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	Programme Notes N - Z


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Programme Notes N - Z

Octet

The Octet was written in 1995 for the Icebreaker ensemble. It is made up of melodies with a storm.

A recurring refrain quotes a passage from The Conquest of Ireland which is there set to the text:

"Hervey was tall and handsome with prominent grey eyes, an agreeable presence, charming features, an elegant way of speaking. His neck was smooth, long and straight, forming a sturdy pillar on which his head rested. He was roundshouldered, his arms and hands were long and elegant, and his chest moderately broad. But his waist, which in most people tends to swell out immoderately, was by nature of modest proportions, and lower down towards his abdomen attained a size in keeping with that of his chest."

Piano Quartet No.1

The Piano Quartet No.1 was written in 1992 and is in one movement. It was commissioned by ICA Live Arts for New MusICA with funds made available by the London Arts Board.

While writing it I was reminded of painting where blocks of colour meet or where objects intersect, of the mysteriousness of those moments. The painter Robert Ryman said that whatever is made should delight and have a rightness about it. That was my aim.

Piano Quartet No.2

Accounting for music is like having to find a motive for a crime already committed. What has been an intuitive process is now laid bare, and must stand scrutiny. Material created has taken on a sullen jealousy, witholding and demandning. You try to look at this material as if it were outside yourself, outside tradition. You want it to be an indisputiable fact, to have a sense of rightness, to delight, to look at from a different aspect. You are not interested in setting scenes but in speaking immediately and being absolutely present. You remember paintings where the points at which objects met were indefinable and look for help in these 'moments of change'. At the very least you hope not to be shamed by any configuration and opt for the most plausible alibi.

The world première of the Piano Quartet no.2 took place at St Paul's Hall as part of the Huddersfield Festival on 1st December 1996, by the Ives Ensemble.

La Plus Forte (2006)

An opera in one act
Text - August Strindberg

Strindberg wrote La Plus Forte (The Stronger) in December 1888 - January 1889, as part of the repertoire for his Experimental Theatre in Copenhagen. Like all his plays it is based on fact. Since his marriage to the actress Siri von Essen he had had various flirtations with other women. The part of Madame X appears to be based mainly on his wife Siri, and that of Mademoiselle Y (Amelie, a non-speaking role) on the actress Helga Frankenfeldt, who Strindberg had given up seeing in 1882 after she had insulted Siri at a party.

In La Plus Forte a traumatic encounter between the two women takes place in a cafe on Christmas Eve. Madame X, friendly and wary at the beginning, gradually becomes vulnerable and then violent as it dawns on her that Mademoiselle Y had possibly had an affair with her husband. To her horror she realises that this was why her husband had chosen the name Eskil for their son (it was Mademoiselle's Y's father's name) and had chosen for her certain colours, authors, food, drink, because these were the favourites of Mademoiselle Y. She feels possessed and is filled with loathing. But in the end she says that she is the stronger because she did not run away, she stayed, but that Mademoiselle Y is now alone, and bitter. "Thank you for teaching my husband to love! Now I am going home, to love him."

Quintet

This quintet was written in 1994 and first performed at the Almeida Festival in London in 1995. It is one continuous movement made up of nine sections.

The Ring

Gerald Barry's The Ring is scored for choir, brass & reed band and church bells. It recalls the heartiness of Carnival in Germany and uses the famous 18th century bells of Shandon Church. They are a central part of life in the city of Cork and are spoken of extravagantly:

There's a bell in Moscow,
While on tower and kiosk O!
In Saint Sophia the Turkman gets,
and loud in air
calls men to prayer
from the tapering summit
of tall minarets.

Such empty phantom
I freely grant them;
but there is an anthem
more dear to me,
'Tis the Bells of Shandon,
That sound so grand on
the pleasant waters
Of the River Lee.
(Popular Ballad)

The Ring was commissioned by Firkin Crane for the Cork International Choral Festival with the assistance of the Arts Council of Ireland. It was first performed on 5 May 1996 by the Cork Airport Singers and the Butter Exchange Brass & Reed Band.

The Road

Written in 1997, The Road was commissioned by the Hessischer Rundfunk for the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. The title and following text came to the composer after the piece was completed:

"The title refers to an image from childhood of sun with high wind on a remote road. The music is looked at as if it were a series of objects whose secret must be grasped - there is no turning away until the force of each is perceived. This intent looking gives the material a vertiginous aspect, and clouds its origin."

Sextet

This Sextet was commissioned in 1992 by the group Array Music, Toronto. It is a piece in which the moments of change between sections are as important as the musical content - rather like those points in paintings where objects or areas of colour meet. Like other pieces of mine fresh material appears at the end opening up new territory as the music concludes. Much of it reminds me of sea side resorts from childhood.

Six Marches for String Quartet - String Quartet No. 3

I have always loved marches. Quick, slow, measured, cheerful, funereal, aggressive, sinister. When bands approach I rush to the street, and when they recede I collapse in a pleasant fever. It does not matter who or what plays them, how incompetent or expert, whether they lurch or stride, they are all haunting. With or without voices.

Snow is white

Francis Bacon died on the 9th of April 1626 in Highgate, after stuffing a chicken with snow.

String Quartet No. 1

Originally written for the Arditti Quartet this piece continued to surface in different forms. It takes as a starting point my opera The Intelligence Park, though the quartet has a much more indirect relation to it. Music from the opera is opened out and telescoped.

1998 - String Quartet No. 2

After writing 1998 I was trying to find a way of describing it. I then happened on Arthur Schnitzler’s novella, Lieutenant Gustl (1900), and saw a parallel. Lieutenant Gustl feels insulted by someone of such low rank he cannot challenge him to a duel and so must kill himself. He considers the ramifications of the encounter in a feverish stream of consciousness, a form which seems to mirror the approach to sound in the quartet.

It’s not that they correspond in any conscious way, but perhaps that the contents of 1998 are so wide-ranging they support most interpretations. They may have this feeling because the sounds are taken from so many musical worlds and are filled with resonances. In whichever direction you are facing, they and you are likely to coincide.

You could say that a drama is being enacted here which will always be hidden because of the completely enigmatic nature of the sounds. But as with Lieutenant Gustl there is a constant weighing of arguments and rushes of blood. (In fact Gustl and 1998 could be performed simultaneously; it would be intriguing to see how they fall out.)

Because there are no signposts it is very difficult to foresee the music’s destination at any point – it is resolutely inconstant. If it were a painting it would be abstract with occasional figurative imagery – a thigh, a calf, those sounds which reassure – but these are illusory and unreachable.

Sur les Pointes

Sur les Pointes was written for the pianist Herbert Henck, and first performed by him at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts on 29 March 1981. The first section (up to the point indicated on page 4) may be performed on the piano, organ, harpsichord, or any keyboard instrument with the correct range, as Sur les Pointes (first section). An organ version is also available separately.

This is one of a series of pieces in which the composer was searching for a music which would be independent in tone colour, and could be played on any instrument with the appropriate compass. It has been performed by various chamber ensembles, choir and orchestra, keyboard instruments, and an orchestra of wind and solo strings. 'Sur les pointes' is a ballet term describing the raising of the body on the tips of the toes.

Swinging Tripes and Trillibubkins

Swinging Tripes and Trillibubkins was written in 1986 and comes from The Intelligence Park to a libretto by Vincent Deane. 'Trillibubkins', meaning 'entrails, the innards of an animal', refers to a feast in Act III:

Soup enough to swim in;
huge swinging tripes and trillibubkins;
pullets not two hours from their shells;
rare buttock of veal en daube;
melons for ecstasy,
a hash of crambe, crambe, crambe.
Pig and carrot - dish of queens;
calf's heart pudding; bowls of flummery:
gardens, forests and menageries
cut down to grace our table.

Ø

Ø is a exploration of ornamentation (the "bending" of an existing melody) and an etude in co-ordination (the problem of playing exactly together). In this piece, because the ornamentation becomes the melody, its traditional function as decoration is cancelled.

Originally written for two pianos in 1979, the version for piano quartet was made in 1995 and the version for solo cello was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in 2002.

Things That Gain

This piano piece is taken from Things That Gain By Being Painted for soprano, speaker, cello and piano. The text comes from the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon written in the 10th century by a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court.
In the original work, music and text inhabit separate worlds; they run in parallel but mostly ignore one another.

The following text was part of this piece:
Things that give a hot feeling:
The effect of tears on make-up,
The folly of unattractive people who sleep together during the day.

Things That Gain By Being Painted

for Soprano, Speaker, Cello, and Piano

Text from the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon:

That parents should bring up some beloved son of theirs to be a priest is really distressing. No doubt it is an auspicious thing to do: but unfortunately most people are convinced that a priest is as unimportant as a piece of wood, and they treat him accordingly. A priest lives poorly on meagre food, and cannot even sleep without being criticized. While he is young, it is only natural that he should be curious about all sorts of things, and, if there are women about, he will probably peep in their direction (though to be sure, with a look of aversion on his face). What is wrong about that? Yet people immediately find fault with him for even so small a lapse.

On the first day of the First Month and on the third of the Third I like the sky to be perfectly clear. On the fifth of the Fifth Month I prefer a cloudy sky. On the seventh of the Seventh Month, it should also be cloudy; but in the evening it should be clear, so that the moon shines brightly in the sky and one can see the outline of stars. On the ninth of the Ninth Month, there should be a drizzle from early dawn. In the Eleventh Month when there are fierce winds and heavy showers, it is quite cool and one does not bother to carry a fan.

One day when I was alone he came up to me and said, "My dear lady, I have something I must tell you at once - something I've just heard." "And what may that be?" I asked. He approached my curtain. "I heard someone who instead of saying 'Bring your body closer, ' used the phrase, 'Bring up your five parts'". And again I burst into laughter.

One is about to say somthing to a person who is obviously embarassed, but then he speaks first - very strange.

ADORABLE THINGS

A child whose hair has been cut like a nun's.

DEPRESSING THINGS

One has been foolish enough to invite a man to spend the night in an unsuitable place - and then he starts snoring. Oh, the dreariness of it. Equally disagreeable is the man who, when leaving in the middle of the night, takes care to fasten the cord of his headdress. This is quite unnecessary. A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. The lady urges him on: "Come my friend, it's getting light. You don't want anyone to find you here. He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not nearly been long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash. Indeed, one's attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance of his leavetaking. When he jumps out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens his trouser sash, stuffs his belongings into the breast of his robe and then briskly secures the outer sash - one really begins to hate him.

THINGS THAT SHOULD BE LARGE

Priests.

THINGS THAT MAKE ONE'S HEART BEAT FASTER

To notice that one's elegant Chinese Mirror has become a little cloudy. It is night and one is expecting a visitor. Suddenly one is startled by the sound of rain drops, which the wind blows against the shutters.

The sprouts of the cherry-flax
In the flax fields

Are heavy now with dew.
I shall stay with you till dawn
Though your parents be aware.

THINGS WITHOUT MERIT

Rice starch that has become mixed with water...I know that is a very vulgar item and everyone will dislike my mentioning it.

TREES

I shall say absolutely nothing about the spindle tree.

THINGS THAT GIVE A PATHETIC IMPRESSION

The expression of a woman plucking her eyebrows.

BIRDS

If I were to write down all my thoughts about the crane, I should become tiresome.

During the short summer nights in the rainy season one sometimes wakes up and lies in bed hoping to be the first person to hear the hototogisu. Suddenly towards dawn its song breaks the silence; one is charmed, indeed one is quite intoxicated. But alas, when the Sixth Month comes, the hototogisu is silent. I really need say no more about my feelings for this bird. And I do not love the hototogisu alone; anything that cries out at night delights me - except babies.

ELEGANT THINGS

Duck eggs.

THINGS THAT GIVE A HOT FEELING

The captain in attendance at the Imperial Games. An extremely fat person with a lot of hair. Nothing annoys me so much as someone who arrives at a ceremony in a shabby, poorly decorated carriage. It is not so bad if the person has come to hear a sermon wih the aim of clearing himself of sin: but even then a very inelegant carriage is bound to make a bad effect. At the Kamo Festival, of course, such negligence is quite inexcusable. Yet there are people who actually attend the ceremony in carriages where the plain white robes have been hung up instead of proper blinds. Even when one has carefully equipped one's carriage in honour of the great day making sure that the blinds and other fittings are exactly right, and has set out for the ceremony confident that one presents a fairly elegant appearance to the world, it is most unpleasant to see a nearby carriage superior to one's own, and one wonders why it had to appear at just that place. How much more galling must it be for someone who is travelling in a really shabby carriage! What could be more magnificent that to see so august a personage as His Majesty seated there in all his glory and honouring his mother in this way. At the sight tears came to my eyes and streamed down my face, ruining my make-up. How ugly I must have looked.

THINGS THAT GIVE AN UNCLEAN FEELING

A rat's nest. A swarm of mice, who still have no fur, when they come wriggling our of their nest.

ed ing en ing nd 11 er ins ed ing led eing ven ding and all ther rms ppled dye-ing. Roll..ed dye-ing un---e-even sha--ding. And all o--ther forms of da--ppled dye--ing Roll--ed dye-ing un-e- ven.

When a woman lives alone, her house should be extremely dilapidated, the mud wall should be falling to pieces, and if there is a pond it should be overgrown with water plants. It is not essential that the garden be covered with sage-brush; but weeds should be growing through the sand in patches, for this gives the place a poignantly desolate look. I greatly dislike a woman's house when it is clear that she has scurried about with a knowing look on her face, arranging everything just as it should be, and when (the) gate is kept tightly shut.

THINGS THAT LOSE BY BEING PAINTED

Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful. One bright moonlight night a messenger thrust a note into the ante- room where I was staying. On a sheet of magnificent scarlet paper I read the words, "There is nothing". It was the moonlight that made this so delightful. I wonder whether I would have enjoyed it at all on a rainy night.

Sei Shonagon has the most extraordinary air of self-satisfaction. Yet, if we stop to examine those Chinese writings of hers that she so presumptously scatters about the place, we find that they are full of imperfections. Someone who makes such an effort to be different from others is bound to fall in people's esteem, and I can only think that her future will be a hard one. She is a gifted woman, to be sure. Yet, if one gives free rein to one's emotions even under the most inappropriate circumstances, if one has to sample each interesting thing that comes along, people are bound to regard one as frivolous. And how can thing turn out well for such a woman?

THINGS THAT ARE UNPLEASANT TO SEE

A lean hirsute man taking a nap in the daytime. Does it occur to him what a spectacle he is making of himself? Ugly men should sleep only at night, for they cannot be seen in the dark and, besides most people are in bed themselves. But they should get up at the crack of dawn so that no one has to see them lying down. A pretty woman looks even prettier when she gets up after taking a nap on a summer day. But an unattractive woman should avoid such things, for her face will be all puffy and shining and, if she is is not lucky, her cheeks will have an ugly lopsided look. When two people, having taken a nap together in the daytime, wake up and see each other's sleep-swollen faces, how dreary life must seem to them ACH! I suppose one of the reasons I do not like ugly women to wear unlined robes is that one can see their navels!

SQUALID THINGS

The inside of a cat's ear.

Triorchic Blues

Triorchic Blues takes its title from a rumoured attribute of the castrato Tenducci (one of the models for the castrato Serafino in The Intelligence Park) that enabled him to surprise his admirers by combining the role of paterfamilias with his operatic career; its material, however, began as a study for another opera The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit, where it appears as an apologia for a life devoted to venery.

Apart from its appearance as a coloratura aria in The Triumph, it also exists in versions for solo violin, solo cello and solo piano. All three are played simultaneously in the version for trio.

The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit

What is needed in a libretto? Nothing should be held back, everything should be seen through, it should look unflinchingly. Abandon, Consequence, Recognition.

Everyone has felt everything in The Triumph of Time and Truth and in The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit because everyone wants the same thing, pleasure.

It’s a modest desire. When it comes one devours it and tries to hold it for as long as absolutely possible. Then it slips away and sighing for the past and future return.

It’s laughable to go to such extraordinary lengths in pursuit of it.

Endlessly hunting for someone to say:

You are my delight, my comfort at night,
And I’ll roll you nine times before morning.

It is the obsessiveness of the soldier in the 11th century text by Giraldus Cambrensis, The Conquest of Ireland:

He was addicted to venery from his youth, and considered lawful any act which others wished to perform upon him, or he wished to perform upon others, involving lust in all its forms.

These found texts are placed throughout the work and act as extremes of temperature, whooshing the music from one moment to the next.

Pleasure’s “You are my delight” is a setting out of wares in his war with Time for Beauty. Time’s crushing response is James Clarence Mangan’s poem “What is Love.”

Mangan, an extremophile, is damned if anything is going to light this scene.

He is devoted, annihilatingly, to the “sadness, desolation, devastation, spoliation and uprooting” of love.

What is Love? I asked a lover –
Liken it, he answered, weeping,
To a flood unchained and sweeping
Over shell-strewn grottos, Over
Beds of roses, lilies, tulips,
O’er all flowers that most enrich the
Garden, in one headlong torrent,
Till they show a wreck from which the
Eye and mind recoil abhorrent.

Quite different from the 19th century Handel translation depicting Pleasure’s court:

Balls by night and manly sports by day.

Whenever a friend of mine looks in the mirror she flutters her eyelashes so rapidly her face is a blur. She has only the vaguest idea of her appearance and will have no season but summer.

Beethoven’s patron, Prince Lobkowitz, found it painful to look at people directly, and preferred to sit in a darkened room watching them reflected in a mirror as they passed in the street.

Images of flight from time litter the text. And desire for its destruction.

It’s as if protection from its ravages would be the reward for the music and singing being brilliant enough. Virtuosity, magically, would create a suspension, and keep one safe.

Vocal brilliance, therefore, sometimes enfolds the text, which gives way to emotional momentum. The text becomes abstract, foreign, perspective with a single viewpoint momentarily abandoned.

The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit. The passing of time, horrible.
Vanity/yearning, as little as possible. Ecstasy, yes.
To manage as many delicious moments as one can. Now.
Flaubert said that things have to enter into us enough to make us cry out.
Handel says to taste is crucial.

Synopsis

Act I
Beauty longs for immortality and is offered it by Pleasure. Time and Truth remind Beauty that it is the nature of time to pass and all else is folly. Deceit tells Beauty that flight will conquer time. Pleasure and Time each try to win Beauty by a display of power. Pleasure speaks of the delights of love and the wonders of the world, Time of the desolation and devastation of love. Deceit presses Pleasure’s case; Beauty resists and Deceit collapses.

Act II
Beauty believes Deceit destroyed, but Truth exposes his trickery. Truth offers Beauty an objective view but Beauty hesitates. All vie for Beauty. He flees. He is alone with Pleasure and Pleasure sleeps. Time and Truth show Beauty his decay but this image is shattered by Deceit. Time and Truth withdraw and Pleasure wakes.

Trumpeter

A trumpeter is a cavalry or artillery soldier who gives signals with a trumpet.

Wiener Blut

Wiener Blut was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and premiered at the 2000 Aldeburgh Festival.

I once thought of mass-producing a Poignancy Grid which, because of the harmonies chosen to fill it (all would contain a distilled poignant essence), could be read in any direction with any rhythms superimposed and always be poignantly foolproof. They would hit the mark and draw blood, be all things to all situations, work at all speeds and dynamics - cancans and dead marches from the same pool.

This idea provided the impetus for Wiener Blut.

Much of it includes sounds remembered from the time when I discovered music until now. They act as a diary in which each entry is a jolt to memory.