Born in 1956, Adrian Williams’s musical talents manifested
themselves at an early age, initially as a gifted pianist but followed
very quickly by serious attempts at composition. Gaining a reputation
as a child prodigy at the piano, his earliest compositions (now withdrawn)
flowed from around the age of eleven and include a Piano Trio in
G Minor dating from 1967. This was followed in 1968 by a Symphony
in D Minor together with a String Quartet and Clarinet
Trio of the same year.
Consultations with Lennox Berkeley ensued from the
age of thirteen, by which time he was already giving piano recitals
on a regular basis. Enrolment at the Royal College of Music led to piano
studies with John Lill and John Russell, whilst composition studies
were under the tutelage of Bernard Stevens and Alan Ridout. It was during
this period of study at the RCM that his music first started to attract
serious attention.
The productive years around his late teens and early twenties spawned
such works as the ambitious and assured Symphonic Studies, his
first mature orchestral work. Also from this time comes the substantial
Sonata for solo cello of 1977, now recorded by Raphael Wallfisch
on the Metronome label along with two other major works for the instrument,
Spring Requiem (1993) and Images of a Mind (1986). Although
stemming from the early years of his career these works already demonstrate
the essential characteristics of Williams’s compositional hand. These
include a deep melodic vein that runs through his entire output, even
amongst those later compositions that exhibit a grittier melodic and
harmonic palette. This is coupled with a strong and audible formal command
capable of binding together conceptions on the most substantial scale,
the aforementioned Sonata for solo cello and the Second String
Quartet being prime examples. This latter work is a particular tour
de force, a massive single span of around thirty-eight minutes. This
essential lyricism and accessibility remains vital to the composer to
this day, "That my music should affect people concerns me. I write
for a public. I am not an isolationist".
It was whilst still a student at the RCM that Williams celebrated his
first major success, winning the Yehudi Menuhin composition prize for
his work Explorations and Metamorphosis. The great man himself
was later quoted describing the composer as "a master of intricate
patterns and forms". Also whilst still a student his skill as an
arranger and orchestrator was noticed. As a result he became closely
involved with arranger and conductor Peter Knight, scoring a number
of films and TV advertisements before a similar relationship commenced
with Carl Davis. Arrangements still form an active part of his musical
life with recent additions to the catalogue including an arrangement
for small orchestra of My Heart Will Go on, the theme from James
Horner’s score for the film, Titanic.
Throughout this period the piano was still an important
part of Williams’s day to day life (the composer can be heard as pianist
accompanying Raphael Wallfisch on the Metronome disc of cello music).
An increasing reputation for virtuoso improvisation in recitals, led
to considerable acclaim from his audiences, a skill with which he can
still amaze today, albeit perhaps with some reluctance.
With
the Duke of Gloucester 1980
The years following college studies saw a period as
composer in residence at Charterhouse School from 1980-1982. These were
unhappy yet fertile and crucial years for Williams as they followed
something of a stylistic and creative crisis. His time at Charterhouse
saw a consequent re-evaluation of his compositional language but also
brought its share of success with a number of the works written around
this period still being felt by the composer to be amongst his finest.
These are the Second String Quartet, the first set of Five
Songs of W.H. Davies, Horseman, Pass By for piano, Where
Chimneys Fall for oboe and in 1982 the symphonic poem, Tess.
I shall speak more of the stylistic changes that Tess in particular
heralded later. Equally crucial during the period at Charterhouse was
Williams’s new-found discovery of Christianity, an absorption that has
since waned but resulted in a steady flow of works for the church over
a period of a decade.
The changes in musical language may also have contributed
to a major change in life, for in 1982 Williams left Charterhouse, bringing
to an end the misery of his tenure there. He then moved to the Welsh
borders, a momentous decision for Wales was to become a spiritual home
for the composer. More than this it also became an outlet for expanding
wider horizons in the founding of the Presteigne Festival, an annual
musical feast that Williams was to organise and manage for the next
ten years until he eventually moved back to London. As the composer
explains below, the festival gave him a platform for his own music.
Not only this but it also presented an opportunity to explore the music
of other composers that meant much to him, all in the glorious surroundings
of the Welsh countryside and of St. Andrews Church in Presteigne, a
sanctuary of considerable importance to Williams. As a result there
was a continued resurgence of his creative flow with one notable work
from 1985, Behold, how good and joyful, for chorus and
orchestra, winning him the Guinness Composition Prize. More significant
however was the resultant commission, Not Yet Born, a major setting
of MacNeice for chorus and orchestra. The composer considers this to
be far more important than the original prize-winning work. Sadly the
premiere of Not Yet Born was not a success, suffering from poor
preparation and it still awaits a further performance. There continued
to be much music for the church and in 1986, Images of a Mind,
the work for cello and piano that was to lend its title to the aforementioned
Metronome disc. 1987 and 1988 saw the orchestral works Leaves from
the Lost Book and Dies Irae, the latter a major commission
for the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra and one of the composer’s most
deeply felt orchestral creations.
The ten years since Williams left Wales and the Presteigne Festival
have, at a number of levels, been difficult once again for the composer.
The move to London proved to be an unhappy one. In 1994 Williams returned
to Wales for a further five years before, in 1999, taking the decision
to make a new life for himself in Japan, the home of his new wife. It
seems however that Wales is never far from Williams’s mind. The last
three years have seen several trips back to the UK with the eventual
intention of settling once again in the borders with his wife and young
son. Inevitably there have been spells, notably during the years in
Japan, when the unsettling nature of losing his spiritual and home roots
have impacted on his compositional output. Indeed, as if to prove his
spiritual attachment to Wales, his second period in the borders had
seen a number of crucial works written. Amongst them are Aruga,
for chamber ensemble of 1996, the Chamber Concerto and Migrations
for string orchestra, both from 1998. Although unintentional at the
time, Migrations was to prove prophetic in its unconscious farewell
to Wales prior to the composer’s residency in Japan. Latterly 2002 has
seen a fresh period of rejuvenation in Williams’s output with the completion
of a commission for the Cheltenham Festival, Out in the Jungle,
for six voices a capella. This was performed to considerable acclaim
at the festival by I Fagiolini, coupled with the chamber work, Jizo,
written for and now recorded by the Belgian ensemble, New Art Trio.
At this point it is crucial to put the foregoing factors
into perspective by taking a look at the essential characteristics of
the music itself.
To gain a true understanding of Williams and his work
we must first understand something of the stylistic issues that have
been constant throughout his compositional career. From even the earliest
works there have always been two sides to his creative personality.
The first is the essentially tonal and unashamedly melodic vein evident
in such works as the Quatre Cantilènes. Set this alongside
the grittier, harmonically more astringent language that inhabits the
Symphonic Studies. This quality has been more prevalent since
the symphonic poem, Tess, one of the crucial works that was written
in 1982 following his period at Charterhouse. Indeed, there is no doubt
that this stylistic "conflict" has inhibited Williams’s career
in terms of the irregular flow of major commissions and his resultant
public profile. He is seen by some as a composer who falls between two
stools, an eclectic with a unpredictable thread running through his
creative output. The composer explains below how the interest stirred
by a tape playing of his Symphonic Studies during a 1979 Society
for the Promotion of New Music course resulted in an expectant audience
for the forthcoming premiere of his substantial choral and orchestral
work, Maiores Ignoti. The audience was to leave disappointed
at the composer’s return to a broadly tonal idiom. Williams’s own comment
here is telling, feeling that his "side-stepping" of a "real
harmonic voice had worked". The words "side-stepping"
and "real" give a broad clue as to where he felt his stylistic
allegiances lay at the time.
Either way, in the prevailing circumstances and with
the weight of expectation upon him, it was inevitable that a crisis
of confidence if not style would eventually follow. When it did it resulted
in a period of soul searching that lasted for around two years. What
emerged from this soul searching was a more personally self-assured
and secure composer. In reality the stylistic variations still exist
in his work. One has only to compare the Chamber Concerto with
Migrations for example. The music has however rid itself of any
signs of apparent awkwardness, instead demonstrating a clear desire
to communicate in a manner that to the composer is entirely natural;
the honest expression of creative instincts that are without question
second nature.
The essential seeds of Williams’s language are evident
in a number of works dating from as far back as his mid to late teens.
The String Quartet No.1, written in 1972 when Williams was just
sixteen, bears numerous unmistakable hallmarks of the composers who
were influential upon him at the time, most obviously Vaughan Williams.
The vein of lyricism and sense of thematic structure that pervade the
music are characteristics that can provide a link to as apparently diverse
a work as the Symphonic Studies. Only three years separate the
First Quartet from Nine Pins, the work for piano duet
that spawned the Symphonic Studies, yet the stylistic gulf could
be thirty years. It is the figure nine that is crucial to Nine Pins
and the Symphonic Studies, being based on a nine-note row and
cast in nine sections. Despite the astringency of the harmonic sound
world and the composer’s claim that he had avoided a true harmonic voice
he still finds it almost impossible to abandon an audible structure
and the work hangs together with some success for an early work on this
scale.
The three String Quartets are an interesting
case for study in Williams’s output, standing roughly ten years apart
from each other. The Quartet No. 2 was written in 1981 during
the composer’s period at Charterhouse and is an ambitious undertaking
by any standards, cast in a single continuous span of around thirty-eight
minutes. Williams lays his material before the listener during the opening
couple of minutes, notably an intensely fervent cello melody that breaks
through after around one and a half minutes. What follows is a tightly
argued and constructed cycle that condenses and breaks the material
down before a long, gradual ascent begins to rediscover the opening
material and melody. Although cast in five movements, the Sonata
for solo cello, of 1977, is a similarly bold achievement, coming
in at around thirty-three minutes. It remains one of the composer’s
most remarkable and assured works given its composition during his student
years. In both cases the composer’s grip on his material and overall
structure is highly impressive. In contrast to the second, the Quartet
No. 3 (1991) takes a more traditional four movement format (the
last two are played continuously). It is more conventionally melodic
and lyrical than its predecessor in a way that at times recalls the
quartets of the Welshman Daniel Jones and, notably in the deep first
movement, Janáček. In the final movement however it is Bartók that
seems to be in the background, a figure whose quartets have, I suspect,
been a source of inspiration to Williams. Like Bartók, Williams’s scoring
for the quartet medium is rarely short of masterful.
In 1988, three years before Williams wrote the Quartet
No. 3, a commission from the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra had resulted
in the first performance of Dies Irae, the first major orchestral
score Williams had written since the symphonic poem, Tess, of
1982. This is one of the composer’s most personal creations and makes
a powerful, distinctive and perhaps above all, thought-provoking impression
on a first hearing. The inspiration was drawn from the composer’s anger
at man’s destruction of the natural environment, an issue that is close
to his heart and recurs in a number of other works including Aruga.
This anger and sense of desolation is wrought to telling effect, Williams
quoting but not over-emphasising the plainchant Dies Irae and
leaving the listener with little doubt as to the chilling consequences
of his message. Of all his orchestral works Dies Irae leaves
a particularly dark but lasting presence, an impression not dissimilar
to that of the first movement of the Sinfonia da Requiem by Benjamin
Britten, a composer who Williams counts amongst his most influential
exemplars.
The two years prior to his return to Wales in 1994
were sparse although one work from 1993 is certainly deserving of mention.
Spring Requiem, for cello and piano, was written in response
to the death of his first wife’s father
in Belgrade during the Balkan crisis and is subtitled “In memoriam Aleksandar
Miletić”. The work reflects something of the anger felt by the
composer at both the futility of the war itself and the needlessness
of his father-in-law’s death. It is also imbued with the atmosphere
of the Serbian Orthodox funeral service, the peeling of bells, incense
hanging heavy in the air, the spring blossom on the approach to the
church and a final ray of hope as the music seems to ascend into heaven
itself during the final section, In paradisum: Adagio,
one of the composer’s most simple yet poignantly beautiful creations.
A previous work for the same combination, Images of a Mind, written
in 1986, had already proved Williams’ affinity with the cello, as if
this were needed after the remarkable achievement of the earlier Sonata
for solo cello. Images of a Mind has its origins in a self-portrait
by Sidney Nolan. Williams knew the artist well, Nolan being one of his
close neighbours in the Welsh borders. The composer happened to visit
him when the paint was hardly dry on the canvas. The composer describes
the work as "a kind of rhapsody" and it is true that the piece
is possibly less strictly structured than a good number of his other
works. Instead it paints a perceptive portrait of a personality that
emerges as complex and multi-faceted but with a humanity that seems
to shine through. Nolan himself paid it the greatest compliment in saying
that it "revealed secrets he would long remember".
The five years marking Williams’s second period in
Wales from 1994 to 1999 were particularly productive. From this period
come a number of important works that reflect a sea-change in the composer’s
self confidence. Amongst them are Aruga for flute, clarinet,
harp and string quartet (1996), the Accordion Quintet of the
following year, the Chamber Concerto for eleven players and Migrations
for twenty-two solo strings, both of 1998. The first three of these
works stand apart from Migrations in that although the sense
of melodic journey and cohesive thematic structure are still in evidence
there is also a certain terseness. This is at its most obvious in Aruga,
an at times angry piece that has its background in the protests surrounding
the construction of the Newbury by-pass, an issue that was receiving
much media attention at the time. Equally striking is the extreme energy
that the pieces generate; an energy that seems at times to approach
the frenetic. It gives a sense of the composer hardly being able to
get his material down on paper quickly enough. It can be no coincidence
that this latent sense of inner energy emerges in his music at a time
when the composer was back in his spiritual homeland, the sense of renewed
vigour and enthusiasm coming through with clarity in the music. Migrations
is very much the odd work out of this group. The composer mentions
that there is possibly a passing influence of minimalism in the piece
but the listener will find nothing to bring to mind the likes of Steve
Reich or John Adams. Instead this is perhaps the most overtly lyrical
of the pieces from the second period in Wales, having little in common
with the Chamber Concerto and Aruga other than a strong
and audible framework. Williams is masterful in his writing for the
strings, with a deep lushness in the more impassioned passages that
is almost redolent of Elgar’s scoring in his Introduction and Allegro.
It is a work that will, I suspect, always stand both forward and somewhat
alone in Williams’s output; deeply personal and ultimately, profoundly
moving.
At the end of February 2003 Adrian Williams returned
to the UK from Japan with his wife and son to settle permanently in
his beloved Welsh borders. He took up residence in a small village between
Hereford and Hay-on-Wye. His previous return to Wales in 1994 had heralded
one of the most productive periods of his career and it is to be hoped
that being in his spiritual home once again will enable him to strike
a similarly rich seam of inspiration. Despite the self-questioning that
has often been present Adrian Williams is a composer with much to say
and the undoubted technique to say it with emotional and expressive
clarity. With a number of potential commissions in the pipeline, including
a work for the Raphael Ensemble (Presteigne Festival 2003), coupled
with the first emerging signs of a new orchestral work the future certainly
appears encouraging.
The interview that
follows was conducted shortly prior to his recent return to Wales.
© Christopher Thomas 2003
Further information on Adrian Williams and his music
can be obtained from the composer’s own website www.adrianwilliamsmusic.com
Interview
List of works