London Sinfonietta play Barry & Ayres, QEH

You'd think that as I'm on the South Bank Centre's mailing list I'd have heard about this gig from them. As it was an email limped into my inbox a few days after the man in Harold Moore's told me about it. He was particularly excited about the prospect of a Gerald Barry premiere; it was the Richard Ayres piece that dragged me along.


It's quite a while since I've been to a proper Sinfonietta-type "contemporary music" gig, so it was reassuring that the crowd seemed to be largely the familiar mix of composers, journos and the nearly-dead. It was also a relief not to have to avoid anyone I've offended over the years. It was the kind of audience full of people who recognised each other, some of whom I recognised, none of whom recognised me. Reassuring but also depressing, because this music ought to be getting a much wider audience than the same old clique.

A lot of this must be down to a failure of advertising. Arts venues generally seem incredibly complacent about their audiences, not really making much effort to reach beyond the audience they already have, and then wondering why they're going down the dumper. It's not really good enough, and the likes of the South Bank really ought to be taking a long hard look at what they do rather than sitting back and feeling smug because they had that Jarvis Cocker doing Meltdown a couple of years ago.

On the other hand, kudos is due for allowing punters to take their drinks into the hall, which I think is an entirely civilised thing to be able to do, and stuff anyone who says different.

But I digress. What of these two fine pieces I heard?

First up was Gerald Barry's Beethoven. This is a setting to music of Ludwig van's famous letter to the Immortal Beloved, in which the great man takes time out from metaphorically bashing us over the head with his cock to go all Emo on us. As Barry says in his programme note, it's a very odd love letter: a combination of declarations of undying love with declarations that it'll never work. If you're feeling sympathetic it's a desperate cry from the heart; if you're not it's some self-flagellating whiny shit.

I can't make up my mind about Barry's music. I like the idea of it,but somehow the reality of it never seems quite as exciting. On the other hand, this particular piece didn't seem too long to me, as a lot of what I've heard of his has. Singer Stephen Richardson negotiated the extremes of his vocal register with wonderful aplomb, and the final section that appropriated the very famous hymn tune that embarrassingly I can't remember what it is now is rather lovely.

I hope the man from Harold Moore liked it. For me though, Richard Ayres' No.42 (In the Alps) was the real deal. Ayres is a comparative rarity in these circles: he has an ability to combine full on, often very silly, humour with moments of genuine profundity, without becoming either superficial or pretentious. He makes it seem entirely reasonable that the band should all come on wearing woolly hats, while conductor Martyn Brabbins is dressed for a good long hike, backpack included.

The use of projected captions (in the manner of a silent movie) is an inspired way to convey the story being depicted in the ensemble, as well as providing some brilliantly timed jokes The female protagonist's raising by very maternal mountain goats raises a chuckle, as does the nicking of bits of Strauss to evoke the Alps (although that's not as funny as the woman next to me thought it was). this also fits in with the silent movie references, as that sort of lifting of well known music is a standard trick of the cinematic accompanist.

Barbara Hannigan (dressed like a post-punk Brunhilde) gives an astonishing performance, in which she's required to impersonate goats, hogs, cicadas and eagles (and probably some other things I've forgotten about), and does so brilliantly. The use of animal noises is a wonderful example of Ayres's way with a joke: it begins as something funny, but evolves into something strange, wonderful and affecting. Likewise Alistair Mackie (fetching in lederhosen) shows that the gag of a hero who can speak only through his bugle can be something much more than slapstick. The tale of unrequited love between these two characters ought to be just silly, but Ayres magically spins something moving out of it.

Two interludes and a postlude reflect on how animals with different heartbeats perceive time. As with so much of this piece, this began as comedy, but by the conclusion was transformed into something altogether more thought-provoking.

It's a terrible shame that the Queen Elizabeth Hall was half-empty. Both these pieces combine immediate appeal with a genuine depth that would repay repeated hearings. Both deserve to, and I'm convinced can find a much wider audience than that tiny in-crowd that turns up to this sort of show. So when are the organisations in question going to make a serious effort to find it?

Heiner Goebbels: Songs from Wars I have seen (QEH)

It's an essential part of the contemporary so-called-classical scene that the show you're at will overrun. A good yardstick of the quality of what you've been listening to is therefore how much that irritates you. I found myself not at all bothered by the fact on this occasion, so well done Heiner*.

To be fair, at least part of the overrun was down to the man who walked on and announced "My name is Andrew Burke Chief Executive of the London Sinfonietta" (how remarkable to have a name that suits your job, I thought) and proceeded to beg for money in that way that people desperate for money who don't want you to have the impression they're begging for it do. A lot of talk of wanting to connect with those who buy their tickets on the door (subtext: please book in advance, we've been shitting brick about advance sales), building relationships with their audiences (subtext: we're really worried about how the hell we get people to come to these things) and so on. All couched in friendly, "hey, we love you and we want to connect" language, but going on slightly too long not to come across as a bit desperate. Maybe I'm completely wrong, the London Sinfonietta feels completely recession-proof and has a mailing list as long as your arm, but it sure as hell didn't come across that way.

I have a problem with the London Sinfonietta; they make me slightly suspicious. Partly this is because they're the Establishment: I think of what Morton Feldman said, that the music you hear in London sounds official, like it was written for the London Sinfonietta. And the Establishment can't ever do anything really innovative or different, because innovation and difference challenges the established order. It's hide-bound by its position, by the deadweight of the one-of-each-instrument lineup that fills so much of its repertoire, from which so little interesting comes. Then there are things like those collaboration nights with Warp Records, which seem slightly pointless: is the Sinfonietta desperately chasing after the cool kids, or is it saying that by rearranging electronica for "classical" forces it's conferring a greater artistic legitimacy on it than it otherwise has? Which would seem to imply some level of contempt for the other, cooler music. The classical world is infested with the notion that its music is inherently better than any other kind.**

That said, it would be dumb to dismiss anything they do because of who they are, and tonight's concert of two pieces by Heiner Goebbels is an impressive one that shows that there's still life in this thing if you're clever enough to know where to look. Which Goebbels is. He understands that this genre of ours is essentially dramatic (why else dos it take place on a stage?) and both the pieces here are to some degree overtly theatrical. The use of samples of other records, as well as quotations of other musics performed by the musicians, emphasises this. It's to Goebbels' credit that these elements don't distract - although it's impossible not to have a moment of trying to remember where that drum loop's from - but manage to integrate in a way that earlier stylistic cross-dressers like Schnittke don't really manage, so the flow from tonality to atonality, from baroque to postwar modernism and back comes to seem natural.

Maybe this just where I'm coming from these days, but it's at its most impressive when there's less going on. "Songs of Wars I have seen" underpins Gertrude Stein's words with subtle, elusive sounds that seem to drift in and out of focus, lending a dreamlike quality. The combination of modern instruments with the period ones of the OAE lends another layer: the quieter baroque strings and winds lend an inward quality. Having the narration provided by the musicians rather than actors or singers is a masterstroke. It helps draw the listener in, almost as though we're being read bedtime stories. It manages to be hugely evocative without ever labouring to make a point. And the final moments, when a lone trumpet spins a melody over the ringing of prayer-bowls, coming over like Miles Davis sounding the last post, are magical, intimate and tender.




*I'm being over-familiar there. I don't actually know him or anything.

**Plus they don't play my stuff. Motherfuckers.

Survival strategies for the average composer (5)

5: Stay away from composers

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the one thing a composer hates above all else, more than war, oppression, racism, Hitler, the Daily Mail, music critics, anything, is another composer.

That's not why I'm advising the average composer to stay away from other composers though, although that would go some way to avoiding a certain amount of bruising and bloodletting (if not seething, festering jealousy and resentment).

I don't mean you should never speak to another composer - you've got to learn something, for starters, and I'd not have got much out of the composers who taught me if I'd sat there mute, or refused to turn up to the tutorial. And I've enjoyed social congress with other note scribblers on many occasions, almost never ending in physical recriminations (it helps if you manage to get enough drink inside you to remove the ability to land a punch, of course).

No, what I'm thinking of is the sort of occasion you can see quite regularly in any place where scccm is being performed (perhaps, here in London - actually, almost certainly, here in London - a mini-festival organised by the London Sinfonietta or the SPNM). The performances come and go through the day, people drift in and out of the concert hall, gravitating towards the bar, usually, and little clusters of conversation can be seen. And here's the thing: it's nearly all composers talking to other composers. If you go along to one of these things, it's actually quite difficult to meet anyone who isn't a composer. Sometimes you might get the feeling that the entire concert scene in London is really just an excuse for a lot of composer networking opportunities.

Now, if making a career's your thing, blah blah, networking's one of those things you do, sure. But composers (mostly) aren't going to play your damn music. Unless you're writing stuff for yourself to perform (and that's a subject I'll return to), you need musicians. Friendly ones, who know you and will be willing to put up with your ill-thought-out notation and ignorance of what their instrument can do, and will gently, kindly tell you how to change it to make it better. Musicians are quite easy to meet - just go to the nearest pub after the gig. If you make friends with them, they'll be only to happy to offer advice, and it's not that big a step from there to persuading them to run through something you've written. So stop talking theory with all the composers and start talking practice with the players.