The
picture I am left with after talking to Michael Nyman is not one of a composer
who is eager to bare his emotional soul in creating lilting scores like the
"The Piano", but of a musical
alchemist whipping his band on, who like sorcrerers apprentices, are caught
up in Nyman’s maelstrom of changing rhythms and harmonies.
Seeing
the band live for the first time many are blown away by the sheer dynamic
and volume of familliar instruments (soprano, alto and baritone sax) inhabiting
a totally unfamillar tonal range, which at times resembles music antiqua (medieval
instrumentation). As a result of the intensity at which his music
is performed, members of this all star band end the night,
limp and sweating, resembling tuxedoed
marathoners. Nyman calls it cookin,
bandmembers, like world renown saxophonist John Harle, a fifteen year veteran
of the Nyman ensemble, have another word for it.
"Madness. There is a sort of hysteria created by the circularity of his number playing which has figures of two, three and four on top of each other. You're never starting in the same place and any attempt to make sense of where you are in the score is frustrated. However, Michael’s pythagorian dictatorship which gives him complete control over the score and I believe the audience, is not necessarily unromantic or unique. Claude Debussy would regularly direct his publisher Durand to add bars to works like Jeux to complete his Golden Cycle of numbers. And, despite the fact all the parts are written it has a collective swing that ‘takes off from the stage not the page’,
Michael Nyman grew up with a professed dislike for the soupy, soporific,
unattacky sound of saxophones of the Glenn Miller Band. Since the sax section carries a large part
of the ensembles sound, he found it necessary
to tonally retool it .
I
ask John Harle to do things that don’t have alot to do with
sax playing, he invents a way of doing it, exaggerates it and feeds it back
into my expectations of what saxophone players can do. Eventhough the band doesn’t contain soloists
like or Tricky Sam Nanton or Harry Carney, there is paralell
to a band like Ellington’s in that the interaction between the unique sonic
capabilities of players like John Harle and baritone saxophonist , Andy Findon,
that are fed back to me color the
subsequent compositions, giving
the band a signature sound.
Much
of Nyman’s compositions and resulting orchestrations are generated from harmonic
ideas and a heavily accented piano style he developed as he struck out on
his own after years of performing other peoples music
and writing as a critic for The London Spectator.
Rather
than deriving my style from what I heard during
my years as a music critic, my compostional style , was generated from
writing at the piano, where I discovered the articulation of certain harmonies
was instinctive. Despite the fact I had been performing as a
concert pianist for years, I had no
inkling that there was this demon, heavy handed, pianist lurking around until
I started playing piano in the composer mode.
It was Brian Eno who pointed out to me, as I was contemplating the
shift from critic to composer, that a distinctive style on the piano or guitar
can't be consciously developed it just happens.
It
was Nyman who first used the term Minimalist, in referring to composers like
Terry Riley, and authored the most detailed work on the subject, Experimental
Music: Cage and Beyond (Schirmer Press) , during his decade as a music
critic. He
championed the openess to new forms and instrumentation exhibited by composers
like Cage and Steve Reich.
A ranking professional might have played it flawlessly
from a technical standpoint, but would have never discovered the passion that
Holly did in her preparation for her role as Ada.
The
score for Jane Campion’s The Piano , precursed a change in Nyman’s cinemascores. Whereas Nyman’s scores in Peter Greenaway’s films often had a life
of it’s own or sometimes directed the action, his scores like that for Six
Days and Six Nights and Carrington are tied to the mood of the characters. His latest project Campion’s adaptation of
Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady is destined to be his most complex musical
psychodrama yet.
I
find my film music is becoming simpler and simpler, Nyman commented.
Lately, I’m paying more attention to what’s on the screen, instead
of putting my head down and saying the music should have a life of it’s own,
which worked in Greenaway's films ("Draughtman’s
Contract", "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover") but
in a film which depends more on genuine interactions between human beings
or is more moody it doesn’t.
The fact the score
for "The Piano"
was so scaled down may very well cost Nyman a shot
at the Oscar, as he pointed out. The
film would have been drenched by a big John Williams score, which the Academy
seems so taken with, Nyman said. I
used my release of the Piano Concerto to display the possibilities for a punchier
score, with further explorations into counter melodies which would have confused
the emotional thread of the movie.
At
the core to much of Nyman’s movie music is his reworking of
pieces from other eras, such as the 19th Century Scottish folksongs
for The Piano or Purcell’s King Arthur, which he transformed for the opening
of The Draughtman’s Contract , the first work for which he garnered world
wide acclaim as a composer.
It
also gained him the wrath of the British critical establishment who accused
him of unceremoniously borrowing great themes and cast doubts about his ability
to create his own, which negatively
impacted his ability to receive commissions for larger works at Home. Indeed part of this wrath may have been a holdover from his days
as a 24 year old critic who made a name for himself covering music, Cage,
Reich and Glass, they chose to ignore. Although he is working on a piece for the BBC
to commemorate Purcell’s 300th anniversary he has often had to cross the channel
(to France) or the Atlantic to find commissions for the larger works he so
desires.
Bach
covered Vivaldi, Stravinsky called himself a kleptomaniac and Handel covered
himself. Jazz wouldn’t survive without
standards, Nyman opined. What I’m doing to classical music is a combination
of respect and disrespect. During the punk era I felt very at Home.
Because I felt they were doing to rock what I was doing to Purcell.
It’s not laziness on my part. It has
to do with perceiving something in someones work that had gone unnoticed. When I use a source I very carefully rewrite
it, trying to give breath to certain qualities it contains that suggest special
harmonic inventions that weren’t available in 1600, but are available to me
now , like in Re:Don Giovanni.
His core compositional motivation is his love of harmony, which he
feels suffered at the hands of the serialists who followed Schoenbergs lead
in creating a linear music that he says is "dire to listen to. Nyman sees Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Lamont
Young as heroic figures who reintroduced chord changes and harmony into modern
classical music.
"This
harmonic movement comes as much from jazz as anything else.
Alot of the chord changes Reich used, he got from Dizzy Gillespie and
many of the blues things Lamont Young was doing came from jazz. I think harmony
is the central attraction to classical music.
Luckily I seem to have a talent for coming up with changes that move
the music along and the emotions. When
I hear other composers parading impotent chord changes I wonder what’s wrong
with their ears or their musical honesty.
Many
are looking to judge Michael Nyman by larger worspecialized band he has assembled
will not be available forever. Inspite
of his own doubts he has created a unique and valuable body of work. And though
he denies the romantic musical impulse, I much prefer the abstract manipulation
of notes, it’s something he does suspiciously well.