Letter to the Editors

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Poems of Love and War

‘Poems of love and War’ is a sequence of settings of nine poems from ‘Viking Poetry of Love and War’ by Judith Jesch. The war poems come first and are formal and celebratory, making vivid use of figures of speech known as “kennings”. The love poems are more direct, and sometimes playful. The aim was to compose choral music that was fresh and timeless. With that in mind, there is formality in the rhythmic character of the settings. A tried-and-tested technique, giving longer value to strong syllables and shorter values to weak, seemed appropriate. The language is diatonic, and many of the tunes were composed on a 20-button concertina to ensure this. The harmony is modal. The music is not chromatic on the face of it, and yet it is inherently chromatic. The poems cry out for colour, and the intention was always somehow to reveal it. There is a change of texture in the sixth and seventh settings: ‘All the grown girls’ is a canon for female voices, and ‘In Gymir’s gardens’ is for tenors and basses in rhythmic unison. Tender, lyrical melody is at a premium in the eight setting, ‘It’s a fact, wise woman’, and in the ninth, ‘Praise the day at evening’, where the upper voices sing a tune in thirds and sixths, the tenors and basses humming a pedal note

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

My setting of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was commissioned by Maurice and Sheila Millward. My normal practice is to respect the integrity of the text, so for several weeks, I was strongly of the view that I should set the whole poem. Maurice’s doubts about this led me to devise my abridged version. My aim was to make as few cuts as possible, and these occur mainly towards the end where the imagery is more elusive. I resolved to introduce brief instrumental interludes where sizeable cuts had been made. The instrumental ensemble to accompany the baritone (Roderick Williams) began with the piano quintet, a startlingly traditional choice for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, to which a horn was added, perhaps to herald the more supernatural turns of events. Lastly, I decided to add the double bass; the sea is, after all, commonly known as the “deep”. Coleridge’s poem is a ballad - a “Lyrical Ballad” - and I set out to capture that essential aspect of its character. The opening tune is like a folk song. Only six notes are used, but this diatonic material is part of a 9-note mode of limited transposition, allowing the musical language to become easily and naturally chromatic. This happens immediately after “the harbour cleared” at bar 69. The narrative unfolds, but stanzas are set in groups, so the form of the whole piece is like a song cycle. The harmonic language is modal. Canon is an abiding principle, and its use in the passage from bar 533 is notable: “The western wave was all aflame”. The aim throughout the setting was to follow speech rhythms. A clear example is at bar 200: “Came to the mariners’ hollo”. The accompaniment is relatively spare: never more so than at the end, with the baritone accompanied only by the double bass playing open strings

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

My setting of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was commissioned by Maurice and Sheila Millward. My normal practice is to respect the integrity of the text, so for several weeks, I was strongly of the view that I should set the whole poem. Maurice’s doubts about this led me to devise my abridged version. My aim was to make as few cuts as possible, and these occur mainly towards the end where the imagery is more elusive. I resolved to introduce brief instrumental interludes where sizeable cuts had been made. The instrumental ensemble to accompany the baritone (Roderick Williams) began with the piano quintet, a startlingly traditional choice for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, to which a horn was added, perhaps to herald the more supernatural turns of events. Lastly, I decided to add the double bass; the sea is, after all, commonly known as the “deep”. Coleridge’s poem is a ballad - a “Lyrical Ballad” - and I set out to capture that essential aspect of its character. The opening tune is like a folk song. Only six notes are used, but this diatonic material is part of a 9-note mode of limited transposition, allowing the musical language to become easily and naturally chromatic. This happens immediately after “the harbour cleared” at bar 69. The narrative unfolds, but stanzas are set in groups, so the form of the whole piece is like a song cycle. The harmonic language is modal. Canon is an abiding principle, and its use in the passage from bar 533 is notable: “The western wave was all aflame”. The aim throughout the setting was to follow speech rhythms. A clear example is at bar 200: “Came to the mariners’ hollo”. The accompaniment is relatively spare: never more so than at the end, with the baritone accompanied only by the double bass playing open strings

Man and Bat

Man and Bat is the third large-scale piece for soloist and ensemble to have been commissioned from me by Maurice and Sheila Millward. It is a setting of a poem by D H Lawrence for baritone, piano, string quartet and double bass. The tussle of man and bat required music of lively character. If ‘The Rime’ is a “yarn” (to use Roderick Williams’ lovely description), Man and Bat is more like a “rummage”! Lawrence’s text is admirably clear, and strikingly direct; almost everyday. I had previously set (in The Moon is Flashing (2007)) his better-known Snake, and my setting of this was steady and ruminative. My treatment of the encounter of man and bat required fuller textures, and greater energy and urgency. The poem has lightness and wit. The sprightly, relaxed opening of the music serves to capture this, and there is a witty take on lines that are arresting in their plainness: for example, “And he did not mind the yellow electric light”. There are also moments of inherent tenderness, and this is conveyed from bar 1158 onwards, for example: “So I picked him up in a flannel jacket”. It is also caught in the glow of the final section, from bar 1261: “And now, at evening”. It was paramount to follow the rhythm of the words. The musical language is more chromatic than for The Rime. Melodic ideas recur, as lines in the poem recur

24 Prelude and Fugues

The form and scale of the work was decided at the outset. A gap in my composing schedule allowed just enough time to complete the cycle, though requiring the setting of tight limits. Each Prelude and Fugue would be confined to an A4 page. The Preludes would be relatively quick and strictly canonic; and accommodated on a single stave, though changes of clef would allow for freedom of movement within a four-octave range. The Fugues would be slower. Each Fugue would take its theme from the preceding Prelude, but in a form that allowed for rapid modulation to a point within striking distance of the “tonality” of the succeeding Prelude. The aim was to effect a seamless progression through the keys, the modally chromatic language taking the music from C major to C sharp minor; and then to D major and E flat minor; and so on. The design for the last twelve Preludes and Fugues would be the reverse of that for the first twelve: C minor to C sharp major; to D minor; and so on. In practice, these guidelines proved to be playful rather than restrictive. They were introduced to facilitate the process and to secure the delight of both composer and pianist in something like an unfolding narrative. A new Prelude and Fugue was delivered each week, though with increasing urgency as the date of the first performance (27th May 2019, in Hay-on-Wye) approached. Delivering the pieces one by one or, latterly, two at a time, made possible an extended period of familiarisation and consolidation. If the earlier pieces seemed to benefit most from this, seeming, in due course, like old friends, the later ones could be approached with sufficient understanding of the lie of the land

James Hugonin and Howard Skempton

This output demonstrates Hugonin’s long-term interest in collaborating with musicians (e.g. Gavin Bryars at Tate St. Ives in the last RAE). Hugonin and his current collaborator, the composer Howard Skempton, were invited to develop an exhibition-performance for Ingleby Gallery by the director, Richard Ingleby. This follows the success of ‘Late Mix: Hugonin Portrait’, performed at the Sage Gateshead during the researcher’s curatorial project at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (see output 2 above). This Hugonin-Skempton project in Edinburgh was part of a series of thirty two-person exhibitions that responded to conversations between different art forms (e.g. Richard Forster and Richard Artschwager; Francesca Woodman and Richard Serra) The music in this output was performed in the earlier Sage version by members the Northern Sinfonia (7th June 2006). On that occasion the accompanying programme also included works by Arvo Part, Steve Reich, Morton Feldman and Lou Harrison. Hugonin draws many parallels between his own practice and developments in contemporary music over the past three decades. There are interesting correspondences between his process-oriented approach and the composition and performance of minimalist works by American composers such as Steve Reich and Morton Feldman. The research that informs this output questions the independence of visual and performing arts practitioner when the creators are bound by a shared interest in formal structure and rhythmic systems. At Ingleby Gallery the collaborators juxtaposed visual and musical manifestations of their left-handedness. This collaboration with Skempton is the latest, and most experimental manifestation of Hugonin’s professional association with the Ingleby Gallery which has led to the sale of works to renowned collectors of contemporary art such Stuart Carey Welch (USA) and David Coe (Australia)