Encounters with British Composers
by Andrew Palmer
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MusicWeb readers don’t need me to tell them that,
for the majority of the public, ‘music’ means ‘popular
music’. It’s The X-Factor and The Voice,
not the Wigmore Hall and the Proms. It’s Radio 1, not Radio 3.
It’s the massive ‘Rock & Pop’ and ‘World
Music’ sections, not the tiny ‘Classical’ one, in
a typical HMV store. And an evening at the opera is Phantom,
not Forza del Destino. Classical music is acknowledged and
even liked, but only to the point at which it starts to become ‘difficult’
by making demands on the listener. And surely everyone knows that ‘modern’
music is the most difficult and demanding. Too sweeping a statement?
Well, it’s what I myself used to think. I had no time for contemporary
classical music, which brought me no pleasure at all. I might have been
encouraged to persevere with it by someone who could help me to understand
how its sounds were related to, and had developed from, those of the
‘popular’ classics I listened to, but there was no one to
do that for me.
As a teenager I felt rather a freak for listening to the Mendelssohn
Violin Concerto and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony rather than 10cc
and Pink Floyd, but little did I realise how small a minority I was
in. Classical music, even of the mainstream variety, is at most a ‘fringe’
or minority interest; and this is a reality that contemporary composers
do their best to ignore. Who can blame them? Not long ago George Benjamin
told an interviewer
The Performing Rights Society is responsible for collecting all the
royalties for all types of music in Britain, and the royalties involved
are immense, something like £600 million a year. And, apparently, the
whole of classical music within copyright – so from Strauss and
Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Britten, through till today – is responsible
for only one third of 1% of those sums… I’m not talking
about difficult or challenging contemporary music, I’m talking
about the last hundred-and-so years of music, including Barṭk and Vaughan
Williams and Messiaen and Copland and Gershwin and so on. I know it’s
a dry, statistical fact, but it does say something. It says that, for
a huge number of people, classical music is just closed: it’s
a very peripheral activity within our society, I fear.’
Which is particularly depressing for those of us who love, like or are
merely interested in the music of our time. And it’s the reason
why I’ve written this article for MusicWeb about my book of interviews
with contemporary British composers, which will be published by Boydell
Press on 19th November. I’m not comfortable when publicising
my work – I’d prefer it to speak for itself – but
because of its subject matter this is probably the most important but
also the least ‘commercial’ book that I’ll ever write,
and therefore one that might benefit from a little help in reaching
its readership.
In one of his essays on music Ned Rorem has written: "A composer
can clarify his method to others, but not his aesthetic. He can tell
how he wrote his piece, but not why. His why is the piece.
All else is a smoke screen through which he explains what you’re
supposed to hear rather than what you do hear. Unless the smoke screen
itself is his music."
Which would appear to confirm that compiling a book of interviews with
composers (in this case, British ones) is rather a waste of time, especially
if the compiler is interested in the social and psychological processes
of composition rather than the techniques used to achieve the desired
musical results. If composers really can’t talk about their own
music, why ask them to? Yet some readers will know that a number of
writers have done just that, most memorably Murray Schafer in British
Composers in Interview (1963) and Paul Griffiths in New Sounds,
New Personalities: British Composers of the 1980s (1985). And I
had reasons – I believe important ones – for wanting to
do something similar.
The first reason is the dates I’ve just mentioned. Griffiths’s
book appeared more than a quarter of a century ago, Schafer’s
more than half a century ago. That’s a long time, musically –
one and two generations of composers respectively. So there seemed to
be value in exploring what today’s composers are doing, and why.
Another reason is the ways in which classical music has developed over
the last half-century. Some people will suggest that a lot has happened,
musically, in that time; others will argue that not enough has happened,
and that genuinely progressive music has been sidelined. It seems to
me that the development of music has been as much horizontal
as vertical, by which I mean that it has broadened under the influence
of many other types of music rather than developing in a particular
direction. And this cross-fertilisation is the result of a globalised
and digitised culture that Murray Schafer and possibly even Paul Griffiths
couldn’t have foreseen.
Whether you believe that music has diversified or fragmented depends,
I suppose, on how optimistic or pessimistic you are. But it was clear,
when I began to compile this book nearly five years ago, that I would
need to interview more composers than either of my literary predecessors
did. Although I’m not trying to define what classical music is
or isn’t, what’s being written (or at least marketed) today
under the umbrella term ‘classical’ undoubtedly covers a
wide spectrum, one that ranges from high modernism – what would
once have been called the avant-garde – to the fringes
of music theatre. So I set out to interview as wide a range of composers
as possible, not only in styles of music but also in ages, personalities
and levels of fame.
(On the issue of fame, I imagine that some of the contributors will
be considered obscure or marginal to the contemporary music scene. But
while it was inconceivable not to include as many of the big names as
possible, it was also inconceivable not to feature some lesser-known
ones. Why? Because for every famous British composer there are tens
or perhaps hundreds of others who work without the support of publishers,
managers, record companies or public relations consultants. They use
the same raw materials and they produce work to the same level of integrity.
And to me they’re no less a part of contemporary British music.
Besides, composers don’t set out to become famous, X-Factor-style;
they simply want to write music and have it performed. Often they don’t
look much further ahead than writing the next piece and getting
that performed satisfactorily. Few, I’m sure, plan a
career as such, and the processes by which fame comes to some of them
are mysterious. I tried to get the biggest names to account for what
might be regarded as their celebrity, but they didn’t really have
satisfactory answers because they don’t feel famous –
and of course they aren’t, in the normal, showbiz sense.)
So the passage of time and the breadth of contemporary British classical
music were two reasons for my wanting to compile this book. The third
was as important, perhaps even more so, and it concerns who I am. Or
perhaps I should say ‘what I’m not’. Murray
Schafer is a distinguished composer, educationalist and environmentalist;
Paul Griffiths is a respected critic, musicologist and commentator on
contemporary music. I’m none of those things, even though, as
a professional writer and speaker, I concentrate on classical music
and musicians. I consider myself as much a recipient of the music-making
process as a participant in it, and my response to music is essentially
that of an amateur.
As an amateur, I sense that some composers are writing music
that the majority of the public don’t engage with because they
feel it has nothing to offer them. But I question whether this is necessarily
the fault of the composers, because we live at a time when attention
spans are shortening – gratification is increasingly required
to be swift, if not instant. Also, I know from personal experience that
some lovers of British music refuse to listen to anything later than,
say, Walton, on the grounds that everything more recent is a horrible
noise and not ‘real’ music. And I must say that I find this
attitude more worrying than the most impenetrable piece of contemporary
music. Why, when many people are unwilling to invest time in listening
adventurously and thoughtfully, should composers feel obliged to write
music that’s ‘accessible’ or ‘approachable’?
On the other hand, what can they expect if they don’t? Is this
the central dilemma for composers who believe that their music should
have some relevance to society?
It’s certainly a dilemma for me, as a listener, because I find
myself torn between two opposing views about how I should approach contemporary
music. I’m often suspicious of pleasure that comes too easily
– it can seem superficial or ephemeral – and so by nature
I gravitate towards the late Sir John Drummond’s comment
People say, ‘I don’t like it; I don’t understand it’.
My education was: ‘If I don’t understand it or
like it, it may well be my fault, so why not go and find out a bit more
about it?’
That makes sense to me, because the hardest-won pleasures are often
the most rewarding, or those that satisfy at the deepest level. On the
other hand - and particularly after a long day at work - I have equal
sympathy with Alexander Goehr’s comment to me that ‘Listening
to music is a leisure activity, so I don’t see any moral imperative
to it.’ Of course, the so-called ‘problem’ of modern
music isn’t only a contemporary phenomenon. Robin Holloway, another
of my interviewees, has commented that 150 years ago ‘full appreciation
of Wagner required patient labour at a new aesthetic (together with
a willingness to be immersed, perhaps drowned).’
I haven’t drowned in contemporary music but I certainly immersed
myself in it while compiling this book. And I discovered that, as a
result, my ear became more attuned to it. Pieces that I’d written
off only a few years earlier as unpleasant, possibly even unmusical
(whatever that means), are now more coherent and meaningful to me. And
I understand that while some music is complex and ‘difficult’
because it needs to be, it will nevertheless ‘speak’ to
me if I pay it attention. Which suggests that, as with food, tastes
can be acquired - but only if we keep an open mind, take chances and
make an effort. After all, music brings pleasure that takes many forms,
some of which can surprise us. So there was a fourth reason for my compiling
the book: the desire to share the excitement of musical discovery. I
hope that asking composers to talk about their music will encourage
readers to listen to it more openly and more patiently.
The interviews took place over a period of four years, and they were
based on a series of standard questions because I was curious to know
if or how responses would differ according to the style of music that
the individual composer writes. What, if any, common musical ground
would I find between, say, Peter Maxwell Davies and Howard Blake? (And
would John Rutter and Harrison Birtwistle show signs of envying each
other’s very different kinds of success?) The interviewees were
asked questions that included: Is there anything in general terms that
you want to express through your music, or anything that you want your
music to do? To what extent does your awareness of an audience
influence what you write? Are you more concerned with the heart’s
response or the mind’s response? How much of ‘composing’
takes place in your head before you write anything down? Do you have
a work routine, and do you still write music by hand? How has your music
changed or evolved since you began composing? How helpful was your formal
musical education? When you started to write music, did you have any
notion of what the life of a professional composer would be like? How
comfortable are you with the increasingly public nature of ‘the
composer’? Do you feel typecast by the success of one of your
works and feel that others are overlooked? Since music is your profession,
is your enjoyment of it different from that of an amateur? Why do composers
tend to talk dispassionately about their own music? And, as this is
a collection of interviews with British composers only, do you feel
that your nationality influences your music?
However, I was aware that a straightforward question-and-answer format
on the page could quickly become tiresome, particularly when the same
questions featured in most of the interviews. In any case, this book
isn’t a vehicle for the expression of my thoughts or
opinions. So when editing the interviews for publication I removed myself
from the conversations, as it were, in the hope that readers will have
a sense of being spoken to more directly by the composers (I’d
like to think that each interview contains at least one question that
readers would like to ask that particular composer, given a similar
opportunity). In addition, each chapter contains a personal and highly
subjective account of where and when the interview took place and a
description of what it was like to talk to each of the thirty-nine contributors,
most of whom I hadn’t met before. I’m not going to apologise
for being an amateur music-lover because I believe it qualified me to
compile the book in a way that being a professional musician probably
wouldn’t have done. But I am going to admit to partial
failure, because Ned Rorem is right: composers can’t really say
very much about their own music. If they could, they wouldn’t
need to compose it. And yet their eagerness to be interviewed for this
book suggests that they nevertheless appreciated the opportunity to
try.
If asked to name my target reader I would risk appearing egocentric
and say that it’s me. In fact, this isn’t so unusual,
because the act of creation is all about pleasing the creator. When
I interviewed George Benjamin I told him that the author’s fantasy
is to walk onto a bus or train and to see that the person sitting opposite
is reading one of his books and is clearly engrossed in it; and when
I asked George whether he has an imaginary ideal listener to his music
he replied, ‘In the end, what else can I do but imagine myself
listening? The best chance I might have of writing music which speaks
to others is by writing music that I would like to hear; and which,
if I hadn’t written it and I came across it by accident, might
appeal to me.’ Similarly, I’ve compiled the book that I
wanted to read – in the belief that many other music lovers will
also want to read it.
What appears to be a potential reader bought a CD of Ligeti concertos
(not your everyday easy-listening classical music fare) from Amazon
and wrote a review that concluded: "For me, as a newcomer to modern
‘classical’ music, this disc demanded some serious listening
adjustment, attention and patience, but it was well worth the effort.
Judging by the liner notes, a degree in music theory might also have
been of great help, but I don’t think I am prepared to go that
far to fully appreciate these remarkable musical/sonic experiences."
If that reviewer is a MusicWeb reader I want to thank him or her for
proving that the kind of reader I had in mind while compiling my book
does exist.
However, and as I suggested at the beginning of this article, I’m
under no illusion that contemporary classical music is anything but
a tiny niche market. What little money there is in it goes to performers,
not to composers. And certainly not to writers. Compiling a book like
this one is therefore a labour of love, which is why I doubt that anything
similar will be published again - at least, not in conventional print
format. So, if you’re interested in eavesdropping on contemporary
British composers talking about their lives and work, it would be a
good idea to get a copy while you can!
Andrew Palmer
andrewpalmerwriter@gmail.com
Contributors
Julian Anderson, Simon Bainbridge, Sally Beamish, George Benjamin, Michael
Berkeley, Judith Bingham, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Howard Blake, Gavin
Bryars, Diana Burrell, Tom Coult, Gordon Crosse, Jonathan Dove, David
Dubery, Michael Finnissy, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Alexander Goehr, Howard
Goodall, Christopher Gunning, Morgan Hayes, Robin Holloway, Oliver Knussen,
John McCabe, Sir James MacMillan, Colin Matthews, David Matthews, Sir
Peter Maxwell Davies, Thea Musgrave, Roxanna Panufnik, Anthony Payne,
Elis Pehkonen, Joseph Phibbs, Gabriel Prokofiev, John Rutter, Robert
Saxton, Sir John Tavener, Judith Weir, Debbie Wiseman, Christopher Wright.
Number of pages: 502
Publisher: Boydell Press
Publication date: 19th November 2015
Price: £25.00
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