Phillip Cooke

I greatly admire the ‘Total Immersion’ days that the BBC and Barbican have put on in the past few years, usually in the dark winter months as if a good dose of high culture will cure any ailments or festive hangovers. The chance to hear a good proportion of a composer’s recent output in a ‘mini-festival’ of sorts moving between orchestral, chamber and choral concerts in the same venue is really exciting and shows a great deal of endeavour and forward-thinking from the powers that be. However, I haven’t been that excited by some of the composers featured in recent ‘Total Immersion’ days – a whole day of Tristan Murail, Unsuk Chin or (God help me) Brian Ferneyhough hasn’t really appealed, but the prospect of a day of Jonathan Harvey’s music (as will be featured next weekend) is something entirely different.

Harvey is a composer whose music has always appealed to me, not in sort of ‘take-it-to-my-heart’ kind of way, but more that my ears have been tickled by something new, something different and something original. I don’t really know half of the works he has composed, and certainly nothing in the last five years but there are certain key works from throughout his career that are as impressive and as exciting as anything I’ve heard from a British composer in the last forty years.

For those of you unfamiliar with Harvey, he was born in Warwickshire in 1939 made his way to Cambridge, Princeton and then to Paris (IRCAM) with Boulez in the early 1980s. He has written for many of the world’s leading orchestras and performers, has had numerous works recorded or broadcast, had festivals devoted to his music across the world and held prestigious academic posts both in the UK and the US. And he has an excellent moustache (well he does in the promo photos of him I have in front of me).

Some of his most well known works are his short choral pieces, and I was interested to see that the BBC Singers under David Hill will be giving an early evening concert of Harvey’s choral music as part of the day. Alongside the New London Chamber Choir pieces Forms of Emptiness and Ashes Dance Back (which will receive its London Premiere), the National Youth Choir commission How could the soul no take flight and the German commission Marahi sit two small church anthems that are probably Harvey’s most performed works – I love the Lord and Come Holy Ghost. These two works date from reasonably early in Harvey’s choral output (1976 and 1984 respectively) and represent the high point of his collaboration with Martin Neary at Winchester Cathedral. Come Holy Ghost in particular is a very successful work moulding together the ancient and the modern with plainchant and long aleatoric (free time) sections vying for attention. For my mind this work is a great example of what modern choral music should be – interesting, performable, thought-provoking and not too long. It is a bit of a shame that the BBC Singers aren’t performing his work The Angels which was commissioned for the 1994 Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge – not only is it quite beautiful and restrained, but it’s also quite creepy, which I like.

Actually the work of Jonathan Harvey’s that I most admire isn’t actually a choral or church piece, but rather the distillation of the entire cathedral tradition – his piece for quadraphonic tape (yes, I don’t know what that is either) Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980). This electronic piece is based entirely on the overtones of the great tenor bell of Winchester Cathedral and the treble voice of a chorister (actually his son), some of the sound manipulations are astonishing, and amongst the usual splicing and dicing that you find in electronic music you find something quite spine-tingling and unquantifiable – the mark of a truly great composer.

PAC

To hear a recording of Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, click here.

There were some nice reviews of my pieces Invocation and Lakesongs in recent publications that I stumbled across. Classical Music Magazine had Lakesongs as one of their premières of the year and referred to the piece as “A very interesting extension of the English nature music tradition”. Jeremy Summerly reviewing the Novello New Choral Series (of which Invocation is featured) in Choir & Organ said of Invocation: “arguably the most interesting of Novello’s new clutch…Invocation is memorably haunting…spine-tingling.” Nice.

2011 has been a successful and enjoyable year with many moments that will stay long in the memory. It began with the amazing performance of my Te Deum by Aurora Nova in St Paul’s Cathedral in January and ended with a superb performance of my Evening Service at Lichfield Cathedral in December. Further performances took place in Liverpool Cathedral, Eton College Chapel, St Peter’s College and many more. One of the highlights was Invocation being selected by the John Armitage Memorial (JAM) and being performed in London, St Andrew’s, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. The piece was also published by Novello and gained some great reviews for the Scottish performances. Meeting HRH Duchess of Cornwall at the première of The Two Trees in Oxford in October was fun as was the nice review in The Observer. Other premières took place at the LDSM and Tet-a-Tet Opera (both in August) and the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music (May). Looking ahead, there are new works for Eton College Chapel, Ely Cathedral Girl’s Choir, some new songs and another set of children’s songs. Performances are planned for Oxford, Cambridge, Gloucester, London, Chester and…Deddington! And perhaps most excitingly, a CD in the offing – hopefully a good year ahead.

PAC

With Christmas just round the corner and feeling full of festive cheer after making a second batch of Christmas jam (watch out friends and family…) my thoughts turned to Christmas music, and after deliberating on what to write about, one piece stood out above the others – Herbert Howells’s beautiful carol-anthem A Spotless Rose.

A Spotless Rose is one of Howells’s most well-known and enduring works, a tender, if somewhat slight unaccompanied choral piece that encompasses much of Howells’s early choral writing and points towards the glories of Collegium Regale and beyond. It is beautiful yet understated, succinct yet not laconic, poised but not mannerist – a triumph of poignant and powerful word setting. And apparently he wrote it in Gloucester overlooking the train station – which makes it all the more impressive – I can’t imagine much creative inspiration stemming from Gloucester train station. At all.

The piece was written in 1919 and is one of the Three Carol-Anthems, a set which includes the equally melodious Here is the little door and Sing Lullaby, but it is A Spotless Rose that stands out amongst the others. It is a simple setting of the anonymous fifteenth-century poem about Jesus’ birth and the purity of Mary, and the naivety of the words seem to give Howells the springboard to create something that appears the model of simplicity on the surface, but hides a deeper complexity – how many carols written in 1919 move mellifluously between 7 8, 5 4 and 5 8 with the subtle changes of metre emphasising the stresses of the words and Howells’s restrained homophony? The harmony moves seamlessly from a modal E major to the minor (0.27) before returning to the major for the end of the first verse – then the magic happens! The second verse (0.58) has a stunning tenor solo that brings a radiant glow to the music, but the skill is in the accompaniment given by the rest of the choir – understated again, but not a note out of place – again pointing towards similar sections in later works.

Perhaps the most celebrated moment of the piece is the very end, in fact the final cadence – this cadence (on the words “cold winter’s night) is one of Howells’s most sublime and affecting moments and the composer Patrick Hadley famously wrote to Howells saying “I should like, when my time comes, to pass away with that magical cadence.” The cadence itself (2.50)moves from A minor to E major through some wonderfully piquant suspensions and unusual dissonance resolutions, all with a good helping of emotion and ‘feeling’ – it is mature Howells through and through and it is indeed wonderful.

So there you go, a great piece of Christmas music – in fact a great piece of music in general. Next year Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine. Merry Christmas.

PAC

(to buy this recording, Polyphony, Hyperion, click here)

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Here are two new recordings: Evening Service (2009) performed by The Choir of Selwyn College, conducted by Sarah MacDonald, and The Two Trees (2011) performed at the opening of the Shulman Auditorium in Oxford, conducted by Owen Rees. Both excellent performances and great reminders of memorable days.

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 The Two Trees (2011) (mp3)

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 Evening Service (2009) (mp3)

Not much comment necessary I suppose. A bad hair day, but fun nontheless.

I have recently completed or revised several pieces which I have finally found the time to put on the website. The most substantial is my setting of the Jubilate for St Peter’s College, Oxford which treads the same ground of my setting of the Te Deum last year. I have also completed a setting of the Missa Brevis which is an elaborated and revised version of the Lady Margaret Mass I wrote earlier this year. I have made some revisions to my setting of O salutaris hostia (2008) and also arranged the first movement of Four Pieces (2006, rev. 2009) for trumpet and organ, now titled Introit. All are available to download and perform.

The Choir of Selwyn College Cambridge, directed by Sarah MacDonald will perform my Evening Service in evensong at Lichfield Cathedral on Thursday 08 December at 17.30. If you’re in the area do come along to hear this excellent choir in an amazing venue.

Here are two of the photos that were taken by Peter Jones earlier this month. The photos were taken on a benign Autumn day in Mollington, Oxfordshire. I’m very happy with them, even if the main response so far appears to be ‘not the kind of guy you would want to bump into on a dark night.’ Due to some unwieldy technology on my website I haven’t been able to upload as many as I’d hoped, but then again, two photos may be enough of me.

Promo 1 (© Peter Jones 2011)

Promo 2 (© Peter Jones 2011)

Competitions are on my mind this month as I try to decide whether to enter one competition and try to come to terms with not winning another, and it has got me thinking about competitions as an entity and their place in the musical world. I guess whether you like them or not, they are part of the game – a useful way of ensembles or artistic bodies gaining exposure and revenue for certain events. They are also a very useful way of providing a huge ‘shot in the arm’ to a composer if he or she wins, often catapulting said composer to a greater level of publicity then they would ordinarily have achieved. So, a necessary evil then?

Well, I guess so. Certainly the most prestigious competitions come with great rewards (both financial and in recognition) and a major competition win is a must for any self-respecting up-and-coming composer to have on his CV. Perhaps the most famous competition is the Prix de Rome which was won by the cream of French composers (Berlioz, Bizet, Gounod etc) for over 150 years, but not winning it didn’t seem to harm Ravel, in fact it seemed to aid his career. The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Prize is often an indicator of the next crop of talented young things in the UK, as perhaps is the Proms Young Composer Prize for a younger generation. The Grawemeyer is a benchmark of success for established composers as are other major prizes (Siemens, Nobel Prize etc), some of which no longer exist.

I don’t have a massive problem, per say, with competitions but there are a few things that bother me about some competitions that have set alarm bells ringing for me over the years. Firstly, it is the entry fee system. An entry fee is not a problem, and often funds any prize money available, but the amount of entry fee and the correlating prize available does bother me. Some entry fees are exorbitant and totally not worth the prize on offer – one I saw recently was a £40 entry for a £200 prize pot and a performance by a middling choir – not really that worth it? £40 for a £1000 prize and multiple performances around the world is perhaps more tempting, but who has that many spare £40s to spend on competitions? The second thing that bothers me is the supposition that often entry fees are just a way of an ensemble raising enough money to pay the guy a quasi-commission fee for a piece they couldn’t raise a legitimate way. This may sound like sour grapes, but I have heard of similar things happening from a variety of sources – not nice. One year I entered several competitions that were all won by the same composer, granted he/she may be a great composer but I was getting a little suspicious by the fifth win that judges/panels were just trying to push someone through the system by the back door. Again, probably sour grapes.

As you may have gathered, I haven’t had a huge amount of luck or success with competitions! Ironically I actually won the first two I entered back in 2001, just minor things, but it gave me the false expectations that it was easy to win – ten years on, and I’m still waiting to win another! I have been selected for various schemes/masterclasses/courses and won a competition naming dinosaurs when I was five but never had the success with the major competitions. And I never got on the SPNM shortlist which still grates…

So whether to enter this competition…I may do, you have to speculate to accumulate. The one I didn’t win…well, no-one won it – apparently the standard of entries was ‘lamentable’ – excellent! Obviously didn’t get enough money together to commission Bob Chilcot!

PAC