Since the 31st August, I have been hiding away in the Cosy Nook, thanks to being awarded residency time to compose a new work for Quadra Quartet. This time was preceded by a lot of anticipation and excitement, firstly because I have never been given residency time like this before, to just compose something I want to do. Secondly, I was eager to explore a part of England I have had no interaction with before arriving here. And finally, to stay in the Cosy Nook is underlined by living on the grounds of the Red House, former home to Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears.
The nook certainly is cosy, and the surrounding grounds have filled my days with a lot of green, wildlife, and new found animal friends — including dragonflies, waterboatmen, birds, and cats. It still surprises me that Britten managed to get any work done while living here, if I lived here permanently, I’d almost have an infinite collection of reasons not to work — be it wandering the grounds, admiring the various statues, observing the wildlife, tending to the garden, or playing in the croquet yard.
While here, my task was to compose my new work for Quadra quartet. These wonderful performers I had the pleasure of working with back in October 2019, as they performed my piano quartet The Gateless Gate… in Riga as part of Jauna Muzika Festivals. Composing a concerto in my head always creates a natural dynamic of one against the other or one leading the other; whereas a concerto grosso is a much more complex dynamic — how do the various elements interact? is there a hierarchy? what is the conflict that drives the work?
This had been an issue I had been pondering for a very long time, however two thoughts came to mind. Remembering Harold in Italy by Hector Berlioz, gave me a fascinating start point for this concerto grosso. The work is quite an incredible and original piece written for Paganini. Instead of traditional concerto, the viola is little Harold, who on his adventure in Italy. He encounters many different things, however he is often an observer who has little leadership. This means the soloist interacts and leads development but is not there to be a virtuoso but a story teller. This novel approach could be said to forcibly create the dynamic for the soloist which has become a mainstay in concerti ever since — the hero or storyteller.
With this in mind, a concerto grosso offered an interesting shift of view of the hero. Namely, a lot of history is defined by heroes and leaders i.e. the Tudor era is defined by Henry VII and his offspring, whereas the Georgian period is defined by the slew of King Georges. A criticism of this is it fails to truly understand how those lower down within society shifted among this period. Historical Materialism came about as a way to study this dynamic looking at the power dynamics between various groups and how they implement change. To heavily reduce a wide field of study, this can be reduced to this —
history is changed by the masses of people enforcing change, however to achieve this it often needs the right leaders at the right time.
This consideration encouraged me to consider folk music. Ethno-musicology has a huge field of research into huge amounts of various musical cultures, however one interesting theme that often repeats itself is the idea of music to busy people during work/rituals or music to celebrate the completion of work. This became the seed of the concerto grosso — drawing upon the dynamic in various folk traditions with the concertino group leading their own groups, finally the conclusion is reached when the whole collection of performers unify into one whole; creating something new that could only be achieved with the mass and the leadership.
From there, it was simply a matter of considering which idioms I wanted to draw upon. I became particularly fascinated with traditions that are arguably most alien to current musical tastes — the first idea was observing Ojkanje a Balkan tradition which has been described by historic observers as ‘devil worship’ due to its intense dissonances. Another fascinating music was Tenore from Sardinia, this idiom is one of the few examples of throat singing in Western Europe. I also fell in love with Albanian Iso-Polyphony, Timbila from Mozambique, and Izvika from Serbia. As well as returning to folk idioms I encountered while living in Vilnius.
The aim in the composing was not to create authentic replicas, or to quote, but to draw upon the architectural backdrop that forms these musical traditions; ultimately it felt more genuine to celebrate what I am fascinated about in these idioms instead of trying to do ‘authentic’ versions of these traditions. So from there, the rest is pretty much history, I ultimately had each section of the work focus on one particular idiom and then overlay multiple renditions so it would effectively become four teams of people busying themselves with work. The second movement is a much more unified idea so it looks to Timbila as a way to address this, which leads to a huge orchestra with everyone overlay small poly-rhythmic sets creating one dynamic whole. This is juxtaposed with a references to Kokles playing from Latvia to a significantly more homophonic texture.
Overall, I am so happy to have worked on this piece, one because it is a piece that tries to marry a passion which I have not had a suitable reason to draw upon. It also is arguably the most modest of my arguably more politicised works, as the politics is hidden behind the ideology — change is won through a mass movement and the correct leadership. It was also a simple joy to stay in the Cosy Nook, in probably the poshest region of England I have ever stayed.
Certainly hope I find an excuse to hide in this nook again soon
