Composer of the month: David Lancaster
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 2013 his new orchestral work ‘Strata’ was performed by the Orchestra
of Opera North and the sax quartet ‘Swan’ – first heard at Late Music in 2010 –
is currently included on a national tour by the Delta Saxophone Quartet.
David’s new piece
Sciamachy for soprano saxophone and piano will be performed at the next LM concert (Saturday 5th
April) by the Sam Corkin and Timothy End.
In May his ‘Echoes from the
Phantom City’ for flute, viola and harp will be played by La Mer trio.
On June 14th David’s major choral piece
Apocalypse will be performed in the Chapel at York St John University as part
of York’s Festival of Ideas.
Steve Crowther: Can you describe the works to us?
David Lancaster: Sciamachy
is an evolution of two former pieces, both of which involve saxophone; I
originally wrote Suspense for a student to play on soprano sax in 2008. That music later formed the basis of my
sax quartet Swan and the music in this concert is the latest incarnation of
those ideas, with a new piano part built around an enhanced version of the
original melodic material. There’s
a slow section followed by a faster section, both based on slowly unfolding
processes. In May’s Late Music
concert you can hear a trio I composed in 1995. It was performed extensively in London for the next few
years but hasn’t been played for a while – I’m looking forward to hearing it
again. I programmed the score into
Sibelius which was quite tricky owing to the extensive aleatoric sections but I
resisted the temptation to change anything. The title is a reference to a wonderfully inventive – if
disturbingly violent - novel by
Alain Robbe-Grillet.
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. (I also
like hearing second performances of my pieces which differ from the first since
each new performer or venue brings a fresh perspective to the music).
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 heard a performance of my orchestral piece Strata 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 year – ‘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: Nights
at the Circus by Angela Carter. I
love the fantastical theatricality of Carter’s writing and her ability to move
so fluidly between the sublime and the grotesque.
SC: 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.
