Learning on ScreenHear the Future of British Music
By exploring the nuances of the piece, Spotlight enables the reader to take a closer look at how works from the collection can inspire others. In particular, Spotlight allows us to show how the archive of British music’s past helps inspire new practice today. Chris Mayo is currently involved in Sound and Music’s Embedded programme for emerging composers. Through this he becomes the Composer-in-Residence at Manchester Camerata. Here he spotlights the works of Gordon McPherson in our Collection:
A few years ago (maybe five or six actually) I received a phone call from a friend of mine: ‘Gordon McPherson wants you to call him’ … In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure what he wanted. I remember he was probing me as to why I would want to live in London instead of Glasgow. He also said ‘I like your titles’ though it wasn’t entirely clear whether he’d heard any of the pieces these titles were attached to. It was a brief and perplexing phone call and I’ve never spoken to him since. But it did get me interested in his music and I discovered that I liked his titles too: Born of Funk and the Fear of Failing, Morning Drunk and Buzzard, Brevity can save the Nation, Uncanny Valley, Heh! Voltaire! (Or, Thoughts Whilst Running From The Scene Of The Crime), Maps And Diagrams Of Our Pain, to name a few. Western Darlings is one of sixteen pieces by McPherson in the British Music Collection and possibly my favourite. It was written in 1992 for Orkest de Volharding and is, in the composer’s own words:
… an attempt to fuse together the style of writing that had preoccupied me during the mid 80s onwards namely Scottish folk traditional techniques such as psalmody and bagpipe ornamentation – what Scottish composer hasn’t at some point gone through this process! – aligned with more intentionally awkward jarring and messy rhythms to a more distinctly de Volharding sound that had, since my first introduction to it, always enthused me.
It’s a fantastic piece of music made doubly fantastic by the fact that it occupies basically the same musical world as Stu Phillips’ theme to Quincy M.E. which is both no mean feat and something I wish I could say about more music (Stu Phillips also composed the themes to Knight Rider and Battlestar Galactica and is someone we should all strive to be compared to).
In April 2013 our new programmes for the coming year were underlined by the findings from our public consultation conducted at the start of the year. Developing The Collection will be an integral piece of work in all we do. The programmes launched since then range from development programmes for composers, new artistic projects, and work supporting the teaching of composition in schools. In short we will be seeking to realise our vision in creating a future in which new music and sound prospers, transforming lives, challenging expectations and celebrating the work of its creators. Our archive, and its role in inspiring today’s composers, will be a key part in that.
Kealy Cozens
www.soundandmusic.org/
