Author Archive

Here is the recording of my piece ‘Breathe Shine Seek’ (ca. 4 mins) from the BBC Singers Workshop, on Tue 26th Oct. The recording was done by Jude Obermuller, also a participant in the workshop.

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Today I took part in a workshop with the BBC Singers at Maida Vale Studios. It was co-ordinated by The Royal College of Music in collaboration with the BBC Singers. The workshop was led by Gabriel Jackson and David Hill (Conductor). There were a number of RCM Composers involved; all having written pieces lasting 3-6 minutes. One of the pieces was my ‘Breathe, Shine, Seek’ (based on a poem by John Donne).

I was really impressed with the Choir – they sightread extremely difficult pieces and seemed to pluck notes out of thin air. They had a repetiteur/pianist present to help them with the pitches as all the pieces were written for choir a capella.

My piece was the second – at about 11.45am. I was initially concerned about the time constraints (we were given 35 mins approx per piece), but it worked out perfectly as the singers sightread everything almost flawlessly at once, and some of the pieces were more challenging than others, so they were allowed more/less time. I ended up getting about 40 minutes which was perfect.

I learned a few things – firstly about layout; I need to create Ossia-type staves rather than dividing up the line, and put one line of text above the stave if there is an elaborate divisi passage. (Alison warned me that this would be mentioned, but I’d already handed in the piece by the time I showed it to her).

Also – comments were made about my metronome marks (I’d written the piece in 3 or 4 days as there was about a month’s notice for the workshop..not including ‘rumours of’ the workshop, and I’d been working on something else at the time). The metronome marks were a bit inaccurate and some sensitive suggestions were made by David about varying it a bit more, most of which I took on board and worked out really well. I also changed a couple of dynamics based on balance (solos etc) and learned something about the subtle difference between grace notes ‘on the beat’ and accented semiquaver upbeats. A debate was triggered over whether the composer or the conductor should be responsible for the tempo variations. I thought: Surely the composer is responsible, but the conductor can create a unique interpretation based around the directions…(?) David Hill reminded me that some composers are more meticulous than others when it comes to directions, and don’t want their ideas to be ‘meddled with’.

My poem gets pretty dodgy towards the end – I only used the first few lines. Jude told me that John Adams used the exact same poem in ‘Doctor Atomic’ (with more of a ballady setting), which surprised me, as since I started setting it all I could think of was what a terrible choice I’d made…! It did work out though, apart from the whole ‘Battered Cod’ joke it evoked (again thanks Alison, for the heads-up)! Text below for the few lines I used:

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;

Solfa has written a choral piece ‘Breathe, Shine, Seek’, is one of six young composers’ pieces which will be workshopped by the BBC Singers next Tuesday (26th Oct). The workshop was partly co-ordinated by the Royal College of Music where Solfa is studying for an MMus.

International Congress of Musical Signification.

Me giving my talk today (see previous entry for abstract). Excuse the blurriness. The paper went well; I think it was fairly clear. It was noted that all my research subjects were very young: (21-26) and that their common views/experiences might have something to do with this. I might ask the same gang of people in fifty years whether their philosophy and views about the composer/audience relationship has changed at all…!

I was told it was comprehensive and it did provoke a lot of questions and discussion. I was pleased to find that a handful of the audience were Composers, and I had a good crowd of 16 or so; not bad seeing as I expected about 4! Memorable questions asked afterwards were: “Do you imagine yourself as an audience member while composing?” and “Do you think that we can be conditioned to experience clear emotions through atonal music?” The ’emotions’ thing becomes a little clichéd, but I defended the next speaker (Piotr Podlipniak) when he was attacked for his over-use of the term, in his research on ‘The universal aesthetic value of tonality and the ubiquity of tonal music‘ (already a provocative topic)! I made the point that for a lay audience, emotion is the first port of call in their attempt to encode what they hear (back to the ‘Constructivist theory’ about people not just passively receiving sensory input but being inclined to find meaning somehow). As children we often learn about classical music in this way; we identify major and minor keys by their potential to express certain ‘moods’. Speaking of moods, there was another talk on Tuesday about how we have to connect a mood to someone, or a legimate circumstance – so, a landscape can’t really be ‘gloomy’, but a painting of a landscape can be etc (Krzysztof Guczalski: Expressive meaning of music – a pioneer conception).

The main ‘discoveries’ in my research were:

A. The majority of composers suggested pre-concert talks or programme notes as a means of explaining to the audience what their music is about. This was interesting considering that a couple of the composers had elsewhere in the questionnaire insisted that the wider audience’s response was irrelevant to them. By insisting on these tools to translate their musical ideas, they are actively imposing a certain meaning on the piece for the audience, so therefore they must be at least a little concerned about how the audience hears the piece.

B. There was a divide in the mindset of some of the composers I questionned, between those who used the lay audience’s ‘ignorance’ as an inspiration to ‘write to challenge’ and those who decided that to acknowledge the audience as an important factor would inevitably hinder their development.

There were other little discoveries but I think those two were particularly important. I gave the audience a printed copy of some (anonymous) answers from the composers I used as research subjects.

Last week, for two days (Tues-Thurs) I had the honour of staying in Connecticut with legendary orchestrator William David Brohn. This was all thanks to the aforementioned Septimus, who makes my life all the more interesting..! He first met Bill in 2006, following a performance of ‘Mary Poppins’ at the Prince Edward Theatre in London. Tim had been a fan of Bill’s since the 1994 re-orchestrated revival of ‘Oliver!’, and thankfully decided to tell him so. Thus began a wonderful friendship, which resulted in ‘Broadway to West End by Special Arrangement’ – a massive gala last year at London’s Drury Lane theatre, in honour of Bill, which was co-produced and created by Tim.  Bill’s most famous scores are probably ‘Wicked’ and ‘Ragtime’. He counts his ‘West Side Story Suite’ (for Joshua Bell) as a work that is particularly special and personal to him.

Bill was working on a re-orchestration of Michel Legrand’s ‘Marguerite’ – which premiered in London in 2008, and I happened to see three times but has since been re-written, book and score. The songs have been changed and this forthcoming production also has a larger band. We heard a demo by Michel Legrand and his wife, performing ‘China Doll’ from Marguerite- originally for solo female but re-written as a duet. We were delighted to discuss the production with Bill, who hadn’t seen the show in performance. I also highlighted a couple of accidentals in the harp writing, which I thought might have been an interesting modal effect but turned out to be a pedal error.

I noticed that Bill’s orchestration style is characterised by a lot of individual, lyrical lines and countermelody, rather than filling in a particular harmony. It’s very refined and creates a sense of polyphony, but still emphasises the vocal line. At times it can be very thick and hearty as well, such as in ‘Journey On’ from Ragtime, and the Gershwin arrangements for Joshua Bell. I noticed the glorious orchestral combination of Gran Cassa, Tubular Bells and Timps for a combined dramatic ‘thud’!

I played ‘Entwining Brances’ (finale) from my ‘Deirdre and Naoise‘ for Bill, and he was very complimentary about it. He liked the fruity ‘Cello solos, and strangely didn’t complain about the Glock, though it’s the biggest problem in the piece for me. There are things about the orchestration that I would change considerably now, but I guess it was a good effort for the stage I was at four years ago. At Bill’s I also studied the full (orchestral) score for ‘Ragtime’, and ‘Ragtime Symphonic Suite’ (of which I had recordings). I also had the honour of studying the score for Stephen Schwartz’s recent opera, ‘Seance on a Wet Afternoon’, and met Schwartz briefly on the Thursday morning before leaving for New York. ‘Seance’ is a beautiful diatonic work which is the kind of thing I was hoping for in Rufus Wainwright’s ‘Prima Donna’, but didn’t quite get.. The arias definitely had the distinct ‘Schwartz’ trademark on them.

As for the Broadway Shows, I can recommend Bacharach’s ‘Promises Promises’, and as always ‘Mary Poppins’! The orchestration is of course, stunning. I took a sneaky photo of Bill’s Tony Award for Wicked, which I will upload at some point after Tim does the photos.

Broadway to West End

Saturday 22nd January 2011 – 7.30pm

• Solfa Carlile – New Work  (APO Young Composers Award Commission)
• Poulenc – Organ Concerto (soloist: David Pether)
• Tchaikowsky – Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique)

The Concert Hall, Reading

Friday was the conclusion of the ‘Theatre of Illusion’ Project. We created a half-hour piece of theatre at 4pm. We recreated five separate scenes from Faust, titled ‘Certain Circles’. The recurring element was that of a circle which provided the ‘set’ for the actors. We had a white screen at the back of the performance space which had glued to it bits of newspaper without colour. The audience and musicians formed part of a larger circle outside of the performance space, with the musicians south of the circle, forming a sort of crescent. The props were made of, or covered with bits of newspaper, to create a kind of ambiguous colour scheme, with the musicians and actors (except Faust) wearing black and navy.

We used bottles, a musical saw, newspaper, 3 tam-tams, trombone, oboe, flute, three violins, bass drum and various other percussion. We all played instruments (me on flute and percussion) and contributed to the improvisation, which was structured.

I created a kind of “map” for the improvisation based on what we’d decided for the different scenes of ‘Faust’. I acted as a scribe, notating everything we were doing as we went along throughout the week. It’s amazing how, because the whole thing was so intensive, we’d spend hours on something one day, and by the next day we’d have moved onto another scene and would completely forget what we’d done previously. It was invaluable to have had a record of everything on the last day, and I was delighted with a pat on the back from H on Friday in the midst of the panic.

One of the initial ‘plans’ Harry set for us was to create two elements to each improvisation. One was that of a ‘continuum’, which would sustain throughout a section, and the other was what he called a ‘punctuation’ element, which was a direct reaction or signal pertaining to what was going on in with the actors, who played the Wyrd sisters, Faust, Mephisto, Beelzebub and Faust’s wives (there were three men and three women, which worked out perfectly). The danger with the punctuation element was that it might become obvious or too descriptive, a concern we had on the first day. In the end though, we had to abandon these laws of continuum and punctuation and just do something freer that worked out with the action. Surprisingly, and wonderfully, we managed to create original, atmospheric and exciting music, or at least that was the general consensus, even among the audience members who weren’t fans of ‘contemporary’ music. We were pleased to hear adjectives like “amazing” and “mindblowing” as part of the audience reaction!

The complimentary Prosecco afterwards made a great ending to the week, and we had a few words of encouragement and congratulations from Stephen L and Harry. I also got a lesson from Harry on Friday morning on my piece ‘Skellie’, during which he made some interesting observations about development of rhythm, and how I tend to use instruments together. His own music makes the argument that individual lines can be exciting, and independent from one another without being ‘tied’ to any kind of dialogue. To be honest, after last week, I’m already thinking about the composition process very differently.

I’m currently involved in a collaborative project entitled: “Theatre of Illusion” at Dartington Summer School, with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Alison Chitty (Designer), Stephen Plaice (Librettist/Writer) and Stephen Langridge (Director). This began yesterday and will continue until this coming Friday, 14th.

In our party are three young composers, six actors, two designers and three musicians, along with a lighting designer. Stephen Langridge, Stephen Plaice and Harrison Birtwistle are acting as mentors and course leaders, along with Alison Chitty who will oversee the set design.

Our challenge is to explore the musical and theatrical potential of Faust; the original chapbook (Historia von D. Johann Fausten, published in 1587) not the Faust of Goethe or Marlowe. We’re putting together a theatre piece based on the first instance of Doctor Faustus’ sorcery in the book, where Faust conjures the Devil’s Agent (Mephisto).

We began the project today and started with an exercise in improvisation. I’m quite new to this and made a few suggestions but will get more fluent as the week goes on. I’m told the music for the project is to be entirely improvised, with clear punctuation points and structural specifics to inform its outline. The main concern for me is to ensure that the music complements the action, and vice versa, without resorting to ‘musically describing’ the event, as might be done with film music, for example. We discussed this in a workshop; how the music will serve a different purpose for this project, rather than simply to mirror what’s going on onstage. H. Birtwistle briefly mentioned a piece I’d sent him a few months ago and has offered to discuss it with me. I must find the piece somewhere in PDF format and print it off over the next couple of days to have a lesson on.

This beautiful site was set up for me by the handsome and talented Tim “Septimus” Connor, of Quant Marketing, and various exciting independent theatre and music projects.

You can read his tips on how to sell theatre tickets in various articles he’s had published in The Stage, and you can meet him occasionally loitering outside such venues as The Donmar Warehouse and The National Theatre.

“A rare treat, sandwiched between Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate and Seán Ó. Riada’s Mise Eire: the brief but effective Aisling by Solfa Carlile, a student of Joseph Horovitz at the Royal College of Music […] unashamedly romantic, adept at conjuring up an instant atmosphere” Martin Anderson, Tempo

“It is refreshing to find such a rare, delicate gift as Carlile’s; her youth belies a determined, contemplative spirit” Vicki Love, The Examiner 2007

“Solfa Carlile’s Sounds is a witty response to the playful ideas of Brendan Kennelly’s poem” Michael Dervan, The Irish Times 2010