Inside: A look back at some of the classical music movements of the 20th century Presented by The London Philharmonic Orchestra as part of Southbank Centre’s The Rest Is Noise
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the Centurion lpo.org.uk/therestisnoise
Issue 4 of 4 Nov – Dec 2013
Hooray for Hollywood And the composers who made the world sit up and listen
Time stands still Pärt & Górecki’s musical medicine for modern life
Beyoncé, can you handle this? Pop music gets an unlikely contemporary classical remix
Beyoncé, beats and blissed-out climaxes
Classical music for our contemporary lives The ‘serious’ composer in the 21st century
Continued on page 10
Inside this issue From stigma to stardom The musical maverick who took Hollywood by storm Page 4 Tuning out Minimalism – the cure for modern malaise? Page 6 How far we’ve come A look back at The Rest Is Noise Page 8 Tuning in Composing for a noisy new millennium Page 10 Preview pieces from the series at lpo.org.uk/ therestisnoise
There’s a dissonant blast, a chatter of woodwinds, and then, with a shake of the hips, the brass section swings into a sassy, oddly familiar riff. A world premiere by Mark-Anthony Turnage always grabs the attention, but on 26 August 2010 at the BBC Proms, delighted smiles of recognition started breaking out all over the Royal Albert Hall. So why didn’t the reviews even mention what we’d just heard? Online comments sections lit up. It was so obvious that only a professional classical music critic could fail to hear it: Turnage’s new work Hammered Out was a kicking, biting, full-orchestral salute to Single Ladies by Beyoncé.
The rest is history The British composers who brought classical music into a new century
A French horn player from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra getting into the rock’n’roll spirit whilst performing alongside the American rock band Kiss in 2003.
The london Philharmonic orchestra continues its 2013 concert series, as part of southbank Centre’s year-long festival The Rest Is Noise, inspired by Alex Ross’s book The Rest Is Noise see Page 2 for details
london philharmonic orchestra | the rest is noise part 4 (Nov– Dec 2013)
Welcome to the twentieth century A rollercoaster ride from romanticism to pop culture In 2007 Alex Ross published his first book The Rest Is Noise. Subtitled Listening to the Twentieth Century, Ross’s book tells the story of 20thcentury music within its historical context, exploring how the events and ideas of the 20th century shaped the art that was created, and vice versa. Why did musicians write what they did? Why did the world react the way it did? Why, in some cases, were they silenced? Throughout 2013, the London Philharmonic Orchestra appears as the major orchestral partner in Southbank Centre’s yearlong, multi-art-form festival The Rest Is Noise. Inspired by Ross’s book, The Rest Is Noise festival looks at the key works of the 20th century through a wide lens, taking in the political happenings, social movements, cultural climates and personal stories that gave rise to these inspiring and sometimes controversial pieces of music. As we approach the final concerts of The Rest Is Noise festival, we look forward to exploring one of the most dynamic periods in musical history, the latter half of the 20th century. From movie soundtracks to minimalism right up to the modern masterpieces of some of our greatest living composers, we’ll explore the music of our recent history and take a look at the role of the ‘serious composer’ living and working in today’s world. We hope you’ll join us for the finale of our year-long, live soundtrack to the 20th century. But the journey doesn’t end here, so keep an eye out for our world premieres in 2014 … Happy reading, and happy listening.
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Join our mailing list at lpo.org.uk @LPOrchestra, #therestisnoise facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra For the full The Rest Is Noise programme including regular weekend sessions of talks, films, debates and other performances plus extra online content visit: southbankcentre.co.uk/therestisnoise
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‘The Rest Is Noise chronicles not only the artists themselves but also the politicians, dictators, millionaire patrons and CEOs who tried to control what music was written; the intellectuals who attempted to adjudicate style; the writers, painters, dancers and filmmakers who provided companionship on lonely roads of exploration; the audiences who variously revelled in, reviled, or ignored what composers were doing; the revolutions, hot and cold wars, waves of emigration, and deeper social transformations that reshaped the landscape in which composers worked.’ Alex Ross Author of The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
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What they said ‘Thirty three and a third of Psycho’s success was due to Bernard Herrmann’s music.’ Alfred Hitchcock ‘If it weren’t for the movies nobody would be able to write this kind of music anymore.’ John Williams
That Hollywood Sound: From Stigma to Stardom The musical mavericks that made the movies memorable
Did you know?
John Williams (composer of many modern-day film soundtracks including Star Wars and Indiana Jones) doesn’t own a computer; he composes with a pen and paper next to his Steinway piano. The Director of Music at Paramount Studios from 1935 to 1938 was a man called Borris Morros. Whilst working at Paramount he made efforts to recruit some of the most famous composers for film work including Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Copland, Weill and Shostakovich, whilst at the same time working as a KGB agent, tasked with producing pro-Soviet propaganda. It turned out that Morros used the earnings from his espionage work to fund his own film projects, although he achieved little box office success.
Alfred Hitchcock on the set of the film Psycho in 1960. Composer Bernard Herrmann was responsible for the film’s nerve-shredding score, which still sends shivers through audiences today.
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In 1969, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer held the Hollywood version of a yard-sale. Sets were demolished, props were auctioned off, and four decades’ worth of music manuscripts were cleared from the studio shelves, loaded onto trucks and dumped as landfill. Today, the original scores of The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, Meet Me in St Louis, and hundreds of the greatest films of Hollywood’s golden age are rotting beneath a golf course just off the San Diego Freeway. After all, went the thinking, this was only film music – literally, trash. Forty years on, the fate of the MGM music library draws gasps of dismay. But to the composers who’d written this seemingly disposable music, it would have seemed all too predictable. The ‘Hollywood sound’ of the 1930s and 40s had largely been created by Europeans, driven into exile by fascism. Working for Hollywood carried a stigma in cultured circles, but for Jewish composers like Bronisław Kaper and Franz Waxman (who’d been beaten by Nazi thugs on the streets of Berlin) it offered safety and a livelihood. Only later did they realise that it was a oneway journey. When the Viennese Erich Korngold tried to get back to ‘serious’ music with his beautiful Violin Concerto of 1945, he found that the Hollywood label had stuck. ‘More corn than gold’ sneered one critic.
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Herrmann But Hitch, I thought you didn’t want any music during the shower sequence? Hitchcock Improper suggestion, my boy, improper suggestion.
FRI 8 NOV 2013, 7.30PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL
FRI 29 NOV 2013, 7.30PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL
The Genius of Film Music 1960 – 1980 North Cleopatra Symphony* Rota The Godfather – A symphonic portrait* Waxman The Ride of the Cossacks Herrmann Psycho – A narrative for string orchestra* Kaper Mutiny on the Bounty* Goldsmith Star Trek – The New Enterprise*
The Genius of Film Music 1980 – 2000 Excerpts from: John Williams Star Wars Vangelis Chariots of Fire Hamlisch Sophie’s Choice Ennio Morricone The Mission Luis Enríquez Bacalov Il Postino Angelo Badalamenti Twin Peaks E Bernstein The Age of Innocence Danny Elfman The Nightmare Before Christmas John Powell / Harry Gregson-Williams Chicken Run Nicola Piovani La Vita è bella Goldsmith Mulan Don Davis The Matrix Hans Zimmer Gladiator
John Mauceri conductor JTI Friday Series *Arranged by John Mauceri
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It took a new generation to challenge that prejudice. The émigrés had written for the movies out of necessity, but by the late 1950s, American-born composers were starting to see film music as a career in its own right. That meant thinking beyond the lush strings and heroic trumpets of the classic ‘Hollywood sound’. For Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s epic Cleopatra (1963), Alex North laid on the swooning violins and exotic percussion to truly showstopping effect. But in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) he matched Marlon Brando’s smouldering performance with a sultry jazz score. Film music was growing up; this was serious, modern music, for a serious, modern American artform. And few took it more seriously than Bernard Herrmann – though ‘Benny’ took everything seriously. Despite an explosive temper and a tendency to dismiss any score other than his own as ‘a heap of junk’, Herrmann revolutionised film music. He began his film career with Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), ended it with Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and roughly halfway between these came Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo
(1958): arguably the three greatest films of three of the 20th century’s greatest directors. That’s no coincidence. Herrmann forced directors to take him seriously – and he responded with total commitment. When Herrmann joined the production of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), the director had decided to cut it down to a 60-minute TV special. Herrmann asked for six weeks in which to change his mind, and Hitchcock agreed, with one proviso: ‘Write nothing for the murder in the shower. That scene must be without music.’ Herrmann transformed Psycho. To match the black-andwhite cinematography, Herrmann composed for strings alone: ‘I wanted to get a blackand-white musical colour’. And he launched the story before a single frame of the action. ‘The drama starts immediately with the titles,’ Herrmann explained, ‘The climax of Psycho is given to you by the music right at the moment the film begins.’ That climax is the famous shower scene and when Hitchcock heard those shrieking, stabbing violins – now probably the most famous single cue in the history of film music – he
accepted them without hesitation. ‘But you requested that we not add any music’, needled Herrmann. ‘Improper suggestion, improper suggestion’ was Hitch’s laconic response. And as the Hollywood studio system crumbled in the late 1960s, a new wave of directors came of age who revered Hitchcock, and saw music as a vital part of film-making. Francois Truffaut, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese all sought out the veteran Herrmann; Francis Ford Coppola forged a relationship with the great Italian film composer Nino Rota in The Godfather (1972). For directors like these, treating the music as a disposable afterthought would truly have been an ‘improper suggestion’. Before Herrmann, classic film scores went for landfill. Today, they’re performed in concert halls. ‘The cinema is a great contemporary artform’ said Herrmann in 1973. ‘I believe that when we’re all gone, people in the 21st century will be interested neither in our literature nor in our music, but only and completely in our cinema.’ And as Welles, Hitchcock, Truffaut and Scorsese all knew: you don’t argue with Benny Herrmann.
Dirk Brossé conductor JTI Friday Series
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World events
1960 Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho is released 1961 John F Kennedy is inaugurated as President of the USA 1962 Dr No, the first James Bond film, premieres in UK theatres 1963 Buddhist monk Thich Quong Doc sets himself on fire to protest against the oppression of Buddhists in Saigon 1964 The Beatles give their debut performance in the USA 1964 Ford Motors introduces the ‘Mustang’ 1965 At the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, 66 ex-SS personnel receive life sentences 1967 Pink Floyd release their debut album 1968 Andy Warhol and art critic/curator, Mario Amaya, are shot on at Warhol’s studio
Hear it first! Preview these pieces at lpo.org.uk/ therestisnoise
1968 US Senator Robert Kennedy is shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel and dies 26 hours later 1968 Dr Martin Luther King is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis 1969 The world watches as Neil Armstrong takes his historic first steps on the Moon 1970 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi takes over control of Libya
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What they said ‘I was attracted to the unbelievable calm and brilliance of his music, and a seeming simplicity … It brings one to a total meditative state. It’s amazing, amazing music.’ Michael Stipe, REM ‘Really good music, like for example Arvo Pärt’s music, is like knocking on a wall and a hole appears in the wall where you can see a new world which you were completely unaware of.’ Thom Yorke, Radiohead
WED 6 NOV 2013, 7.30PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL Sofia Gubaidulina Offertorium Arvo Pärt Magnificat Arvo Pärt Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten Arvo Pärt Berlin Mass Tõnu Kaljuste conductor Sergej Krylov violin London Philharmonic Choir Supported by the Estonian Embassy in London and Ambache Charitable Trust
FREE PRE-CONCERT EVENT 6 – 6.45PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL LPO Foyle Future Firsts, conducted by Ben Gernon, present a programme to include Galina Ustvolskaya’s final work – Symphony No. 5 (Amen), a haunting setting of The Lord’s Prayer.
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WED 27 NOV 2013, 7.30PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL Krzysztof Penderecki Violin Concerto No. 1 Górecki Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs)
Did you know?
Arvo Pärt attributes part of his musical epiphany to an encounter with a street cleaner outside his house. In a desperate attempt to come up with a technique which could bring his spiritual and musical lives together he asked the cleaner: ‘What should a composer do?’, to which the cleaner replied ‘Well, he should love every note.’ In January 1993, Górecki’s Third Symphony sold an average of 10,000 copies a day, winning it a spot in the UK’s album top ten in February, between En Vogue and REM.
Henryk Górecki
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Michał Dworzynski conductor Barnabas Kelemen violin Allison Bell soprano FREE PRE-CONCERT EVENT 6.15 – 6.45PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL Michał Dworzynski discusses the evening’s programme. Supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Polska Music programme.
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Hear it first! Preview these pieces at lpo.org.uk/ therestisnoise
Space, Simplicity and a New-Found Spirituality Górecki and Pärt’s musical balm for the modern world New York in the 60s and 70s – Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and La Monte Young are thrilling new audiences with a new musical style. People are calling it minimalism. The pulsing rhythms, hypnotic repeating phrases, tape delays and bebop influences are creating a new kind of crossover between avantgarde and pop, and a feedback loop is created between bands and composers, all borrowing one and other’s techniques and collaborating on new ideas. It’s all thoroughly modern. Meanwhile, something similar yet very different is taking root in Europe – another kind of minimalism. By the 1970s, composers including Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and Sofia Gubaidulina are each arriving at a simple and spiritual method of composition, drawing influence from age-old sacred music techniques and texts. This form of minimalism, often referred to as ‘holy minimalism’, is minimalist in that it offers a reduced form of musical composition – each work is a simple and pure as it possibly can be. It is this style of composition that has engaged contemporary audiences like no other, enjoying a widespread popularity almost unheard of in the realms of contemporary classical composition. In an increasingly secular Western world, the fact that this music
could so successfully reach beyond the walls of sacred spaces to tap into the collective modern psyche is even more impressive. But something about the works of these composers, Górecki and Pärt in particular, seemed to fulfil a universal human need, giving listeners a feeling of suspended time and transportation from daily life, providing what Alex Ross describes as ‘oases of repose in a technicologically oversaturated culture’. Arvo Pärt first became aware of his music’s potential when he encountered some
aggressive border guards while emigrating from the Soviet Union in January 1980. Subjecting his family to a full luggage search, the guards came across his scores and records. Asking to listen to the music, they were played his Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. It was then that Nora Pärt, Arvo’s wife, witnessed what she described as ‘the power of music to transform people’ as the guards let the Pärts cross peacefully. It was this experience of the threat of danger that led Pärt to develop his distinctive style, which he called tintinnabuli
Arvo Pärt ‘Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers – in my life, my music, my work.’
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World events
steve Reich Pärt’s music fulfils a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion and explained as evoking ‘the pealing of bells, their complex but rich sonorous mass of overtones, the gradual unfolding of patterns implicit in the sound itself, and the idea of a sound that is simultaneously static and in flux.’ Previously his Credo had been denounced as a politically provocative religious work by the Soviet government in 1968, which prompted a breakdown of sorts. Pärt stopped composing, instead turning to study sacred music of the European renaissance: plainsong, chant and early polyphony. Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, written as an elegy to the British composer, is a profoundly moving example of this tintinnabuli technique. Structured around a canon, an ancient method of composition where the same blocks of music are repeated, one violin voice performs a descending scale, while another outlines the chord beneath it. Such a simple technique creates a sense of timelessness, emphasised even more by the desolate chiming of bells, and the periods of silence written into the beginning and end of the score. The simplicity of this style of music has captured the imagination of countless people looking for respite. Alex Ross recounts an anecdote of a nurse who ‘regularly played [Pärt’s] Tabula rasa for young men who were dying of AIDS’. Pärt’s influence has filtered into popular music too. Artists as diverse as Björk, PJ Harvey, REM and Radiohead all name Pärt as a key influence on their music.
Similarly profound is Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, which, 15 years after its composition in 1976, was recorded with soprano Dawn Upshaw, and rocketed into the charts. And not just the classical charts – it was one of the UK’s top ten albums in early 1993. To this date it is the largest selling classical CD of all time. The composition, simple in structure using repeated blocks of music over which a soprano’s yearning melody floats, has become synonymous with poignant reflection, particularly over the atrocities of
the Holocaust. The Symphony, however, was not written for this purpose, the composer in fact avoiding many commissions to write a piece to commemorate the victims, claiming that music alone was not enough to ‘capture the vastness of that tragedy’. Instead the work is a reflection on the relationship between mother and child, using three texts over its three movements, including a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during World War II. However you interpret it, there is no doubt of the Sympho-
ny’s ability to reach right into the soul of the listener. Its profound popularity in the 80s and 90s can perhaps again be seen as a sign of the times, as some were seeking absolution and catharsis after various political atrocities of the 20th century, whilst others merely sought time and space to reflect and escape from the pace of modern life. As Górecki put it: ‘Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music … Somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed.’
1971 Apollo 15 discovers a rock thought to date back to the origin of the Moon 1972 British coal miners strike against the UK government 1973 US President Richard Nixon orders a ceasefire in Vietnam 1974 Maria Estela Isabel Martínez de Perón is sworn in as the first female president of Argentina 1975 New legislation outlining women’s rights to equal pay and status in the workplace and in society come into force in the UK 1978 The world’s first ‘test tube baby’ is born in Manchester, UK 1979 China invades Vietnam after prolonged tension at the border 1980 The Beatles singer, John Lennon, is shot dead in an assassination in New York 1982 Argentina invades the Falkland Islands 1985 Scientists discover the hole in the ozone layer 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev takes over as Soviet leader 1987 Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity
Hustle and bustle The incredible sense of stillness and spirituality inherent in Górecki and Pärt’s music proved popular with audiences of the late 20th century who were seeking respite from the increasing pace of modern life.
1988 Ben Johnson wins a gold medal in the 100m final at the Seoul Olympics, which is later rescinded after he tests positive for drugs
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How Far We’ve Come 1900
1905
1910
Late / Post-Romantic Period
Expressionism and Atonality
Germany and Austria dominate the field of classical music. A time of provocative new ideas in art and science, challenging traditional notions. Artists revel in exposing the darker sides of human behaviour and society through opera and rich orchestral music.
Arnold Schoenberg leads a movement away from tonality and the lush styles of the 19th century, turning to atonal, expressionistic styles.
Nationalism and Folk 1905 Premiere of Richard Strauss’s Salome in Dresden, Germany. ‘ Nothing more satanic and artistic has been seen on the German opera stage.’ Alex Ross
1900 Premiere of Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. 1925
Composers across the world look to their native folk music and landscapes for inspiration in asserting their national musical style. 1911 Jean Sibelius premieres his relatively traditional Symphony No. 4.
1930
1935 Political Pressure and Censorship
Twelve Tone Music / Serialism Schoenberg unveils his concept of twelve-tone music, a unique formula for composition based on a set of 12 notes.
1928 Premiere of Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, featuring the well-known song Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife).
‘ The ‘extreme emotionality’ of atonal composition had exhausted him, and he needed a less fraught, more orderly way of working.’ Alex Ross
Soviet state newspaper threatens and denounces Dmitri Shostakovich and his work. ‘ This is a meaningless game that may well come to a very bad end ‘ Pravda, Soviet state newspaper.
Politics and Popular Song in The Weimar Republic
War Looms
Composer Kurt Weill and writer Bertolt Brecht meet and quickly become leading figures in Weimar culture, introducing dark satire, cabaret, jazz and popular song into opera, reflecting the tastes and political issues of the time.
Jewish composers are persecuted and censored by authorities and music becomes a propaganda tool for oppressive regimes in Germany and Russia. ‘What is going on right now is so sick that I don’t know how this can last longer than a few months’ Kurt Weill upon leaving Germany.
1926 Premiere of Edgard Varèse’s Amériques.
1950
1955
1960
Hollywood The Darmstadt School and The Avant-Garde After the intense politicisation of music during the War, composers see no other option than to start from scratch, turning to notions of purity and abstract theories to create ‘art for art’s sake’, free from attached meaning The Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music is set up in Germany, offering international courses for new music .
1951 Premiere of Francis Poulenc’s Stabat mater, written after the death of his friend Christian Bérard.
1975
1952 John Cage’s piece 4’33’’ is premiered in New York, during which performers sit in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
Experimentalism John Cage leads a movement of experimental artists creating abstract and conceptual works, relishing in chance, noise, silence and surrealism.
1960 Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho is released, featuring the influential score of Bernard Herrmann whose highly original scores challenge the notion of film composing as a ‘lesser art’.
1980
1985 Hollywood: Rise of the Blockbuster
Hollywood blockbusters give rise to epic orchestral scores from a new generation of film composers including John Williams. Synthesised sounds and pop songs begin to be incorporated into orchestral soundtracks. New technology allows composers to completely sync music to visuals and orchestrate entire scores on computers.
New Found Spirituality and ‘Holy Minimalism’
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1977 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is released, featuring a soundtrack by John Williams.
1977 Premiere of Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten.
Composers such as Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener revel in a simple and spiritual method of composition, drawing influence from age-old sacred music techniques and texts.
lpo.org.uk/therestisnoise
A glance back at some of the composers, pieces and classical music movements we’ve covered in The Centurion and The Rest Is Noise festival; just a handful of the very many musical styles and artists that flourished throughout the 20th century. Learn more about the context of, and stories behind, the music at Southbank Centre’s immersive weekends of films, talks and debates. southbankcentre.co.uk/therestisnoise
1914 to 1918: World War I
1920 Jazz Composers in America incorporate elements of jazz, spirituals and sounds from city life into their music to create a distinct ‘American sound’. Crossovers between jazz / popular music and classical prove successful in America, Paris and Germany.
1913 Premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring ballet in Paris. Its hammering, irregular rhythms, dissonant chords and stomping choreography provoke a near-riot from the Parisian audience.
Parisian Style In the years surrounding WW1 Paris rivals Germany as a hub of European creativity. Composers rebel against Germany’s ‘seriousness’, and turn to jazz, musichall and ‘sounds of the urban street’.
1924 Premiere of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
1938 to 1945: World War II Hollywood 1937 Carl Orff’s hugely popular Carmina Burana receives its first staging in Frankfurt.
1943 Michael Tippett serves three months in Wormwood Scrubs prison as a conscientious objector.
1938 Bohuslav Martinů�’s native Czechoslovakia is occupied by German forces. He is inspired to write his passionate Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani. 1938 Nazi officials set up their ‘Degenerate Music’ exhibition, including works by Jewish and Jewishorigin composers, Marxist, and Modernist composers.
During and after the War, several European composers emigrate to America including Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff. Many European composers end up living in Los Angeles, teaching and / or writing for Hollywood.
1939 Dmitri Shostakovich completes his Sixth Symphony, which in 1948 is banned by Soviet authorities.
1965
1945 Premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes at Sadler’s Wells.
1970 Second-wave Avant Garde
A new wave of avant-gardists emerge, favouring musical textures over musical processes. ‘Some gravitated toward the musical past, cutting it up by way of quotation and collage. Others pushed out into interstellar spaces, abandoning any pretence of an organising system.’ Alex Ross 1962 Premiere of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem at the new Coventry cathedral. 1962 Premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony (‘Babi Yar’), named after the site of the Nazi massacres in Kiev.
1967 Premiere of György Ligeti’s Lontano.
New York Minimalism
Steve Reich develops his pioneering tape delay techniques in works such as It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. Composers such as Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass simplify their harmonic language and ‘ rediscover the pleasure of a steady pulse’. (Alex Ross) They also work with ideas from pop, bebop and jazz.
1990
1974 Premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles, (From the Canons to the Stars), inspired by the canyons of Utah.
1995 Globalisation and Post Modernism In a world where capitalism, global communications and pop culture thrive, musicians and audiences have increasing access to music from past and present and all corners of the globe. Composers continue to draw inspiration from and world around them, often echoing the many different sounds, issues and ideas of modern life in their work.
1986 Sofia Gubaidulina completes her revisions of her violin concerto Offertorium.
1993 Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 (written in 1976) sits at No. 6 in the UK music charts.
1997 Premiere of Thomas Adès’s Asyla.
2000 John Adams’s El Niño is first performed in Paris, re-telling the Nativity story in a Hispanic American setting.
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What they said ‘One way to describe his [Adams’s] work is to say that it sounds like Highway 1. It is a cut-up paradise, a stream of familiar sounds arranged in unfamiliar ways.’ Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise ‘When I wrote Asyla, I thought that composing music was like tuning a radio. It was as if the music was on the radio, and I could tune my brain in and find it. But now I think it’s more like flying a plane – you know you need to land safely, and you need to see all the controls and the whole landscape, and if you get into stormy weather you need to keep hold of everything.’ Thomas Adès, interviewed in The Guardian, 2007
Mark-Anthony Turnage The story of a 19th-century courtesan is accepted as grist to the mill of opera composers. But because [Anna Nicole] died only in 2007 and is meant to be trailer-trash, it makes people uncomfortable … But why is she of less value or less suitable as a subject than, say, Marilyn Monroe? We are still dealing with a fascinating human being whose life, however weirdly, reflected the times we all live in. … on his opera Anna Nicole – The Guardian 2011
Did you know?
The experimental pop artist Björk is heavily influenced by contemporary classical repertoire – much of her work has been inspired by techniques and music of composers such as Stockhausen, Messiaen and Arvo Pärt, to name only a few. She has also collaborated with composer John Tavener, singing on his work Prayer of the Heart.
Björk
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Mark-Anthony Turnage is one of the leading British composers of the 21st century.
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Tuning in to the modern world
SAT 7 DEC 2013, 7.30PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL Julian Anderson The Stations of the Sun James MacMillan Veni, Veni, Emmanuel Mark-Anthony Turnage Evening Songs Thomas Adès Asyla
World events
Vladimir Jurowski conductor Evelyn Glennie percussion FREE PRE-CONCERT EVENT 6 – 6.45PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL
From front page
The critics really should have been ready for that. Turnage has written orchestral music inspired by Miles Davis, and made a string quartet play Stairway to Heaven. Members of The Mighty Boosh attend his premieres, and his most recent opera told the story of stripper-turned-reality-TV-star Anna Nicole Smith. And if that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing an Important Classical Composer should be writing about in the 21st century – well, the critics are just going to have to get used to it. Because no serious composer has ever written in a vacuum. And at the end of a century in which classical music tore itself to pieces over abstract theories (and lost most of its audience in the process) something had to give. The young American composer John Adams realised that something wasn’t right as far back as the late 60s. ‘Imagine me, if you will, an aspiring composer sitting in a classroom diligently counting backward from twelve, tracing down combinatorial transformations’ he recalls in his memoir Hallelujah Junction. ‘Then imagine this same student emerging from his sombre seminar, walking cross the campus, and hearing from some dorm window the screaming, slashing, bending, soaring lawless guitar of Jimi Hendrix.’ The result has been a generation of composers who, in finding their own voice, have embraced the world and the time they live in. John Adams has made a life on the coast of California, and creates music that pulses with emotion. He’s
written operas about Richard Nixon and Palestinian terrorists, a chamber symphony inspired by Road Runner cartoons and El Niño: a joyous Christmas oratorio that draws its energy from the music of Los Angeles’ Latino community. Adams writes for his time and place. When the director Peter Sellars filmed El Niño, he set part of it in an LA diner: a sacred epiphany takes place over a Pepsi and fries.
John Adams I like to think of culture as the symbols that we share to understand each other. When we communicate, we point to symbols that we have in common. If people want to make a point, they reach for a reference. It might be a Woody Allen movie, or a John lennon lyric, or ‘I’m not a crook’.
That’s John Adams’s world, of course. But British composers have felt that same urge to re-connect; to compose life as they live it, not as musical theory dictates. When, in the early 1990s, the rumour went round that a brilliant teenager called Thomas Adès was ‘the new Britten’, it simply reaffirmed Adès’s determination to be anything but. ‘Why should that be the thing anyone would want to do in 1990?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t make any sense’. But what made perfect sense for a 26-year-old composer in 90s London, is the
third movement of his 1997 orchestral work Asyla, with its pounding bass, flashing colours and blissed-out, off-your-face climax. Its title? Ecstasio. Again, only a classical music critic could miss the point there. Still, after that sensational high, Asyla uncoils into an uneasy sort of quiet. MarkAnthony Turnage’s Evening Songs draw on all its composer’s many musical influences to evoke intensely personal memories of the composer’s own early teens in suburban Essex – and later the anxiety he felt as a new father, listening to his baby son breathing. And while Julian Anderson would be the first to admit that he was never really as much of a clubber as Thomas Adès, pieces like The Stations of the Sun tug you down into a world of deep emotion even while their surfaces blaze with HD colour. The point is: get past the traffic, the raves, the tabloid TV, and all the thrilling, maddening, surface noise of modern life, and these composers are serious. They mean what they’re saying – and they know exactly how to say it. That’s why Alex Ross, talking about the state of international classical music soon after the launch of The Rest Is Noise, said that ‘Having travelled around the world a bit, I’d say that yes, the situation in Britain really is one of the healthiest. Names like Thomas Adès and Mark-Anthony Turnage will come up in conversations about culture.’ But who needs conversation when you can let the music speak? This is music that demands to be heard. So hear it.
The LPO Foyle Future Firsts, under conductor Paul Hoskins, perform British music from the 1990s including Martin Butler’s Jazz Machines, described as ‘jazz that machines might play, on the sly, when we’re not listening’.
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SAT 14 DEC 2013, 7.30PM ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL John Adams El Niño (Nativity Oratorio) Vladimir Jurowski conductor Kate Royal soprano Kelley O’Connor mezzo soprano Matthew Rose bass Daniel Bubeck countertenor Brian Cummings countertenor Steven Rickards countertenor The Coloma St Cecilia Singers Trinity Boys Choir London Philharmonic Choir Mark Grey sound designer FREE PRE-CONCERT EVENT 5 – 5.45PM THE CLORE BALLROOM AT ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s creative ensemble for 15 –19 year-olds, The Band, performs its latest set – new music inspired by John Adams’s El Niño and its source texts.
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1989 The Berlin Wall is brought down, after nearly 30 years of separating East and West Berliners 1990 Leading anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela is freed from the South African prison he has been held in for 27 years 1991 The Gulf War Allies send hundreds of bomber planes into Iraq at the beginning of Operation Desert Storm 1991 South Africa repeals apartheid laws 1991 Gorbachev falls from power and the Soviet Union is dissolved 1993 The World Trade Centre bombing terrorises New York 1994 A British man is given the first battery-operated heart 1995 OJ Simpson is found not guilty of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman 1996 The first genetically modified food produce goes on sale in British supermarkets 1997 Princess Diana dies after a car crash in Paris 1998 Former Cambodian dictator, Pol Pot, dies
Hear it first! Preview these pieces at lpo.org.uk/ therestisnoise
1998 US President Bill Clinton is impeached 1999 Nato calls off its 11-week air war against Kosovo 2000 Billions of people around the world celebrate the new millennium
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The Rest Is Noise: A Soundtrack to the 20th Century Throughout 2013 the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been charting the great musical movements of the 20th century via a year-long series of concerts as part of Southbank Centre’s festival The Rest Is Noise, inspired by Alex Ross’s book.
In the spirit of The Rest Is Noise, our quarterly newspaper The Centurion has been delving into the incredible stories behind the music of the 20th century. All issues are available online at lpo.org.uk, or you can call the LPO box office for printed copies.
Issue 1: 1900 – 1915
Issue 2: 1916 – 1939
Riots at the ballet, operas full of sex and violence and punch-ups at premieres. New music at the turn of the 20th century causes a stir.
Songs of subversion and submission spread across Europe as music becomes a political tool in the lead-up to the Second World War. Jazz and cabaret make their mark on the world and American classical music comes into its own.
Featuring: Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.
Featuring: Kurt Weill, Carl Orff and George Gerswhin.
Issue 3: 1945 – 1975
Issue 4: 1976 – 2000
The world reels after a Second World War. New ideas and new beliefs give rise to new sounds and the avant-garde movements of the 1950s and 60s.
A look at the music that soundtracks our modern lives, and ‘classical’ music’s role in contemporary culture. Featuring: John Adams, Arvo Pärt and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
Featuring: Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messiaen and Alfred Schnittke.
Stay Tuned
The Rest Is Noise continues until December 2013. For full programme details and future London Philharmonic Orchestra performance listings, visit lpo.org.uk Join our mailing list at lpo.org.uk @LPOrchestra, #therestisnoise
/ londonphilharmonicorchestra
For the full The Rest Is Noise programme including talks, films, debates and other performances, and for extra online content visit: southbankcentre.co.uk/therestisnoise Book now: Tickets £9 – £39 London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office: 020 7840 4242 |lpo.org.uk Southbank Centre Ticket Office: 0844 847 9920 |southbankcentre.co.uk Transaction fees apply: £1.75 online, £2.75 over the phone. No fee for bookings made in person at Southbank Centre
Contributors Richard Bratby, Libby Northcote-Green, Lily Oram Editor Mia Roberts Design Cog Design Quotes sourced from The Rest Is Noise © Alex Ross 2007 & 2009. The Rest Is Noise published by Fourth Estate in 2007 and by Harper Perennial in 2009. First published in 2007 by Farrar Straus and Giroux in the United States. Photographs courtesy of Getty Images, Flickr Commons, Royal College of Music and Wikimedia Commons: Beyoncé p1 Wikimedia Commons Beyoncé concert in Central Park 2011 by Asterio Tecson / CC-BY-SA 2.0 Paramount Pictures Studio p4 Wikimedia Commons Paramount Pictures Studio, Hollywood by Antoine Taveneaux / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Portable casette player p5 Wikimedia Commons Portable cassette player TPS-L2 Walkman. The first Walkman, released by Sony in 1979 by Døgen / CC-BY-SA 2.0 Thom Yorke p6 Wikimedia Commons Radiohead at Heineken Music Hall, May 9. Ed O’Brien (left), Thom Yorke (right) by Michell Zappa / CC-BY-SA 2.0 John Williams p8 Wikimedia Commons John Williams at the Boston Symphony Hall after he conducted the Boston Pops. May 2006. by Nationalparks, user of that wikipedia / CC-BY-SA 3.0 Sofia Gubaidulina p9 Wikimedia Commons Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina in Sortavala by Dmitri N. Smirnov / CC-BY-SA 3.0 Björk p10 Wikimedia Commons Björk (of the Sugarcubes) in Japan by Masao Nakagami / CC-BY-SA 2.0 Thomas Adès p10 © Brian Voice Mark-Anthony Turnage p10 © Philip Gatward