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".
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.
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