Programme Notes N - S

Nine Romantics

The nine Romantics are actually three musical 'characters' but each subsequently perceived also in the other's guise - ie A as B and C, B as A and C, C as B and A. In order of appearance their qualities are (A) dramatic and volatile virtuoso-pianistic (and pseudo-operatic) gesture; (B) monody-based on Hebrew liturgical chant - and designed as a tribute to the Victorian painter Simeon Solomon; (C) quietly ruminative polyphony in a chromatic style derived from Tristan and Isolde by Wagner (a tribute is intended here, too). B then appears transformed into C, A into B, C into A, and so on.

In a way, these characters are designed to symbolize (A) the operahouse world of larger-than-life emotion, with its explosive mixtures of fantasy and brutality, (B) the persecuted, 'minority' artist: Jew and openly homosexual, dying in poverty and squalor, (C) the epitome of progressive 'on-the-edge' commitment to an (aesthetic or spiritual) ideal, reaching out to the future.

The piece, which plays continuously for about 25 minutes, was composed for Rolf Hind and commissioned by him.

© Michael Finnissy 1992
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Not Afraid

"They rose again, not afraid to...forget."

Text compiled by the composer from historic sources - newspapers, journals, eye-witness accounts, etc - with the generous assistance of the Jewish Museum in Finchley. Pianist:

1. August. Nineteen thirty-six. Sir Oswald Mosley announces a fascist campaign for October the fourth. A petition of protest, signed by one-hundred thousand people, is taken by the mayors of the nine East London boroughs to Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary - but the government refuse to ban the march. Use Mosley to disrupt and discredit the Jews. Set community against community. Encourage diversions from the real issues: Poverty and Unemployment. They try to pass, in "mind-forged manacles."

2. In the Spanish Civil War the slogan 'No Pasaran' defended Madrid. 'No Pasaran' - They shall not pass. The march was to start at Royal Mint Street, pass up Leman Street, eastwards into Whitechapel Road, pass northwards from Cambridge Heath Road to a rally at Victoria Park in Bethnall Green. Pass by - don't look!

3. Eternal 'Merrie England', the false ideal - tinkle of hammer on village anvil, ploughteam appearing over the brow of the hill - the green belovèd country now turned to sweatshop and slum; the decadent, degenerate playground of investment-brokers: servicing those great gentlemen who hold the destiny of civilization in waxy hands. "Hurray for the Blackshirts, " proclaims the Daily Mail - "a riot of appalling folly" - George Orwell calls 'The Thirties'. Lord Nuffield gives fifty-thousand pounds to support the British Union of Fascists. They pass unseen and unrecognised.

4. October the fourth. Nineteen thirty-six. Crowds assemble early, even though the Jewish Chronicle advised Jews to stay at home, keep their windows closed, not be involved. Blackshirts paraded in Royal Mint Street, having photographs taken. About one o'clock six or seven trams come along Commercial Street, and four or five along Commercial Road - spread right across Gardiners Corner, forming a barricade - the drivers wave to the crowd and walk away. About a quarter-to-two three bus loads of police come down Commercial Road, some of the police give the Nazi salute and start shouting "Jew bastards" from their buses. Police then attempt to force a way through for Mosley, but the crowds are too tightly packed. Mounted police arrive. At three o'clock they tell Mosley it's not possible to take the planned route, that the only way is along Cable Street. Cable Street - in those days leading off the docks, running about a mile and a half. Narrow. Full of ship's chandlers, little sheds, tenements. Phil Piratin, Tubby Rosen, Wolfy Millee and others, ran ahead to build a blockade, open the sheds, pull out old lorries, turn them on their sides. Not afraid. The women stood ready at tenement windows. Not afraid. It was a three-and-a-half hour battle. Authorities taken aback at the strength of resistance: can't keep turning the other cheek, must take a stand. Not afraid. Charlie Goodman - they just lashed out at him and his head was split open. They brought a girl to the police-station, carrying stones in her blouse. They tore the blouse off, yelled "Jewish whore!" - She said "I'm not afraid of you." The mounted police had long whips. Women threw marbles under the horses' hooves. Not afraid. Some police had their hands up in surrender. Statements were made to the Press: "Brutality - Injustice." Three months hard labour for causing 'grievous bodily harm.' They rose again to deceive and deny. They rose again with blessings to mock and pour scorn. They rose again, not afraid to maim, and kill, and forget. Not afraid.

Singer:

Adonai melech Adonai malach, Adonai yimloch l'olam vaed. Lord you reign, Lord you have reigned, Lord you will reign forever.

Adonai oz l'a-a mo yitayn, Adonai yevarech et am'o vashalom. Lord give strength to your people, Lord bless your people with peace.
[Psalm 29.v.11]

Obrecht Motetten I-V

The Obrecht Motets is a series of five works using material derived from the motets "Salve Regina" and "Ave regina caelorum" by the Netherlands composer Jacobus Obrecht. The pieces, in form and by design, do not imitate or reproduce Obrecht's style of composition. Fragments of the original melodic material, and the plainsong on which it is, in turn, based - are cyclically varied and permutated.

The first Motet was written for the Dutch ensemble 'Delta' and is scored for flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin, viola, and cello.

The second Motet, commissioned by the Penna Trio, is for mandolin, guitar and harp.

The third Motet is for viola solo and an ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, two violins, cello, and double bass.

The fourth Motet is a brass quintet, first performed by the Fine Arts Brass Ensemble.

The fifth, the last in the series, was written for De Volharding's tenth anniversary celebrations. It is for flute plus piccolo, 3 soprano saxophones, horn, 3 trumpets, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, double bass, and piano.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday was commissioned by the BBC as part of a choral project celebrating the millennium. I have subsequently revised it for the vocal ensemble 'Exaudi' taking the material from half of what was originally a double-choir texture and re-writing it for instruments (these parts have a fixed entry-point but are not otherwise aligned in any strict way). The text superimposes documentary Gospel (John and Matthew in Vulgate Latin) onto Henry Vaughan's introspective and poetic account of Christ's palm-strewn entry into Jerusalem. The choral material is derived from Bruckner's 'Vexilla Regis' (the catholic chant appropriate to Palm Sunday), melting it down and re-shaping it. The piece is dedicated to Jeanice Brooks and Mark Everist.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Plain Harmony

Plain Harmony was commissioned by COMA for their 1993 residential summer course, and first performed on 3rd September that year at Wortley Hall, just outside Sheffield. The title indicates where I concentrated my energies in writing the piece, and also reflects my interest in those collections of psalm- and hymn-tunes gathered together in 18th and 19th century America, the works of William Billings for example, which bear titles like 'The Suffolk Harmony' and 'The Continental Harmony'. Although I didn't appropriate Billings' music literally (as I have elsewhere) I have parodied the 'plainness' of his harmonies (lacking sevenths or chromaticism). I have also piled up the chords in a very un-19th century way, almost suggesting two or more choirs of voices travelling in different musical directions, the kind of thing Charles Ives also does (and with similar source material). It is not entirely true that the piece is only (or plainly) about 'harmony'. In general I think harmonic interest is generated by overlaying several (separate) LINES, or from a resultant 'resonance' situated within a line. The progress, through time, of these collusions of lines being variously tense or relaxed, dissonant or consonant. I can't get all that excited about 'chords' in themselves, I'm more interested in where they're going, or where they seem to have come from. The notion of harmonic 'functionality' is also rather fascinating, particularly the issue of relative contemporary awareness of it, or of 'understanding' its highly developed (perhaps now obsolete) codes and covert aesthetic obligations.

This version of the piece is 'open' in its orchestration, freely available to any collection of instruments, and - in my mind - the more heterogeneous and unconventional the timbral mix the better. There is a later version for string quartet, and I'm contemplating one for piano-duet, both homogeneous in soundscape. This version has four sections, each with a different density of texture (8-part, 4-part, 6 'floating' soli over a sustained drone of two notes, and 12-part). The sections bear the following indications (i) Lustily, as in hymn-singing (very full-toned and sustained) (ii) Quietly, rather sentimental (iii) Lyrical, spontaneous and individualistic, a sort of dawn-chorus, each voice for itself (iv) Unhurried, with strength and passion.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Pour les Agréments

It would be, I think, misleading to understand 'agréments' simply as 'ornaments' - 'amplifications', 'adjustments of focus' or 'harmonic strengthenings' might be (technically) more appropriate. I have extended the notion to encompass a larger-scale dialectic involving elements either concordant or discordant with Debussy's original text: a commentary running parallel to, and including, it - and referring to Barraqué, Satie, Wagner, Schumann and François Couperin (an exact retrograde of the Double of 'Le Rossignol en amour' from his fourteenth Ordre concludes the piece).

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Red Earth

When, by plane, I first crossed the central desert lands of Australia, they seemed to bear a closer resemblance than any other landscape I'd seen to the human body. Their textures and colours were those of blood and flesh. This piece is, at least in part, a celebration of that landscape, that vision, but one which remained five years or so in my head before being committed to paper. The shock of the vision itself is still fresh in my mind, and I don't think I could have dealt immediately with the constellation of reactions to it very coherently - it needed time and distance to deepen and clarify.

There is a soil, red-ochre in colour when moistoned, that aboriginal Australians use as a body paint in ritual ceremonies. In homage to, but not as an imitation or parody of, their culture, the general character of this piece could be described as primitive, ritual chant: perhaps a roll-call of totem animals, a murmured invocation, a strident but stylized lament - or maybe all of these things. The title Red Earth was chosen for the richness of symbolic associations that it called forth: "Red" for blood or fire, the colour of the planet Mars, the colour of the sun on the horizon as it rises or sets, and so on.

The piece is dedicated to Barrie Gavin.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Same as we

Same as we is a 'scena', a 'theatrical monologue', rather than a 'song'. Although the words neither specify the character or location, nor provide a 'coherent narrative', it is intended that the piece be both dramatic and, albeit in a generalised way, illustrative. The music (as distinct from the original text) is antiphonal - an unseen (offstage? interior? distant?) voice addresses a woman whose voice is the same as her interlocutor. Perhaps it is her younger-self (her memory?) or maybe it is her contemporary (her conscience?). The emotions and topics are wide-ranging - belonging to almost anybody: though possibly limited by the melodic-style (intentionally reminiscent of Gaelic folksong), and by the inference of poverty (and even suffering) in the words, though this should all seem mediated by warmth and generosity, and a philosophical acceptance of mankind's fate.

The singer is to pre-record the music marked 'Tape' in a spacious and resonant (even slightly 'swimmy') acoustic.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Selected Movements Of Great Masters

The 'great masters' are here caught off guard, wrongly interpreted, inappropriately harmonised and re-composed, anachronistically juxtaposed - they meet in conversation, go off to ruminate on their own or discuss with each other. Inadvertant physical actions, usually overlooked and ignored, are randomly inserted into the musical discourse. The piece reflects on everyday occurences - realism of sorts - rather than a portentous and inflated 'exceptional event'.

The musical source material is drawn from Paul Steinitz's One Hundred Tunes for Harmonization, the actions are from nursery-rhymes and the works of Shakespeare (a great literary master with both a sense of humour and healthy profanity). The title is stolen from a delightful volume of harmonium pieces edited by J S Anderson, Selected Movements of Great Masters. The work, commissioned by the Delta Saxophone Quartet and premièred on 30 November 1996, is dedicated to Richard Steinitz in thanks for his exceptionally generous support and championship at many Huddersfield Festivals.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Seterjentens Fridag

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Seven Sacred Motets

The cycle of Seven Sacred Motets date from 1991-92, and are dedicated to Philip Adams. The odd-numbered ones are medieval hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary (the first to a text by the Venerable Bede - lines from "Adesto, Christe, vocibus", the last by Hildegard of Bingen - lines from "O Virga ac diadema"), while the even-numbered ones relate to her life according to the gospels of St Luke and St John.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Stabant autem iuxta crucem from Seven Sacred Motets

Stabant autem iuxta crucem is the sixth in the cycle of Seven Sacred Motets written in 1991-92 and dedicated to Philip Adams. These Latin-settings alternate medieval hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary with texts about her life taken from the gospels of St. Luke and St. John. Stabant autem iuxta crucem is a setting of John 19 and the score is marked "Simply, without dramatising".

Text:
There stood beside the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Cleophas' wife, and Mary Magdalene.

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved standing there, he said to his mother: Woman, behold your son.

Then he said to the disciple: Behold your mother.

And from that hour on the disciple took her into his home.

Silver Morning

The things that interest me about A E Housman's poetry are (i) his attempts to dramatise and coyly conceal evidence of homosexuality (ii) the notion that a beautiful, but quite unreal, Arcadia provides a refuge from, or alternative to, the all too real and terrifyingly de-humanised and hostile cities. Both continue as currents in British thinking (not only to poets). The ambiguities are such that Housman has been popularly taken as a sort of advertisement, and once praised, as a sort of advertisement for ye olde (evidently dishonest and short-sighted) England. I have endeavoured to make this piece a 'critique' of Housman: neither an adulatory nostalgic slobbering over, nor emphatic endorsement of his verse, indeed regarding "the author merely as a peg to hang things on" as Housman himself fulminated in a letter to Grant Richards. His words (and their vocal setting) become part of a musical world which is not seeking to re-inforce their meaning, but to question it - and, indeed, confront and even displace it.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Texts of Silver Morning by A E Housman

Last Poems

XXIII
In the morning, in the morning,
In the happy field of hay,
Oh they looked at one another
By the light of day.

In the blue and silver morning
On the haycock as they lay,
Oh they looked at one another
And they looked away.

A Shropshire Lad

XLI
In my shire, if I was sad,
Homely comforters I had:
The earth, because my heart was sore,
Sorrowed for the son she bore;
And standing hills, long to remain,
Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year:
Whether in the woodland brown
I heard the beechnut rustle down,
And saw the purple crocus pale
Flower about the autumn dale;
Or littering far fields of May
Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
And like a skylit water stood
The bluebells in the azured wood.

Yonder, lightening other loads,
The seasons range the country roads,
But here in London streets I ken
No such helpmates, only men;
and these are not in plight to bear,
If they would, another's care.
They have enough as 'tis: I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;
And till they drop they needs must still
Look at you and wish you ill.

Last Poems

XXXVI - Revolution

West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
Day's beamy banner up the cast is borne,
Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal,
Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.

But over the sea and continent from sight
Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed
The vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,
Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.

See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,
The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.
'Tis silent, and the subterranean dark
Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb.

Speak Its Name!

Question: What does this piece mean? To paraphrase Dylan Thomas' answer: It is what it means.

Less economically - in imagining Speak its Name! (during almost two freewheeling years) and in capturing and exploring it with pen on paper (during three or four months of continuous intensive desk-work) I tried to bring some kind of order out of some kind of chaos - if I could have done the same thing with four hundred words, or a chat in the bar, I would have - but I could not do the same thing: music has to be listened to on its own terms (mysterious, indivisible), words cannot be a substitute, reliable guide or key.

However, the illustration of 'emergent order' is not chosen at random: in the first couple of minutes most of the material is smudged and unclear, too tangled to clearly decipher; the next five minutes polarise, clarify and supplement - one hundred fragments of folktunes from all over the world appear: divided among the flutes, oboes, cellos, and doublebasses. Short (3-second long) re-workings of the initial material emerge on the violins and violas, hymns and chorales appear on the vibraphones. So far the music has flowed continuously, albeit diverse and densely packed. The second section strives to re-articulate what has gone before (history!), changing this and substituting that, but falling into silence, testing options and gaining a certain textural simplicity, but failing to achieve a meaningful continuity. The third section is a continuous melody - the folksong fragments have joined together, references to earlier moments are now merely shadows or momentary fissures across this dominant vocalisation.

The title of this piece refers to a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas - written at a time when hypocrisy and taboo had criminalised homosexuality. The poem refers to 'love' (not to 'sex') - thereby being, quite possibly, even more problematic and controversial: admitting and tentatively embracing elevated emotions and human feelings: rather than being a polemic for the fulfilment of base carnal desire. It is, though, safely and typically elegiac. I have opted for a more positive, unashamed, stance: an imperitive rather than an apology.

© Michael Finnissy 1996
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Strauss Waltzer

The three Strauss Waltzes (Where the Lemon-trees Bloom; O Beautiful May; Tales from the Vienna Woods) were originally part of a longer set of '23 Poems/Fantasies' written, for the most part, between 1960 and 1968. At that time I was accompanying ballet-classes, to pay my way through sixth-form and college, and these pieces reflect (to a certain extent) 'balletic' idioms - and (more specifically) my enthusiasm for the virtuosic transcriptions of Strauss by Tausig and Godowsky. However, these are not straightforward 'transcriptions', the original sequences have been chopped-up into tiny fragments, and then re-ordered - rather in the manner of the re-ordered angles and perspectives of cubist and futuristic painting...harmonic and melodic patterns recognisable from Strauss' original, appear out-of-sequence and with no fear of the consequent tonal instability. The intention is to evoke the spirit and sensual elevation of a Strauss waltz, and clearly not to try and reproduce (or fake) one.

The waltzes have subsequently been re-copied, and re-dedicated to Jonathan Powell, Nic Hodges and Ben Morison, who gave them their respective first performances.

© Michael Finnissy
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

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