SILENCE
At St. Anne’s Church in Lewes, there is an anchorite hole.
Could I live the life of an anchorite, or a hermit? Not a chance. Too quiet, too slow, too lonely.
What does silence mean to me? On the one hand, in a noisy world, it’s a precious commodity. On the other hand, it’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’m sifting through all the bad stuff in my life, and I’m terrified.
This is what the piece will be about.
No, it’s to be a choral piece. So something about collective silence.
On the radio a Libyan refugee is talking about the experience of crossing the Mediterranean on a boat. He describes it as ‘a great journey made in silence’. (Oddly enough, I’ve come across this phrase before, in a Michael Ondaatje novel.)
So that’s it. The collective experience of being in transit, fearful, in limbo.
The music arises out of silence, dissolves into silence. It’s simple, monumental, epic.
A piece about silence, made in sound.
Listen
We have come from far away
A great journey made in silence
Listen to the silence
It is a hyena it is a jackal
It is a lost child it is a mother searching
It is an oasis it is an embrace it is a prayer
It is a storm cloud a distant guillotine a slow guillotine
It is a dung beetle it is a virus
It is a dark room it is a blinding light
No-one can walk in its sight
Listen
We have come from far away
A great journey made in silence
Listen
C-DanCe
For The Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments
Commissioned by Clare Salaman
Ah, the tromba marina. An instrument, named after the Virgin Mary, invented so that women, who were discouraged (forbidden?) from playing wind instruments, could play an instrument that sounded like a trumpet, well, almost like a trumpet, an extraordinary other-world sound where the dislocation between what you hear and what you see makes your brain jump. An instrument which immediately became associated with Death, and the Dance of Death. It’s difficult to imagine the Grim Reaper playing the tromba marina. He (surely always a he?) wouldn’t have a hand free to grab you.
October 2021. We are in the midst of a vicious C-pandemic. The Grim Reaper has been working overtime. Four wonderful women I know, all involved in early music, are coping with a different kind of C-attack, coping brilliantly, courageously, defiantly. So I’ve written a little piece that is a Dance of Life, a Dance of Defiance, intending that the beautiful strange natural harmonic palette and honky fire-fighting sound of the tromba marina express the fact that in times of trouble people are capable of extraordinary acts of strength.
The piece is dedicated, with love, to Deborah Roberts, Sianed Jones, Belinda Sykes and Clare Salaman.
Belinda, Sianed and Clare have since died, profound losses to the world of early music, and to the world in general.
Erthe toc of Erthe
The song is on Joglaresa’s wonderful 2021 CD Boogie Knights.
And
Erthe toc of erthe, erthe wyth woh
Erthe other erthe to the erthe droh.
Erthe leyde erthe in erthene throh.
Tho heuede erthe of erthe erthe ynoh.
Earth took of earth, earth with woe;
Earth another earth to the earth drew;
Earth laid earth in earthen trough;
Then had earth of earth earth enough.
The earth: where we live - and where we are buried.
Freedom
Lyrics Peter Levi
Performed by Netherlands Radio Choir
Score TTBB from Boosey and Hawkes
Score SSATB in Scores
This mountain standing in the sun.
Out of the light into the heat
out of the heat into the wind
out of the wind into the sun.
Out of the rock into the snow
out of the shadow of the rock
onto the rock below the peak,
off the rock into shadow.
Freedom cannot be ended.
Out of the snow onto the grass
out of the grass onto the face
out of the grass onto the snow.
Freedom cannot be ended.
Out of the cold into the light
out of the heat into the snow
out of the snow onto the grass
and off the grass into the trees
among the trees in the shadow
out of the trees onto the rock.
This mountain standing in the sun.
Peter Levi
The Arc of the Sky
A film by Sal Pitman, Nathan Clarke, Jonathan Baker and Sian Croose
Performed by Lisa Cassidy, Sianed Jones, Sian Croose, Jeremy Avis, Jonathan Baker and the Voice Project
A film inspired by the landscape around (and above) the Cathedral of the Marshes, Blytheburgh Church, in Suffolk.
My contribution is a series of very short songs about skylarks, inspired by illegal (or at least frowned-upon) visits to the South Downs during lockdown.
Skylark sings all day
But all day not long enough
A haiku written by the 17th century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, master of the style. Concise, beautiful, thought-provoking. I was interested to discover that the poem is often recited at funerals. I have set it twice, once in an exuberant explosion of choral sound, and once in a delicate meditation for small ensemble. There are I’m sure a thousand other ways.
Solar
Music for Bruce Munro’s Light Towers installation
Performed by Sarah Gabriel, Sianed Jones, Rebecca Askew, Sian Croose, Melanie Pappenheim, Hazel Holder, Manickam Yogeswaran, Jeremy Avis, Ben McKee, Jonathan Williams and Jonathan Baker
Recorded and mixed by Claire Windsor and OG
Bruce Munro has based his Light Towers installation on a theory of the scientist Lyall Watson that there is an Earth Pulse, a pulse in the earth’s upper atmosphere, which occurs 69 times per day, one pulse every 21 minutes approximately. That’s a very slow pulse of course, not at all musical - but sped up, it becomes a pulse you can detect, and sped up even more, it becomes a note you can hear. I’ve based the music on a pulse which is 1024 times as fast as the Earth Pulse – that’s about 50 beats per minute - and on a note that’s 65,536 times as fast – that’s about A flat below the bass clef. The entire piece of music is determined by Lyall Watson.....
The music has a very simple structure. It describes the sun rising, shining, setting. The lyrics I’ve written were inspired by two amazing poems, one written in the middle of the 14th century BC, Akhnaten’s Hymn to the Sun, and one written in 1964, Philip Larkin’s Solar. These lyrics are in English, but then there also lyrics in an invented language – the language of sunshine – which comes from translating the words ‘sun shine’ into many different languages. As the sun moves, it sheds its light on different parts of the world, and the language moves too.
The music lasts for one Earth Pulse, and then it cycles round. But I realized that anyone who spent a long time in the installation (which is very easy to do) would begin to find the music predictable, so every time the music cycles I have made variations. Many of these variations are based on improvisations made by the singers in response to the music I wrote. These variations are often influenced by music from different parts of the world, so the overall effect of the music is very panoramic.
Because of the pandemic, it was not possible to record the music with all the singers in one room. They recorded their parts at home, singing to a backing track. This is a method which is commonplace for recording pop music, but it’s a weird and unusual way of making choral music (pioneered I think by the American composer Eric Whitacre). I really enjoyed the feeling of receiving all these sounds from far away places, and assembling them into a piece. Rather like an automobile production line, but much more fun.
The Distance Between Us
A film by Sal Pitman, Nathan Clarke, Jonathan Baker, Sian Croose
Music by Jonathan Baker, Sian Croose and OG
Performed by Lisa Cassidy, Sianed Jones, Sian Croose, Jeremy Avis, Jonathan Baker and the Voice Project
A choral diary of lockdown.
One of the last performances by the extraordinary Sianed Jones, an astonishingly generous and gifted and unique talent. She will be much missed.
here here
there there
me me
you you
here and here
there and there
me and you
here in my room
there in your room
we will talk together
we will dance
together
in my room
in your room
Out Of My Head
Performed by the Baroque Collective
Conducted by John Hancorn
Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head: perfect pop song? disposable ditty with a simplistic tune and moronic lyrics?
I have always had a weak spot for it.
Out Of My Head is a (very!) extended version of / remix of / fantasy on the song, sounding sometimes like an ancient Lithuanian folk song, sometimes like a piece by Purcell, sometimes like a Cuban pachanga dance, sometimes like a medieval Mass, sometimes even, occasionally, like a turn-of-the-millennium pop song.
It is an exploration of obsession, of memory, nostalgia and longing, of our relationships with our past selves, of the passing of time. The piece exists in a dreamlike state, shape-shifting and making unpredictable turns.