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	Programme Notes F - L


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Programme Notes F - L

Fantastic Mind (1997)

Fantastic Mind amalgamates two passionate poems of longing by the 17th-century libertine poet, The Earl of Rochester. Although he is famous, if not infamous, for his erotic and saucy language, this side of Rochester is, I think, sometimes rather overstressed to the detriment of his many muscular but less overtly sexual poems; lines on death, for example.

The Mistress (or Absent from thee), remind me, in their driven power, of Dylan Thomas as well as other metaphysical poets like Donne, Herbert, and Marvell. And so when I came to the word "rave" for instance, I was immediately reminded, almost sub-consciously, of Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and found myself repeating the verb as does Thomas.

The unusual metre of both poems and the dramatic stances of Rochester suggested the use of an actor speaking rather than a sung line. There are, too, many similarities between both pieces which seemed to allow the implanting of A Song into the body of The Mistress.

It struck me as absolutely natural to weld these lines to brass, given their ability to sound both overbearingly raunchy and exquisitely tender. Furthermore I have written for them in a direct, bald style with many parallel intervals as in music contemporaneous with Rochester himself.

Excerpt of the text for Michael Berkeley's Fantastic Mind taken from The Mistress and Absent from thee I languish still by the Earl of Rochester:
An age in her embraces past,
Would seem a winter's day;
When life and light, with envious haste,
Are torn and snatched away.
But, oh how slowly minutes roll,
When absent from her eyes
That feed my love, which is my soul,
It languishes and dies.
For then no more a soul but shade,
It mournfully does move;
and haunts my breast, by absence made
The living tomb of love.
Earl of Rochester

Fierce Tears I (1984)

Fierce Tears was written in memory of Janet Craxton, for whom Michael Berkeley had composed his Oboe Concerto (1979), for performance by her pupil Nicholas Daniel. The title comes from Dylan Thomas:

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.

It was the first of three works (including Keening for saxophone and piano and Coronach for strings) to consider the emotions, and particularly the anger, frequently felt following bereavement. The oboe's unusual portimenti seem to suggest a cry of grief.

Fierce Tears II (1990)

When the Aldeburgh Foundation commissioned a work in memory of my father it seemed logical to write a companion piece to Fierce Tears and both pieces stem from the Elegy - in memoriam Benjamin Britten that forms the final movement of the Oboe Concerto.

Flighting (1985)

Flighting was first performed in a charity concert in aid of the Hospice Movement in 1985 by Emma Johnson. The piece grew directly out of a work for solo baritone entitled Pere du doux repos (Father of sweet sleep), the idea being that the soul, now released, takes flight in the form of the clarinet. Both works then are fairly self-descriptive and can be performed together or separately.

For Mrs Tomoyasu

The oratorio Or Shall We Die? was commissioned from Ian McEwan and Michael Berkeley by the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus. It was first performed in 1983, the year that Reagan declared that a nuclear conflict in Europe was not only thinkable, but winnable; Cruise missiles came to Britain; Heseltine was appointed by Thatcher to extinguish CND; Professions for World Disarmament and Development was formed at the suggestion of Fenner Brockway and MANA was formed as one of those professional peace groups.

This piece is a chamber version of the soprano aria in section five of the work which forms the heart of the oratorio. Mrs Tomoyasu was a young woman in 1945 when her nine-year-old daughter died in her arms after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. She told her story to Jonathan Dimbleby in his television film 'In Evidence: the Bomb', and her words - changed by the librettist only to make smoother rhythms - were used directly in the text.

All night I searched for my daughter.
At dawn a neighbour told me
she had seen her by the river,
among the dead and dying.
I heard her voice calling Mother, Mother,
and I went towards the sound.
My child was completely burned.
The skin had come off her head,
leaving a knot of twisted hair.
My daughter said, Mother, you're late, so late,
please take me back. It hurts, it hurts.
Please take me home. But there were no homes,
no doctors, there was nothing I could do.
I covered up her naked body and held her
in my arms for seven hours.
Late at night she cried out again, Mother,
Mother, and put her arm around my neck,
her small cold arm.
I said, Please say Mother again.
But that was the last time.

For the Savage Messiah

For the Savage Messiah was commissioned by the Schubert Ensemble of London with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain.

The music begins with a large boulder of sound on the piano that triggers off a scrambling burst of notes on the other instruments, with whom it is frequently in conflict. As the composition developed I became more and more conscious of a very physical relationship with the music. I felt as I imagined a sculptor must feel, moulding and chipping away tangible textures, and at this point I reread H.S. Ede's 'Savage Messiah' - a remarkable portrait of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, the French sculptor who died in the trenches in 1915 at the age of 24. The preceding years were filled with dynamic, not to say demonic, creativity, passionate love and tragedy. Gaudier added the Brzeska to his name having fallen in love with Sophie Brzeska, a disturbed Polish woman almost twice Gaudier's age, who died in an asylum in 1925. Their life in Paris and London was marked by extreme poverty and work of real brilliance. Gaudier was a fabulous draughtsman, but coupled to his delicate lines there seems to me a boulder-like massiveness born of frenetic energy. But it is perhaps most of all the awful inevitability of his life and the appalling waste at its ending that are echoed in the music. The boulder, like the Savage Messiah, is both the man and his destiny.

Funerals and Fandangos

Funerals and Fandangos was commissioned as the test piece for the 1984 Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. I was particularly keen in those eleven or so minutes to try to write something that was not merely a pyrotechnic showpiece but music that tested the interpretative gifts of the player as well as the virtuosity. The title came to me as I was composing and finding myself in the midst of a slightly macabre dance, initially marked spettrale or eery and mysterious. I remembered seeing early woodcuts of skeletons rising from the grave in an unearthly dance. However the mood of the music oscillates between these dance-like passages and emotional outbursts suggesting perhaps the frustration of these otherwise entombed spirits.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

I have for many years had Hieronymous Bosch's visionary triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights in the back of my mind as a potential spring board for a piece of music. Then, a couple of years ago, I went to the Prado in Madrid to see the picture in the flesh and was overwhelmed by its extraordinary individuality and detail. This visit coincided with a series of pieces that I had been working on, all of which dealt with aspects of the imagination - Fantastic Mind, a setting of the libertine poet the Earl of Rochester, Torque and Velocity for the Takacs Quartet and in particular Secret Garden written for the LSO and Colin Davis which was virtually a symphonic sketch for tonight's work.

Bosch (1450-1416), like Blake and Donne, depicts the sacred in a powerfully secular manner. Clearly you can simply open the doors of this tripartite work and describe scenes of innocence (The Garden of Eden), experience (Carnal Knowledge) and retribution (Hell) but, thanks to the originality of the painter's mind, what we have is something very much more than that. Something that seems to gather up mythological symbolism (the use of water and fruit to signify sensuality) and leap into the 20th century and the world of Freud and surrealism (phallic cornucopia being a transparent instance).

It would require a staggering genius to translate all this into music and I have not even tried. Rather I have expressed my own reactions to the piece and indeed added other dimensions. In the opening tableau, for instance, the music suggests that innocence and ignorance are not necessarily bliss, rather there is a sense of melancholy and wistfulness, a longing for something yet to be articulated. In music different strands of the triptych can be superimposed upon each other, thus allowing the simultaneous and interwoven voicing of ideas from all three panels. Furthermore all the material is joined to form a continuous whole. And here's a strange thing - without realising that there was a fourth part to the Bosch, I instinctively wrote, at the beginning of the music, an evocation of birth, the growing of a world from nothing only to find that when the panels of the Bosch are closed they show, as a frontispiece, a haunting, luminous picture of a globe in the act of creation.

I was excited by the possibility of harnessing both the infectious enthusiasm and skill of the NYO and the space of the Albert Hall. So I decided to put three players into loggia boxes at 3, 6 and 9 o'clock from the stage - as well as playing their usual instruments (Violin, Soprano Saxophone and Trombone), these three players also play percussion. They act as timekeepers, tempters, devils and the sound of omnipotent power at different stages in the music.

Clicking pieces of wood and a little upward flourish on the trumpets open the score and return at critical points. Then comes the awakening with a spiralling flight of birds and a warm motif on the horn that underpins the whole score. This first section of the music is lush, indulgent even, but gradually the harmonic language, whilst using the same germinal notes becomes (almost autobiographically as it happens) more angular - as with Bosch we move from concord to discord, consonance to dissonance. Early on in this opening passage there are some rich and sonorous chords, reflecting perhaps the majesty of Creation and these too have a significant role to play as the score unfolds.

Gradually the music moves into a more excitable phase as the external players pick up notes from the trumpet. This exhilarates the clarinet section into some wild acrobatics (a throwback to an idea begun in my clarinet concerto) which in turn draws from the rest of the orchestra some gentle sensuous music, a loving twist, if you like, not to be found in the centrepiece of the Bosch. The tempo inexorably quickens, games of the chase taken on a more sinister hue, a pair of high piccolos are partnered by a jerking, jumping pair of low tubas. Whilst the Bosch has not been programatically followed, I found some images irresistible - a Machiavellian ratchet brought to mind a modern rattle and figures stretched across harps prompted yet another obvious musical analogy. I have also used the Cuica (Lion's Roar) not so much for its fearsome sound (it's actually not that loud) but more for its dirty growl!

At the climax of the fast music weeping strings are subjected to a brutal attack from the wind, their final desperate line leading to ideas from the opening which now create the close; the clicking wood, trumpets and majestic chords are transmogrified into the overwhelming voice of judgement.

Gethsemane - a sacred scena

This ten minute scena was commissioned by The Nash Ensemble and is dedicated to Amelia Freedman. I have concocted my own text using lines from the four gospels as they describes Christ's doubts in the Garden of Gethsemane.

It is an episode that I find particularly endearing and human since it shows Jesus in a rare moment of utter frailty and fear. In asking his Father if "this cup might pass" from him, Christ has the awful ability to both foresee his crucifixion yet know that his suffering cannot be mitigated by his divine status. Though the prevailing mood is one of anguish, I have pointed-up a moment of warmth and tranquility when, finding his disciples asleep for the third time, Jesus bids them to sleep on, as though momentarily glimpsing for himself the glow of eternal peace. Similarly I have also emphasised the duality of context for the famous phrase "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" - which has resonance for both the disciples and, momentarily, Christ as well. The music concludes with an inversion of the all-pervasive ostinato figure with which it opened. Now though, the direction of the relentless footfall which began as it made its way up the Mount of Olives is reversed, but the mood is scarcely the less ominous for that.

Then He went to the Mount of Olives, over the brook, Cedron, unto a place called Gethsemane, The Garden of Gethsemane, and saith unto his disciples: "Sit ye here while I go and pray yonder, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful and very heavy. Heavy even unto Death."

And He went a little further and fell on his face and prayed: "Father, O my Father, let this cup pass from me, never the less, not as I will, but as thou wilt."

And He came unto the disciples and finding them asleep, sayeth unto them: " What, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."

He went away again the second time and prayed and being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. And his sweat was as great drops of blood falling down to the ground: "O my Father."

And He came and found them asleep again for their eyes were weary. He left them and prayed a third time: "Father, O my Father, Thy will be done."

And he came unto his disciples still sleeping for sorrow and saith unto them: "Sleep on now and take your rest, the hour is come. Sleep on now, it is enough, the hour is come; the Son of Man is betrayed.

"Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. O my Father."

Gethsemane Fragment

Music for string orchestra has played a significant part in Michael Berkeley's list of compositions. It was his Meditations for String Orchestra that won the composer the Guinness Prize for composition in 1977, and it was that piece and the Concerto for Strings that first brought critical attention to Berkeley's music. More recently Coronach (1988), which is based on a Scottish highland lament, has begun to be widely played, and Gethsemane Fragment (written for the New English Orchestra and first performed by them in 1991) might be seen as its companion piece, both pieces being about eight minutes long and dealing with various aspects of grief.

The commission for Gethsemane Fragment required the composer to take a biblical passage as his starting point and Berkeley recalled how, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ was overwhelmed with sorrow and torment and asked "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

"I chose this passage", he says, "because it seemed to me that at Gethsemane we see Christ at his most human, revealing a frailty that is all the more moving for its being a flash of weakness with which we can all identify. But combined with the the human foreboding is the additional and awful visionary knowledge of what is in store. My piece, while abstract rather than programmatic, simply attempts to capture a brief glimpse of the gnawing and nagging doubts racing through the mind of Christ. One does not, I think, have to be religious to identify with this touching moment."

Grenadier

Grenadier was commissioned by the Housman Society as part of the celebrations for the centenary of the publication of A Shropshire Lad and received its first performance in Ludlow on 20 July 1996 when the singer was Mary Wiegold with members of The Composers' Ensemble. What particularly drew me to this short poem about a young man plucked from daily life to serve and die for the queen for thirteen pence a day, was its sense of melancholic futility. In this, and in its irony, it reminds me all too sadly of Wilfred Owen's most affecting poems and indeed his fate.

I deliberately chose to set the words of 'Grenadier' with a folk-like simplicity while the accompaniment is little more than an incessant drum beat. Thus the instruments used are interchangeable.

Horn Concerto

In 1980 while working together with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the horn player Michael Thompson suggested I write a work for him. The resulting concerto was commissioned by the Cheltenham Festival and first performed there in 1984 by Michael Thompson and the Polish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jerzy Maksymiuk.

For the Scottish première of the work, given almost exactly ten years later by the same conductor and soloist but with the strings of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, I considerably revised the music.

There are two movements which are closely related but while the overall mood of the first is aggressive (it is marked 'Malizioso'), the second is more resigned and poignant (and marked 'Con Melancolio'). Various musical ideas heard only in fragments in the opening movement come more sharply into focus in the second. Through a smoky haze of sound the lachrymose notes of the last post are superimposed on a Bach Chorale from the St Matthew Passion, the juxtaposed melodic line of which is heard at the start and continuously throughout the concerto but only now towards the end does it begin to appear in a recognisable form.

Impromptu

On the morning of 15 July 1983, Julian Bream asked me to a concert and party that evening to celebrate his 50th birthday. Unable to lay my hands on a suitable card or present, I decided to make one - Impromptu was the result. This little vignette which is based on the musical letters in Bream's name (B E and A) was first performed on Radio 3 in 1985 by Anthea Gifford.

Keening

Keening was commissioned by John Harle with funds provided by Greater London Arts. The title comes from the Irish word caoin: to utter the keen for the dead; to wail bitterly. The music continues and develops the atmosphere of my Fierce Tears which was written in memory of the oboist, Janet Craxton. That title was drawn from the Dylan Thomas poem about the loss of a father, Do Not go Gentle Into That Good Night.

Both pieces are concerned not only with the grief and vulnerability experienced over loss but also the sense of rage that often attends it. In many ways the saxophone is an appropriately more explosive instrument than the oboe and having already worked with John Harle, I wanted to write a piece that would make the most of his remarkable gifts and at the same time stretch the instrument to its utmost limits. In the hands of an artist like John, the saxophone can at one moment sound beguilingly fragile and in an instant transform itself into something quite terrifying. So a work that reflected in music one of the most profound and desperate of human conditions seemed to me to set the right kind of challenge to both composer and players.

Laetentur Coeli

Laetentur coeli et exultat terra ante faciem
Domini quoniam venit.

Jubilate Deo
Jubilate Deo omnis terra: servite Domino in laetitia, Jubilate Deo.
Introite in conspectu ejus, in exsultatione.
Jubilate Deo, alleluia. Jubilate Deo.

Beati Mortui
Opera manuum tuarum Domine ne despicias,
Domine audivi vocem de caelo dicentem mihi.
Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur.

Laetentur Ceoli
Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult
before the presence of the Lord:
for he is coming.
(Psalm 95(96):11a & 13b)

Jubilate Deo
Rejoice in God all the earth,
serve the Lord with gladness.
Go into his presence with exultation. Alleluia!
(Psalm 99 (100):1-2)

Beati Mortui
On the works of your hands, Lord,
do not look down.
I heard a voice from heaven, saying to me:
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.
(Antiphon at First Vespers, Office of the Dead, Rev 14:13)

Lament for Guitar

This short Lament was commissioned by Oxford University Press for their second book of Modern Guitar Music published in 1980 and edited by Hector Quine. It was my first attempt at writing for guitar and the music is fairly simple and expressive. The wistful opening phrase in D minor provides the nucleus for everything that follows; a version of the tune in thirds, in the major, in the bass and in running semi-quavers. There is a counter melody with a richer harmonic base but it inevitably gives way to the rondo-like return of the original lament.

Love is Strong as Death

Love is Strong as Death was written as a wedding present for Richard Hickox and Pamela Helen Stephen and first performed at their marriage in Hedsor Parish Church, by Stephen Varcoe with Nicholas Daniel playing the oboe, Simon Standage the violin, and Ian Watson the organ. I subsequently made this arrangement for choir (with optional solos) and organ for a concert in Gloucester Cathedral as part for the 1996 Cheltenham Festival. This time the bride sang the solo part and the groom conducted The Joyful Company of Singers with the cathedral organist, Mark Lee.

The lovely words are from 'The Song of Solomon' and were specifically requested by the dedicatees. The simplicity and brevity of the setting is perhaps partially explained by the fact that the music had to be written between concerts during the last few days of the 1995 Cheltenham Festival.