Sergeant, my colleagues at Sounds of the Engine House Steven Jackson and Ben Gaunt and numerous others whose names escape me at this particular moment.

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

EH: I’d probably be absolutely terrified but it would have to be Olivier Messiaen. His work with birdsong and instrumental colour have been extremely influential in my development as a composer. Chaser with Ligeti please...

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

EH: Messiaen - Chronochromie for large orchestra

Ligeti - String Quartet No. 2

Lutoslawski - Grave for cello and piano

Birtwistle - Punch and Judy

Toru Takemitsu - Rain Tree Sketch II

Ravi Shankar/Alla Rakka - Three Ragas

Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring

Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire

Tricky to choose but I'll go for the Takemitsu!

SC: …and a book?:

EH: Haruki Murakami: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

SC: …a film?

EH: Persepolis

SC: … and a luxury item?

EH: Decent coffee and associated paraphernalia please!

Composer of the month: James Williamson

James Williamson studied composition at the University of Huddersfield and Royal Academy of Music and is now working towards a PhD in Composition at the University of York. He has had performances and collaborations with ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, CoMA London, Aurora Orchestra, Galliard Ensemble, Croation Philharmonic Orchestra, Österreichischen Symphoniker, Rhodri Davies, Barry Webb and Franko Bozac. He was commended for his Aurora Orchestra commission Chamber Concerto for the RAM Eric Coate’s Composition Prize. James won the inaugural Lunar Saxophone Quartet New Music Award in December 2007 with his piece In Memoriam. This piece is recorded on the LSQ’s album ‘Flux’ and was subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction. Franko Bozac and the Österreichischen Symphoniker recently performed James’ accordion concerto The Hole of Horcum in their most recent “International Series” season, in Linz. The concerto has recently been broadcast on Radio 3 Belgrade, Serbia.For more info visit: jameswilliamsoncomposer.wordpress.com

James Williamson's Staten Crossing I-VIII will be premiered by Delta Saxophone Quartet at the next Late Music concert, Saturday 6th September.

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the work to us?

James Williamson: I visited New York with my wife for the first time just after Christmas this year, as I was best man for a friends wedding in Central Park. I’ve always been fascinated with buildings and structures (perhaps because my dad was a builder) and I was in ore and overwhelmed by these magnificent skyscrapers around me. We did lots of touristy things including taking the Staten Island Ferry to get a chance to see the Statue of Liberty. One thing that struck me as we left the dock from Manhattan was that these huge structures that dominated us as we walked next to them, and could only see an aspect of, suddenly came to full view and complexity. Equally on the return, as we approached Manhattan, these buildings grew like giants. It was this play of perspective that inspired the piece and its title.

I am increasingly interested in creating small fragments or cells and using to these to create pieces with longer durations (although this piece is only about 5 minutes). Therefore the piece has eight movements, which are basically a set of variations based on one simple melodic phrase that you will hear in the very first movement.
SC: Do you write at the piano, do you pre-plan? Can you describe the compositional process?

JW:I guess my compositional process changes every time I start a new piece and I must say, that I find composing a very difficult process. Sometimes I’ll have a strong sense of what the piece will sound like in the end, which can be a luxury as the piece can come together very quickly allowing me to get on with next project. However more often than not, I’ll start and have no idea where it is going. This can be extremely frustrating at times as its like getting blood out of a stone. I usually start be improvising on my old out-of-tune upright piano to work out chords and melodies etc. I can spend hours and hours doing this. Once I’ve got my ideas in place (melody, sonority, discourse etc), usually on a couple of sheets of A3 manuscript, I tend to work through them using the manuscript like an artist would use a palette (not to sound too cheesy) to start sketching out the piece. Once I’ve written out the piece in full by hand and whack it on Sibelius and then try and iron out the creases and get a very rough idea of how it might sound, using a lot of imagination.
SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you write with a sound in mind?

JW: I don’t think it’s necessary to know the performers but it certainly helps. The more you can work closely and collaborate with the performer the better the piece you can potentially write. It can be a great learning curve for both parties as you can learn from each other’s strengths. If I am lucky enough to write for a particular ensemble or soloist, I do try and write with the sound in mind. A good example of this was working with a fantastic accordionist friend of mine Franko Bozac on my accordion concerto ‘The Hole of Horcum’. In the pre-compositional process we sat for hours in rehearsal rooms exploring the instrument and trying to get as much out of the instrument as possible and learning that it’s such a versatile instrument. In the end I managed to write a piece that really shows of the performer and the instrument by only using simple techniques that are actually very “simple” to play but sound incredibly difficult and complex to the listener.
SC: How would you describe your individual ‘sound world’?

JW: I always find this question very hard to answer when asked as I think my pieces tend to change each time. However, there is one running theme, which is ‘static’. My pieces, particularly more recently (although a couple of odd ones from the past) tend to circulate within their own harmonic and rhythmic juices and don’t really go anywhere in a traditional teleological manner of guiding a listener toward particular points of climax. This doesn’t really answer the question of sound, but I think it gives an idea – I think I’ll leave this question and rather let the listener decide. I guess it’s often easier to look in from the outside rather than in from the inside (that makes sense in my head). One critic described my music as “rich and sexy”, so I think I will go with that…

SC: What motivates you to compose?

JW: I ask myself this question everyday. As I said earlier, I find composing really difficult at times, but I think what really motivates me is when I hear the piece being performed in concert, it gives me real buzz. I also like the idea of leaving some sort of legacy behind and that me music will (hopefully) outlive me and continue to live on. This is what I find fascinating about buildings, that someone has built this amazing structure and years later it is still standing, living, breathing and being used, just like my dad’s buildings do to this day.

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

JW: Whilst at Huddersfield University, composer Bryn Harrison gave a seminar about his music and I was hooked. I was so intrigued by his music and philosophies, I asked him for a few lessons when I had finished my studies and he was very happy to oblige. So I had a few lessons for a year before I went on to the Royal Academy. I learnt so much in such a short time and I am still thinking about these lessons today. I should probably mention Salvatore Sciarrino too, I love his music. His sound world is so beautiful and unique, it’s like a living organism.  

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

JW: Morton Feldman. We’d probably have a cigar too. I’d like to think we’d hang out in a trendy New York loft or some dingy bar somewhere, maybe start off in the bar. I love his music and take great inspiration from him. I’ve just finished reading his collected writings and lectures “Give my regards to Eighth Street”, he has such a great sense of humor and a sense of what music and art is about, and I find his digs against Boulez very amusing (I should say that I like Boulez).

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

JW: Toughy, there are many but at the moment –

Miles Davis - ‘So What’

Gregory Porter - ‘No Love Dying’

Faure - ‘Lebera me’ (the baritone solo from his ‘Requiem’)

Feldman ‘String Quartet no.2’

Enno Poppe ‘Kielshrift’

Sciarrino ‘Lo Spazio Inverso’

Elton John ‘Your Song’ (Ellie Goulding version as this was my first dance at my wedding)

Dowland – ‘Flow, My Tears’

As a romantic (my wife would disagree, haha) I would choose ‘Your Song’. I imagine being deserted on an Island would be pretty tough, so I would like to be reminded of that happy time and that would get me through.

SC: …and a book?

JW: "The Hundred year old man who jumped out of the window and disappeared" by Jonas Jonasson. A very funny read! Although I might be inclined to take a recent purchase of a John Cage collected writings and lectures book. If I’m stranded for long enough I may start to understand what on earth he is on about.

SC: …a film?
JW: The Goonies. "Goonies Never say die!"
SC: ...and a luxury item?
JW: A tuned!! piano. As well as being able to write music, I might be able to learn to play it properly too.

Composer of the month: Edward Caine

Dr Edward Caine PhD is a composer, pianist and conductor currently based in York. Edd has had work performed across the UK and internationally and has been awarded high profile commissions from HCMF and Cheltenham Festivals. He is currently working as  Musician in Residence in UK schools and has been performing solo and chamber concerts of classical and contemporary music on the piano.

For more information please visit www.edwardcaine.com

 Edward Caine’s new work, wild flowers,  will be premiered by pianist Ian Pace at the next Late Music concert, Saturday 2^nd August.

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the work to us?

Edward Caine: The piece is called “wild flowers” and is inspired by a recent obsession I’ve had with running; I was running along the embankment beside the river in york, feeling the tall rushes and wild flowers knock at my legs on the way past, and I was struck by the spashes of colour and different light and shade patches. It’s also a follow on of a recent drive to improve my piano writing and playing. I guess you could describe the idea as impressionist, and certainly it is inspired in part by Debussy’s images. The work has several layers of musical gesture, and uses piano clusters to represent clusters of flowers or splashes of light, long vertical runs to represent stems, branches and fronds, and a fast shifting pianissimo texture to represent lots of blades of grass as they go past.

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

EC: I usually start with a blank manuscript and a group of ideas, which I start to work out on the paper. It really does depend on the piece but the pre-compositional activity can range working out mathematical formula, through doodling shapes up to writing short pieces of musical material, which then present limitations from which I can work. Inspiration can come from anywhere though and often I’ll have ideas while at an instrument like the piano. For this piece (and for the group of etudes I am writing) the focus is on exploiting specific mechanical actions to aid piano technique, and so my initial steps are at the piano in the study of those actions. Mostly it is worked out slowly on manuscript, eventually checked using a piano, and then edited as I enter it into a notation program like Sibelius.

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

EC:I feel it is very important to write with the intention of having something performed, and knowing the limits and strengths of the performer in question is a real boon to the composition process and can provide a great deal of inspiration. To a certain extent I do write with a sound in mind, although more often I write to exploit instrumental and vocal technique. I don’t always know exactly what the outcome will be and often I am surprised and excited by the sounds created. In this case, the performer I am writing for is actually myself, although Ian will be premiering the piece.

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

EC: I don’t think I could accurately describe it. My pieces often turn out very differently each time and I have a diverse approach to my own compositional technique. If pushed, I say that I am a contemporary composer i.e that my music is quite dissonant. One reviewer did in fact describe it as an “acerbic dissonance”, which is a description I quite liked for the piece in question. I think of my sound world personally as quite awkward and in retrospect quite melancholic, although that is a side that recently I have wanted to move away from.

SC: What motivates you to compose?

EC: I’ve never been quite sure. I have sporadic moments of creativity of often very different types. One day I’ll suddenly decide I want to write an app for my iPhone, the next I’ll be doing computer illustration, and I’m relatively successful as a hobby poet. As a child, before I even got into music, I wanted to be an inventor, or an artist. When I did start teaching myself the piano being a virtuoso was what I had my heart set on, until I discovered composition, a discipline which has arrested my attention ever since. I think there are also certain points in a musician’s life when you realize that what continues to motivate you to do it is having always done it. For me composition is a process of discovery and of self-expression.

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

EC: I really enjoy the music of Michael Finnissy, whose music is complicated, often beautiful, often rambunctious, political, cantankerous and certainly dissonant. His and Brian Ferneyhough’s music always interested me from the standpoint of someone that was first attracted to classical music through the complexity of the language involved, and the desire to express quite complex and emotional ideas (Ferneyhough’s less so, as being more of an exponent of process-based music). I also really enjoy the music of Salvatore Sciarrino, a former artist, who composes using sonority in the way a painter might use light. I find something about the analogy between sonority (sound) and visual phenomena to be compelling. Kurtag’s ideas of the use of performance Mechanics also interest me. Sadly the composer who has informed a lot of my approach has recently died, but I would feel amiss if I didn’t mention the towering giant of György Ligeti as one of my main influences.

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

EC: I’d probably choose Beethoven, and not young Beethoven. The gristled, cantankerous, disappointed old man with lead poisoning in his blood, a profound deafness and an arrogance you could crack rocks on. There is something about his plight that I’ve always identified with. His music falls just short of perfect in just the right way and is to my mind awkward, personal and yet sometimes profoundly intellectual. There’s a real brilliance and humour about his writing as well, and you can feel his relationship to the players around him and the music itself. In the British library there rests some of his handwritten scores, and it’s really interesting to see how the noteheads seem to follow the line in the phrase, as if he’s just carving painting the line in with a brush. I think he would also be a hilarious old letch, and ripe for a few yarns after a glass or two.

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

EC: It’s odd but I rarely have time to listen to music nowadays. Instead here are some recordings that changed my life and without which I think the world would be somewhat bereft (in no particular order):

Charles Ives: Unanswered Question

J.S Bach: Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould 1981 recording)

Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas (Brendel)

Messiean: Quartet for the End of Time

Chopin: Piano Sonata No.2 in B minor (Ashkenazy)

Harrison Birtwistle: The Mask of Orpheus

Steve Reich: Tehillim

Brahms: A German Requiem

I would choose the Brahms German Requiem (sung in English) as my one piece. It was the first large scale choral work I sang in and at a very sensitive time in my life, when I managed to escape my uncertain fate as a binman to study music in a boarding school (Ackworth School, West Yorkshire). I still know all of it by heart and would have the fifth movement (“Thee will I comfort as one whom his mother comforts”) played at my funeral.

SC: …and a book?:

EC: Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Every time I open it is makes me chuckle and there is so much to go back to. It appeals to both my intellectual and “slightly odd” sides.

SC: …a film?

EC: Films are over so quickly, and rarely life-changing. The geek in me would choose something from my childhood – Star Wars for example. The film I think I regularly go back to is The Muppet Christmas Carol. I’m sure that tells you more about me than I want it to.

SC: … and a luxury item?

EC: Assuming a power source, I don’t think I could do without my iPhone any more. It links me up with the world, it has become part of my arm.

Chris Caldwell: Remembering Steve Martland

 Saxophonist Chris Caldwell managed and performed in The Steve Martland Band from 1996 until his untimely death in May 2013. He writes:

 I was fortunate enough to join the Steve Martland Band on Baritone Saxophone in the mid 1990’s when the opportunities for performance and the recording of new music seemed to be in its heyday. The band first recorded with Tony Wilson’s seminal ‘Factory’ label and then with the German record label BMG, but changes in the music scene were happening very quickly. Marketing and hype were the ‘buzz words’, new music for some reason couldn’t just be what it was, but had to be sweetened by what became a ‘cross-over’ revolution. This mixing of styles started to be perceived as a dumbing down, if you knock off the musical edges you end up with something edgeless, characterless and devoid of spirit..

Steve’s music avoided all of this, he hadn’t been forced into combining marimba and violin with saxophones, drum kit and electric guitars. This was his style, not a compromise, the public knew this truth and his music naturally ‘crossed- over’ so many of the stereotypes without even trying. The Steve Martland Band toured the world (Australia, America, Asia & Europe), where it was received with an enthusiasm not usually experienced in classical music festivals.

Beneath Steve’s ‘edgy’ appearances was one of the most generous and giving people I have ever had the pleasure of working with, he was a huge supporter of a British education system which gave opportunity to all, he delighted in giving hours of his time and energy (fueled by coffee!) in the support and nurturing of a new generation of composers. I personally miss hearing his loud and impassioned voice over all things creative and artistic, and how this was totally relevant to our democracy. The recent UK/Gove re-shaping of music provision in our state schools would I’m certain, have received the Alex Ferguson ‘hair dryer’ response. It is our responsibility as artists/performers and concert goers to continue to pump out, the Martland volume.

Composer of the Month: Roger Marsh

Composer of the Month: Roger Marsh

Roger Marsh studied with Bernard Rands at the University of York, UK, in the early seventies. He spent two years (1976-78) at the University of California, San Diego, on a Harkness Fellowship. From 1978 to 88 he lectured at the University of Keele, before returning to York where he is currently Professor of Music. His music has been performed and broadcast widely. Roger Marsh’s new work, Running, Jumping, Standing Still, will be premiered by the Late Music Ensemble, conductor James Whittle, at the next Late Music concert, Saturday 5^th July.

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the work to us?

Roger Marsh:  It’s a piece for instrumental ensemble in three short movements.  It’s called ‘Running Jumping and Standing Still’ – which was the title of a famous short film in the 1950s made by Peter Sellers and the other Goon crowd.  I’ve always loved the title.  The three movements are all, in their own way, concerned with physical exercise (I thought of calling the piece that). Two of the movements are a re-working of earlier material – a piano piece I wrote last year (Descending) and a solo piano section of my music theatre piece ‘Rising’ (Rising).  The third movement is all new and is the Running Jumping and Standing Still movement.

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

RM: Actually I used to always compose at the piano, a bit too much really; I would spend forever trying and re-trying chords and changing them, adding to them every time I sat down to carry on working.   But now I don’t use the piano so much – just to get initial ideas, and then I do almost everything at the computer with good old Sibelius playback allowing me to check things. I don’t know if it’s better, but it seems to work and I spend less time doodling.

Again, I used to re-plan, but I moved away from that quite a long time ago.  I think and imagine a lot in my head (and at the piano) before I start writing – which is a less rigorous kind of pre-planning I suppose.  I mean, I don’t start from scratch with a clean page in front of me.  By the time I’m thinking about writing something down I’ve done a lot of composing in my head already.  Usually.  There are always exceptions.  With Pierrot Lunaire I had 50 poems to set, and I gave myself the challenge of starting with the first one and never moving on until I had finished a setting.  Some of the settings went from initial idea to finished score in a matter of hours.  Some took days.  But I didn’t allow myself to think about the next one until the one in progress was done.

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

RM:   Very often that’s the case.  Not always.  Two of my recent pieces were for the Hilliard Ensemble – you can’t write for them without hearing their sound as you write.  When I wrote my Lullaby I had a particular sound in mind, but no idea who would perform the piece.  In the case of the new piece, I knew who the performers would be, and it has influenced me a bit, but not a huge amount.  Except in ‘Rising’ because there’s a little bit of theatre involved, and I thought carefully about who would be doing it.

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

RM:  That’s hard.  The one thing I can say that might help is that I think a lot about chords.  I almost said ‘harmony’ there, but I find that that invokes notions of a harmonic theory, and I don’t have one.  I just like to hear chords which make sense in relation to one another, and which seem to have a purpose, and which are rich and interesting.  I use the same kind of chords a lot, so I think you can listen to my music and say it has a recognizable sound world because of that.  And melody too, but more in some pieces than others: Pierrot Lunaire and the Hilliard pieces are full of it, Running and Jumping less so (but a bit).

SC: What motivates you to compose?

RM: Another huge question.  The desire to make something; to make something different; to provide something for a performer or ensemble that has asked for it.  Like all composers, I suspect, there are days when I wonder why I put myself through it (because it can be hard and frustrating), but there’s a satisfaction in having made a piece that seems to be valued.

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

RM:  I admire and find inspiration in so many kinds of music it’s impossible to give a list.   When I was younger I used to be a bit clearer about it: Britten, Stravinsky, Berio, Stevie Wonder, the Beatles. Those names would all still be on the list, but the list would be so long and I wouldn’t be sure that they would be at the top of it.

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

RM:  I had tea and a chat with Maderna once, and a few beers with Berio.  But I think I was so overawed to be in their presence it was less a chat and more an ‘audience’.

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

RM:    The truth is there is no music I couldn’t live without.  But I’ll play your game:

Oedipus Rex (Stravinsky) blows me away every time.

Bach B minor mass (ditto)

Fulfillingness First Finale (Stevie Wonder).

Mahler 9, with Das Lied on the B side.

Love’s Old Sweet Song (sung by Anna Myatt – as on the Ulysses audiobooks I produced)

Kinshi Tsurata singing Dan –no –ura (Heike Biwa).  It’s used in the film Kwaidan –the last story about Hoichi the Earless.  Tsurata – blind female singer and Satsuma biwa player – was phenomenal.

Smiley Smile (Beach Boys)

Il Cor Tristo (Marsh) - it’s the piece of mine I’m most proud of and I most like listening to.

SC: …and a book?:

RM:    Ulysses

SC: …a film?

RM:  The Godfather parts 1 and 2

SC: … and a luxury item?

RM:   Binoculars

Composer of the month: Valerie Pearson

Valerie is a composer, improviser and violinist. She read music at King’s College London, studying composition with Rob Keeley and Harrison Birtwistle and came to York University to complete a Masters degree and PhD in composition with Bill Brooks and Nicloa LeFanu, funded by the AHRC. She lives in York where she teaches the violin and runs Club Integral North. Valerie Pearson’s New Work will be premiered by pianist Mark Hutchinson at the next Late Music concert, Saturday 7^th June at 7.30pm

Steve Crowther: Can you describe the work to us?

Valerie Pearson: It deals with Macbeth. In particular, the overwhelming, pervading guilt that gradually takes over his psychology, and also his position of zugzwang. 

Zugzwang has been coined as a chess term describing a situation where a player must make a move, but every option to move weakens their position. Zugzwang is, therefore, a weak position that the player is responsible for having created.

After killing King Duncan Macbeth realises that if he does nothing he may be found guilty, but each move that may prevent his denouement unravels further problems. Accompanying this worsening series of moves, which lead to the murder of beloved friends and civil war, is Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s growing psychological demise. This is fuelled by overwhelming feelings of guilt and paranoia, and starts to take the form of uncontrollable mad behaviour that may betray them.

When I was first considering these themes of Macbeth, musical ideas came to mind immediately; I knew that there had to be a particular ‘sound’ that represented Macbeth’s guilt and paranoia that could slowly infect the piece. I didn’t want to ‘prepare’ the piano so I used a technique that involves striking and immediately releasing the keys of cluster of notes and catching the resonances of the harmonics with the sustain pedal. The result is a faint ethereal glow of sound that can be used to ‘infect’ or ‘taint’ conventionally played notes. I also use the extremely high notes of the piano in a musical motive of disruption. I quickly discovered how one musical idea could be trapped and infected by another should it be ‘allowed’ in and I began to see how some elements of the zugzwang position may be realised musically.

At the start of the piece we hear the main theme made up of clear phrases. It turns out that there are weak spots in this material where we can hear the disruptive musical elements find a way in. The piece charts the gradual infection and demise of the main theme by these other musical ideas.

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

VP: I can’t write at the piano in the sense that I play through my piece as I write it because I can’t play the piano. I can check sounds and chords but that’s about it in terms of being able to reproduce fixed music. I really enjoy improvising and do this a lot to generate ideas or try to realise things I have in my head. I perform as an improviser on violin and this is inextricably linked to my composition work. I improvise because I need to hear my ideas instantly in order to grow as a composer. I have learnt so much about pacing and how to develop ideas - what grabs the ears’ attention and how to keep that attention. Real time is a difficult thing to handle when you are composing.

I can’t compose a piece of music starting at the beginning and continuing chronologically. I have to have the piece planned and structured in my head before I get down to writing it out. The musical ideas have life and flexibility in my head whereas once they are written down they can get tied to that particular version of their existence. I am a cataloguer of ideas and like to play with different little combinations in my head or work out many versions of the same idea. The cataloguing of ideas is a security blanket and I wish I could grow out of it. It is safe to have those ideas there but I know, deep down, they are fetters.

In my life as a composer there is ‘general cover’ composing - coming up with ideas and playing around with things. There are three important stages to finishing a piece.  The first is to be ‘broken’. I have no clue how this eventually happens, but I only get anything done once I’m able to mentally shut out all the obligations and duties of real life. Stage two is to have a moment of crisis. Stage three incorporates stage two and is the moment when I realise that the piece doesn’t flow and it noodles all over the place. The stuff I’ve been meticulously crafting for weeks is the problem and needs to be cut and I come up with the most simple and obvious idea in about two minutes, because that’s all the time I’ve got left, and this turns out to be the most effective idea in the final piece.

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

VP: There is always a practical provision for a work’s development and this one lent itself to me presenting Mark with a fully notated score of my conception. Knowing Mark allowed me to be confident about writing certain things knowing they suited his style of playing. As I hope the piece will have a life after the premiere with other performers it is an interesting question.

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

VP: My individual sound world is still developing. After trying to make every piece as different as possible I have, in the last five years, been nurturing a tendency to write fast paced collage with an emphasis on fluid metres. I also explore the relationship of pitch verses sound and harmony verses timbre and strive to make notes produce interesting timbres rather than relying on extended techniques. I’d like to try to make my music sound a bit lighter in places.

SC: What motivates you to compose?

VP: When I was a child, before I had any music lessons, I wanted to know how people managed to put the notes in an order that sounded right and I wondered how many possibilities there were and whether they had already all been used. Every time I tried to make up a song it sounded like something I knew. My grandmother had a pedal bellow organ/harmonium, which I would spend hours playing, trying to make up a tune and a way to make a convincing ending. I spent hours doing this because I couldn’t ever make the music sound like it had finished.

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

VP: There are so many. Kurtàg has always been of great importance to me and although I knew his work before, I just couldn’t get enough of him between 2000 and 2004 when the ECM recordings came out.

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

VP: J.S. Bach, so that I could ask him what music he liked to listen to when he was alive. I’d like to fill the pub with composers, but to choose a few: Varèse, Nancarrow, Sibelius, Stockhausen, Feldman. These guys aren’t going to say they need to head off when its closing time.

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

VP: A l'Ile de Gorée by Iannis Xenakis is my absolute favourite piece of music and is probably the only one I really couldn’t live without.

Wozzek by Alban Berg

Orchestral Set no.2 by Charles Ives

The Queen’s Suite by Duke Ellington

Piano Concerto by György Ligeti

String Quartet by Conlon Nancarrow

St Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach

To balance the epic nature of a whole opera, which I think is allowed, can I make a special mix tape of short songs as one choice?

Bundle by The Kenny Process Team, Mutual Core and Come to Me by Björk and Look Away by Deerhoof

SC: …and a book?

VP: I really like Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy and Morton Feldman’s Give My Regards to Eight Street but if I could take the particular book that I own I think I have to choose E. E. Cummings’ Selected Poems 1923-58.

SC: …a film?

VP: The Big Lebowski by the Coen Brothers is the one I could watch over and over. La Strada by Fellini is so good as is Inland Empire by David Lynch.

SC: … and a luxury item?

VP: A cafetiere with an endless supply of coffee. Or a Korg Micro sampler – I’ve never managed to use one yet.