Barrett, Richard (b. 1959)

[Richard Barrett]

What a great shame. Current thinking of contemporary composers writing large scale symphonic works.

What do you mean by "symphonic" there? As a description of a type of form it's been anachronistic already for some time. It could be argued that orchestras themselves are too. Most of them have little or nothing to do with the music of our time except that which consciously or by default is based on stylistic and structural models from 70 years ago and more. Of course people can write whatever music they like, but it seems to me a shame that so much of what you hear seems like an exercise in nostalgia. Hardly any of that stuff is going to be able to hold its own in comparison with the "classics" - precisely because it wasn't composed with all the knowledge and necessities of its own time. You often read on this forum dismissive assertions that the kind of new works presented at the Proms are only going to get one performance before being consigned to oblivion - this isn't because they're "too contemporary" but because they aren't contemporary enough. Is it even possible to write for orchestra in such a way as not to be parasitical on historical models?

[Joseph K]

My most recent piece for orchestra had its first performance in February of this year, and, given the opportunity, it will be expanded in future from its present two parts into five.

The two completed parts are truly excellent, so very pleased to hear that it will (hopefully!) be expanded.

Currently listening to 'colloid-E' from negatives and scrolling down your solo/duo works list, I wonder if you'd consider something for regular six-string classical guitar? I mean, not that I'd probably be able to play it, but I might able to bash through it, sort of.

[Richard Barrett]

Thanks, Joseph. You aren't the first person to ask about music for "ordinary" guitar! (My next guitar-related adventure will involve the pedal steel, which is an incredibly complicated piece of machinery to get one's head around.) Anyway: yes, eventually no doubt.

[Conchis]

I liked Mesopotamia a lot.

Alan Clements' bleary and wrong-headed rubbishings of contemporary composers directed me to the work in the first place, so I suppose he has his uses.

[ahinton]

What do you mean by "symphonic" there? As a description of a type of form it's been anachronistic already for some time. It could be argued that orchestras themselves are too. Most of them have little or nothing to do with the music of our time except that which consciously or by default is based on stylistic and structural models from 70 years ago and more. Of course people can write whatever music they like, but it seems to me a shame that so much of what you hear seems like an exercise in nostalgia.

But would you say that this is a relatively recent phenomenon? Was Brahms being in some way and to some extent "nostalgic" when writing his symphonies and concertos (and yes, I know that you don't especially care for Brahms, but I don't let that get in the way of asking the question). Did Boulez eventually become somehow "nostalgic" for the scores of Debussy? I cannot imagine that you would attribute this kind of nostalgia for aspects of a bygone age to your own orchestral work, but would you say that your recently completed orchestral piece might be seen by some as displaying some - or no - such nostalgia for Vanity, NO! &c.? Was Krenek in his early symphonies evidencing some kind of nostalgia for Mahler? I really do think that, other than in the most obviously overt (and perhaps even deliberate) instances, this notion of "nostalgia" is notoriously difficult to pin down. One might as well say (as I could almost imagine Busoni saying) that we all write the same notes...

Is it even possible to write for orchestra in such a way as not to be parasitical on historical models?

If it isn't (and I cannot possibly answer such a question), why might writing for orchestra be any different in this regard than writing for string quartet, piano solo, piano trio, organ solo et al?

[ahinton]

I liked Mesopotamia a lot.

Alan Clements' bleary and wrong-headed rubbishings of contemporary composers directed me to the work in the first place, so I suppose he has his uses.

Do you mean the great and never adverbially challenged critic Andrew Clements?

[kea]

Is it even possible to write for orchestra in such a way as not to be parasitical on historical models?

If it were possible to write such a piece of music, no orchestra would be able to play it...

that's kind of a facile answer though. This is a question that sort of interests me at the moment because I'm writing an orchestral piece. The whole concept of the piece is very dependent on historical models, which in turn are dependent on the original urge for creating the piece being to write something with triads in. So the question is obviously irrelevant to me for this particular piece, but I've got to thinking about it in case I should write another orchestra piece someday and in general what I'd do differently next time, and what I come back to most often is the orchestra as basically a mob of human beings, operating under... crowd dynamics? if that's the right term. So I think a lot about the late orchestra pieces by Cage (58, 74, 101 and 103) and other things that make use of the orchestra in that way.

It's either that, or you break it down into sections—solos, duos, trios, up to the decet of first violins etc—with their own individual identities who all may interact in various ways but are also distinct groups with their own culture, principal, instrumental timbre, bowing practice (in the string sections) and so on. But obviously those sections are themselves based on historical models.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Do you mean the great and never adverbially challenged critic Andrew Clements?

There are other interpretations of his first initial that I think Conchis is to be congratulated for avoiding.

(And to think that in the '80s and early '90s, Clements was one of the country's finest commentators on new Music. )

[Richard Barrett]

This is a question that sort of interests me at the moment because I'm writing an orchestral piece. The whole concept of the piece is very dependent on historical models, which in turn are dependent on the original urge for creating the piece being to write something with triads in.

I was careful to imply a difference between being dependent on historical models and parasitic on historical models!

what I come back to most often is the orchestra as basically a mob of human beings, operating under... crowd dynamics?

... or: one of the very few examples in worldwide musical culture (or almost any other activity) of such a large number of people united in a shared aim, potentially (although not in those Cage pieces!) with split-second coordination.

or you break it down into sections—solos, duos, trios, up to the decet of first violins etc—with their own individual identities who all may interact in various ways but are also distinct groups with their own culture, principal, instrumental timbre, bowing practice (in the string sections) and so on

... or: you break it down into heterogeneous groupings which might never have existed before.

[Conchis]

Do you mean the great and never adverbially challenged critic Andrew Clements?

Yes: I can never remember his first name.

He's one of those critcs who is reliably wrong on just about everything.

[kea]

I was careful to imply a difference between being dependent on historical models and parasitic on historical models!

True! I'm not sure how one would be objective enough to make that distinction for one's own music, but I guess the main difference is in awareness, and acceptance of history (to an extent)....

... or: one of the very few examples in worldwide musical culture (or almost any other activity) of such a large number of people united in a shared aim, potentially (although not in those Cage pieces!) with split-second coordination.

I think that may be part of the crowd dynamics I was talking about though... any large group of people can be united in a shared aim and act towards it with considerable precision (though not necessarily approaching the level of an orchestra)—not just mob violence or football chants or whatever, but also noticeable with flash mobs, mass rescues, etc. I suppose usually there needs to be some catalyst for a crowd to start behaving as a unit, whereas orchestras are one of the very few examples that unite in that shared aim simply because they feel like it....

... or: you break it down into heterogeneous groupings which might never have existed before.

Is that an orchestra though? Or is it a group of heterogeneous chamber ensembles that happen to be on the same payroll? (I think a lot depends on how those ensembles are used, but regardless of philosophical questions about definitions, an orchestral musician in such a group will be forced to perform in a very different manner than they are used to.)

[Richard Barrett]

Is that an orchestra though? Or is it a group of heterogeneous chamber ensembles that happen to be on the same payroll? (I think a lot depends on how those ensembles are used, but regardless of philosophical questions about definitions, an orchestral musician in such a group will be forced to perform in a very different manner than they are used to.)

Whether it's deemed to be an orchestra is not so important I think. Nor do I think such a situation "forces" anyone to play in any particular way. Ideally they'd be listening to each other whoever each was playing "together" with.

[Joseph K]

...Another thing I've probably mentioned before is that in my young days I used often to find myself looking through my record shelves for something to listen to, and thinking that the music I really wanted didn't actually exist. It strikes me that what is often called an "individual voice" among composers (or artists in other disciplines) is actually an individual way of hearing, which everyone has to a greater or lesser extent and which everyone develops to the extent of their involvement in listening, but coupled with a desire to somehow share that way of hearing and thus to expand the experience and consciousness of others...

(Quote from another thread).

As I understand it, RB has no special technical ability on any traditional instrument, which makes me curious... When I was at uni studying music one question I asked one of my lecturers was how do I improve my musicianship? To which he replied - practice your instrument. But since I greatly admire his music, I am curious about how much technical musicianship training RB required before he felt comfortable focusing mostly on composition? But perhaps that is a silly question, perhaps these things take place side-by-side and that actually a composer never stops his or her technical training. Nonetheless I would be interested to know the extent of RB's training in tonal harmony and counterpoint... does he remember any books used, and which ones he found particularly useful? I have about half-a-dozen (probably actually more!) counterpoint texts, but am currently in the evening focusing on Counterpoint in Composition by Schachter and Salzer... this is based I believe on how Schenker taught counterpoint, which itself is derived from Fux's text (I think). While it's nice to be able to memorise the many rules set out, really I see the usefulness of this as a kind of ear-training... it's a kind of chess game with tones. I wonder what usefulness RB considers learning counterpoint and harmony of this kind? Did he ever have a go with Hindemith's Elementary Training for Musicians? Then there is that Schumann quote about the trained musician being able to 'see with one's ears and hear with one's eyes' as regards musical literacy. I think this seems less mysterious for someone who is, say, a virtuoso on a instrument since they have instant access to an extent to play for real what is written down. But for someone who is not a virtuoso, by guess is their innate aptitude for listening and absorbing what they hear must be considerable - ok, but still, there must have been work involved. Perhaps instead of practising to gain technical facility with an instrument, time was spent honing the ears through dictation? Composition being, perhaps a kind of dictation of the inner ear, and technical training being about honing the inner ear, making it more vivid and transcribable. Of course, a certain amount of speculation might be involved in certain kinds of composition (orchestral, for instance) but where does that speculation begin as regards how vividly imagined the music is?

Of course, extremely grateful for any response I get for this long-winded set of questions!

[Richard Barrett]

(Quote from another thread).

As I understand it, RB has no special technical ability on any traditional instrument, which makes me curious... When I was at uni studying music one question I asked one of my lecturers was how do I improve my musicianship? To which he replied - practice your instrument. But since I greatly admire his music, I am curious about how much technical musicianship training RB required before he felt comfortable focusing mostly on composition? But perhaps that is a silly question, perhaps these things take place side-by-side and that actually a composer never stops his or her technical training. Nonetheless I would be interested to know the extent of RB's training in tonal harmony and counterpoint... does he remember any books used, and which ones he found particularly useful? I have about half-a-dozen (probably actually more!) counterpoint texts, but am currently in the evening focusing on Counterpoint in Composition by Schachter and Salzer... this is based I believe on how Schenker taught counterpoint, which itself is derived from Fux's text (I think). While it's nice to be able to memorise the many rules set out, really I see the usefulness of this as a kind of ear-training... it's a kind of chess game with tones. I wonder what usefulness RB considers learning counterpoint and harmony of this kind? Did he ever have a go with Hindemith's Elementary Training for Musicians? Then there is that Schumann quote about the trained musician being able to 'see with one's ears and hear with one's eyes' as regards musical literacy. I think this seems less mysterious for someone who is, say, a virtuoso on a instrument since they have instant access to an extent to play for real what is written down. But for someone who is not a virtuoso, by guess is their innate aptitude for listening and absorbing what they hear must be considerable - ok, but still, there must have been work involved. Perhaps instead of practising to gain technical facility with an instrument, time was spent honing the ears through dictation? Composition being, perhaps a kind of dictation of the inner ear, and technical training being about honing the inner ear, making it more vivid and transcribable. Of course, a certain amount of speculation might be involved in certain kinds of composition (orchestral, for instance) but where does that speculation begin as regards how vividly imagined the music is?

Of course, extremely grateful for any response I get for this long-winded set of questions!

People come to composition from all kinds of directions, some more “technical” than others, some involving more hands on experience of instrumental playing and others less, and I wouldn't say one direction is preferable to another, or that one involves more or less work than another. (Remember that Schoenberg, one of the most exacting teachers and systematic writers on the subject of compositional technicalities, was himself almost completely self-taught.) My early experiences of performing involved the electric guitar in the context of the first wave of punk rock, although even at that time my interest in more experimental musics was pulling me away from committing myself to that way of doing things (and I’d taught myself to read music by following scores I’d take out from the library, plus I would spend Sunday afternoons tinkering on my grandmother’s piano). When I was 19 I took piano lessons with an elderly fellow by the name of Leonard Hudson, who had studied composition with John Ireland and had much of the music of the early 20th century (especially Stravinsky) under his fingers ready to demonstrate. When he realised I was more interested in composition than in practising we worked instead on harmony and counterpoint, which I think I took to quite easily through my interest in early and baroque music, so for me that was both enjoyable and useful. I continued with that sort of thing when I managed to squeeze myself into the composition MMus course at King’s Collage London, but by that time I think I knew what I needed from “music education” and preferred to explore it for myself, so I only lasted three months there before dropping out and continuing my private composition lessions with Peter Wiegold which had begun about a year previously.

Some might think of composition as “dictation of the inner ear” but I think composers in general don’t conceive it that way, and I certainly don’t. For a start, free improvisation is one method of composition, and “training” in this method consists of learning to be as open as possible in one’s responses to anything, in a constantly changing musical situation (that is, the opposite of training oneself to play pieces from the classical repertoire). While my composition techniques are quite systematic, one reason for this is for the process to fulfil my desire for particular clearly-defined characteristics (sound, structure, expression…) while also generating possibilities I hadn’t thought of which I can then respond to one way or another. Some of my compositions also involve improvisation on the part of performers, influenced but not dictated by the notated material of the score, so that I neither have nor wish to have a precise idea of how each performance will sound. In a sense of course it’s still “vividly imagined”, but not in the sort of terms a more traditionalist view would recognise. Almost any composer would I think tell you that their results are strongly influenced by the course of the composition process rather than this being just a matter of writing down something already clear in every detail. Why would one not take that opportunity? The techniques I’ve evolved, anyway, are concerned with enabling a dialogue at every level of the process between systematic thinking and spontaneous intuitions. For the lowdown on all this you’ll have to read my book that comes out next year!

[Joseph K]

For the lowdown on all this you’ll have to read my book that comes out next year!

Thanks for the reply, and I look forward to reading your book!