Notes on Notes from Underground

This project is attracting some public attention. Several weeks before the date I heard the première was nearly sold out. The local press has given it some coverage, a number of Twitter accounts have mentioned it, and last Saturday’s The Guardian (10 October 2015) printed an excellent article by Sean O’Brien himself, ‘How I fell under WH Auden’s spell’, outlining O’Brien’s rationale for the project. 

It is satisfying to see professional wordsmiths engaging with the project, and to let the professionals handle it, so to speak. My only attempt to explain my side of the story was slightly lost in translation at The Journal - I don't use “focuses” as the plural of "focus" and I would not describe any part of an orchestra as “elite sub-sections” (what would that mean?).

Rightly, since the commission and the première are part of the Durham Book Festival 2015, much of the attention focuses on the words, on O’Brien and on Auden. I feel fortunate to bask in some of that reflected glory, grateful for the commission and hopeful that the audience, even if attracted more by the words than by the music, will appreciate the concert, the première and the sublime three movements from Das Lied von der Erde in Schoenberg’s arrangement. And yet, conscious that those whose primary interest is musical may be interested in the composer’s viewpoint, I want to add a few remarks to complement those already in the public domain. 

Notes from Underground is a song cycle for baritone, chamber choir and large chamber ensemble, with words by Sean O’Brien (b. 1952). Both the words and the music were commissioned by Durham Book Festival 2015. 

From the earliest conversations it became clear that there was an affinity between poet and composer. O’Brien spoke about words, places, histories and people, all of which resonated powerfully with me. It was captivating to hear how vividly he could describe the ideas he was after, even before he had put pen to paper. My own personal history made me receptive to the world O’Brien was portraying. I am an inveterate lover of the landscape of Northumberland, where I have lived since I moved out of Newcastle in 2007. My centre of gravity is not particularly near the North Pennines, but I know the area, and am attuned to crags, hills and valleys; I do, after all, come from the Andes.

Having said that, my knowledge of Auden’s world is superficial by comparison with O’Brien’s. He, O’Brien, has been my gateway into the older poet’s world. He immersed himself in Auden - probably for a very long time - and I immersed myself in the poetry O’Brien created for Notes from Underground. 

1. And I grew sore afraid

 The first poem starts with the woeful line ‘And I was sore afraid’; a challenging one to set, not least for intelligibility. ‘Sore’ as an adverb is not the common usage of the word, so it seemed important to set it as plainly as possible to enable the listener to understand it. And yet, the mournful fear being expressed demanded a degree of intensity, best achieved with a dramatic gesture and, preferably, a high note or several for the singer; neither of these would help intelligibility. I therefore opted for repeating the phrase several times, first in a comfortable range where the singer could enunciate them clearly, then more dramatically, with the high notes required to match the intensity of the words. 

Overall, the first song is dark, as it could not fail to be, considering the text.  Double bass, contrabassoon and low piano intertwine to produce a gloomy sound fabric, with a simple pitch progression to avoid excessive muddle. In a simple, age-old device, the pitch progression goes up to suggest the mysterious letter’s direction of travel from the underworld. 

The structure is simple: the same upward-moving progression is treated in three different ways - three variations, so to speak. The only other music besides this is the ‘calling bells’ gesture from Approaching Melmoth (2000), revisited twice in this song for reasons too long to explain, and the Kobold. 

The presence of a kobold - the Kobold - in the penultimate line posed a conundrum. Of course I did not know what a kobold was; I had to look it up: it is a sprite in Germanic mythology. It was thrilling to discover that its name is believed to be connected both with the English goblin and with the element cobalt - both for perfectly good reasons the reader can glean from more authoritative sources. There are kobolds of various shapes and sizes, and one of them is known to inhabit the underground, notably mines. Hence the kobold’s presence in O’Brien’s exploration of Auden’s North Pennine world. The way O’Brien introduces it,

‘Who is the monster crouched inside the stone? 

In this great dark I dread to see his face.’

seemed to portray, on first reading at least, a sinister, frightening, possibly revolting creature. I was looking forward to the evil convolutions I was going to write to punctuate this part of the song. But, on closer inspection of the lines that follow and of some of the available literature, the kobold became less harmful in my mind, giving rise to a tamer creature that was ugly - but not awful - pitiable, grotesque and vaguely ridiculous. Such is the Kobold - with a capital K in O’Brien’s text - that makes an appearance towards the end of the first song. 

2. Down a deep well

The second poem did not reveal any hidden surprises. First perceptions survived a second, third and umpteenth reading. The direct style and the use of repetition immediately suggested a folk-oriented treatment, a suggestion reinforced by the provocative line ‘For no one is well in this country’, of traceable Audenian pedigree. 

The poem has two stanzas, and they are identical. You may feel tempted to scrutinise every line and every comma in search of differences between the stanzas, but there is none. There are two ways the composer can respond to this duplication: you treat the repetition in a totally different way for maximum contrast, or you follow the poet and restate the song verbatim. I opted for the latter, and my impending deadline was only one reason; the other was a curiosity to see what would happen to the timeflow if words and music went on a round trip yoked together.

Another structural feature of this song is the downward motion. This is a pervading theme in this short poem, where the word ‘down’ appears three times, the word ‘fell’ twice and the word ‘well’ three times - once in ‘deep well’ and the other two times in the word’s other sense, but in this context the ambiguity is plain to see.  

Music cannot convey specific meaning (discuss!), but one thing music can do particularly well is move in a specific direction, especially up or down. If in the first song the poem invites an upward direction of travel - from the deep underground to the speaker’s level - in the second song the invitation is just as clear to travel down. ‘Down a deep well’, down a mine shaft, down towards the centre of the Earth - endlessly down, it seems to me. That is what the music aims to do. It could have been done more methodically, but there were two constraints: one was the need to avoid caricature; the other was the need to make the most of the only opportunity in the whole work - and, as it happens, in the whole programme for 15 October 2015 - to be buoyant.  

3. Now I am lying low

This movement is set in an underground place. In ten lines, the poem - arguably the most beautiful in the series - sets a vivid stage that could be the bottom of a well, a subterranean river, a mine’s tunnel, a grave, or the mother’s womb. A universe of possibilities, all rich in sonic associations. The things I could have done with this if I had had more time! But, project circumstances aside, I take consolation in the thought that to explore all the latent sounds contained in this poem would have demanded a longer development, throwing the overall structure off-balance. So I had to be selective.

I focused on the key word ‘low’, on ‘gravest harmony’, on ‘the sound of water running, running down’ and on the overall subterranean atmosphere, implying some dullness of sound and sense of oppression, but implying also the space for echoes of various kinds. Quite enough for a sound palette there. At times it seemed that O’Brien was composing the music for me. 

On a less literal, more poetic level, I responded to two potent images in the poem: ‘So far below/You cannot tell the living from the dead’ populates the mind with Dantean figures moving slowly in a cavernous space. ‘O mother, mother, are you there,/And if not in my grave then where, then where?’ takes us to the naked core of all thought and existence, to where we come from, to where we are heading to. How far down this way the music can accompany the words I am not sure, but I am glad they are there together. I hope you can learn as much as I did from crossing that Styx with O’Brien as your Virgil. 

4. You have no shadow

This is some kind of trial, as presaged in the first song’s ‘There is a court where I will have to plead’. The choir are prosecution, jury and judge. The accused is mostly silent. For the ritualised gestures I kept in mind passages in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. For the ice and cruelty of the scene I could not help thinking of Tom Cruise facing his masked accusers in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.   

The choir’s pitch material originates in the second song, in one of the many interconnections that underlie the material, which are probably not interesting enough for the general readership for whom these notes are intended. Towards the end, in response to the choir’s demand ‘Admit it/Admit it/Oh, do you dare/Do you dare’, a new figuration takes shape which determines how the next song is going to unfold. 

5. They say the road that water finds

Like the second one above, this poem seemed to demand a folk-oriented treatment. Meaning what? To avoid a long digression, I hasten to say that I am not referring to a borrowed folk tune or a pastiche of an existing folk style. I mean an ease in the melodic flow through the use of some of some of the more familiar intervals and contours, a line- and verse-based phrase construction, and of course a clear form in audible stanzas. All this is latent in the poem, and I asked the poet’s agreement to repeat some lines in order to facilitate strophic symmetry. He agreed. 

The score has the instruction ‘elfin, misty, Nordic’ in the tempo marking. None of these is a musical term, but good musicians, such as those at Royal Northern Sinfonia, will probably respond to these allusions, referring to musical precedents that are familiar to them. A much-revered Nordic composer looms large - it may be distracting to name him - in some of the rhythmic configuration and in the textural scheme that governs the movement. 

‘Northness’ is an important concept in the context of this project. Auden gravitated north in more than one way, his love of the North Pennines being one example. In the early stages of the project O’Brien and I had planned an excursion to Iceland as part of our attunement to the world we were envisaging. The fact that the plan fell through only made the imagination work harder. 

This song could be said to be a return of the Kobold, but in a different incarnation: a playful, elusive, mischievous but ultimately benevolent creature. And this one is not lonely, but has plenty of company. Which probably means this is not a Kobold at all, but the arrival of the elves. There is probably nothing in O’Brien’s words to justify this association, but by this stage in the project everything was steeped in everything else and the ideas were burbling in a multidirectional stream. I am sure that the creatures inhabiting the Northumbrian landscape featured in the preliminary conversations. Even if they did not, they exist in my perception of this teeming, multivoiced land. O’Brien’s poem is full of references to land, water, ground, light, mountain. To me this was enough to conjure up hidden lives and fluttering motion. They scuttle around in the instrumental ensemble while the voices glide along in longer notes.

If the second song descends, and the third and fourth are set down below, the poem for the fifth bring us up above ground, and higher. We are now in a landscape of roads, bare moors, mountains, streams and - an urban touch? - noonday street. A crucial phrase is "carry me up to the light" which gives me licence to bring the music out of the darkness it had inhabited. 

6. Now when I was a curious boy

This is the longest text. It looks back on a history of personal experience and dreams, and beyond, a long past of lives and deaths, mining, family feuds, and, ultimately, the old primeval fear. 

Naturally this text is an invitation for the music, too, to look back on itself and to go over previous developments. They are all transformed in some way, some of them beyond recognition. As with every reminiscential exercise, it produces new findings, too, some of which are already finding their way in a new project. 

Continuity is an important need, not only within a project but also beyond, between works. The violence and the war in this poem were going to be a pretext to revisit material from one of my operas (The Wheel, 1993), but in the event there was scope only for allusions of the most generic kind: a tempo and a key signature.  A more specific allusion in the material relates to the opening violence in my Meditación No 1 of 1985. But this is all very fleeting. Too many other references from within Notes of Underground itself were vying for attention, demanding a space in the roll-call of ideas O’Brien’s final storm of evocation had unleashed.

A particular challenge was the setting of the line "love is not love that loves alone", appearing twice just before the end. It seemed to me to be something of a dictum in an otherwise flowing narrative. I asked O'Brien to explain his intention, and explain he did. I have tried to give this line the character of a serendipitous, but life-changing discovery.  

Notes from Underground

My latest project is Notes from Underground, a song cycle for baritone, chamber choir and large chamber ensemble. The words are by Sean O’Brien, an award-winning poet also based in the Northeast of England, and also a professor at Newcastle University.

The work is a commission from Durham Book Festival 2015. Earlier this year, the Festival's dynamic and forward-looking creative team approached O’Brien to propose a new commission involving words and music dealing with WH Auden, and in particular with Auden’s interest in the lead-mining areas of the North Pennines. O’Brien accepted, and he in turn proposed that I should be engaged as the composer. I accepted too, even though the timescale was daunting: these conversations were happening in March, or perhaps April, and the Festival was going to be in October; the words would have to be written first; and I had other works to complete first. But the proposal was too attractive to resist, so I agreed.

O’Brien did not take long to send me the first drafts. I found them very stimulating. It was not difficult to relate to the world he was evoking: landscape, the underworld, mines, shafts, regional histories – which are, of course, universal histories. The poems – which is what they are, and they could stand alone in their own right, without music – are pithy, contained, stark sometimes, and all the more powerful for that. They leave plenty of expressive space for the music to unfold. Which does not mean they are short; some are, but some are of a length I found challenging for the timescale of the piece. The total duration comes to about twenty-five minutes.

As soon as the academic year ended, I stepped down from my duties as head of music at Newcastle University. This enabled me to concentrate on writing music all summer. I first completed After the Gathering for Kathryn Tickell and The Side. I agreed a later time than I had been expecting for the completion of my next project with New Juilliard Ensemble. I started at length on Notes from Underground in mid-July, and after a period of concentrated work I was able to complete the piece by the agreed date, 15 September.

The team that will be in charge of the production is the best one could hope for. It includes a brilliant baritone from Germany, Benjamin Appl, the local chamber choir Voices of Hope directed by Simon Fidler, and Royal Northern Sinfonia conducted by Clark Rundell. The première will be on 15 October in the Gala Theatre, Durham.

Collier's Rant

In 2013 the Festival of the Northeast commissioned me to write a choral arrangement of a song of the Northeast of England. The specific project was Create, a multi-choral concept of Kathryn Tickell, who was the festival's driving force and at the time the Artistic Director of Folkworks.

I chose the song The Collier's Rant. The material is of the greatest simplicity: four descending pitches four times, and a brief chorus with the phrase structure ABAC. The cycle is repeated a number of times with different words. Not much to work on, some might say. But, of course, in the simplicity lies the appeal. The less there is in the original, the more space there is for a composer or arranger to be creative.

And then there are the words. Try this for an opening: As me an' me marra was gannin' to wark, we met wi' the deevil, it was i' th' dark. If you can navigate your way through the Northumbrian dialect, which I can only claim to be able to do to a limited extent, you are hit by a force of expression, a strength of imagery and a raw poetic drive that leaves you breathless.

How much of these qualities I would have appreciated if left to my own devices I am unsure. What I do know is that, when I was researching for the project, my ears and eyes were opened by the revelation of a recording by Sedayne, a remarkable artist whose rendition of The Collier's Rant came to my attention on YouTube.  On discovery I was overcome by the torrent of ideas - musical, emotional, dramatic, industrial, tragic, ironic - that lay hidden in that simple tune and those enigmatic words. Intrigued half-comprehension on reading the song in Crawhall's A Beuk o' Newcassel Sangs was replaced by mesmerised fascination, for me strongly reminiscent of the experience of watching Goya's late work.

The 2013 commission held out a very appealing prospect for textural treatment of the material: five choirs were to come together, each with its own idiosyncrasies. I wrote an ambitious arrangement, which I then had to reduce for four choirs, and eventually for three. It may be this paring down of the original ideas that left me feeling that there was more to Collier's Rant than I had been able to execute.

Thus, when The Maltings Berwick-upon-Tweed requested a companion piece for Arreglos bolivianos, preferably one with a local connection, I did not hesitate long before I decided to return to Collier's Rant and to explore it afresh, this time for a string orchestra.

The resulting piece, also titled Collier's Rant (omitting the definite article in the original song's title), is scheduled to be performed on 19 April at The Maltings by members of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland conducted by Chris George.

Meanwhile, here is a sneak preview, with the customary caveats about computer demos (see comments in previous posting).

Arreglos bolivianos

[English version below the picture on this page]

Mientras esperamos con curiosidad e impaciencia la documentación que nos prepara Bolivia Clásica, aquí pongo las versiones computarizadas de Arreglos bolivianos.

Este tipo de documento de audio tiene sus funciones específicas, que se pueden resumir en pocas palabras: sirven como sustituto a falta de de una grabación verdadera. Pero, demás está decirlo, no son una grabación verdadera, sino un remedo de lo que harían los ejecutantes humanos.

Los programas de computadora que proveen estos "demos" son cada vez más sofisticados, y si uno tuviera tiempo podría trabajar más en ellos para hacerlos más verosímiles. Pero la vida es corta, y uno escribe para músicos reales. Me parece apropiado que los demos suenen como lo que son: un sustituto provisional, parcialmente útil hasta que estén disponibles las grabaciones hechas por los músicos.

Ventajas: los tempos, los ritmos y las duraciones de las notas son exactos, tal como están escritos; la afinación es correcta; las dinámicas son consistentes.

Desventajas: no hay expresión; no hay flexibilidad, no hay carácter; no hay variedad de tono; la afinación es inflexiblemente diatónica; algunos efectos de articulación son imperfectos (como la ligadura sobre punto de separación en Viva Cochabamba o los staccati del violín en Pensando en ti); los sonidos se aproximan bien a los instrumentos que representan, pero a fin de cuentas no son los sonidos reales, sino que suenan sintéticos.

Las notas de programa están en la sección correspondiente de esta bitácora; pulsar Programe notes / notas de programa en el panel de la derecha, o pulsar aquí.



While we await with curiosity and impatience the documentation Bolivia Clásica are preparing, I am placing here computerised versions of Arreglos bolivianos.

This kind of audio file has specific functions, which one can sum up in very few words: they are useful as a substitute where there are no real recordings. But, it goes without saying, they are not real recordings, but a mimicry of what human performers would do.

The software that produces these 'demos' is ever more sophisticated, and, if one had the time, one could do more work to improve their verisimilitude. But life is short, and one writes for real musicians. I think it appropriate that computer demos should sound like what they are: a provisional substitute, partially useful until such time as the recordings made by the musicians are available.

Advantages: the tempi, the rhythms and the note durations are accurate, as notated; intonation is correct; dynamics are consistent.

Disadvantages: no expression; no flexibility; no character; no variety of tone; intonation is rigidly diatonic; some articulation effects come out imperfectly (such as the slur over a staccato dot in Viva Cochabamba or the violin's staccati in Pensando en ti); the sounds are close enough to the instruments they represent, but ultimately they are not real and sound synthetic.

Programme notes (only in Spanish for the moment) are in the relevant section of this blog; click Programme notes / notas de programa in the panel on the right, or click here.

Bolivia Clásica

Con estas palabras me uno a las celebraciones del 189 aniversario de la fundación de Bolivia. 

En pocas horas más se realizará en el Teatro Municipal de La Paz - escenario de las experiencias musicales más significativas de mi juventud - un concierto en el que se estrenarán mis Arreglos bolivianos. Los interpretará la Orquesta Juvenil de Bolivia Clásica, dirigida por Jaime Laredo. El proyecto es idea y realización de Ana-Maria Vera. Me cuesta creer que no estaré allí para presenciar este acontecimiento, pero, mal que me pese, ésa es la realidad. 

Desde hace algún tiempo que conozco por referencias la existencia de Bolivia Clásica. Y desde hace muchos años - por lo menos treinta - conozco a Ana-Maria Vera. La conocí de lejos en la década de los setenta, siendo ella solista muy precoz con la Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional. En aquella época hubo varias visitas de ella a La Paz, causando admiración general, pero yo nunca tuve contacto directo con ella. Con el paso de los años y décadas he seguido las noticias de su floreciente carrera con interés. 

En los últimos años, a raíz de su trabajo con Bolivia Clásica, mi interés en Vera se fue acrecentando. La noticia de que ahora residía en Londres me decidió a buscarla, y nos conocimos este año. Pude conversar con ella aquí en el Noreste inglés, cuando vino a tocar un recital con la joven violinista española Leticia Moreno en el Sage Gateshead. Fue una ejecución de altísima calidad, y la breve conversación que tuvimos después me reveló a una persona inteligente, atenta y muy segura de sus objetivos. 

En esa oportunidad Vera me invitó a asistir al lanzamiento británico de Bolivia Clásica, que iba a tener lugar en Londres a los pocos días con el apoyo de la Embajada de Bolivia y nuestro excelente Embajador, Roberto Calzadilla. Conseguí organizar el viaje y pude presenciar su carisma como anfitriona del evento y líder del proyecto. Al mismo tiempo pude constatar otra vez su refinada musicalidad, a través de varias obras de cámara que tocó con colegas suyos que habían ya visitado Bolivia como tutores invitados. En especial me impresionó el Cuarteto con piano de Schumann, del cual tocaron dos movimientos. Además del elegante fluir del piano de Ana-Maria, la participación de la violinista Katharine Gowers me pareció excepcional; me maravilló la expresividad de esta violinista, y su capacidad de prolongar y sostener las líneas melódicas largas e intensas de la obra magistral de Schumann. Ken Aiso en la viola y Guy Johnston en el cello completaron un grupo sorprendentemente sincronizado si se tiene en cuenta que sus miembros no tocan juntos regularmente.

No pasó mucho tiempo antes de que Vera me pidiera que escribiera arreglos de piezas folclóricas bolivianas para su festival de agosto. No puedo negar que me habría gustado más estar representado por una de mis obras, o más de una, pero Vera me explicó su visión para este proyecto y los distintos factores que pesaban sobre el diseño de los programas. No fue difícil entusiasmarme, primero porque el trabajo de Vera me parecía digno de apoyo, segundo porque cualquier proyecto que me mantenga presente en Bolivia es importante para mí, y tercero porque el folclore también es lo mío, mi música. Lo digo no sólo en el sentido lato en el que todo boliviano se siente vinculado a su folclore, sino además por mi relación especial con la música folclórica boliviana. Recordemos que antes de dedicarme a la composición tuve una carrera precoz de charanguista, y que mis primeros escenarios de trabajo fueron las peñas folclóricas.  

Para mayor coincidencia, Vera me pedía arreglos que representaran a La Paz, a Cochabamba y a Santa Cruz, es decir, los tres departamentos en los que se desenvolviera mi vida en Bolivia. De los tres tengo recuerdos indelebles, a los tres están atados mi pasado y, por lo tanto, mi presente, es decir, mi identidad. Los tres son, por razones distintas pero por igual importantes, mi tierra. 

Hubo cierto ir y venir entre Vera y yo, y entre Vera y sus auspiciadores, para convenir la combinación exacta de piezas folclóricas que habíamos de escoger. Hicieron falta negociaciones relativamente prolongadas antes de llegar a un acuerdo que satisficiera a todos. La combinación resultante es lo que ahora llamo Arreglos bolivianos, en el entendido de que hay distintas permutaciones posibles y que no todos los arreglos se programarán en un mismo concierto. 

También tuve que combatir en Newcastle para abrirme un espacio temporal que me permitiera dedicarme a este trabajo dentro del apretado cronograma que teníamos. Cuando por fin pude empezar, salió a relucir Armando Vera como una figura clave del proyecto. En su calidad de director titular de la orquesta, su conocimiento de primera mano de las secciones y sus integrantes me resultó muy valioso, sobre todo por el entusiasmo con que me brindó su consejo.

En Jaime Laredo y su esposa Sharon Robinson me resultaba más fácil no pensar. Me parecía increíble que fuera él el director designado para el proyecto. Cuando me permitía pensarlo, la idea resultaba tan absorbente que me distraía de la labor que tenía entre manos. 

Es difícil medir con palabras el significado de Jaime Laredo para mí, para los bolivianos de mi generación, y quizá para todos los músicos bolivianos. La magnitud de sus logros es una inspiración para todo el que ha nacido en nuestra tierra desaventajada pero ama la música demasiado para no dedicarse a ella. Laredo nos muestra que, en ciertas condiciones, lo imposible puede hacerse posible, y que un oriundo de nuestros páramos puede competir y triunfar en la reñida arena internacional de la música clásica. Para los que tuvimos la suerte de oírlo tocar, su musicalidad estratosférica es una referencia de hasta dónde se puede llegar con talento, dedicación y cultivo.

Aquí también hay una dimensión personal que me toca de cerca. Uno de los amigos y mentores más importantes de mi juventud fue Don Eduardo Laredo, padre de Jaime. A través de Don Eduardo me enteré de una infinidad de detalles de la educación, la lucha y la carrera de Jaime Laredo. En esa época - principios de los setenta - en que era muy difícil obtener cuerdas de violín, Don Eduardo organizó el envío de las cuerdas usadas de Jaime para mi violín. Don Eduardo me inspiró, me alentó y me aconsejó. A él se debe el nombre del Instituto Laredo, y cuando compuse el Himno del Instituto Laredo le dediqué a Don Eduardo frases de gratitud y homenaje. 

Otra figura para mí importantísima es Don Walter Montenegro. Lo conocí en La Paz en 1973, y no tardó en nacer una amistad. No es ésta la ocasión de expandirme sobre esta relación importantísima en mi vida, pero diré que Don Walter y Don Eduardo eran amigos entre ellos, y que Don Walter y Jaime eran amigos entre ellos. Tan amigos que años atrás, en los Estados Unidos, Laredo le había obsequiado a Don Walter su violín de juventud, una copia de Guarnieri. En un momento dado, también en prueba de amistad, y de la generosidad del aliento que Don Walter me brindaba, ese mismo instrumento, en sí no valioso pero de un significado enorme, pasó a mis manos, primero en calidad de préstamo y después, al cabo de años, Don Walter confirmó su deseo de que me quedara con él. Con este violín he recorrido el mundo, he explorado la música, me he ganado la vida en más de un periodo, y con este mismo violín compongo ahora y pruebo los efectos especiales - los armónicos, las dobles cuerdas - antes de escribirlos. 

Más de una vez quise entablar contacto directo con Jaime Laredo, pero las condiciones no se dieron. Hoy las condiciones están dadas para entablar un contacto a través de la música, profundo aunque todavía indirecto.

Al maestro Laredo, a Ana-Maria Vera, a Sharon Robinson, a Armando Vera, a todos los jóvenes de la Orquesta: no necesito desearles éxito porque sé que lo tendrán. Decir que estaré presente con el corazón será una perogrullada, pero es verdad. Por las razones explicadas, este proyecto es muy especial para mí, pero sé que lo es también para todos ustedes. Los felicito y les agradezco por la parte que desempeña cada uno de ustedes. 

After New York

The Momenta Quartet's performance was impressive indeed.

I greatly admired the commitment and the intensity of their rendition. Each of the four individuals showed command of their part and their role in this challenging piece. The succession of solos in the second movement Plegaria was an opportunity to enjoy the diversity of their personalities and the discipline with which they integrate into a cohesive whole. The finale was an opportunity to appreciate their tightness even in the most frenzied passages. They are a truly professional string quartet, and one of the most thrilling groups I have every worked with.

The audience was appreciative. It included some people I had long known and admired, such as the composer Ezequiel Viñao, and some people I was privileged to meet for the first time, such as the clarinetist Camila Barrientos Ossio. I am grateful for their interest and support.

Photo by Camila Barrientos Ossio

'Sin tiempo' in New York

The new string quartet has now been performed four times, and today we will hear its New York première.

At yesterday's rehearsal the Momenta Quartet demonstrated the extent of their achievement so far. It is impressive indeed. They play with passion, with commitment and with a determination more than worthy of the topic that gave rise to the music. It is exhilarating to witness such an impassioned display of artistry.

The concert is at HiArt! Gallery in TimeIn, 227 West 29th Street, NYC

String Quartet No. 2, 'Sin Tiempo'

The Koussevitzky commission is now completed. It took me one and a half years' work – obviously not full-time, since university work only allows a fraction of my week to be spent on composition - but intensive enough. The last few months I had to find additional hours in the day, starting in the very early hours, before the family woke up. Six hours' sleep is not a regime I thrive on, but it was the only way of achieving results.

The Momenta Quartet were very tactful in not applying pressure, even as time went by and the agreed time for a première - autumn 2013 - approached. Now, with any luck, they will be able to prepare the new piece over the summer and release it to the world as scheduled. We do not have a specific performance date as yet.

This is probably a good time to explain some of the background and the nature of the piece.

'Sin tiempo' are the first two words of a longer title: Sin tiempo para las palabras: Teoponte, la otra guerrilla guevarista en Bolivia (“No time for words: the other Guevarist guerrilla campaign in Bolivia”). That is the title of Gustavo Rodríguez Ostria's monograph on a guerrilla campaign that took place briefly in 1970 at Teoponte, a mining district northeast of La Paz.

Teoponte is also the subject of an eponymous opera of mine, premièred at the London International Opera Festival 1988. Teoponte is not a full-scale operatic display, but a shorter affair, 35 minutes, for six singers and an electroacoustic soundtrack. A digression on this older work may be useful for an understanding of the new piece.

Living as a student in London at the time (1987), I found it beyond my reach to find a suitable collaborator to write the libretto. This did not feel like a severe inconvenience, since, as I researched the topic, I was developing a clear conception of how I wanted to treat the story. Thus came about as a natural development for me to write my own libretto, based as much as was feasible on the historical facts of 1970 - remembered from childhood and more freshly gleaned from the pages of El Diario, La Paz's conservative daily. Miraculously, many of its issues of the relevant period were available on microfilm at London's Colindale Library.

Contemporary sources were scarce. I contacted Isabel Hilton, then Latin American correspondent at The Independent. She was very helpful and pointed me in the direction of James Dunkerley, the author of a well-researched book on Bolivian politics in the relevant period, Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia 1952-1982. One paragraph in the book relates to the episode, but I inferred that Dunkerley knew more, so I sought him out. Dunkerley, too, was very helpful. He received me at his office in Queen Mary University of London, with a surprising treat: he opened a packet of Casino, a strong brand of dark tobacco much in favour among Bolivian students and intellectuals. I was not a smoker, but I could neither decline the hospitality nor resist a nostalgic taste of earlier times. Dunkerley explained his take on Teoponte, opening my eyes to aspects I had only been half-aware of, such as, for example, the influence of Liberation Theology on the catholic contingent among the insurrectionists. He kindly lent me his copy of Teoponte, una experiencia guerrillera, a succinct testimonial by the Brazilian priest Hugo Assmann, which I used intensively and returned to Dunkerley by post.

Memories, press, two conversations, one book. Based on these exiguous sources I formed a conception and fashioned a libretto that was simple, pithy and essentially distilled from contemporary speeches, reports and communiques.

Teoponte the opera was performed at the Bloomsbury Theatre, as part of the 1988 London International Opera Festival. The performers were Innererklang Music Theatre, directed by Séan Doran. The reception seemed enthusiastic on the night, but appeared mixed in the press. It was instructive to hear appraisals from colleagues who had attended, including one from Trevor Wishart - whose Anticredos Innererklang had performed in the same programme - who opined that Teoponte showed an excessive closeness of its composer to its subject. 

Wishart’s comment was perceptive, but I am not convinced that it was possible to form an informed opinion on the basis of that performance. I cannot fault Séan Doran or any member of his team; they worked with commitment and artistry in difficult circumstances. It is the circumstances I find fault with: a tight timescale and a breach of understanding between Innererklang and me as to the role of the tape part. They had expected occasional electroacoustic interventions, whereas I presented them with a soundtrack to which they were expected to synchronise from beginning to end.

It had not been my intention to surprise; I simply had not considered any other possibility than a fully developed tape part as a substitute for the orchestra, that is, as a continuous stream of sound, not only supporting and punctuating what the voices did, but also carrying the flow of expression whether the voices were singing or silent. And, it would be disingenuous not to mention it, I delivered the completed tape part to the performers two weeks prior to the première, that is, far too late for them to assimilate it properly.

This is tempting, but I must postpone a detailed description of Teoponte the opera. I will only say that it is set in a folk club, it is in four scenes or tableaux, and its structure – both locally and overall – is based on four chords which happen to be quite common in Bolivian folk music.

I will also say that, back in my very young days as a folk musician in Cochabamba, I knew Benjo Cruz, a charismatic solo singer who was a frequent visitor at the folk club where most of my gigs took place, Peña Ollantay. I greatly admired the intensity if his performances, charged with the energy of his political convictions. I did not fully understand these at the age of eleven, but I was aware, like any Bolivian of any age was, of an ideological struggle between the establishment, broadly associated with right-wing military dictatorships, and a younger front who opposed it and wanted change. I had seen the demos and the riots, I had smelt the tear gas, and I had heard the shots. Both my parents were journalists and news were always table conversation. I was certainly aware of Che Guevara and of the entrenched polarisation in public opinion after his death.

Benjo Cruz sang protest songs. He would first work the crowd with some lively traditional repertoire, and then he would hit them with a thinly veiled political message in the form of a song or a recitation. The folk club – Peña Ollantay – was a popular weekend entertainment, and it was well attended by a cross-section of the population, including the well-heeled. Benjo would not temper his message if there was a public official or dignitary in the audience. This added to the electricity in the atmosphere of his performances, and yet I never witnessed any unpleasantness.

What could not escape my or anybody’s notice was that a new guerrilla campaign had begun. ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) had made good a promise made on the death of Che Guevara: volveremos a las montañas (we shall return to the mountains) and had unleashed a new insurrection against the military regime. Among the fighting rebels was Benjo Cruz. Over the next few months, either in combat or in summary executions, the military killed 59 out of the 67 rebels. Benjo was one of the casualties.

The story of my attachment to this topic is long and entangled. I tell it in greater detail elsewhere, and will tell it in even greater detail when I have the chance.

For today’s purposes, I will say that Gustavo Rodríguez Ostria’s book opened my eyes to many facts and ideas I had only superficially known, or intuited, and many other facts and ideas which I had not known. If this book had been in existence in 1987, Teoponte the opera would have been very different indeed.

Hence the need to write more about Teoponte. My business is unfinished. In 2012 I completed Souvenir de Teoponte for double bass and piano, a piece where I return to some of the opera’s material and I test its potential in a new medium. As well as the harmonic and structural conception, there was the conversion of electroacoustic sounds into double bass and piano sounds to explore. James Rapport and Eduard Lanner, and then James Rapport and Linus Kohlberg, have done committed work with this piece in Vienna.

Now I present my Second String Quartet, ‘Sin tiempo’. It too revisits some structural and thematic material from the opera, even where it is only in passing evocation. It engages with the world of turmoil, commitment, strife and self-sacrifice for an ideal that characterised that moment in history. It brings the past to the present and it does so in several layers. It pays homage to some of those fighters – Benjo Cruz in particular – and to Gustavo Rodríguez Ostria for his enormous achievement. It also celebrates the artistry of the Momenta Quartet, who I know will do a superb job with the work.

Souvenir de Teoponte in Vienna

Souvenir de Teoponte in Vienna, December 2012

Following a joint initiative by the JS Bach Musikschule and IMEN a concert was arranged to take place on 7 December in the Festsaal at the Diplomatic Academy, Vienna.

IMEN (International Music Education Network) has been set up by the Director of the JS Bach Musikschule, Dr Hanns Stekel, in collaboration with a group of enlightened Viennese residents, seeking to provide opportunities for musical talent to flourish in places where access to musical education is limited. Right now IMEN has a presence in Bolivia , China, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay. The event in December 2012 was organised for the benefit of Instituto Laredo, my old school in Cochabamba.

Recently IMEN has scored a significant success: to secure a studentship to enable Andreas Siles, a hugely talented violinist from Instituto Laredo, to spend time in Vienna furthering his education. I had the chance to meet and to hear Andreas in my last couple of visits to Cochabamba, and was impressed by his talent, his determination and his warm, prepossessing personality. His situation reminds me of my own, forty or so years ago, having to wrench himself from hometown and family in order to pursue his musical vocation. I sympathise with his parents for the difficult decision they are having to make. But I know that Andreas will make the best use of this opportunity. 

A period of study in Vienna for the wonderful flautist Daniela Moya is another possibility being discussed by IMEN, but this is less advanced and more funds will be needed than are currently available.  

Back to my Viennese adventure. This benefit concert had been set as the occasion to première Souvenir de Teoponte for double bass and piano. Readers will remember that I wrote the piece last year, in response to an expression of interest from James Rapport, the double bass professor at the JS Bach Musikschule. The pianist for the première was Eduard Lanner, replacing Daniel Wnukovski who had had to withdraw from the project. In the event, it was difficult to imagine a better suited pianist than Eduard Lanner. 

Messrs Rapport and Lanner had done serious work on Souvenir de Teoponte before my arrival. They allowed me to attend their final rehearsal, less than three hours before the concert, and even at this late stage they were receptive to comments and indications. It was clear that they are two seasoned professionals, neither of them a stranger to new music. The challenges the new piece was posing to them only highlighted, for the umpteenth time, the difficulties I create for myself and for my performers by composing the way I do. Yet again, I had tried to ensure the musical thoughts were stated simply and without frills. But, yet again, the result was characterised by technical, gestural and at times rhythmic intractability. I should despair, but I do not; I will continue to strive for greater simplicity - even if it is too late to help Messrs Rapport and Lanner.

On the night, the two performers fought like lions, and came up with a rendition that was committed, persuasive and characterful. That the piece spoke to its audience - and my well-trained success/failure meter told me unhesitantly it had - was in no small measure due to the impassioned delivery.

The concert was well organised and well attended. Fronting it with articulacy and aplomb was a young graduate from the Diplomatic Academy and member of IMEN, Jiao Tang. Solid groundwork - and very successful catering - was the work of Mathias Lichem. 

The following morning a workshop took place at the JS Bach Musikschule. The small audience included students at the School and guests, in roughly equal numbers. The Bösendorfer Imperial provided a luxurious palette for Mr Lanner to depict the colours and textures. We had agreed to start and end the workshop with a full reading of the piece; in the event the players volunteered a third go, which proved the most faithful version. 

It was pleasing to meet some of the students, among them a twelve-year old composer, Linus Köhring, who had just completed a new solo double-bass piece for James Rapport. A brief glance at the manuscript showed a sure hand and a working knowledge of the instrument. It transpired that the young composer is preparing his first opera, on a libretto by his older brother, aged fourteen, who was also in the audience. Something tells me that we will hear more about Linus Köhring.  

Other interesting attendants at the workshop included Charlotte, a double-bass student, Maximiliano, a double-bass player from the south of Chile, the professional composer Michael Paulus, and Phillippe Ternes, a member of IMEN and conductor and founder of the choir at the Diplomatic Academy. 

My hosts in Vienna were María Teresa Lichem, a highly respected literary critic and scholar, and her husband Walter Lichem, a former UN official and Austrian diplomat. They treated me with kindness and warmth, and lavished their valuable time on meals, and interesting conversation, delighting me with their inexhaustible knowledge of the city and its history. I cannot thank them enough for making my brief Viennese sojourn easy and enjoyable. 

Mrs Lichem is, of course, one of the brains behind the project and the whole idea of IMEN. Another is Beatriz Bauer, a vivacious, dynamic operator whose ability to make things happen is legendary. At the heart of these interesting developments is the director of JS Bach Musikschule, Dr Hanns Stekel. He is energetic, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and possessed of a very original and creative mind. To meet them all was a joy and a privilege. 

On this visit to Vienna, my first, it was important to make a pilgrimage to the sites connected with the idol of my youth, still the guiding light of my professional work. I was touched by the stark simplicity in which the Viennese preserve his Paqualati House by the Ring, and no less so the flat in Heiligenstadt. In both places admission is charged for what amounts to a very modest display of portraits and the odd document. In Heiligenstadt the richer exhibition was said to reside in the flat opposite, managed by a lady of a certain age who unfortunately was unwell on 8 December, so access was not possible. This arrangement seemed breathtakingly casual for the legacy of one of music’s towering figures. And yet my heart swelled at the sight and feel of these places where he had lived, breathed, walked and worked.

The brief pilgrimage ended at the cemetery, where I was able to salute the tomb of my immortal friend. I had forgotten that Schubert and Brahms were also buried within a few steps of the crucial spot. I gave them an affectionate greeting too, in what was by now a dark winter evening. My thanks to María Teresa and Beatriz for traversing the city with me on this composerly mission. 

Two and half days were not enough for such a city, but I am very grateful for what it, and a few of its best residents, gave me.   

Stop press: I just (19 December 2012) had the players' consent to share some of the video footage from the workshop on 8 December. It is work in progress for them, but there are very good achievements already. My thanks to James Rapport and Eduard Lanner.

Cortes de la Frontera

Cortes de la Frontera is the euphonious name of a locality in Andalucía where my family and I had a brief holiday last month, August 2012. 

More down-to-earth than its arty neighbour Gaucín, Cortes welcomed us with a no-nonsense approach to everyday things. Gorgeous hills, simple food, bright sun, slow tempo, good ice cream, characterful yet unobtrusive inhabitants, and relative silence. Those were the place’s main attractions, until the feria begun. Quite suddenly, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin powered the town up into overdrive: outdoor bars, amusements, bullfights, ambulatory wind band performances and an apparent trebling of the population transformed our quiet refuge into a sunbaked mini-Las Vegas for a very long weekend. The children loved the amusements, and we enjoyed watching the local youths teasing the calves down the fenced-off main street. But we were relieved when, eventually, normal life returned. We never quite got the hang of the eateries‘ opening hours. We were splendidly fed and well treated further out at Quercus a few miles down the road in Estación de Jimera, and at De Locos Tapas a bit further north in Ronda.  

Back in Northumberland, the rain had not stopped. I brace myself for the next challenges: complete String Quartet No. 2, face a couple of major admin challenges at uni, prevent this house from being overrun by nature. 

Koussevitzky commission

For the last few months I have been battling with a piece for double bass and piano. Along with the trombone, this is the instrument in the orchestra I feel I understand the least. Its workings may be based on the same basic principles as those of the violin and the viola, of which I do claim a good knowledge. But the size, the tuning in fourths, the strings’ thickness and length, the very different proportions and resulting differences in the physicality between the player and the instrument, they all strike me as an unknown world. I would have never volunteered to write for it if someone else had not planted the idea in my head, in this case James Rapport, a professor at Vienna’s Bach Musikschule. 

With impressive initiative, some time ago Professor Rapport offered to transcribe one of my existing pieces for the double bass. Partly in recognition of this commitment, partly from serious doubts that any of my existing pieces could be successfully adapted for the double bass, and partly, too, out of curiosity, I offered to write a new work instead. That is how I came to be treading this outlandish territory. It is a learning process, and I don’t find it easy.  

Not many days ago, on Bolivia’s national day - 6 August -  I received the wonderful news that the Koussevitzky Foundations (that is, The Serge Koussevitkzy Music Foundation in The Library of Congress and The Koussevitzky Foundation) had graciously decided to commission a new quartet from me for the Momenta Quartet. This brought me joy. At a time of dwindling opportunities in the UK this comes as a much-needed reminder that not all is indifference and that somebody has been listening, even some distinguished ears.  

For quite some time I have been in awe at the stratospheric - and rising - standard of the performances the Momenta Quartet have been offering of my String Quartet No. 1, ‘Montes’. Their première of it in 2007 in Philadelphia was already the best I could have hoped for; their rendition at King’s Hall in Newcastle the following year was entrancingly impassioned. A recording they sent me of a performance at Cornell University last year (2010) shows them with a new lineup - three players have changed - but playing ‘Montes’ to something worryingly akin to perfection. 

It was the Momenta who applied to Koussevitzky on my behalf, and the application’s success is, I am sure, in no small measure due to their rising prestige in the USA. To have one of the best commissions I know of to write music for one of the best quartets I know of makes a heady combination. 

What makes Koussevitzky any more desirable than any other commission? History, of course. The list of previous recipients is a who’s-who of twentieth-century music, including some legends of the recent past. Next to those one holds close to the heart (Adams, Andriessen, Dallapiccola, Henze, Ligeti, Maw, Stravinsky) are names one cannot but respect (Babbitt, Birtwistle, Britten, Castiglioni, Malipiero, Messiaen, Schoenberg, Stockhausen). The list also includes other names that are less universally acclaimed, and even some others I hadn’t heard before, but I am not letting that dampen the joy, the illusion of breathing for a moment the same air as music's most exalted figures. Ultimately it boils down to this: if Koussevitzky enabled Bartók to compose Concerto for Orchestra, I am jolly proud to have Koussevitzky. 

Am I slow or what. I was aware, I think, at all times, that the two venerable Foundations that made all these commissions had been set up in 1942 by Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951), a Russian émigré to the US who was a celebrated conductor and entrepreneur. What at some point had slipped my mind was the fact that Serge Koussevitzky was also a virtuoso double-bass player, and the composer of a concerto and other pieces much prized in the repertoire.  When the coincidence dawned on me, I wondered if my efforts grappling with the double bass had acted as an incantation that eventually worked the magic of attracting Koussevitzky to me. I know, their panel takes its own decisions oblivious to any incantatory attempts, based instead on scores and recordings from the composers and the track record of the performing organisation. But it is a temptation to think that I had been currying the eponymous maestro's favour even before the panel convened. 

Meanwhile I grapple on.