Over the next few days, I'm going to be uploading score videos for each of the movements of my recent piece "Three Poems by Li Bai". Here's the first movement, featuring mezzo-soprano Yi Zhang, viola player Ellie Blackshaw, and me on guitar & programmed vibraphone.
October 18, 2022
October 17, 2022
October 16, 2022
Back to the guitar, with a vengeance...
In my last post, I said I'd barely have time to catch my breath after finishing the Master's programme at Surrey before throwing myself back into (or "at") classical guitar. And so...
Yesterday I played with the Brighton Guitar Quartet at the wonderful Unitarian Church in Brighton as guests of the Sussex Musicians' Club. The latest (third? fourth?) line-up of the quartet is Ruairi Gann, James Hartt, Olivier Thereaux, and your correspondent. We'd really only got together before the big C struck back in the spring of 2020, so we've only had a couple of opportunities to play in front of an audience since getting together, but if last night's showing was anything to go by, I have to say that I think we've really gelled.
We played Andrew York's lovely "Pacific Coast Highway", originally composed for the LA Guitar Quartet (so no pressure there) and Roland Dyens' "Austin Tango". Both worked well, and for once we took the former at the tempo the LAGQ take it at, much improving on previous performances.
I also played my, er, party piece, Reginald Smith Brindle's "El Polifemo De Oro" and was especially pleased with it. I'd just decided to enjoy it as much as possible and make the performance, well, a performance. Gregg had also encouraged me in our last lesson to really concentrate on timbre and colour as much as possible, which I think I really went for. It was certainly helped by the beautiful acoustic at the church, which has a lovely "bloom" without being too soupy. Anyway, there were a few slip-ups and a bit of shakiness in the right hand in the second movement, but for once I think I more than just "got away with it".
Thanks to our teacher and mentor Gregg Isaacson for getting us in performance shape, and to the SMC for inviting us to play.
The guitar playing was sandwiched between two piano performances. Kevin Allen played Berg's bracing first piano sonata, and the young student Oscar Gardner turned in a stunning performance of two Debussy pieces.
Incidentally, the last time I played at the Unitarian Church was in a rather different setting: the first (and indeed only) Boom Logistics live show, with Pete Marsh on bass and Paul May on percussion:
All in all, a highly enjoyable evening. Next weekend, I'm playing at the Guitars by the Sea workshop, led by Stephen Gordon, Jon Rattenbury, and Gerald Garcia, and have a huge amount of music to prep for that. I'll report back!
October 10, 2022
On finishing my Master's course
So, that’s it then. This time last year I was about to start my Master’s at the University of Surrey, and last Tuesday I handed in my final piece of work. It’s been quite a ride: >25,000 words of commentary and analysis, 50 compositional sketches and experiments, 10 fully scored and recorded ensemble compositions of various sizes, two solo recitals, a competition appearance, one piece of musical theatre(!), a handful of both informal and formal academic presentations, two semesters of lectures and seminars, and 100s of hours of independent study and practice. And, as I say, now it’s all over. It feels a bit weird, and perhaps inevitably somewhat of an anti-climax.
I was on campus for one final time last Wednesday, to return a handful of scores to the library, but mostly I was there to see my fellow students give their final recitals, which ran the gamut from Mozart to Villa Lobos, Randy Newman to Copland. Needless to say, I thought they all smashed it, as my daughter says, although there were a lot of nerves on display before the show! Having performed my own recitals in the previous semesters, I declined this time (for reasons I outlined here). I felt an odd mixture of disappointment and relief at merely being an audience member this time.
Sadly saying goodbye to Yi after her final recital
What I settled on delivering as my final submission instead was a fully scored and recorded 30-minute work for small ensemble: mezzo-soprano, viola, guitar, vibraphone, and pre-recorded atmospheres. Having worked with fellow student Yi Zhang on a set of Elizabeth Barrett Browning settings earlier in the year, I wanted to take vocal writing further. An obvious route was to set Chinese poetry, and after background research I settled on the Tang-era poet Li Bai1 (701-762 CE), considered one of China’s greatest poets. I'll post a score video as a YouTube video as soon as I can, but in the meantime, here it is on Soundcloud:
Knowing that things were going to get busy on the work front in September, I did the bulk of the research, compositional work, and scoring over the summer, consulting with Yi on the vocal setting and the Brighton-based viola player Ellie Blackshaw on the viola writing. I then recorded Yi, Ellie and my own guitar playing in September. With little time to rehearse, the music was recorded one part at a time, often just a few bars at a time, and the final assembly in Logic required 1000s of painstaking edits, perhaps robbing the piece of some spontaneity. The electro-acoustic interludes were an attempt to combine my previous practice with a more rigorous harmonic framework.
Once I get my final marks and feedback, I'll post my commentary on this blog. In the meantime, in a somewhat stream of consciousness, a few thoughts on finally completing the programme, and where it's taken me.
Although I can't really "hear" the piece at this point, having been so close to it for so long, I can nonetheless say that it would have been inconceivable for me to have created something like it this time last year. As a previous (mostly) auto-didact, I've been blown away by the impact of this year's teaching. As I say in my commentary: "I’m happy that the overall results reflect a real integration of many of the compositional approaches covered this year, and the piece represents a substantial step forward for me in terms of compositional technique and range."
Of course, I've totally thrown myself at every assignment over the year, acquiring a huge number range of technical skills and aesthetic understanding along the way.
It has been fantastic working with Yi and Ellie. To work with highly trained and supremely capable musicians as a, let's be honest, fledging composer, has been a real delight and honour.
On the subject of being a fledgling composer, one of the real breakthroughs for me this year was raiding the university library for scores, which I would study while listening to recordings. It's opened up my ears, and to some extent eyes, and given me innumerable pointers in terms of texture, harmony, and orchestration. But it's had a down-side, too: occasionally it's been dispiriting to look at my own jejune scores alongside those I'm studying. Only this morning I was reading and listening through Jonathan Harvey's Rabindranath Tagore settings "Song Offerings", all the while thinking, "Christ, this makes my stuff sound like the Ramones - and without the cool". Yes, I get it, it's a process, but really!
Final set of scores on the way back to the library
While I'm talking about Harvey, he's one of the composers I'll be studying in much more depth over the coming months (or years); the other two are Messiaen and Takemitsu. Make of that what you will, but for me they encapsulate a sound world to which I'm drawn ineluctably. (Saariaho and Radigue are in there too, I think).
But in the meantime, I have a lot of remedial work to do, specifically around harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. Back to those classic Walter Piston tracts! It's worth remembering that I tapped out on my music theory grades at 7. We've covered some pretty deep and abstruse ground over the last year, and while it hasn't always come easy, I've kinda got there. But I do wonder how much easier it might have been had I been on more solid theoretical ground. No, maybe being a bit more assured in say, figured bass realisation wouldn't have helped with Neo-Reimanian Theory. But then again it might have. Voice-leading is voice-leading, after all. Not sure what I'm saying here other than that I've got to sort some shit out before I go any further, whatever that route takes.
And finally, the aspect of my musical practice that's really suffered this year has been my guitar playing as I've had to redirect so much of my daily music "time" to compositional and theoretical practice from the rather more mundane pursuit of practicing guitar. Well, I've gotta get down to it now. There are performances on the immediate horizon (very immediate in one case: the Brighton Guitar Quartet are playing at the Unitarian Church in Brighton this coming Saturday!); and of course, the Performance Diploma I abandoned once lockdowns kicked in is now back on the cards. So, much work to be done!
That's it for now, then; not an especially eloquent - nor particularly structured - set of musings, but they're what come to mind a week on from finishing this exhilarating, if at times bruising, year.
Back to it, then...
October 02, 2022
September 25, 2022
August 01, 2022
Current thinking on my Master's Portfolio
Not entirely successful prompts for my second-semester recital
Yes, it's been a while since I posted here, but I really needed to take a break and well, get on with some real work.
Anyway, I'm into the last two-month sprint of my Master's and I've had to make a final decision about what I'm going to deliver in my final portfolio. Firstly, results so far. It looks like I've scored about 71-72% over the first two semesters, so it's all to play for with this remaining work (I need >70% overall for a distinction, more of which below).
Disappointingly, the thing that's consistently bringing down my overall mark is performance. Almost all my other work - research and composition - is >70, but my recitals have been low-mid merit, which on reflection I think is entirely fair, if not in fact a little generous. My original intention was to split my final portfolio between composition and performance, as I have so far, but I've finally decided to concentrate on the former. (I wrote in my previous post about my disappointing second-semester recital.)
For sure, it feels a little like "ducking it"; I really do want to continue to face down my performance demons, although I should stress that it's not just about the nerves - although there is that, of course. In recent recitals and competitions, I've been playing repertoire that is just a little bit beyond me, as I have been doing since I took up this whole classical guitar business.
But... I really would like to land that distinction. In my more disingenuous moments I maintain that this is because it would be a prerequisite for going on to study for a PhD. And there's some truth in that but, a. in truth a high merit would do the trick, and b. I'm still not convinced I want to go down that route at all. (I'll write about this another time.)
No, the real reason I'm pushing for a distinction is, well, chippiness, which has been a significant, if not especially attractive motivation for me doing this course in the first place. Look, I realise that at some point I really should fess up with myself about some of this stuff, the sense of making up for previously squandered academic and musical opportunities and of disappointing a lot of people who invested an awful lot in me when I was young. But it is what it is, and I'm not "going there" just yet.
Of course, the core motivation for seeing the course through remains learning and, er, personal growth, and looking for a structure to enable these. On that front, the course has outstripped my expectations. But now that I'm nearing the end of the programme and a distinction is a distinct possibility, I really do want to go for it. And at this point, that feels more of a priority than (again) facing down my performance demons (which in any case I'll have plenty of ongoing opportunities to do). As it stands, there's simply too much jeopardy in hanging this last stretch on a recital that could, well, go either way (a fact that of course increases its chances of not going very well at all).
So there you have it. Decision made. Next time out I'll write about the composition I've embarked on, which, characteristically, is something of a monster...
June 15, 2022
A look back at the second semester of my Master's course
A little light reading
On Thursday last week (9/6), I finished the second semester of my Master's course at Surrey with a classical guitar recital in Studio 1 in the PATS building on campus. (More of that somewhat fraught affair below). So I thought this might be a good opportunity to look back on the term, which kicked off what seems like a long time ago in February.
For me, the semester comprised three modules: Performance, Music, and Research Training for Practitioners. I was the only student who elected to do both composition and performance; the marking I get for my final recital will be the deciding factor in whether I continue with both in my final portfolio work - I would dearly love to, but at the moment it's 50-50, I think. I'll step through each in turn.
The first part of "Composition B" comprised three sets of very different, but equally fascinating topics. Milton Mermikides looked at some nuts and bolts music theory stuff, which of course I love. We covered, among other things, Neo-Riemannian theory, Bartók and harmony, and Joseph Shillinger's approach to rhythm. Tom Armstrong's lectures took on the theme of "medleys and chains" and drew in composers as diverse as Lutosławski, Milhaud, and Mike Oldfield! (And, er, "Hooked on Classics".) I was especially taken with the Lutoslawski stuff and have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole there. Cameron Graham's classes were, if you will, slightly more conceptual, concerning areas such as "parafiction" and "music & metaphor". As ever with Cameron's lectures, there was a huge amount to digest and some real gems I'd never come across, not least Peter Falconer's "What Happened to Seaton Snook" project.
Along the way, I got a super-generous amount of tutorial time (as I had in the first semester), with detailed feedback on my ideas from Milton, great conversations with Tom about his own work and scoring for electric guitar in particular, and working through some thinking with Cameron about where I might go next with all this stuff.
I was aware from the feedback on my first semester's composition portfolio that I have a tendency to take on a few too many ideas and should, rather, explore a smaller number in more detail. Milton had also pointed out to me that I shouldn't let the theoretical stuff get out of my own musical intuitions. As a result, to be frank, I didn't really explore Cameron's areas at all in the portfolio - but I hope to be doing so in my Master's Portfolio over the summer.
I've covered the work I ended up submitting elsewhere, but I'll recap in any case. (I've posted my detailed commentary of the works' creation here.)
Following Milton's lecture on Shillinger, I immediately set about creating some sketches for a post-metal piece based on Shillinger's "resultants"-based approach to rhythm. I had Meshuggah in mind from the start, but ended up going in a more 70s rock direction that's more like Crimson or Rush, not least as, well, I just cannot do what the in-human Meshuggah do (not saying that I'm exactly Alex Lifeson or Robert Fripp either!) It was interesting to approach a piece like this by scoring it entirely first before recording it; the whole process was painstaking but in the end I was pretty chuffed with the outcome, "Doom Scrolling":
Download Simon Hopkins - Doom Scrolling (score).
Perhaps the least successful piece was "On the Empty Pianos, Puppeteer Spiders" (which on took Tom's lecture on Lutoslawski's "chain"-based compositions(as well as some of Milton's coverage of pitch set theory), although perhaps ironically the piece bears the most resemblance to my previous work. Not that the piece didn't work entirely, it's more that the, if you will, Lutoslawskian chain approach didn't really work for the ensemble I settled on: string quartet + atmospheres. The process also revealed that I have a huge amount to work on in terms of idiomatic writing for strings, and that realising a piece like this without real players (despite Spitfire's string quartet samples being pretty bloody impressive) is, well, not without challenges. Also, I'd originally intended to include electric guitar (hence the conversations with Tom and a huge amount of relevant score reading), but in the end, I just couldn't make the sound world gel. Nonetheless, I think it's not without its moments, and I do very much like its constantly unsettling nature:
Download Simon Hopkins - On the Empty Pianos Puppeteer Spiders (score)
The most rewarding piece I worked on (and possibly the most rewarding - if challenging - music I've ever created) was a setting of three sonnets by the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, my first foray into writing art song, or any sort of song for that matter. I've written about the process at length previously, so won't belabour it here, but a couple of things to add.
The piece was originally conceived for the Joyce Dixey Composition Competition, and I wrote it to be sung by my fellow Master's student Yi Zhang. We performed the piece on Monday June 6th, and while it didn't win, it got very positive feedback from the adjudicator, composer and guitarist Gary Ryan. It was a great night, with a huge range of music: dream pop, jazz, alt-chamber... you name it. Yi and I performed last (sigh). I was unhappy with my own performance, which was badly affected by nerves (more on that below), but Yi completely nailed it. Honestly, she is already, at 21, a far finer musician than I'll ever be, and it was a huge pleasure to work with her. I'm not sure I'm the right person to judge these things, but it seems to me that she could have a great career ahead of her.
I also had to give an academic presentation about the creation of the piece, which went well, but was not without its own challenges. My tendency to chuck in the kitchen sink (see above!) somewhat hampered the clarity of the underlying argument, and as I've noted before, if I'm going to take the academic malarkey any further, I need to be more disciplined. Anyway, for one last time, here's the piece:
Download Simon Hopkins - Three Sonnets (score)
And so to the "Research Training for Practitioners" module. I've written at some considerable length about the "Butterfly Lovers" collaboration project that came out of this previously - about 12,000 words to be precise. Sigh. So I won't add to any of that. But I want to say a word or two about the overall practice as research approach. Before I do, I should say that none of this is a reflection on Tom's teaching of the course, which has been thorough, detailed and hugely insightful - and, indeed, very enjoyable. But, but... I am still somewhat sceptical, and studying the two modules has clarified, or rather contextualised, some of the trends in art generally, and music specifically, that I've noticed over the last couple of decades. (I should also add that my ramblings here are indebted to conversations with my good buddy and incredibly clear thinker Anno Mitchell, who's currently studying for a Master's in Fine Art.)
Practice research of course has a long history, and I think one can reasonably argue that all creative practice is to some extent an act of enquiry, if not of formal research (I remember Pat Metheny once referring to his work in this way, although I've never managed to find the exact quote online). But as far as I can see, the whole area really ramped up as art schools and music colleges were absorbed into the university sector from the noughts onwards. On several occasions, the composer and online music educator Samuel Andreyev has made reference to the problem of composition in North America increasingly being taught in universities rather than in conservatoires (as it still is in, say, France), but I didn't really get why this is a problem until starting this course. Now I think I'm starting to get it.
Putting it crudely, it seems to me that certain creative practices have been turned into academic, rather than strictly technical, disciplines, in order to shoehorn them into, well, the academy. And while this has undoubtedly made practitioners sharpen up their thinking about their craft (no bad thing in itself), it's also led to a tendency for even music, arguably the most abstract of art (the condition to which all art aspires, as Walter Pater famously commented), to have to be "about" something.
In terms of the visual arts, I'm old enough to remember when the notes placed next to pieces of visual art displayed in galleries pretty much carried the title of the piece and the artist's name (with dates, if the curators for feeling especially didactic). These days, artworks are pretty much accompanied by essays, and jargon-filled ones at that. Now I'm no enemy of conceptual art, but have we reached a point where, if there's no essay to be written about a piece, then it hasn't got a home? And despite the fact that I avoid the culture wars like the plague here (as someone as politically confused as I am, how could I not?) I have to say, what the visual arts are often "about" is often distinctively modish.
And this has undoubtedly crept into "art" music. It's notable that most of the work played on BBC Radio 3's (otherwise excellent) New Music Show is prefaced with a brief essay around the music's "theme". And I do mean "most". I really would love, at least on occasion, for the presenter to just say "honestly, I have no idea what this is about, if anything, but it fucking rocks". But then clearly I'm the wrong audience member.
At this juncture, I do want to take my studies further, but I am genuinely concerned that my, let's be honest, somewhat chippy credential-hunger is tempered with some trepidation about chasing the practice research dragon any further. To be clear, I think I have stuff to say, but it's ultimately somewhat technical and revolves around the interstices between composition and improvisation, narrative and texture, beauty and violence, and (more prosaically, but arguably most importantly) acoustic and electronic performance. I've got lots of other things to say, but I really don't feel the need - or the ability - to say them through music.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself but wanted to put it out there...
So, finally, to the most difficult thing to write about here: the performance module. In the recital at the end of the first semester, I played two pieces I've been working on in preparation for taking a performance diploma with Trinity. This semester I rolled out three more from the same set. the prelude from Bach's Prelude, Fugue and Allegro (BWV 998), Joaquín Turina's "Hommage a à Tárrega" and the guitarist Paulo Bellinati's arrangement of Jobim's "Estrada Bianca".
Home recital for friends: utterly nerve racking
I did huge amount of prep on these pieces, and I don't mean just a shit ton of practice (although there was that), and worked especially hard on the Bach after my car crash with it in competition at Springboard in Brighton earlier this year. In the run up to the recital I did one of my now-traditional "home" recitals (which are utterly nerve racking) and even a run through with two very fine undergraduate guitar students also studying under Paul Thomas, my guitar tutor at Guidlford. Also, it's worth noting that right before my own recital on the day I accompanied one of my fellow students, Jeongyi, on a couple of pop songs (which she performed beautifully), so I thought that might shake the nerves out
Turns out, not so much. Honestly, I was very disappointed with what I went on to play. I opened with the Turina, which I thought I pretty much nailed at a recent perfromance at one of Jon Rattenbury's Platform events in Brighton, but this time, it was, well, sloppy. I followed up with the Bach, and perhaps ironically it was the best perfromance of it I've ever turned in with an audience. Sure, there where some slips, but I think it came across musically as well as technically, and Paul's last minute advice to hold back the tempo paid off. As for the Jobim, well, it was the most recent piece I'd learned and I think I used too much lounge-jazz impressionistic rubato to hide the fact that in truth, it wasn't really under my hands.
Ultimately, as during the Monday competition perfromance, the nerves kicked in badly and the resulting adrenaline just killed my hands - and to some extent my memory. I've been here over and over, but after the January recital I thought I was getting there. Apparently not. Now, I will say that the acoustic at the PATS studio is particularly unforgiving (it's really a recording studio - and clearly a very good one). But that's basically an excuse. One the day, I wasn't really up to the gig.
So the big question for me now is: will I ever be? Is it possible to take up a classical instrument as late as I have and really ever be "up to the gig"? It's not as though I have ridiculous ambitions here; I'm not looking for a career as a classical guitarist. But I'd love to play reasonaby adavanced repertoire, comfortably, and competently, in front of small audiences. I've fallen in love with the instrument, and with the repertoire, but am I deluding myself that I'll ever be able to carry it off at least respectably?
I did, of course, come straight out of the recital and make a whole bunch of notes about the performance while it was still in my memory, and on paper it didn't look so bad. So maybe it's just negativity bias at work. We'll have to see what the examiners thought, but a week on, I have to say that it feels pretty disheartening, and made more so by hearing my fellow students (two pianists, three singers) rehearrse on the morning of the recitals: they were all really very, very good. Real musicians: not a middle aged faker. Oy veh.
Next time, some notes on what I hope to do for my final Master's portfolio, and some thoughts on future areas of study.
Post-performance notes
Recent reading
Christopher M Palmer MD: Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health
Mike Frengel: The Unorthodox Guitar: A Guide to Alternative Performance Practice
Dominic Sandbrook: Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles
Jeremy Denk: Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons
Rhian Williams: The Poetry Toolkit: The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry