Hear and Now - New Irish Music - 25th June 2011

[Guest]

From the mysterious land of rain and the potato sandwich comes - Hear and Now!

Christopher Norby: A Tale of Fractured Minds (BBC Radio 3 Commission, world premiere) - " ... describes the composer's experience of depersonalisation ... a terrifying yet strangely interesting experience ... personal voyage into the underworld ... violent outbursts in percussion and brass ... a coda that can never again be certain of itself ... fretful and unsettled."

Well, I can get all that at home.

Norby mentions film scores and the music could be from an Indiana Jones film, it's quite familiarly ominous, well-orchestrated and clear emotionally. Anyone who's seen Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has known what it is to suffer so I suppose he's got where he wants to. I didn't hear anything though that went any deeper than Spielberg on an off-day.

Below is heartwarming film of the aftershow party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BLJKlhoeC8&feature=related

Sam ... stay in the trolley!!

Ian Wilson: Rise - Some attractive sounds but I wasn't sure that they added up to anything. In the first movement, there's a cluck of wind instruments which in itself is a good noise; there's a whistle from the strings at the end. It was interesting to hear consistent time signatures across a whole movement which I'd somehow assumed were a thing of the past.

By the way, I like both rain and potato sandwiches on buttered soda bread with some salt and salad cream. Not the rain. I don't like rain on my sandwiches and a rain sandwich is a ridiculous idea. I think less of you for suggesting it. Where would you put the top slice of the bread, for a start? At what altitude? The bottom slice could stay on your plate but the top one?

It could be an open sandwich, I suppose, but then that's introducing a Scandinavian element to the food and I wasn't really thinking about fusion cooking.

[hackneyvi]

If you insist on using rain in your cuisine then, after a period of mature reflection, to qualify as Irish, the least it could be is a rain and potato sandwich but with a top slice.

[PatrickOD]

I must get out more. I remember Christopher Norby as a young man, a boy, from a musical family. I think there were 3 of them, who attended a week end strings course, and all of them impressed the tutors - the Emperor Quartet. Since then I've lost track of their fortunes, so I am delighted to see that Christopher has gone on to greater things.
I missed this programme, so I will be iPlaying with interest. Thanks for the reminder, Phil.

I can see that you probably don't get out much either, Phil. If you did, you would know that you just can't keep the rain out of your sandwiches - potato or otherwise. Think - out on a lake in a boat on a typical summer's day - need I say more?

[hackneyvi]

I must get out more. I remember Christopher Norby as a young man, a boy, from a musical family. I think there were 3 of them, who attended a week end strings course, and all of them impressed the tutors - the Emperor Quartet. Since then I've lost track of their fortunes, so I am delighted to see that Christopher has gone on to greater things.
I missed this programme, so I will be iPlaying with interest. Thanks for the reminder, Phil.

I can see that you probably don't get out much either, Phil. If you did, you would know that you just can't keep the rain out of your sandwiches - potato or otherwise. Think - out on a lake in a boat on a typical summer's day - need I say more?

If you don't put rain on your sandwiches in the first place, if you restrict the ingredients to fairly dry ones, there need be negligible rain content in any sandwich. How much rain, after all, can there be in salad cream? I'm pretty sure there's none at all in salt and ... oh!

The potatoes!

There's a good deal of rain in potatoes. Indeed, it shouldn't have need pointing out to me, but so much rain goes into potatoes - and more into Irish potatoes than most - that the potato sandwich inevitably contains rain, even without any later adulteration by rain outdoors.

You don't need to say it; I've been a fool.

[hackneyvi]

I remember Christopher Norby as a young man, a boy, from a musical family ... Since then I've lost track of their fortunes, so I am delighted to see that Christopher has gone on to greater things.

I missed this programme, so I will be iPlaying with interest.

I'd be interested to know what you make on the Norby piece. Perhaps I resisted hearing the deeper tones in the music. If you listen to the programme, you'll hear that he was aiming to communicate the experience of depersonalisation in an accessible language. I'm not sure how convincingly the music communicated that to me. However, it was evocative of stressful, unnatural and excited states - my parallel with a Spielberg/Indiana Jones score seems a fair one.

Perhaps, therefore, it does achieve what he wanted? It doesn't communicate any fear to me, though, because the language I hear 'spoken' is broadly one of fictional, filmic wonder and excitement.

PS: Listening again, I'm reminded of the interludes from Peter Grimes - of the opening music on the beach (Dawn), the first appearance of the trumpet is reminiscent of "What harbour shelters peace?" and then the introduction to the Storm music itself. The later section also brings the Moonlight music to mind in the sounds of its gentle surges.

David Morris' Jump is an agreeable chugger however it feels to me like dance music really. It's a toe-tapper (maybe it was written as hoofer music; we aren't told so, if it was). The R3 documentary on New York minimalists seemed to say that it began as something of a cross between salon and club music; music for friends and acquaintances. Morris' piece would seem to me better suited to a dance hall. Perhaps, really, the concert hall is a sort of music museum and some of the music would be better returned to something more closely resembling it original environments where it could be moved to. Music where the audience could make its own noises.

Frank Lyons' Unbreakable - I think it's started. There was an original sound (to me) from the brasses and something else which was arresting. At the moment, though, it's bringing Swingball to mind; back and forth, something more than Morris' "on the spot" energy.

[PatrickOD]

I'd be interested to know what you make on the Norby piece. Perhaps I resisted hearing the deeper tones in the music. If you listen to the programme, you'll hear that he was aiming to communicate the experience of depersonalisation in an accessible language. I'm not sure how convincingly the music communicated that to me. However, it was evocative of stressful, unnatural and excited states - my parallel with a Spielberg/Indiana Jones score seems a fair one.

Perhaps, therefore, it does achieve what he wanted? It doesn't communicate any fear to me, though, because the language I hear 'spoken' is broadly one of fictional, filmic wonder and excitement.

I've listened to the Norby piece a couple of times. I wanted to be impressed, and I was. I found his orchestration exciting, and the episodic structure was clear enough to me. There was the dreamlike quality he sought as well as moments of stress and violence, accentuated by his insistence on discordant intervals for periods, and the ominous percussion crashes. I heard what I thought was a militaristic element, with the trumpets and snare drum noticeably creeping into the music, and I'm afraid my imagination began to operate. Was he referring to his own youth growing up in the same town and experiencing the same events as I did? Was he expressing his view of these events, which were violent and disconcerting and fracturing his mind? Was he glad when it was all over, but unsure of what came in its place? If he had a film in mind, and he said he was trying to do something different, I have just outlined the running order. I think it would work. But that is only my imagination, and my response.

[hackneyvi]

I've listened to the Norby piece a couple of times. I wanted to be impressed, and I was ... If he had a film in mind, and he said he was trying to do something different, I have just outlined the running order. I think it would work. But that is only my imagination, and my response.

You draw my attention to something I've missed. I don't think of film music generally as music to sit down and listen to, though I know many do. At the moment, the music which holds me is hard itself to grasp - the improvised and the astringent (often the two).

Did I imagine the crests of the Grimes' sea interludes in the piece? It also seemed quite like John Williams. Spielberg and Peter Pears - as figures - are never going to make me anxious; perhaps a more appropriate source would have been Turn of the Screw? This seemed very well done but in several ways familiar and not something which ever communicated alarm to me and that seemed to be an essential quality; more, to me, it had the moods of a score to a family-friendly semi-supernatural scene. A good one.

[3rd Viennese School]

Well, I was in a pub in Rochester for a beer festival as usual and as usual couldn't get a signal on my Radio.
Why does Radio 3 have such a bad signal?
The only Irish music I heard was from the Morris lot in the beer garden!
To be sure, to be sure.

3VS

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, I was in a pub in Rochester for a beer festival as usual and as usual couldn't get a signal on my Radio.
Why does Radio 3 have such a bad signal?
The only Irish music I heard was from the Morris lot in the beer garden!
To be sure, to be sure.

3VS

The signal gets lost trying to penetrate through all the alchohol.

[hackneyvi]

Well, I was in a pub in Rochester for a beer festival as usual and as usual couldn't get a signal on my Radio.

3VS

The signal gets lost trying to penetrate through all the alchohol.

Is it one of the Al-Fayed beer-powered radios from the new Harrods' food hall? If it is, I've got news for you; they aren't any good.

As SA says, the effete R3 signal just can't penetrate the booze. Converting it to run off a very thin claret is your best bet. Or throw the towel in and just take it back; clobber the assistant till he's too weak to protect the cash register then snatch some money out.

Word of advice, stay focussed and grab the notes first. Start with the change and you've had it.