18th May 2002
Tisbury, Wilts.

Composer's Day

After a long gestation a group of 8 met up last Saturday to share each others' work - the participants' names appear in the text below.

Maxwell Steer writes:
As the projected London venue was not available people traveled to my house in Tisbury. For me there was an added piquancy to the event because it took place in the music room of Nadder school - at which I had been teaching ... until the previous Tuesday, when I was placed on (a still unexplained) suspension. It was a very affirmative use of the space - for the large windows gave us beautiful views over the surrounding countryside, and at one point allowed me a fascinating reverie, as I shall explain. Altho I was the event's caretaker (to use our terminology) Id like to give a personal subjective response to the music I heard. I hope others will too, so that a full picture will emerge.

After introductions, the day opened with some movement exercises led by Jenni Roditi. My perception of people's individual self-presentations within this was that the movements really were arising from an unconscious level of truth, in that they seemed to accord with people's deeper soul-identity than the rhythms of the social being that is our normal social 'wear'.

This led seamlessly into Susan Nares' improvisation map based on The Elements. She had illustrated the archetypal quaternity as an image on paper, adding some adjectives to help us identify which of the elements we felt drawn to represent in sound. This resulted in a work full of rewarding interactions - underpinned by Philippa Forrest, the mezzo who had come to perform my music, personifying the ether or spirit by remaining still and observant.

Participants performed in a spontaneous sequence, and next was Russell Stone who gave a magnificent solo vocalise to the accompaniment of a drone which he had only acquired a few days previously. He warmed up by running throu the different Indian scales and then launched into a heartfelt and original song building on the musical ethos already created - which he afterwards named Invocation.

Our ears were thereby opened to a recording of the extraordinary vocal performance of Sian Williams in the Prelude to Jenni Roditi's opera Spirit Child. Having been privileged to hear the genesis of this sequence several years ago at Rhoscolyn and to see it performed live in the opera I found it instructive to be able to follow the score, not only to observe the musical structure but also to understand the full import of it in relation to the lyrics.

James D'Angelo presented two works. The first consisted in two movements from his Three Portraits of Krishna. Written for flute and the interior of the piano, it was performed on CD by a recorder player. James told us that it was actually an amalgam of tenor & treble but that we wouldnt be able to hear the joins. And indeed, tho I normally reckon to be able to pick out edits (because Im so used to making them myself!) I really couldnt.
 I had the most wonderful experience during this, for the music continued in an incantatory way at some length - and its rhythmic character was perfectly matched to birds, solo and flocks, flying in the open air outside the window; and when none were passing the wind caught the top of a silver birch in rhythmic movements that brought into my mind the silent sound of accompanying cymbals. In this reverie I noticed that all the birds seemed to fly with maximum speed and certainty of purpose & wondered how each experienced the call to flight and to their several destinations. Particularly synchronous were the flocks of crows or starlings.
 After that James presented a work for solo double-bass based on Cecil Collins' Fool and Angel entering a City. Very helpfully he had a couple of books of Collins' work, which he declared a major influence, for us to look at.

(As I write a bluetit is performing aerobatics right in front of my window, dancing in the air, and sometimes clinging on upside-down to the upper window-frame. I think may be feeding on the spiders' incubation nests secreted in angles. They do a lot of aerobatics, to the accompaniment of the wrens and blackbirds that inhabit the adjacent hedge.)

The sequence continued by the most elegant spontaneous programme planning with Clement Jewitt's setting of Whitman's The Last Invocation recorded by our friend & Network member Sarah Verney Caird with string quartet at its Oxford premiere a couple of years ago. Having been present on that occasion I was struck by how totally different it sounded. In the concert hall I had found the quietness of the music diffused by the acoustics, but in the recording the lack of projection became like magnificently expressive screen acting, where the minutest nuance conveyed a world of emotion.

After this our aural digestion called for a change and this was admirably supplied by a song called I am Love composed and performed by Percy Sheppard in which we all were invited to join. And which experientially hit just the right note.

This was Percy's first visit to a Network event, as was Jenny Fowler. In her introduction she had told us of her compositional evolution from the unmusical soil of W Australia, and we were treated to a most beautiful bloom in her Lament for Dunblane, brilliantly performed by an Australian singing group.

The day was rounded off by Philippa Forrest giving the premiere of one of my recent settings of Gerard Manley Hopkins 'NightSongs'. It was a privilege for me to be able to give it utterance in such a deep-listening context, altho the piano left a considerable amount to be desired ... as (ever) does the pianist!

Thereafter most people returned to my house for supper whereafter we were regaled with some fine entertainment music in the confines of my studio. Best wishes and thanks to all who took the trouble to adventure to the depths of the countryside.