NEVER MISS AN OXFORD SALE (SIGN UP HERE) |





	Programme Notes S - U


	Search the catalogue

Programme Notes S - U

Secret Garden

Jointly commissioned by Oxford University Press to celebrate the 75th anniversary of its Music Department and by The London Symphony Orchestra, with funds provided by the Arts Council.

Secret Garden opens by depicting the barrier that surrounds it - an impenetrable wall of sound from the brass and wind announced initially on the trumpet. The end of the wall is reached only to reveal the beginning once again. The very solidity and mass of this obstacle is both frustrating and exhilarating. For on the other side lies a magical but dangerous landscape. Touch an exotic piece of foliage and it becomes instantly transformed, rears up to threaten ... or embrace. There is a bitter sweet atmosphere in the garden, a faint suggestion of melancholy. Here is found what has so far only been imagined but delight is tinged with fear, excitement. In one direction lies great stillness and space, in another, frantic movement and momentum. Which direction to take?

Secret Garden is closely related to its immediate forebears - Torque and Velocity for the Takacs Quartet, and Fantastic Mind, a setting of the libertine poet the Earl of Rochester, for reciter and brass quintet. It is too a prelude, a brief glimpse into The Garden of Earthly Delights (very loosely inspired by the Hieronymous Bosch Triptych in Madrid), which the BBC have commissioned for the National Youth Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich. All of these pieces then, explore facets of the imagination, that garden in the mind that so thrills and alarms but, alone amongst the workings of human beings, can never be completely conquered or stolen by another. This in turn seemed an appropriate tribute to the State of Israel (whose birthday I share) where the work is being toured as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations.

Thus Secret Garden, which lasts ten to twelve minutes, ends with a sense of triumph yet to be totally resolved and with an elliptical but organic reference to one of the most striking aspects of the recent and exhilarating partnership between the LSO and Sir Colin Davis.

Severn Crossing

Looking out across the Severn Estuary, I have often been struck by the beautiful but lonely seascape that stretches out to the Bristol Channel. It very much suggested the wistful melody on the flute which opens Severn Crossing and on which the whole piece is based.

Gradually the sounds of construction are heard; just the odd knock at first but then the busy rhythmic pumping and beating of powerful machines. As the crossing nears completion, so the cross rhythms become more pronounced and a familiar Welsh melody is glimpsed amidst the swirling textures.

A defiant reminder of the opening line brings us to the conclusion as the final sections of the span are hammered into place.

Shooting Stars & Slow Dawn

Shooting Stars is a complete re-write of a short piece called Hunt that I wrote for Tim Reynish and Sir John Manduell some ten years ago. I initially thought of calling it 'Dodgems' since it has a feel of the fair ground, of bright lights and of being jostled. Near the end there is even that empty sensation of putting your foot down in a dodgem and finding the power has been momentarily cut off by all the pushing and shoving. I also recall childhood days in the shooting gallery when the targets where placed at the centre of a star. However as I was working on the music I witnessed the brief spark and flash of a shooting star flying across the night sky and, since this short piece for symphonic wind can act as a prelude to the more substantial Slow Dawn, I opted for the ambiguous, though related, title.

Tim Reynish has been asking me to write for Wind Band for a quarter of a century and Slow Dawn, which is dedicated to the memory of his son, William, is, finally, the result. It depicts the gradual appearance of the sun (in the form of the Tuba) as it climbs into the sky. Shafts of light and playful reflections accompany the increasing warmth of day. Although in this hemisphere we have tended to think of, as Wilfred Owen put it, 'the kind old sun', the music of midday in this piece suggests more the savage anger of heat in foreign climes with stabbing beams of light. Though the sun winds down as ever, it is its endless power that informs the music's closing bars.

Speaking Silence

Blow, northern wynd
Echo
And is it night?
The Ragged Wood
Pere du doux repos

These songs were especially written for David Wilson-Johnson, whose voice and artistry I very much admire. Since he sang in the first performance of my oratorio Or Shall We Die?, we have been planning this cycle of songs. The texture and range of the voice suggested to me poetry of yearning and longing and this also allowed me to continue the ideas I had begun in my recent song cycle for Heather Harper with Songs of Awakening Love. However, where Heather's songs were for orchestra and soprano, and dealt with first love, these songs for mezzo-soprano and piano comes at the end of the love cycle. You might say that where Heather's songs belonged to the day, this new cycle has very much the atmosphere of night and indeed, the desire for rest and even oblivion is frequently mentioned.

Speaking Silence - version for mezzo soprano & piano

Speaking Silence was originally written for the baritone David Wilson-Johnson. It continues the theme of yearning and longing explored in Songs of Awakening Love, written for Heather Harper and premiered at the 1986 Cheltenham Festival. But where the latter cycle dealt with first love, Speaking Silence comes at the end of the love cycle. The difference is almost that of day and night, and the poems I chose for Speaking Silence frequently focus on a desire for rest and even oblivion. There is a wide range of poetry ranging from early anonymous verse to the romantic lines of Christina Rosetti and a more recent and muscular poem by WB Yeats. The penultimate song is a setting of the 16th century French poet Pontus de Tyard for unaccompanied voice, suggesting that the sequence of music and words have gradually pared themselves down to a single line. Speaking Silence opens and closes with the anonymous and beautiful Blow, northern wynd.

It was at the suggestion of Julius Drake that I made a version of this cycle for mezzo-soprano, and Alice Coote and Julius gave the first performance of it in this form for the Radio 3 series New Waves on 23 February 1995 at St George's, Brandon Hill.

Speaking Silence - texts

1
Blow, northern wynd
Send thou me my sweeting
Blow, northern wynd
Blow, blow, blow
Anon

2
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Christina Rossetti

3
And is it night? Are they thine eyes that shine:
Are we alone and here and here alone?
May I come near, may I but touch thy shrine?
Is Jealousy asleep, and is he gone?
O Gods, no more, silence my lips with thine,
Lips, kisses, joys, hap, blessings most divine.

O come, my dear, our griefs are turn'd to night,
And night to joys, night blinds pale Envy's eyes,
Silence and sleep prepare us our delight,
O cease we then our woes, our griefs, our cries,
O vanish works, words do but passions move,
O dearest life, joys sweet, O sweetest love. Anon

4
O hurry where by waters among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images-
Would none had ever loved but you and I!

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?-
O that none ever loved but you and I!

O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry-
O my share of the world, O yellow hair!
No one has every loved but you and I. W B Yeats
Used by kind permission of A P Watt Ltd on behalf of Michael B Yeats)

5
Pere du doux repos, Sommeil pere du songe,
Maintenant que la nuit, d'une grande ombre obscure,
Faict à cet air serain humide couverture,
Viens, Sommeil desiré, et dans mes yeux te plonge.

Ton absence, Sommeil, languissamment alonge,
Et me fait plus sentir la peine que j'endure.
Viens, Sommeil, l'assoupir et la rendre moins dure.
Viens abuser mon mal de quelque doux mensonge.

Ja le maet Silence un esquadron conduit
De fantosmes ballans dessous l'aveugle nuiet,
Tu me dedaignes seul qui te suis tant devot!

Viens, Sommeil desiré, m'environner la teste,
Car d'un voeu non menteur un bouquet je t'appreste
De ta chere morelle, et de ton cher pavot.
Pontus de Tyard (1521 - 1603)

Strange Meeting

Strange Meeting was commissioned by Howard Shelley with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain and first performed by him in Berlin in December 1978.

The work takes as its starting point Wilfred Owen's poem of the same name. The first movement was written five years earlier in 1973 and performed by Malcolm Williamson. Howard Shelley's request for a new piece gave me a welcome opportunity to revise the original movement and add two more.

The first depicts the 'strangeness' of the meeting "...Down some profound tunnel", and the second portrays the viciousness of war with violent, jabbing rhythms and this leads directly into a concluding chorale-like movement in which a kind of peace is attained, echoing the closing words of the poem "Let us sleep now..."

String Quartet no.1

String Quartet no.1 was commissioned by the Gerald Finzi 25th Anniversary Celebrations at Ellesmere, 1981, with funds provided by the West Midlands Arts Association, and first performed by the Amici String Quartet. I was looking forward to writing a string quartet for some years, since I find the medium particularly personal and powerful. Having written a String Trio, it also seemed a natural step forward. I did in fact write a string quartet whilst a student at the Royal Academy of Music, but have since destroyed it.

The quartet continues the structural format of the three main works I wrote in 1980, which were all in one movement: the Chamber Symphony (for the Nash Ensemble), Uprising (for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra), and Flames (for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra). In all these pieces, and this quartet, I have tried to weld and balance the separate movements into a complete whole, in an attempt to create unity and continuous grip. Since I was asked if this work could be used as a ballet score at the 1981 Cheltenham Festival, I found myself thinking in terms of physical movement, and this gave me several ideas. The quartet was completed on Good Friday, 1981.

String Quartet no.2

My second string quartet was written during the autumn of 1983, and is in one movement lasting a little over a quarter of an hour. It begins with a cello solo which, with the intervals created by the entries of viola and violins, form the basis of what is to follow.

I found myself at something of a musical crossroads before and during the composition of the quartet, but in the course of writing it, a new direction began to emerge. This utilises a freer, more random use of thematic material, and indeed, the final bars of the quartet dispense with barlines altogether, though the sound is always very carefully controlled. This last passage contrasts sharply with the central section of the work, which is tight and rhythmic. The quartet consists, therefore, of three interrelated and continuous sections.

The quartet was commissioned by the Merlin Music Society with assistance from the Welsh Arts Council. It was first performed by the Gabrieli String Quartet at a Merlin Music Society concert in Monmouth, on 15 January 1984.

String Trio

In 1976 I began studies with Richard Rodney Bennett who had in turn been taught by my father, Lennox Berkeley. It was generally agreed that Lennox was too nice and gentle a person to be of much use to me at this particular point. Whilst I had learnt an enormous amount from him over the years, I now needed the sort of disciplined guidance in technique that is, in most instances I think, very hard for parents to give to their own children.

On day one of my sessions Richard looked at my scores and asked me what I was thinking of writing next. Like many students I suggested an orchestral work. Realising that my problem was not a shortage of ideas but rather the lack of a technique with which to select and develop them, Richard replied that he had in mind a somewhat smaller scaled piece with just one or two lines so that I could not resort to mere gesture - in particular percussion! Not being a complete fool I opted for a Trio (rather than a duo) and over the course of the following months I re-wrote this String Trio eleven times until I could justify the presence of every single note. It was a hard but useful experience and I was mighty relieved to be told that "we will not need to do that again".

Ever since I have had something of a soft spot for this two movement work which is dedicated (with much gratitude) to Richard Rodney Bennett.

A three bar theme introduces the first movement which is deliberately worked almost entirely in step-by-step crotchets. The Allegro that follows is more spiky and angular but has a lyrical central passage in 3/8 which is rather like a speeded up and inverted reference to the slow three in a bar with which the Trio opens.

String Trio - alternative note

The String Trio was the first piece by Michael Berkeley completed after he began working (in 1976) with Richard Rodney Bennett to whom the work is dedicated. It attempts to reach an uncluttered intensity through purity of line. The first movement is based on a slow theme in crotchets with a faster middle section. It is balanced by a quick second movement which, correspondingly, has a more relaxed central passage. This movement also uses the Trio in combinations of duets.

From Three Songs to Children

A Cradle Song
A Child Asleep

One of my earliest compositions to survive 'the bottom drawer' is the Three Songs to Children: short, touching poems by Yeats and de la Mare, which we'll hear this morning, and a third, more ambitious setting of a much more ambitious poem by Wilfred Owen. This last I am still not happy with, but I do rather like the direct simplicity of A Cradle Song and A Child Asleep.

Torque and Velocity

Torque and Velocity is Michael Berkeley's fifth composition for string quartet. It was commissioned by the Cheltenham Music Society (with financial assistance from South West Arts) for the Takács Quartet, which gave it its first performance at the Pittville Pump Room in Cheltenham on 15 October 1997. Berkeley says that it was the Quartet's special qualities of "exhilarating vigour coupled to innate musicianship, as exemplified in their playing of the Bartók quartets, which helped dictate the nature of the piece."

Like Berkeley's previous string quartet, Magnetic Field of 1995, this work is in a single movement; and again it has a title derived from physics - torque being the rotary movement produced within an engine. The composer likens the opening gesture to the flicking of a switch which sets the piece in motion. It then accelerates through the gears, as it were, gradually building up increasing momentum with each change of tempo and texture. The energy thus generated throws off sparks in the form of vocal interjections; and at the climax precise pitches and rhythms are briefly abandoned in passages of freely co-ordinated "manic, sawing glissandi". However, the work's obsessive forward movement is interrupted from time to time by moments of stasis, with quiet, widely spaced chords and expressive fragments of melody. And one such quiet moment occurs at the end of the piece, before the final click of the switch.

Torque and Velocity - alternative note

Torque and Velocity was commissioned by the Cheltenham Music Society for the Takacs Quartet with whom both Cheltenham and I have had a close relationship. Indeed it was very much the special qualities of the group - the exhilarating vigour coupled to an innate musicianship, as exemplified in their playing of the Bartok quartets - which helped dictate the nature of the piece.

Another contributory factor was Magnetic Field, my most recent essay in the quartet medium until this commission.

In that work physics and emotion were, so to speak, joined to propel the music forward; the presence and (just as important) absence of a magnetic force around which everything else revolved.

In Torque and Velocity I have taken that process a stage further. At the outset the flick of a switch sparks off an idea on the cello which, through progressive gearing is soon converted into forward propulsion. As with the incessant drive of powerful machinery there is here an element of dynamic obsession that is at once both exhilarating and dangerous.

This onward rush of sound is contrasted with a sparer, more widely spaced arrangement of the opening notes which are gradually exposed and become ever more simple and vulnerable.

But, like some fiendish Rondo, the rhythmic figure returns developing and heightening the Magnetic images until they are transformed into something quite new.

At the climax of the music there is a passage of frantic, almost uncontrollable swaying and oscillation which leads us back to the notes of the opening and a final click as the current is switched to off.

Touch Light (2005)

The idea of writing a duet for soprano and counter-tenor immediately put me in mind of Monteverdi and Handel but when I looked more closely at the scores, the texts (and music) they employed for rapturous moments can usually be boiled down to a very simple language - a caro mio or mi tesoro. In other words it was going to be hard to find a text or a poem that was sufficiently spare and that would offer opportunities for two voices. So I decided to distil the essence of some of these ecstatic moments into my own words and also employed a variation on the ground bass which lies at the heart of some of my favourite arias and duets - Dido's Lament by Purcell or the final great duet from Poppea by Monteverdi. Touch Light is, then, a homage to these masters of early opera and though originally envisaged with a counter tenor and soprano it is not exclusive to these voices.

"My heart, my breath, my life, my death,
Light so bright I scarcely see,
Touch so light I barely feel
My breath, my life, my heart, my death."

Touch Light was commissioned for the 2005 Tetbury Music Festival to celebrate the marriage of Katie Smith and Jonnie Wake, and first performed by the King's Consort, Lorna Anderson and Robin Blaze, directed by Robert King.

Tristessa

Tristessa, composed for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, was written very much with particular players in mind. One of the great advantages of having an association with an orchestra is that, as a composer, you get to know the particular qualities of various individuals while, correspondingly, the orchestra begins to get a 'feel' for the nature of your musical language. Although there are two soloists in Tristessa, it is not a concerto but rather a tone poem in which a solo Viola and Cor Anglais are the chief protagonists, but where there are also important roles for other instruments, such as the principal clarinet.

The title comes from a pivotal character in Angela Carter's extraordinary and visionary novel "The Passion of new Eve". Carter died prematurely of cancer, thus cutting short one of the most idiosyncratic and distinguished of literary careers. She was a close friend and even wrote a libretto for me for a possible opera on Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Tristessa is a similarly ambivalent creation both philosophically and sexually. The very word, Tristessa, suggests to me the lachrymose melancholy of a John Dowland lament. Angela's writing, however, has that element as well an intense, almost furious energy that I still find very inspiring. So Tristessa is a memorial to Angela. The music is not in any way programmatic but an abstract essay for which the personality of Tristessa is a starting point.

The piece lasts around 20 minutes and constantly returns to the glowing and still chords of the opening. These are marked "luminous" but are almost immediately darkened by plaintive chanting from the soloists who constantly speak with one entwined voice. Indeed the writing overall is quite linear and contrapuntal with the orchestra providing a shifting harmonic landscape. The music becomes more tense and then faster with Cor Anglais and Viola sometimes reflecting on the orchestral passages, sometimes intervening and sometimes leading. There are also absorbed and transmogrified references to other works of mine that have a similar motivation, most notably Entertaining Master Punch, itself an offshoot of my first opera, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and the memorial elegy to Benjamin Britten that is the last movement of my Oboe Concerto.

The apex of the score comes two thirds of the way through and is followed by a cadenza-like passage for the soloists but once again the sustaining of the line is more important than any overt show of virtuosity. An impassioned climax leads to a last recollection of the opening chords, irrevocably tainted now by the Cor Anglais and Viola finally arriving at, and sadly resigned to, their final destination.