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The Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival (27th February–1st March) celebrates its 10th anniversary at the end of February. The theme this year, is 'Biomusic'. Professor Eduardo Miranda, Professor in Computer Music at Plymouth University, explains:
'We are witnessing a shift of paradigm in computer science as scientists are looking to building new kinds of computers: biocomputers. Machines that combine silicone processors made with microbiological organisms. We are interested…in developing new musical systems based on biocomputers.'
His new piece, Biocomputer Music, for piano and biocomputer – possibly the first work of its type – can be heard on the last day of the festival. In a similar vein, on 28th February, the gala concert will feature three new works, each inspired in different ways inspired by nature and biology: Alex Kirke's Orchestral Processing Unit, Anandi Sala Casanova's The Hidden Sea and Linas Baltas's DNA. There are is also a film, installations and a symposium (registration required) exploring the festival theme. More information and an interesting video exploring the programme is available on the festival website.
Also on Wergo (see my previous post) is Japanese composer Keiko Harada's recent disk, F-fragments featuring solo piano, accordion and duet of the same. F-Fragments, the work that lends the disk its name is a movingly austere meditation on the events surrounding the Fukushima disaster in 2012. It is followed by Book I, a virtuoso work for solo accordion that brings to mind the Ligeti Etudes or Berio Sequenzas and Nach Bach, for solo piano, a meditation on the Well-Tempered Clavier. The musical language is commendably pure, if a little austere.
Other recent Wergo releases (not, as yet, Spotifyable) include: Mark Andre's …auf…, a sequence of three orchestral pieces that 'search for new resonances and means for transitions between sounds'; works by Ukranian composer Valentin Silvestrov; a complete box set of Hans Werner Henze's 10 Symphonies played by Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin; and John Cage's so-called 'Number Pieces' One7 and Four6 in versions for piano.
On ECM records, Souvenance is a selection of works from oud player and composer Anouar Brahem. I've only heard the preview track January, available on YouTube, but it's pretty clear that the key word here is cross-over, with his style mixing up elements of European classical and popular cultures with music from his native Tunisia. The two-disc recording is available later this month.
On Naxos, yet another rerelease from the old Maxwell Davies, Collins Classics back catalogue, this time his ballet Caroline Mathilde with bonus works Chat Moss and Ojai Festival Overture. Also on the label is Chinese composer Gan-Ru's Shanghai Reminiscences, which explores his childhood and the Chinese cultural revolution; and Jack Gallagher's Symphony No. 2.
Adriana Hölszky: Wie ein gläsernes Meer, mit Feuer gemischt. Works for Organ. Wergo WER 67892.
There are some fine recent disks on the German label Wergo. If you are not familiar with their work I urge you to have a rummage around their website, especially as many of their recordings are available on Spotify.
Adriana Hölszky's disk Wie in gläsernes Meer, mit Feuer gemischt, for example, is a meaty sonic spectacular. It's astonishing the number of unusual sounds she coaxes out of the organ. As a non-specialist it is not always possible to be sure which extended technique she uses when, though one suspects half-open stops, unmixed mixtures, turning the blower on and off to detune and retune and certainly plenty of deliciously dense clusters.
In Und ich sah wie in gläsernes Meer mit Feuer gemisch, [And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire] and Efeu und Lichtfeld [Ivy and Field of Light] furthermore, she uses percussion ingeniously to colour of the organ line, feeling, as it were, like just another drawn stop. The latter work also features a solo violin. We are told that it and organ 'appear to exist independently of one another', but the effect is just as much febrile conversation, with sudden bursts of energy sparking between the two. In the four moment Und wieder Dunkel, the percussion takes on an independent role, lending a brooding intensity of its own.
The musical language everywhere is challenging and it will certainly not be immediately apparent what underlying forces give these works their coherence. That they all unfold with an impressive, near apocalyptic inevitability is, however, undeniable. And the delicious palette of sounds that form the surface means that boredom is an impossibility.
The recorded sound is appropriately ample yet intimate enough to catch the the solo violin with clarity. Performances are superb.
I don't know about you, but I'm always relieved when the Christmas season comes to an end. The Christmas tree, such an attractive sight at the beginning of December, is, by now, dropping needles everywhere; the rich meals and endless chocolates are starting to pall; and, fun though it was, I've now had quite enough of the saccharine yuletide soundtrack. Bah humbug.
It's now time to cast our clear-thinking, January eyes forward to see what 2015 will bring. Quite a bit as it turns out: Boulez's 90th birthday celebrations, including a Total Immersion Day at the Barbican; Tansy Davies's operatic debut Between Worlds in April; the New York Philharmonic's CONTACT! series including new music from Italy, Nordic countries, Japan and Israel; and any number of festivals and other events.
Here's then is my little preview of 2015. It is not, of course, comprehensive; I will update CT's own concert diary month by month as the year progresses, so do swing by every now and again for updates.
For now, I wish you a very Happy New Year!
10th Scanner New work & Naama Zisser Drowned in C (world premières). London Sinfonietta. Kings Place Hall One, London.
17th Hear and Now: Hans Abrahamsen. String Quartet No.1, Double Concerto (UK Premiere). BBCSSO. City Halls, Glasgow. London Sinfonietta. Kings Place Hall One, London.
21st James Dillon Stabat Mater Dolorosa (London première). London Sinfonietta. Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
26th–30th FOCUS! 2015: Nippon Gendai Ongaku, Japanese Music Since 1945. The Juilliard School, NYC.
28th Composer Portrait: Thierry Escaich. BBNOW. Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff.
31st Total Immersion Percussion, with a selection of works by various living composers. Four events in total. Barbican, London.
9th CONTACT!: New Music from Israel. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic. Lincoln Centre, NYC.
12th Concert of vocal music by James MacMilan, including two UK premières. Barbican, London.
12th–14th Birtwistle Responses: Of sweet disorder and the carefully careless
(U.S. première). BSO. Boston Symphony Hall Boston MA.
14th–15th Lachenmann's Tableau, with Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle. Barbican, London.
25th Tokaido Road: A Journey after Hiroshige. London premiere of Nicola Lefanu's acclaimed opera. Milton Court Theatre.
25th Composer Portrait: B Tommy Andersson. BBNOW explore a selection of B Tommy Andersson's works, as part of his role as Composer-in-Association. Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff.
27th Georg Friedrich Haas Open Spaces (UK premiere), Mica Levi New work (world premiere). London Sinfonietta. Purcell Room, London.
27th-1st March Peninsular Arts Contemporary Music Festival.
28th Manfred Trojahn Herbstmusik/Sinfonischer Satz (UK Premiere) and Vito �uraj Hawk-eye (horn concerto) (UK Premiere). BBCSSO. City Halls, Glasgow.
7th CONTACT!: New Music from Nordic Countries. NYPhil. Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
8th Unsuk Chin Alice in Wonderland. Multimedia staging by Netia Jones (UK Premiere). Barbican, London.
12th–14th Thomas Adès Totentanz (U.S. première). New York Philharmonic
Avery Fisher Hall.
20th Molly Joyce, world première and other works by Monk, Balter, Adams and Dennehy. Present Music. Turner Hall Ballroom, Milwaukee.
21st Total Immersion: Boulez at 90. A number of events celebrating the work of the French composer. Barbican, London.
21st–29th Lucerne Festival at Easter
26th–28th John Adams Scheherazade.2 – Dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra (world première). Avery Fisher Hall, NYC.
28th Michael Gandolfi New work for organ and orchestra (world première). BSO. Boston Symphony Hall - Boston, MA.
Also in May (details tbc):
LONDON EAR festival of contemporary music. Currently showing the 2014 programme.
1st Composition: Wales - Culmination Concert. Composers worthy of wider exposure have the opportunity to hear their works performed by BBCNOW.
5th James MacMillan St Luke's Passion (London première). Barbican, London.
11th-25th Between Worlds. Operatic debut from composer Tansy Davies, who collaborates with director Deborah Warner and librettist Nick Drake on this world premiere. ENO, London.
14th Jake Heggie Camille Claudel: Into the Fire for string quartet (European première). Barbican, London.
17th Esa-Peka Salonen Nyx (UK première) with NY Philharmonic. Barbican, London.
17th David Matthews Symphony No.8 (World première): BBC Philharmonic. Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.
18th Music by five living composers. Musicians of the NY Philharmonic. Barbican, London.
22nd, 24th, 25th Georg Friedrich Haas String Quartet No 2
Atthis (UK premiere). Royal Opera House, London.
24th Christopher Rouse Prospero's Rooms (UK premiere). BBCSO. Barbican, London.
24th Richard Ayres' In the Alps. Turner Hall Ballroom, Milwaukee. Present Music.
28th Ensemble Intercontemporain: Boulez at 90. Barbican, London.
8th–24th Norfolk and Norwich Festival.
11th CONTACT!: New Music from Italy. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic. SubCulture, NYC.
12th-23rd Vale of Glamorgan Festival.
15th–25th Bath International Music Festival.
16th–25th July Peter Pan Richard Ayres. Richard Ayres and Lavinia Greenlaw's new opera Peter Pan receives its UK première in a new production by Keith Warner.
19th Seán Doherty New work (world première). Part of the Making Music's Adopt a Composer programme. Barbican, London.
25th–30th Northern Chords Festival.
Also in may (details tbc)
Prague Spring International Music Festival. Currently showing the 2014 programme.
The English Music Festival 2015 programme should appear today.
St. Davids Cathedral Festival
York Spring Festival of New Music
5th CONTACT!: New Music from Japan. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic. Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, NYC.
6th Nico Muhly Sentences (world première). Nico Muhly's new exploration of the life and ideas of Alan Turing. Barbican, London.
12th–27th Harrison Birtwistle The Corridor & The Cure (world première). Music theatre double bill. London Sinfonietta. Various Venues.
12th-28th Aldeburgh Festival.
12th–28th Gregynog Festival (in France)
19th-24th St Magnus International Festival. Orkney Islands, Scotland. Programme not yet available.
Other June festivals (dates tbc):
Zeit für Neue Musik
Munich Opera Festival Nationaltheater and other venues in Munich.
3rd-–16th Soundscape. Maccagno, Italian Alps.
5th Jonathan Dove The Monster in the Maze: a new opera for children (UK premiere). LSO, Simon Rattle. Barbican, London.
10th–26th Buxton Festival. A marriage of opera, books and music, including some by contemporary composers.
17th-12th/9th BBC Proms. Programme not currently available, but there will be guaranteed premières aplenty. 2015 season accounted on 23rd April. Royal Albert Hall, London.
18th–30th/8th Salzburg Festival
Other July festivals (dates tbc):
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. Various venues, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
Tête à Tête Opera Festival. Described as 'our most imaginative opera laboratory', the festival focuses entirely on new music.
'Aix en Provence Festival. Some information available here. As yet, no contemporary music has been announced, but this might change.
3rd–15th High Score Festival. Contemporary music festival and classes. Pavia, Italy.
7th–31st Edinburgh International Festival. Programme not yet available, but there is usually a good selection of new music.
27th–1st/9th Presteigne Festival. Artistic innovation, musical discovery and, of course, new works in the Welsh Marches. Presteigne, Powys.
10th–19th Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.
4th–9th/10th Beethovenfest, Bonn.
Also in September (date tbc):
Warsaw International Festival of Contemporary Music. Still showing 2014 programme. Warsaw, Poland.
Dates not yet available:
Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea de Tres Cantos. Contemporary music festival in Madrid, Spain.
Sound. North East Scotland's Festival of New Music. Various venues.
Wien Modern. Festival that focuses on contemporary music. Still showing 2014 programme. Vienna, Austria.
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Lucerne Festival at the Piano.
A morality tale with apologies to Mahler and Charles Dickens. Merry Christmas to all CT members!
Mahler was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by his agent, the conductor, his understudy and the chief mourner. Scrooge would have signed it too had he been there, for Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Mahler, just as Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and Bach before him, was as dead as a door-nail. The last in a noble line.
Oh! But he was a choosy man as a listener, Scrooge: melody, tonality, species counterpoint and classical forms! Hard and sharp as flint, with a distain for anything that defied the old norms. The excitement of discovery had little influence on him. No melody without tonic, no rhythm without pulse, no harmony without concord. The bitter wind of change blew and he resisted with scornful word and condescending look. But what did Scrooge care? He knew what he liked.
Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Scrooge sat busy in his house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.
'A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!' cried a cheerful voice from the front door. It was Scrooge's nephew, who, on being let in, presented his uncle with a small wrapped package.
'I have a present for you. Open it!'
Reluctantly, Scrooge took the packet and unwrapped it.
'Bah!' said Scrooge, 'Humbug!' he said.
'Stravinsky a humbug, uncle!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'You don't mean that, I am sure?'
'I do,' said Scrooge. "'Stravinsky! All noise I tell you!'
'Come,' returned the nephew gaily. 'I promise you, it is not even difficult Stravinsky: these works were written before the death of your beloved Mahler.'
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, 'Bah!' again; and followed it up with 'Humbug.'
'Don't be cross, uncle!' said the nephew.
'What else can I be,' returned the uncle, 'when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Stravinsky! You invite me to your concerts of modern Music and you insult me with this present! Every idiot who goes listening to this nonsense should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
'Uncle!' pleaded the nephew.
'Nephew!' returned the uncle sternly, 'keep to your own Music, and let me keep to mine.'
'I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!'
'Good afternoon!' said Scrooge.
'And A Happy New Year!'
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding.
Left in peace, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his tie; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his supper. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing.The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
'It's humbug!' said Scrooge. 'I won't believe it.'
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, 'I know him; Mahler's Ghost!' and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Mahler with his swept-back hair, severe woollen suit, bow-tie and wire-frame glasses. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
'How now.' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. 'What do you want with me?'
'Much. I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping your fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer. You will be haunted by Three Spirits.'
'Without their visits,' said the Ghost, 'you cannot hope to shun the narrow Musical path you tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!'
The following night Scrooge lay in his bed when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.
'Ding, dong!'
'A quarter past,' said Scrooge, counting.
'Half-past!' said Scrooge.
'A quarter to it,' said Scrooge.
'The hour itself,' said Scrooge triumphantly, 'and nothing else!'
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor.
It was a strange portly figure with a white wig. It wore a long navy coat, white knee breeches and socks and buckled black shoes. In one of its delicate jabot and lace cuffed hands it held a piece of brown parchment.
'Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?' asked Scrooge.
'I am.'
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
'Who, and what are you?' Scrooge demanded.
'I am the Ghost of Music Past.'
'What do you want of me?'
'Rise! and walk with me!'
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
'I am mortal,' Scrooge remonstrated, 'and liable to fall.'
'Bear but a touch of my hand there,' said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, 'and you shall be upheld in more than this!'
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall and stood in the chancel of a large church. Scrooge's house had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The bulky walls of the building were broken by small arched windows, which let in so little light that it took Scrooge's eyes a moment to adjust. A choir of monks was rehearsing in the gloom.
'Good Heavens!' said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. 'Who are these people?'
'These are but shadows of people that have been,' said the Ghost. 'They have no consciousness of us. Watch and listen'
The strange sounds filled the building. Scrooge was perplexed.
'What is this Music? It is beautiful in its way,' he said.
'You sound uncertain,' said the Spirit.
'I don't know, it sounds…' Scrooge struggled to find the right word.
'It is organum.' said the Spirit.
'What is that?' asked Scrooge, who had the feeling that a trick had been played upon him.
'A type of Music common at this time. You only need to know that it is different.'
'I cannot see how that concerns me,' said Scrooge.
'You stand here at the very source of all you love. It concerns you a great deal.'
Before Scrooge could reply the Spirit had taken his hand. He led him down the chancel steps before motioning him to turn back towards the high altar.
To Scrooge's astonishment the scene had changed: he now found himself in lavish courtly surroundings. There was a smaller group of singers and an informal audience of eminent personages in various positions of elegant repose. The men sported pointed beards and wide moustaches and wore close-fitting doublets, hose and breeches. Of the women, Scrooge's eye was drawn to one more splendid than the rest. She sat apart with a pearl headdress, ruff, a finely embroidered blue doublet with a high neckline and matching skirts.
'Who is that?' asked Scrooge.
'That is Margherita of Austria, bride of Philip III of Spain.'
'And where are we?'
'Mantua' replied the Spirit.
Scrooge listened to the singers and quickly found himself engrossed. The beauty of the voices, the finely wrought counterpoint and, above all, the agonising and exquisite harmonies. Tears came to his eyes.
'You are emotional,' said the Spirit.
'I cannot help it, this Music, it…'
Scrooge's search for a superlative was interrupted by the sound of a chair scraping on the floor. One of the audience had sprung angrily to his feet and was walking noisily from the room.
'Disgraceful!' cried a scandalised Scrooge. 'Who would interrupt such beautiful Music.'
'A man who, perhaps, found these harmonies a little trying.'
'Trying! I cannot believe it!'
'Believe it you must. That man is Giovanni Maria Artusi. He will soon be writing a book called The Imperfections of Modern Music.'
Scrooge was incredulous. 'Imperfections? I cannot imagine a Music more perfect' He would have continued but his eye was caught by a member of the small choir, a man in his thirties, who looked as enraged as the man who had stormed out.
'Who is that?'
'He is Claudio Monteverdi.'
'Of course!' cried Scrooge, 'He is the composer. I am not surprised he is angry.'
'The path of the modern composer is never easy…'
The Spirit looked pleased with himself. Scrooge was beginning to guess the game.
'You show me these visions to what end?'
'That tastes change,' replied the Spirit 'and Music progresses. You found the open harmonies of the organum dull compared to the Music you prefer. Imagine if those monks had been listening to this Monteverdi madrigal. How might they have reacted when even Monteverdi's contemporaries found it shocking?'
Scrooge thought for a moment. 'You make a good argument Spirit. I can see that what you say is true but how can I change the Music I like? Modern Music is so difficult, so complicated.'
'All will become clear'
Seeing that the ghost looked upon him with disdain, Scrooge became angry.
'Why do you mock me?' he exclaimed. 'Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
He was suddenly conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, then, of being in his own bedroom. He had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.
Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, Scrooge found his bed the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour of one; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at. At last, however, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. He was looking at a schoolroom, more specifically a Music room. There was a piano and stereo system and several rough lines of chairs. On each was seated a fidgeting and excited child. As well as a large whiteboard, the walls were adorned with posters of composers: a plump and contented looking Bach, a dishevelled Beethoven, a hugely foreheaded Berlioz. There were also some other figures – Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Shostakovich – and also many others he had never heard of.
'I am the Ghost of Music Present,' said the Spirit.
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
'Spirit,' said Scrooge submissively, 'conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.'
'From these children shall ye learn!'
Another figure, a young man, was now in the room. He was putting a CD into the stereo system.
'Remember' he said 'when you close your eyes to think of the Musical elements: tempo, texture, timbre, dynamics, duration, pitch and pulse. But, also, I want to know what you feel.'
Half-expecting some Mozart or Beethoven – something, he thought condescendingly, that would challenge these young minds – Scrooge was stupefied to hear a score of astonishing complexity and dissonance.
He recognised the opening words, Kyrie Eleison. But this was no cheerful Mozart Mass setting; it was a terrible and awesome wall of sound.
'Where is the melody? Where is the harmony? I cannot make sense of this,' opined Scrooge.
'Your ears are dulled by the familiar. You must learn to listen anew.'
After a few minutes the teacher faded the Music out.
'Who wants to tell me something about this piece. What about the dynamics?' he asked.
Twenty hands shot up, twenty posteriors bounced on chairs.
Child 1: 'Started quietly sir and got louder!'
'As simple as that?'
Child 2: 'No sir. It got quieter again at the end.'
'And the texture?'
Child 3: 'It started thin, there wasn't much going on, but then there was more and more.'
'Ok, good, so how would you describe the things going on? What about the duration of the notes?'
Child 4: 'Lots of very fast short notes, all at the same time!'
'Anything else?'
Child 2 again (smart aleck): 'No, there were some long notes every now and again'
'What about the timbre of the notes? What instruments could you hear?'
Child 5: 'Well, mostly the quick bits were with singing, but the long notes were played by instruments.'
'And the pitch? Did anyone notice what happened at the end?'
Child 6: 'It got higher'
Child 7: 'Yes, but that stopped at the end leaving lower sounds underneath'
The teacher took out a pen and drew three shapes on the whiteboard: a rectangle, a wedge shape starting with the widest section and gradually tapering off to a point and a wedge that did the exact reverse.'
'If you had to choose one of these shapes to describe the Music, which would it be? Who votes for the first?'
One hand, quickly withdrawn. Disgusted looks from the others.
'The second?'
Not a single hand.
'The third?'
Every hand shot up.
Child 2 (again!): 'But maybe you should also put a little shape at the end to show it getting quiet.'
'Quite right too!' said the young man, well content. 'And what did you think of the Music? Did you like it?'
Chorus of children: 'Yes! It was spooky! Scary! Sounded a bit spacey! To infinity and beyond!'
The Ghost turned to Scrooge. 'Do you still think modern Music is too complicated to understand?' he asked.
Scrooge felt hot with embarrassment. 'No,' he answered simply.
'You listen to Music expecting certain things, especially you expect tonal harmony and melody. As soon as these things are absent you switch off your ears and close your mind. Children have no such preconceptions. They listen without prejudice and so hear without limit.'
'How then can I free my mind?'
'I have one more thing to show you'
The Ghost took Scrooge's hand and suddenly found himself high in the air and moving with great speed. It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a bright, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability.
'Ha, ha!' laughed Scrooge's nephew. 'Ha, ha, ha!'
'He said that modern Music was a humbug, as I live!' cried Scrooge's nephew. 'He believed it too!'
'More shame for him, Fred!' said Scrooge's niece, indignantly.
'He's a comical old fellow,' said Scrooge's nephew, 'that's the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.'
'I have no patience with him,' observed Scrooge's niece.
'Oh, I have!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'I am sorry for him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. He takes it into his head to dislike anything written after Mahler. What's the consequence? He misses a whole world of Music.'
'But perhaps', said one of his friends, 'your old Scrooge is right. Why shouldn't he listen to what he likes?'
'My good man, you entirely miss the point. He is like a child who refuses new foods. I do not object to him listening to what he likes, but I object most strongly to him not trying new things.'
'But your analogy does not work,' his friend protested, 'one can avoid the taste of new food by the simple act of refusing to put it in one's mouth. That is childish indeed. Music is everywhere. He cannot fail to have heard some New Music so, even though he avoids it, his opinion is based on real data.'
'Ah, but how many of us talk about "the acquired taste" when we talk about those marvellous flavours that we eschew as children. We have to work to acquire them. Once cultivated, life becomes rich indeed.'
'Life without the great classical composers before Mahler is not rich enough?'
'Simply not as rich as it could be. How can it be when you consider the enormous variety of Music written since that time? Actually, given that there is such a variety, he has even less excuse not to listen to it'
'What can you mean?'
'Some of our most eminent living composers do not pose a stylistic challenge in the way that he perceives it. Our first reaction when listening to Glass, Adams or Reich is not to bemoan the astringency of the harmonies and the impossible intricacies of the serial method. I am saying that, even given his current tastes, there are marvellous pieces he could listen to today without any great effort. He simply needs to be more inquisitive.'
'But that is still an admission that he will never get to grips with more challenging fare'
'What I refer to is a gradual opening of the mind. Of course if one begins with Boulez or Birtwistle, there is a possibility that a listener will perceive all the Music of our time as being difficult and stop listening. That is why I tried to give him some early Stravinsky today. The same composer who wrote the Requiem Canticles at the end of his life also wrote Fireworks and Firebird at the beginning. This is a microcosm of Music of our time; there is a multiplicity of styles. If you find some of it bewildering that is not an excuse not to listen, but to find something else, and perhaps try that which bewildered you again later.'
'Anyway,' said Scrooge's nephew, becoming cheerful again, 'at least his oddities provide with us with good conversation, so it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, "Uncle Scrooge!"'
'Uncle Scrooge!' they cried.
'A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is.' said Scrooge's nephew. 'He wouldn't take his present from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!'
Scrooge was so gay and light of heart, to hear his health so heartily drunk. Neither had the lesson been wasted upon him:
'I do believe that my nephew is right. Perhaps there is something to be gained by being a little more adventurous in my listening habits. I will look into it when I have a moment.'
'You feel no urgency?'
'Is there any?' asked Scrooge.
'Very much so.'
The whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by the Spirit; and he and Scrooge were again upon their travels. It had been a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until, as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
'Are spirits' lives so short?' asked Scrooge.
'My life upon this globe, is very brief,' replied the Ghost. 'It ends tonight.'
'Tonight!' cried Scrooge.
'Tonight at midnight. Hark! It is already time.'
The chimes were ringing twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Mahler, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
'I am in the presence of Music Yet To Come?' said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
'You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,' Scrooge pursued. 'Is that so, Spirit?'
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it.
'Ghost of the Future!' he exclaimed, 'I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear your company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?'
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.
A churchyard. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite.
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
'Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,' said Scrooge, 'answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?'
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
'Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,' said Scrooge. 'But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!'
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave the Spirit's own name:
Music Yet to Come
'It cannot be!' he cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to the Phantom himself, and back again.
'No, Spirit! Oh no, no!'
The finger still was there.
'Spirit!' he cried, tight clutching at its robe, 'hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if it is beyond all hope?'
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
'Good Spirit,' he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: 'I understand. Finally, I understand. I have always loved and honoured Music. I have fawned and doted upon composers, but never once have I stopped to listen to the Music of my time. I never realised that there was such variety and richness, that I already possess the faculties for comprehending it, if only I tried to be a little more adventurous.'
'I will not let Music die. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!'
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
'I will not let Music die!' Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. 'The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh, Gustav Mahler! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Gustav, on my knees!'
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
Scrooge was better than his word. He listened. Oh how he listened! Berg, Boulez, Benjamin; Messiaen, Murail, MacMillan; Stravinsky, Simpson, Saunders. The modern classics and the classics in the making. He bought tickets to concerts and evangelised. The occasional piece he did not like he did not cast aside, granting instead that, perhaps, he had not fully understood it or that a second or third listening might be required. He did not forget the old composers. In fact, his knowledge of the repertoire helped him better understand the Music of his own time.
Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew his Music, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, God bless Us, Every One!
Most record labels are taking a break this month, new releases being few and far between. Not so on Naxos, of course. If you haven't been able to get tickets for Joby Talbot's Alice in Wonderland (now sold out), you might consider the deluxe DVD recording with the Royal Ballet. Though I think this has been available elsewhere for a while, it popping up on Naxos this month feels timely. It is also an accessible score that would make a good Christmas present for those not necessarily attracted to new music.
There is a new Alun Hoddinott disk containing a cross-section of his song cycles and folk songs written between 1975 to 2006 performed by Claire Booth (soprano), Nicky Spence (tenor), Jeremy Huw Williams (bass) and Andrew Matthews-Owen (piano). The Maxwell Davies rereleases continue with The Beltane Fire, The Turn of the Tide, Sunday Morning, Threnody on a Plainsong for Michael Vyner and Sir Charles his Pavan with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by the composer. Another senior British composer, John McCabe, is represented by an album exploring his triple life as conductor, pianist and conductor. It contains his Symphony No. 1, Fantasy on a Theme of Liszt, Two Piano Studies and Tuning. Chris Paul Harman's new disk uses a variety of keyboard and percussion instruments as the medium for exploring works by J.S. Bach and Robert Schumann. Barcelona-born Leonardo Balada's new album, finally, contains his Symphony No. 6 Symphony of Sorrows, Concerto for 3 Cellos and Orchestra and Steel Symphony.
I remember the death of Karajan in 1989 as something that I read about in newspapers without really understanding the hysteria that had surrounded him in life. He already seemed a figure from another age, far removed from my own burgeoning musical tastes, which centred round period instrument recordings and contemporary music. I certainly remember the aversion I felt when seeing CD covers that featured his name in grander lettering than the composers I revered. For a while Karajan even became a kind of shorthand for the opposite of the kind of recording I favoured: 'Are you buying a recording of Bach's Cello Suites?','Yes [sarcastically], I was thinking of getting Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic.'
I have since bought a few Karajan recordings: Mahler, Bruckner and even some Schoenberg, but my youthful prejudices about the conductor never completely vanished. BBC4's new documentary, Karajan's Magic and Myth went some way towards dispelling them. The famous megalomania was as disagreeable as ever. His insistence that the camera remain on him in his films, his refusal to acknowledge applause in smaller venues when on tour with the Philharmonia, his childish attitude that, when ill, the Berliners should not play for a different conductor. His membership of the Nazi party during the war was also distasteful, though perhaps less so than his refusal to come to terms with it afterwards, even hinting that he too had been the target of persecution.
Artistry should always be judged separately from biography, however. In this sphere the film was justifiably more sympathetic. His rehearsing of the European Community Youth Orchestra in the opening of the second movement of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, in particular, was brilliant. It was astonishing how many valid musical points he extracted from these few phrases, most revealingly around the unexpected change of chord that occurs at the end of the third bar. It was also interesting to hear some of his recordings exhibit the lightness and virtuosity that marked him as rather closer to the period instrument aesthetic than I had otherwise thought. Not surprising, perhaps, given that Karajan himself was much influenced by the sprightly conducting of Toscanini. The film also showed that some of the tricks that Karajan played on his performers were made for sound musical reasons. On one occasion, when Jessye Norman had meticulously warmed up for her practice session of the Liebestod from Tristan, Karajan made her sit in silence at the front of the orchestra, listening to them rehearse. As she acknowledged herself, and was evident in the footage that followed, this paid dividends when she was eventually called upon to sing; having absorbed the sound of the orchestra she was better able to find her place within the texture.
There were, inevitably, some gaps in an otherwise excellent film. Of course, I would have liked some more information about Karajan's dealings with contemporary music. Whilst he could hardly be called a great supporter he did conduct his fair share. He also had interesting things to say on the subject. He was once asked if Boulez and Webern would eventually be understood by concertgoers. His open-minded (though rather simplistic) response was: 'I am quite certain that the next generation will have no problem in understanding most of the music of today. Think of the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra. Twenty years ago it was considered inaccessible; today it is a classic. Think of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. When we perform it today, it sounds like a concerto grosso of Handel. With the decline of melodic inspiration in music, the serial techniques of today are a necessary self-imposed discipline for the composer…' It would have been nice to have known more about this aspect of Karajan's musicianship.
Neither did the film completely get to the bottom of why Karajan was the way he was. Other conductors have proved that greatness is not synonymous with self-obsession and a tyrannical approach. So it was not simply a means to a noble musical end. It is probably a question that will never be answered since there is such a lack of first-hand witnesses – Karajan had few friends and certainly none within the Berlin Philharmonic. One player remarked that, during his thirty year tenure, he only had one conversation with him. One senses that this was all part of Karajan's master plan. In order to reinforce his status he chose to distance himself from others. This, no doubt, feeds the myth – the paucity of facts fuelling speculation – but it also leaves him a rather sad and lonely figure.
BBC4's Karajan's Magic and Myth is available on BBC iPlayer until Friday 12th December.
Some time ago I wrote about the problem of where a composer should live. Large Western cities probably make most sense. London, Paris, Berlin, New York and the like have a thriving cultural life that is appealing to artists. They are also, however, impossibly expensive to live in. For me, furthermore, I find city life unattractive: the traffic, the crowds, the often depressing urban architecture. I also like to be a bit more adventurous in my travel habits.
For almost five months I have been living in Antigua, Guatemala, something I rather hope you haven't noticed if you have been reading my blog posts. Before Guatemala I went to Mexico for a couple of weeks to discuss a possible writing project with a colleague. After this I headed south. I initially planned to spend around two months in Guatemala, returning at the beginning of September. It didn't work out like that and, instead, I had to drag myself away at the end of November.
Until very recently I would never have believed I could visit such a place for so long and, here's the thing, still support myself. It dawned upon me one day that, since most of my musical work takes place over the internet, I could do it from any point in the globe. Becoming a 'digital nomad' is a fairly common lifestyle choice these days. Less so, however, for musicians. And musician or not, traveling to a developing country was something of a risk – I had no idea what the infrastructure would be like and feared I might end up having to get straight back on the plane to search for a decent connection.
Things didn't bode well when I arrived. Apart from being violently ill and having to chase a large cockroach around my bedroom the first night, the place where I was supposed to be staying for the first month had no web connection at all. I soon learned that the internet was down in the whole of Antigua. This would cause apoplexy in most Western towns. In Guatemala it resulted in shrugged shoulders and the advice that I should be patient.
It did, in fact, return after several days, but the quality was horrible. This was, however, more to do with a bad set-up where I was staying rather than the standard of telecommunications as a whole. I was eventually saved by the extraordinary, better than first world, quality of Guatemala's 3G phone network. Phone tethering is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I was able to use my unlocked phone with a local sim card and, at a price that was bearable if not exactly cheap, had a decent internet connection. It even passed the Netflix streaming video test. Eventually I shifted to a USB dongle sold by one of the local carriers, which was even better since it also allowed me to access the 4G network.
My complete system is shown in the photo that heads this article. It consists of a Macbook Pro, small midi keyboard, iPad (essentially used as a replacement for printing stuff out), my ageing iPhone 4, an external hard drive and, also visible, the 3/4G dongle. With this mobile office I was able, quite easily, to write these blogs, conduct interviews, write musical arrangements and complete a commission for a Christmas carol. It was also liberating being free from a wired internet connection; I could take my laptop anywhere, even to the middle of a field, and continue to work. In fact, as I write this I am on a bus from Querétaro in Mexico to the airport, having rounded off my time in Guatemala with another visit to my friends here.
There are pro and cons to this kind of lifestyle if you've ever considered it, especially if you are a composer:
• Nothing inspires like travelling; you expose yourself to so many new experiences. I've collected a fair few ideas for pieces, even if the Christmas carol I wrote could hardly be called Guatemalan.
• If you earn money over the internet in pounds, dollars or euros, when you convert that into a currency like the Guatemalan quetzal, you are going to have a lot more spending power. I eventually rented a house for four months. It was probably the most expensive part of the country and cost me less than £300 per month. That included a cleaner.
• You certainly appreciate how little you need. I've got a garage full of possessions at home. I didn't miss a single thing. With an iPad, Netflix, BBC iPlayer and a VPN account you can feel at home anywhere. Not that that's entirely the point. You need to mix with the natives too.
• The sheer freedom that you feel. There is something wildly exotic about working in an unusual location, even if that means on a bus or at an airport.
• There's no doubt it is isolating. Guatemala has no contemporary music scene that I could discern (unlike Mexico, for example). I couldn't see it as a permanent way of living. Sooner or later you need to come back to renew your contacts. And, with the best will in the world, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to composers who are always in the right place at the right time.
• Of course not everyone can just up-sticks. If you have a family or other commitments things are rather more complicated.
• If you are squeamish about things going wrong – medically, travel-wise or in terms of being a target for criminals – then maybe it's not for you. Having said that, I find that disasters lead to the most interesting experiences. I once had my camper van broken into on a three-month tour of Spain. My laptop was stolen and there was quite a bit of damage to the vehicle. This, however, set off a chain of events that led to me making friends with a lovely family in the Basque country, one of the richest and rewarding cultural experiences I've had.
• If you're contemplating trying to remain as a composer and move around very frequently, e.g. as a backpacker, I think this would be very difficult. My attitude is to go somewhere interesting but stay there for a long time. 'Slow travel' as they say. That way you can live normally, exploring your surroundings at a leisurely pace.
Despite my reservations, composing and long-term travel can work. If you have ever thought of doing the same and have the means, the opportunity and, in my case, a very understanding boss then you should forget your fear and go for it. It has been one of the most extraordinarily rewarding periods of my life. After a suitable pause I shall be heading out again. I haven't even returned and I am dreaming of exotic new destinations.
This is normally when I moan about December, the month without contemporary music. This year, however, there are quite a few things going on.
Chief amongst these is Spitalfields Music's Winter Festival, which runs from 5th–16th December. Specifically contemporary music events can be viewed here. Highlights include a late-night performance of Tavener's Lament for Jerusalem on 11th; a programme of new works by Jerzy Kornowicz, Carl Bergstrom-Nielsen, Regin Petersen and Aleksandra Gryka that all use visual scores on 12th; the London première of Gérard Pesson's Bitume and world première of Sam Hayden's Transience given by Quatuour Diotima on 14th; and a new work by Edward Wickham and Christopher Fox that also incorporates music by Isaac, JS Bach and Webern on 15th. Throughout the festival there is a sound installation by Gawain Hewitt that will be taking place simultaneously in London and Dhaka, Bangladesh, transforming the sounds of the cities into music.
Perhaps reflecting the time of year, there is also plenty of more accessible contemporary music on offer. On 11th December the LSO dedicates an evening to the music of film composer Alexandre Desplat, including from the films Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The King's Speech, Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Grand Budapest Hotel. There are two adaptations of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland on offer. Joby Talbot's rather wonderful version at Covent Garden and a newer one by Helen Woods, which will run from 17th–20th, at St. David's Hall, Cardiff. On 20th December in Brighton, pianist Johan de Cock, will present a recital of Christmas works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Bartók, Liszt and Tchaikovsky as well as original compositions by Frederick Stocken, Stephan Beneking, and Trevor du Buisson. The London Concert Orchestra will also be touring popular film music scores by John Williams, with venues including the Barbican on 27th and Symphony Hall, Birmingham on 28th.
There's a good sprinkling of more challenging fare too. ENO's staging of John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, begins on 21st November but runs until 5th of the following month. At Wigmore Hall there are works by Michael Berkeley and Patrick John Jones; Mark-Anthony Turnage and Peter Maxwell Davies; and Pēteris Vasks on 3rd, 4th and 9th respectively. The UK première of James St. Luke Passion takes place at Birmingham Symphony Hall on 4th with the CBSO Symphony Orchestra, Choir and Youth Chorus, conducted by the composer. On 5th the London Sinfonietta celebrate the 80th birthday of Harrison Birtwistle with The Message for trumpet, clarinet and side drum and two new additions to his duet series (world premières). The composer will also be present to talk about his work. On 10th the London Sinfonietta also present five new film and music works by emerging composers at the British Film Institute.
Outside the UK, on 1st December Ensemble Kontrapunke will play perform works by Wolfgang Seierl, Tanja Brüggemann-Stepien, Ming Wang, Friedrich Cerha and Roman Pawollek at the Musikverein on 1st. At the Concertgebouw on 8th Twan Huys, Lavinia Meijer and Arthur Theunissen perform works by Philip Glass and Nico Muhly; on 12th there is music by Ives, Debussy, Dutilleux and Messiaen as well as the Netherlands première of Brewaeys' Zesde Symphonie. In the States there is a once-only performance of Tobias Picker's Fantastic Mr. Fox with Odyssey Opera, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Boston Children's Chorus at Jordan Hall, Boston on 7th. Meanwhile Jessica Meyer's 50 minute solo show Sounds of Being, which consists of her pieces for viola and electronics, comes to NYC's Cell Theatre on 15th.
This month marks the release of NMC's Next Wave disk, now available for preorder. Next Wave is a joint project with Sound and Music that has commissioned new pieces from 12 young UK composers studying in higher education. The works will be performed at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on 27th November, where a panel chaired by SaM Chief Executive Susanna Eastburn will also discuss ways composers can record and distribute their work. You can learn more about each of the composers featured on the Next Wave disk at the NMC blog.
DG's Max Richter Berlin by Overnight with remixes by CFCF, Efdemin, Lorna Dune and Tom Adams is a sad sign of the label's attitude to contemporary music. I've got nothing against Max Richter, having enjoyed, for example, his imaginative reinterpretation of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The cynical side of me, however, can see how his music is attractive to such an profit-aware label as DG. It is stylistically unchallenging, easy listening contemporary music. In some ways, that's fine by me – marketable music doesn't make it bad music. I draw the line, however, at taking one of the slightest of Richter's compositions, his one-and-a-half minute solo violin piece Berlin by Overnight, and making it the subject of four much longer reinterpretations, or, as we are forced to call them these days, 'remixes'. You would barely be aware from listening to these reinterpretations that they are by four different people; we are treated to the same ragbag of effects in every one of them: an underlying perpetuum mobile drawn from the original piece, no harmonic movement whatever, piling on of futile counterpoints and the addition of dance beats. It is an exercise in pointlessness that left me depressed and angry.
On a more positive note, Bridge Records has just released Poul Ruders' Nightshade Trilogy, a work that was written over 17 years and, in the composer's words, 'a collection of compositions that evoke for me an almost Gothic association with pale moonlight, tombstones [,] crypts and the elusive shadows deep inside an ancient forest at the deep of night'. Ruders is a composer of pluralistic range, quite capable of writing exuberantly accessible music, as, for example, in his Concerto in Pieces – a kind of homage to Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Here, however, there is little by way of stylistic compromise. The result is compellingly: there is an ever-present sense of structural integrity, harmonic connectedness and textural control, the music itself darkly and luxuriously broods or works its way into episodes of terrifying violence. The contrast with the aforementioned album is stark indeed.
There are three interesting new chamber music disks worth considering on Nimbus: John Psathas's Corybas and other works played by the New Zealand Chamber soloists; Christopher Wright's Four String Quartets played by the Fejes Quartet; and Augusa Read Thomas's Music for Strings, a selection of her works performed entirely by young musicians. There are two very welcome releases on their Lyrita label: the first consists of cello concertos by John Joubert, Robert Simpson and Christopher Wright played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales; the second of seven works by Geoffrey Bush with the Northern Chamber Orchestra and cellist Raphael Wallfisch. There is also an album of twelve improvisations by pianist Geoff Eales.
Ukranian music features strongly on Naxos. There is the release, over three disks, of all five symphonies by Boris Lyatoshinsky, a figure often considered to be the father of contemporary Ukrainian music. There is also the opportunity to trace his influence on the subsequent generation in a new album of music by Yevehen Stankovych, consisting of symphonies 1, 2 and 4. From the US, finally, Can You Hear God Crying? by Hannibal Lukumbe is a 'spritatorio' that explores the themes surrounding African slavery through the combination of jazz, gospel and chamber music.
Christian Morris talks to Marina Khorhova, an up-and-coming Russian composer known for her interest in advanced compositional techniques.
Tell us something about your background.
I was born in Russia but have been in Europe since 2008, first in Switzerland and from 2009 in Germany. In 2008 I received a scholarship from the Paul Sacher Foundation to work on Helmut Lachenman, hence my move to Switzerland. Then I won a DAAD scholarship and moved to Germany, where I studies in the MHS Stuttgart as a composer in the soloist class for 3½ years. It was an important change that had a strong impact on several aspects of my work.
How did you start composing?
When I was seven I started to compose some short songs, even attempting to write them down. While studying in college as a pianist (1996-2000) I often freely improvised at the piano, though often I found it difficult to crystalize my ideas in notation. At the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory from 2000 to 2005 and later as an aspirant composer and doctoral candidate of music theory I began to work more professionally and regularly on my compositions.
What was your first success as a composer?
In 2002 I won a competition between composers from Moscow and Paris Conservatory. My piece Music for Seven Instruments was brilliantly performed in 2002 by Parisian musicians at the festival Quinte et Plus. It was led by Hadady Laszlo, a fantastic oboist from Ensemble Intercontemporain.
>>Click here to read the full interview
I mentioned Wien Modern in my last concert roundup, though it barely qualified to be included, since most of its concerts fall in November. If you are lucky enough to be in Vienna from the end of October I urge you to take a look at the festival website. There's much on offer: 12 concerts that include music from composer-in-residence Georg Friedrich Haas, world premières aplenty, symposiums and films. There are up to five events per day, so there is the opportunity to immerse yourself in the festivities or, alternatively, pick and choose.
There always seems to be a music festival at Lucerne and in November it is the turn of Lucerne Festival at the Piano. Whilst there is a wide range of core repertoire on offer, especially Beethoven, contemporary music does not, sadly, get much of a look in. Two of the pianists play their own works: Vestard Shimkus his Dreamscapes Nine Etudes for Piano on 26th and Marc-André Hamelin his Variations on a Theme of Paganini on 30th. There is also an offstage Jazz festival at various hotels in Lucerne from 25th – 30th.
In the UK, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, runs from 21st – 30th November. This year's composer in residence is James Dillon, with two major premières: Stabat Mater Dolorosa for the London Sinfonietta and BBC Singers and Physis I & II on Saturday 29 November played by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. There will be a 40th anniversary tribute to the Arditti Quartet, celebrated with the world première of a new work for them by Marco Stroppa, and the opening concert will mark the 80th birthday of Christian Wolff, which will include his works 37 Haiku, For Six or Seven Players and the UK première of Trust. There are also new works from Larry Goves, Alexander Schubert and Pedro Álvarez.
Away from the festival scene there are some noteworthy premières in November. Sally Beamish's Equal Voices, based on poetry by Andrew Motion, receives its first performance at the Barbican on 2nd; there are world premières of four audio-visual collaborations given by Ensemble Matisse at Kings Place, Kings Cross on 3rd; the UK première of Alexander Goehr's …between the Lines on 8th; Miriam Mackie's new work reflecting life in the last war Still in this World on 9th; Michael Finnissy's Remembrance Day, a major new work for baritone, choir and orchestra on wartime texts by Henry Lamont Simpson on 16th; and the chance to hear eight works for obbligato instrument and ensemble by talented teenage composers as part of a BBC SO Inspire project at Maida Vale on 23rd. Two opera events also not to be missed: the world stage première of John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary with performances from 21st November until 5th December; and Music Theatre Wales's tour of Philip Glass's The Trial, with performances in Oxford, Basingstoke, Cardiff, Mold and Birmingham.
Quite a range – stylistically, I mean – in October's CD offerings. On NMC there are new disks by Charlotte Bray and Helen Grime, among the most gifted younger-generation composers in the UK right now. I mentioned Grime's disk in the last roundup, but it has now been fully released and is available on Spotify as well as all the normal places. Bray's disk, which takes its name from her 2012 BBC Proms commission At the Speed of Stillness, will be released on 20th October. The sound worlds of the two composers are not dissimilar: modernist in outlook but with a nod to tonal procedures; bright, trebly textures.
For a complete contrast, head over to Signum Records and have a look at Will Todd's new disk: Lux et Veritas. Todd's music is unabashedly tonal, his most obvious model being that of John Rutter. Some will find it a little saccharine, but it is well-crafted and illustrates a more general point: that whatever 'old' classical music you are attracted to, there is a contemporary composer that you will probably enjoy too. There are 14 works in all, drawn together by the sentiments expressed in the disk's title. Nigel Short conducts the English Chamber Orchestra and Tenebrae with James Sherlock on the organ and piano.
Two stalwarts whose styles need no introduction: Colin Matthews and Maxwell Davies. Matthews' powerful work No Man's Land, 'a dialogue between two dead soldiers whose corpses are strung up on the barbed wire of no man's land' lends its name to the title of a new disk on Nimbus Records. It is accompanied by Aftertones (1999-2000), a half-hour setting for choir, soprano solo and orchestra of words by Edmund Blunden; and Crossing the Alps, an unpublished work for seven-part choir and organ. Maxwell Davies's Symphony No. 10 Alla ricera Borromini, much of which was written whilst recovering in hospital from serious illness, is now available through Hyperion with the LSO conducted by Antonio Pappano.
On Naxos there are two new disks in the Canadian Classics series. The first consists of neglected works for cello and piano by Jean Coulthard, John Weinzweig, Alberto Guerrero, Violet Archer and Jean Coulthard; the second of chamber works for strings by Jacques Hetu. The Villiers Quartet have released the world première recording of Robert Still's String Quartets 1–4. These works cover a wide range of his evolving composition style, including later dalliances with atonality, and would therefore be a good starting place to get to know this neglected British twentieth century figure. Also on Naxos is Portuguese composer Antonio Pinho Vargas' Requiem paired with his 2002 choral-orchestral work Judas.
David Ellis' new album on Divine Arts, finally, contains his concert works Diversions, September Threnody, Celebration and Solus, recorded at different times by various Manchester orchestras. His music is described as 'the best tradition of modern-approachable-impressionistic, post-Romantic if one needs a label'. There is a short extract on the website for you to make up your own mind.
Spotify Links (where available):
Hallé – Helen Grime: Night Songs
Tenebrae – Will Todd: Lux Et Veritas - Music for Peace and Reflection
London Symphony Orchestra – Sir Peter Maxwell Davies: Symphony No. 10
Halle Choir – Colin Matthews: No Man's Land
For those in the UK, Sound and Music have just published a couple of Embedded opportunities, the deadlines for both being fairly close (15th and 21st October). Embedded is the organisation's artist development programme and has, over the last few years, helped many composers to launch successful careers.
The first is an opportunity for two composers to spend a year in residence at club inégales with the Institute of Composing. A flavour of what the club is about can be found here.The chosen composers will contribute to the running of club inégales, curate their own events with the house ensemble and compose for and direct the ensemble in a work or works of their own.
The second is a c.18 month residency with Hampshire Music Service, again open to two composers. This will give the successful applicants the opportunity to devise and deliver creative music-making with schools and a range of groups within the remit of the service.
With both opportunities there will be expenses for travel and accommodation, a bursary of £2,000 and a budget for developing work.
For more than one hundred other opportunities from round the world, don't forget to visit the Composition, Jobs and Opportunities page on C:T. Full access requires a subscription.
Though especially associated with early music, I cannot let today pass without lamenting the loss of Christopher Hogwood, one of our finest conductors.
For me he was the man who taught me the difference between a good and a bad performance. Specifically, I remember, at a fairly tender age, returning a recording of Mozart's C Minor Mass to a shop because the cassette had a nasty click on it. I had to stump up some extra cash for a different version, which, if I'm honest, I bought because I liked the cover. It was Hogwood's electric performance with Winchester Cathedral Choir, a superlative cast of soloists and the Academy of Ancient Music. It didn't sound to me like the same piece. It was so alive. This awoke in me both a sense of discernment between interpretations of the same work and also a passion for historically informed performance in general. In this passion, he was always the first conductor I sought out.
His association with early music wasn't, however, the complete picture; he was a great supporter of contemporary music too. This extended both to commissions – by composers such as John Tavener, David Bedford and John Woolrich – and to innovative programming of more established twentieth century repertoire: Tippett with Corelli, Schoenberg and Handel, Webern with Bach. Not the tokenism which one too often feels when the obligatory modern work is sandwiched between Mozart and Beethoven, but a real passion to draw connections, to educate and demystify.
Bass and frequent collaborator David Thomas described his artistic philosophy yesterday: 'He always said I want the music to speak for itself because it can, it's good enough, it will'. None of the hubris of the conductor as interpreter, just an honest desire to reveal the composer's deepest intentions. What composer, contemporary or otherwise, could want more?
If you are in Scotland today and are suffering from post referendum exhaustion you can cheer yourself up with the thought of the imminent arrival of Sound, Scotland's festival of new music, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary. The festival theme – new approaches to traditional music – will look at new ways of writing for traditional instruments and new collaborative works. As well as music from Turkey, Argentina, Norway and France, there will be a commission from Scottish folk musician/composer Alasdair Roberts and electroacoustic composer Ross Whyte. There will also be a joint project between Sound and partner festival, Musiques Démesurées, from Aberdeen's twinned city Clermont-Ferrand. Sound have jointly commissioned two new works from one Scottish and one French composer for the joint forces of Clermont-Ferrand's Orchestre d'Auvergne and Scotland's Red Note Ensemble. There will also be late night concerts, workshops, events aimed at families as well as a promenade discovery concert, the aim being to encourage the exporation of new works.
In London there will be a celebration of the life and work of John Tavener with a BBC SO Total Immersion Day at the Barbican on 5th. There are two films: at 11am the 1992 documentary Glimpses of Paradise includes footage of the young Tavener as pianist and organist, performances of his music, and contributions from those who knew him; at 15:00 there will be a showing of the 1997 Melvyn Bragg South Bank Show profile. The latter will be followed by a roundtable expert discussion on the impact and legacy of the composer's music. There are three concerts that provide a good cross section of his output: chamber music at 13:00, consisting of works for solo piano, solo cello and The Last Sleep of the Virgin for string quartet and handbells; vocal music at 17:30, including The Lamb, Song for Athene and Missa Brevis; and larger-scale works, including The Protecting Veil and Akhmatova Requiem.
The Swansea Festival marks the Dylan Thomas 100th birthday celebrations with the Welsh première of New York composer John Corigliano's A Dylan Thomas Trilogy on 11th. On the same night there will also be the rare chance to hear Richard Elfyn Jones's Brangwyn Hall Festival Overture for organ and orchestra, which was originally commissioned by the festival in 1984. The final concert, on 18th, will also feature the world première of another another Dylan Thomas homage, Karl Jenkins' Llareggub. There will be the chance to hear the composer in conversation an hour before the concert begins.
If your in or near Venice tomorrow the 58th Biennale runs for two days this month – 20th and 21st – and then from 3rd to 12th October. Highlights include a tribute to Steve Reich with the Orchestra del Teatro Petruzzelli of Bari directed by Jonathan Stockhammer on the two September dates. The October portion continues with the theme of music that is far removed in time and space: the Eco Ensemble of Berkeley with the music of the Bay Area; the Orquesta Sinfonica de Euskadi with Basque tradition and modernity; the Meitar Ensemble of Tel Aviv; the Violinat e Lapardhase polyphonic choir in the Albanian tradition; and Anatolian music reinterpreted in the ethno-cultural improvisations of the Galata Electroacoustic Orchestra. There will be 13 world premières, by composers Eduard Hamel, Amir Shpilman, Daniele Ghisi, Ondrej Adámek, Ofer Pelz, Silvia Borzelli, Aaron Einbond, Giovanni Dario Manzini, Yotam Haber, Dai Fujikura, John MacCallum, Oscar Bianchi, and Stefano Bulfon.
Wien Modern only just qualifies for this roundup, beginning on 29th October. George Friedrich Hass is this year's guest composer. The opening concert will feature his Concerto Grosso No. 2 for chamber orchestra, forming the prelude to a series other events featuring his music. Also featuring during a number of concerts in the festival is the work of Reinhard Fuchs, this winner of the Erste Bank Composing Prize. The world premiere of his work «MANIA» by Klangforum Wien as part of the Erste Bank-Composing Prize also provides a link to the «on screen» series, a part of the festival that examines the interface between film and television and contemporary music.
To the Sun and Stars is a new album on Bridge of vocal music by Louis Karchin. The works – American Visions, To the Sun, To the Stars, The Gods of Winter, and 'A Way Separate…' – were written between 1992 and 2012, so provide a good cross-section of his style: dissonant, rhythmic and angular. This might sound forbidding except that he also does not eschew overt, even lush, tonal references as, for example, at the arresting major-chord declamation of 'Who are you, Grand Canyon?' a third of the way through the first movement of American Visions. Karchin is normally labelled a modernist, but such gestures give his music more flexibility and variety than perhaps the term suggests. This disc also demonstrates a gift for vocal writing; the texts set with great clarity and expressivity, the unobtrusive accompaniment supporting, colouring and commenting. Performances are rock-solid under the direction of the composer, the cast of singers impressive. The album is available on Spotify. Worth exploring.
Extracts are now available for three imminently available disks on NMC: John Taverner's Akhmatova Requiem, Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest and Helen Grime's Night Songs. The release date is slated for 22nd September. Nonesuch, meanwhile, are heavily trailing two of their own upcoming releases: Steve Reich's Radiohead-inspired Radio Rewrite programmed with Electric Counterpoint and Piano Counterpoint; and Nico Muhly's first large-scale opera Two Boys. Both are available for preorder, the Muhly also has a three-and-a-half minute preview video (follow my link).
The latest disk in the Naxos rereleases of the Collins Classics' Maxwell Davies back-catalogue contains two symphonic works from the seventies: Black Pentecost (1979) 'a plead against environmental destruction' and Stone Litany (1973), an evocation of a Neolithic burial site. Other Naxos releases include: Life Sketches—five piano works by Nils Vigeland played by Jenny Q Chai; Volume 2 of the Toshio Hosokawa series of orchestral works, containing Woven Dreams, Blossoming II and Circulating Ocean; and Lancino's Violin Concerto and Prelude and Death of Virgil.
There are three new albums on Metier, all of which I've only been able to listen to the not-too-generous extracts on the website (though the complete recordings are likely soon to be released on Spotify). There is a disk of Christopher Wright's quirkily tonal chamber music; Eric Craven's angular-sounding–the extract provided reminded me a great deal of Fém from Ligeti's Etudes–Piano Sonatas 7, 8 and 9; and Michael Finnissy's sardonically humorous Mississippi Hornpipes for Violin and Piano.
Two last recordings worth considering. In addition to the Karchin disk with which I started, Bridge records this have also released Stephen Douglas Burton's Symphony No. 2 Ariel with mezzo-soprano Diane Curry, baritone Stephen Dickson and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Keene. On Signum Classics, finally, is a new album of choral music by Gabriel jackson performed by the BBC Singers with whom he is Associate Composer. The disc, available on Spotify, contains his seven movement Airplane Cantata and four movement Choral Symphony as well as three shorter (though not insubstantial) works The Voice of the Bard, Ruchill Linn and Winter Heavens.
A few weeks ago Sound and Music released a report examining the current sate of composer commissioning. You can read the whole thing here, or take a look at this handy summary:
I suppose as a composer I should be filled with self-righteous anger after reading the report. The bottom line is that most composers receive very few commissions, get paid very little and feel that there is not sufficient time given to the preparation of their works. Why then do I find myself encouraged by it?
Composing is art, not a job in the normal sense. At the highest level it is the production of a thing of beauty that has something new and vital to say and is a true reflection of the person writing it. If you are going to submit yourself to these lofty ideals, you're probably going to wind up poor. Let's face it: most serious artists, sculptors, novelists and poets are in a similar position.
Given this, I find it gratifying that, for some composers, it is very lucrative indeed. At least one in the survey earned over £100,000 in commission fees. Another made £60,000 from a single commission. Let's also not forget that this does not include money earned from performances, broadcast rights, sheet music and record sales. Composing can be a viable career, even if the sums at the top end do not rival those found in the world of, say, the visual arts.
Much of the commentary accompanying the survey outlined the difficulties composers encounter when learning their craft. SaM's chief executive, Susanna Eastburn wrote in the Guardian, for example, about the 'heroic commitment to become a composer if you're from a working class background.' I think she's right about this, though not necessarily for the reasons she describes. The worst outrage inflicted upon music education has been the destruction of free instrumental tuition. This is a national scandal that affects all music making, not just composing.
In other respects our education system works rather well for composers. Foreign musicians I speak to are always astounded that our school music curriculum includes composing from an early age. It is now possible (though I would argue not ideal) for a pupil to become a composer only through study in the state-funded classroom. Higher education costs do seem prohibitive, but no more so than in other subjects. We also forget that degree fees only have to be paid back once a certain income level is attained, and then on a sliding scale. As for postgraduate level, for the talented there are sources of funding that can be accessed through individual institutions and AHRC.
Eastburn also observes that 'Composers either need private or other sources of income – usually teaching, performing or conducting, all of which require a whole new set of skills, training, time and energy.' As if composers have never done this before! Thinking back through the canon of music history's most venerable composers it would probably be quicker to make a list of those who didn't have a significant other job. Most composers played, conducted, taught or did a combination of the three. Some, such as Ives, did something entirely different. Perhaps, like the career politicians we love to criticize, composers should have other interests.
Of course I'd like composers to be paid more. I'd like there to be more commissions and more rehearsal time when a piece is played. I wish my every creative utterance were showered with gold. It's a competitive world, however, and, beyond the ludicrous idea of composers receiving a salary, I can't imagine easy solutions. There will always be composers struggling at the bottom, just as there are struggling sportsmen, writers, artists and actors. In common with all of those professions the cruel reality is that the act of merely doing the thing is worthless: kicking a football, writing a poem, painting a picture or composing music is of no intrinsic value in and of itself. For that reason the world is hard on us. We have to prove that what we do is worth it. Is that really so bad?
September sees 80th birthday celebrations for Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle at the BBC Proms. On 6th September the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group under Oliver Knussen will perform Birtwistle's Verses for Ensemble, Dinah and Nick's Love Song and Meridian; on 8th the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Ben Gernon will give the London première of Maxwell Davies' Concert Overture Ebb of Winter, Strathclyde Concerto No. 4 (for clarinet) and his popular An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise. Other premières to look forward to include Chris Brubeck's Blue Rondo à la Turk and Travels in Time for Three on 9th whilst Gavin Higgins is the composer of this year's Last Night commission with his excitingly titled Velocity on 13th.
At the Barbican on September 28th is the chance to attend the première of John Tavener's last major concert work, Flood of Beauty, performed by an instrumental group that includes orchestra, voices and Indian classical instruments spaced around the hall. As Tavener remarked: 'The audience, so that they are, as it were, "surrounded" by bliss and beauty'.
The Lammermuir Festival (12th – 21st) contains three interesting events: a concert of brass music that includes works by Harvey and Birtwistle on 15th; Raymond Dodd's Fantasy String Quartet also on 15th; and a performance of Olivier Messiaen's epic Vingt regards sur l'enfance Jésus on 20th. Meanwhile the North Wales International Music Festival runs from 20th – 27th September. There will be a William Mathias 80th Anniversary Concert on 23rd and the world première of Gareth Glyn's Gododdin for orchestra on 27th.
Musikfest Berlin takes place over 21 days (2nd – 22nd) at the Philharmonie and Kammermusikaal in Germany. There is a strong emphasis on works by Wolfgang Rihm, with Zwei Linien on 7th, Wind Quintet and Concerto for Horn and Orchestra (German première) on 14th and Transitus for orchestra and Concert Piece for piano trio and orchestra (world première) on 17th. There are also works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Helmut Lachenmann, Peter Eötvös and George Friedrich Haas on 5th, 8th, 12th &13th and 15th respectively.
Also in Germany, the Beethovenfest Bonn runs from 6th September to 3rd October. The motto of the 2014 festival is 'Divine Spark', a reference to the 'daughter of Elysium' from Symphony No. 9. To this end there are a large number of living composers represented, including: Sofia Gubaidulina, Gediminas Gelgotas, Imants Kalniņš, Frederic Rzewski, Slavomír Hořínka, Oliver Schneller, Alexandre Ouzounoff, Lera Auerbach, Igor Raykhelson and Dieter Schnebel.
Ultima, the Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, takes place from 10th to 20th September. It will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution and 'under the theme "Nation", the festival will focus on how a local musical identity is expressed in the context of an international, digital world.' Highlights include Luciano Berio's Coro; Mauricio Kagel's Exotica; Scelsi Revisited, a concert investigating his music with a new work based on the composer's secret tapes; the new music group Avanti! Ensemble; a new work by performance company Verdensteatret; Jenny Hval & Susanna's Mashes of Voice; David Brynjar Franzson's Longitude; and Simon Steen-Andersen's Buenos Aires.
If July's CD releases were on the parsimonious side the same can not be said of this month, with a deluge that will probably only be surpassed by the August weather.
There are seven new albums on Naxos. Their latest rerelease from the Maxwell Davies series originally on Collins Classics is his opera Resurrection, a work abandoned in the 1960s and only resumed and completed more than twenty years later. It is a work that encompasses a diverse range of musical styles – 'hymn tunes, marching bands, saccharine waltzes, and banal TV advertisements' – a result not of the work's long gestation, but of intentional musical parody.
There are two new song-cycle discs on the label: American composer Kenneth Fuchs' Falling Man, Movie House and Songs of Innocence and Experience are recorded by baritone Roderick Williams with the London Symphony Orchestra; and Jonathan Dove's All You Who Sleep Tonight, Out of Winter, Cut my Shadow and Ariel by Claire Booth, Patricia Bardon and Nicky Spence (soprano, mezzo-soprano and tenor respectively) accompanied on the piano by Andrew Mathews-Owen. Both composers are known for the accessibility of their styles, making these discs appealing choices for those who like their contemporary music to be a little less abrasive.
Another developing Naxos series is that of Franco-Lebanese composer El-Khoury: his fifth album on the label contains his Violin Concerto No. 1, Horn Concerto and Clarinet Concerto. There also several new Naxos discs devoted to chamber music: Arnold Cooke's Violin Sonata No. 2, Viola Sonata and Cello Sonata No. 2; Andrzej Panufnik's String Quartets 1-2 and Lutosławski's String Quartet; and two discs of piano works, one containing music by Frederic Rzewski, the other by Carter Pann. Also of interest is a disc of chamber music by emerging young Canadian composers William Rowson, Kevin Lau, Hunter Coblentz, Abigail Richardson-Schulte and Mark Nerenberg.
To get a flavour of these and the rest of this month's Naxos releases you can have a rummage through their monthly sampler album, available on Spotify.
There are four new releases on Bridge Records. Bamboo Lights contains seven works by Lei Liang written between 1999 and 2013; Paul Lansky's disc contains Textures for two percussion players and two pianos and Threads for four percussion players; there is a programme of piano music by Martin Boykan played by Donald Berman; and Plectra and Percussion Dances composed and performed by Harry Partch. None of these is available on Spotify, your best bet being to listen to the extracts on iTunes (excerpts are not available on Amazon). Of all the discs the Partch strikes me as the most interesting, both as a composer-performer historical document and and as an expression of his idiosyncratic style: extensive borrowings from traditional music, unusual tunings and his 'instrumentarium' of unorthodox and modified instruments.
NMC are celebrating the naming of Judith Weir as Master of the Queen's Music by promoting their back-catalogue of her recordings. This could, therefore, be a good time to know some of these fine discs, including: The Vanishing Bridegroom, Blond Eckbert, A Night at the Chinese Opera, Piano Concerto and The Welcome Arrival of Rain. There are also seven new releases in their New Music Biennial project: Panning for Gold by Alistair Anderson; A Child Like You by Andy Scott; The Girls Who Wished to Marry Stars by Luke Styles; On a Piece of Tapestry by Gwilym Simcock; Three Fables by Stephen Montague; Grind by Samuel Bordoli; and Sound Carvings, Strange Tryst by Piers Hellawell. Extracts for these are all available on the website with some also released as complete recordings on Spotify. NMC are also trailing three recordings that aren't yet released: Helen Grimes' Debut Disc Night Songs; Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest; and John Tavener's Akhmatova Requiem. You can, however, get a preview of these on their YouTube page, here.
Two new discs on Sargasso are both available on Spotify: Daniel Biro's Shir Hadesh and Paul Fretwell and Ambrose Field's collaboration Northern Loop. The former is a collection of gospel-inspired compositions for voices and electronics. I'm not usually a fan of works that are billed as 'mystical' and 'trance-inducing', finding their often glacial pace of development frustrating. Whilst not entirely overcoming this impression here I did, however, find the works on this album attractive. Northern Loop is also a disc of electronic compositions. It presents a less sumptuous, more pared-down sound, possibly due to the cerebral process that went into its making. The result, nevertheless, is not so different from Shir Hadesh, again because of the slow unravelling of the musical material.
One final recording, which I mention here for completeness: a disc of organ music by Naji Hakin played by the composer on the Schuke Organ of the Palacio Euskulduna in Bilbao in the Spanish Basque Country. It is music of attractive and accessible quirkiness, well-suited to the nuances of the instrument. It is also available in full on Spotify, here.


text:
Top Ten Things Alumni Can Do
10. Help recruit future Rams and encourage a prospective student to visit the campus.
9. Mentor current students.
8. Support WSSU Athletics. Attend and show your RAM PRIDE!
7. Attend a WSSU Young Alumni Council event in your area, and take a fellow RAM with you.
6. Update your mailing address, email address, job information, birth of children, etc. by visiting the
WSSU Alumni Relations website or call 336-750-2125.
5. Stay educated about WSSU, share what you know with others.
4. Visit the campus. Wear WSSU Ram Scarlet and/or display WSSU paraphernalia at home or work.
3. Visit the WSSU Alumni Relations website and join our Facebook page.
2. Join the WSSU National Alumni Association.
And the Number One Thing WSSU Alumni Can Do . . .
1. Make an annual gift to WSSU. Every gift regardless of size, helps.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Getty Images/ Rebecca Grabill [ Grand Rapids Makes Forbes' List Of Blue-Collar Hot Spots By Josh February 3, 2014 Grand Rapids made another list, and this one shows promise! Read More Category: Grand Rapids News Tags: Blue-Collar, jobs Send to a friend! Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Pin it! Reddit This! Share on Tumblr!


text:
Redmine project management
Redmine is a powerful project management system. It is similar to the popular Trac, however it looks much more professional and is certainly easier to navigate.
There are no Ubuntu (nor Debian) packages of Redmine available, though some are in progress. Additionally as Redmine uses a Ruby on Rails framework, there are additional complexities ensuring that the Rails framework is current.
Rails setup
You need to be running rails v2.1.2 or later. As we were installing on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, we used packages from Debian unstable:
- rails-2.2.2
- this means rake, ruby1.8, libruby1.8 and perhaps other ruby libraries too
- also install libxml-simple-ruby_1.0.11-2 (due to a path issue in older versions)
- otherwise the install will fail with "no such file to load -- xmlsimple"
Redmine install
- build a package from http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/r/redmine/
- or just download our pre-built package
- update: later versions of Redmine is now available in both Debian and Ubuntu so we've removed our packages
- now install the redmine package
- you might want to preseed redmine/default-language to "en"
- otherwise it defaults to "bg" and the database will contain "???" in many important fields
- we've sent this information to the package maintainer
echo "redmine redmine/default-language select en" | debconf-set-selections
- edit /etc/redmine/email.yml:
- the domain attribute is sent in the HELO to the email server
production: delivery_method: :smtp smtp_settings: address: localhost port: 25 domain: example.com
Apache configuration
The redmine installation can do this for you, however we prefer more control over our Apache installations so we did this by hand:
- install libapache2-mod-fcgid and libfcgi-ruby1.8
sed 's,_REDMINE_ALIAS_,/redmine,g' \ /usr/share/redmine/templates/apache2-alias.conf.template > /etc/apache2/conf.d/redmine
- restart apache
Redmine setup
- visit http://example.com/redmine
- login using the default username of "admin" with a password of "admin"
- administration -> users -> admin
- change password and email address
- administration -> settings -> general
- set hostname to example.com/redmine
- set protocol to https if required
- administration -> settings -> authentication
- enable "authentication required"
- enable "authentication required"
- administration -> settings -> projects
- disable "new projects are public"
- administration -> settings -> email notification
- set "emission address" correctly
- select all actions
- change footer web address to http://example.com/redmine/my/account
- if you have mod_deflate enabled on apache, this gain is very small
- using http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ shows up a few things to speedup
- in particular we can use the smaller version of prototype prototype_size_enhanced.js
- just replace the version in /usr/share/redmine/public/javascripts
Add favicon
Redmine ships an empty favicon.ico file in /usr/share/redmine/public which you can alter if redmine is the root application (i.e. on http://example.com). Otherwise:
- edit /usr/share/redmine/app/views/layouts/base.rhtml and add to the end of the meta lines:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
Follow up
If you create an issue without an assignee, you may find that no-one is notified. The only way around this at the moment is to ensure that someone watches each project. They can do this by selecting "My account" and setting "Email notifications" to "For any event on all my projects".
Redmine's permissions and workflow are currently very primitive compared to something like JIRA. We can't wait for them to catch up and surpass it.
To gain a useful speedup and reduction in memory, you can migrate to using mod_passenger. Most of the documentation and packages are supplied by the kind folks at BrightBox.
There are a few extra items due to running redmine under a subdirectory.
- ln -sf /usr/share/redmine/public $DOCUMENT_ROOT/redmine
- edit /usr/share/redmine/config/environment.rb directly (not sure why the SetEnv and DefaultInitEnv in apache do not work)
- ActionController::AbstractRequest.relative_url_root = "/redmine"
- snippet of apache config (you don't need the rewrite rules any more):
RailsAutoDetect off PassengerAppRoot /usr/share/redmine RailsBaseURI /redmine Alias "/redmine" /usr/share/redmine/public
We also needed to edit /var/lib/dpkg/status (naughty!) as a quick workaround to Ubuntu bug #257110 and to drop the ruby1.8 requirement for redmine from 1.8.7 to 1.8.6.