James MacMillan makes the case for modern classical musicBy Alan Morrison
CONTEMPORARY classical music confuses me and leaves me cold. Not every time, of course - there are some beautiful modern pieces out there, as well as tougher works whose initial challenge reaps rewards after a bit of effort. Often, however, as blocks of rhythm shift like tectonic plates and orchestral sounds crash together like waves in a storm, I'm left befuddled, wondering when I'm supposed to start enjoying myself. There's no harmony in my head.
Consider Olivier Messiaen's mighty Turangalila Symphony, composed in 1948 (it's a topical example, as this year marks the centenary of the French composer's birth). Sudden pauses are followed by loud fanfares; in the first movement, there's a tinkling effect like a fairground carousel running backwards; elsewhere, an ondes Martenot (an early electronic instrument" apparently) hits an eerie note that's like something out of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie; and through it all, a pianist plays a part that sometimes matches its orchestral surroundings and sometimes does not. I can appreciate the dramatic contrasts and each of the elements in their individual, constituent parts; what I don't get is a sense of this music as a whole.
In search of a few words of wisdom, I've arranged to meet Scottish composer James MacMillan, who recently became patron of Sound, Northeast Scotland's annual festival of new music. MacMillan writes the type of contemporary music that I do love - tuneful, textured and passionate, often with a narrative element that unifies the piece and offers listeners a much-needed focus. His brand of composition is much in evidence at Sound, where melodies created on a classical palette share space with works under jazz, electro-acoustic, rock or traditional headings.
However, Sound, now in its fourth year, also prides itself on showcasing the harder edge of music in the 21st century. In its wide and varied programme (assembled by the ear of festival co-ordinator Fiona Robertson), the modernist dissonance that is my musical blind spot will be pushed to the fore. Indeed, the first few days of the event - which begins on Tuesday - is dominated by that man Messiaen and, in particular, his works for the organ.
"Messiaen has stamped that territory with his thumbprint," says MacMillan when we get together in a Glasgow café, "so that every time you turn your hand to writing a piece for organ, the ghost of Messiaen is hovering over your shoulder. The 20th-century organ sound is completely marked by what he did, by his choice of strange modes and that apocalyptic, mysterious sound.
"It's a strange instrument, in that there's not the kinetic connection that other instruments have, like a string instrument that involves physical force or a wind instrument that requires physical engagement. With the organ, you press a key and, depending on what stop you happen to pull, you get a quiet sound or a loud sound. So there's a complete detachment between the physical and the sonic. Messiaen turned that to his advantage by giving what is essentially a disembodied sound a real numinous and spiritual character."
MacMillan, a composer who freely admits that Catholicism motivates many of his compositions, believes that Messiaen's own religious beliefs (he was organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris for over 60 years) are the key to recognising the spirituality that resides in even his most difficult organ works. "I find his music has a detached mysticism," MacMillan says. "Most of the time, it is music that floats, disembodied from the Earth and the physical parameters. Maybe for that reason, one can see what his priority was - to capture in sound something of the divine, something which he saw as music of another dimension. Hence all his experiments in what we would now describe as "unworldly" sounds - new modes, made-up modes, modes that were not in common usage - which give his music a sense of unusualness all the time."
The Turangalili Symphony that I mentioned previously isn't part of the Sound programme, but talking to MacMillan about it - and my problems with this type of fractured music in general - does give me a few pointers as to what I'm missing.
"Messiaen was more interested in placing fragments against each other," he explains. "In fact, one major putdown was that Messiaen doesn't compose, he juxtaposes. He takes one thing here and follows it with something very different there, maybe not connected, so that he goes from episode to episode."
This makes a certain sense to me, and now MacMillan widens his focus.
"There's a strain within the 20th century that was like that. I think it was Stravinsky who began that world of non-directional, anti-Romantic music. There's no sense of organic growth in music that's made up like that. Composers take little fragments, stick them together and start building, collage-like, as they go on.
Perhaps the obstacle for me has been that I was brought up with a Great Composers mentality, steeped in the Romantic, German-dominated symphonic tradition - Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, etc - which was rejected by a generation of hardcore modernists who believed that, after the Third Reich, it was a tainted culture.
"But even before that," MacMillan insists, "French music was fascinated with the sensations of colours for their own sake. Messiaen has taken that from Debussy and Ravel, who wallow in sensuousness in way that Central European composers didn't to the same extent. The sheer joy of the moment, the sheer sensual pleasure of going from this to that - from one fantastic food to another - is part of the French way. But it's also part of the rejection of Wagner and what the 19th century stood for as well."
Enough about Messiaen, though I'm beginning to feel that MacMillan's comments might have unlocked a door for me. There are four weeks of the Sound festival to consider, and many other composers and musicians to take on board, including a special weekend focus on the saxophone (October 30-November 2). Now, here's an instrument that I can get my head around, whether it's John Coltrane's fast-fingered "sheets of sound" jazz solos or Clarence Clemons's raucous licks on Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band albums.
Sax highlights at the festival include a performance by Rob Hall and pianist Chick Lyall, drawing from their tremendous The Beaten Path album, among other works; a gig by Andy Scott's nine-saxophone collective SaxAssault (who opened their 2007 album Sax Of Gold with Lip Service, a swing-disco hybrid that sounds like the Glenn Miller Orchestra stopping off in Studio 54); and appearances by Richard Ingham, Martin Kershaw and Ben Waghorn. In this context, the festival will be playing its part in expanding the public's perception of the saxophone as an instrument that deserves, once in a while, to creep out of those smoky jazz clubs.
"In the public imagination, the saxophone is so strongly associated with jazz that to hear it played in a different way sounds initially odd," admits MacMillan. "But it was a European instrument first and foremost, developed in the 19th century in France, and so jazz wouldn't have been in the mind at all of its original players and makers. It's very closely associated with the clarinet, so a much purer way of producing sounds would have initially been in the mind. I can understand why a lot of composers have shied away from the saxophone because of the associations. There's too much potential for relying on cliché because it's been taken over by jazz."
What else has caught my eye at Sound? Kim Cascone, who worked with David Lynch on the soundtracks of Twin Peaks and Wild At Heart, heads a strand of events showcasing electroacoustic music, substituting laptop computers for traditional instruments. Gig-goers who shudder when guitars and drums aren't somewhere in the mix can check out Berlin's To Rococo Rot (November 5), Fife's King Creosote (November 7) and Chicago's Volcano! (November 11). Olafur Arnalds, who supported fellow Icelanders Sigur Rós on tour recently, plays his delicately cinematic piano-and-string-quartet compositions at The Tunnels in Aberdeen on Wednesday October 22. And then there's a welter of classical premieres from composers such as Thea Musgrave, Nicola LeFanu and Dave Fennessy - although James MacMillan reckons we shouldn't get too hung up on this aspect of the festival.
"You can develop a bit of a fetish about premieres," he argues, "in that it has to be the be-all and end-all. Sometimes you need to step back and take a more sober, reflective look at the world of the new' that doesn't necessarily involve the feverish creation of brand-new things all the time."
Sound manages to do both, with world premieres and slightly older pieces existing side by side, sometimes on the same bill. The festival also weaves workshops and lectures in among its concerts, many of which are free. Although Aberdeen acts as the centre, events also take place in Banff, Tarland, Banchory, Inverurie and elsewhere. Such an approach gives this particular festival a scope, both geographical and musical, that must make Central Belt trendies wonder why nothing of this ilk takes place in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Perhaps the very fact that it's held away from those bigger cities allows it to be just that bit more daring and imaginative in its programming. MacMillan, for one, believes that such curatorial boldness has been rewarded by eager audiences.
"The fact that Sound has been so successful in its first few years proves that there are enough people with curiosity and goodwill to make this a viable concern," he says. "As a composer, I always look for a listener who is open-eared as well as open-minded. It's not often you get that, to be honest, in classical music. You look for someone who is curious to hear something they've never encountered before."
If MacMillan has offered answers to my contemporary classical listening questions in theory, then perhaps Sound can go further in practice. After all, there's something particularly visceral about the live music experience, something that can never be captured on a studio recording.
Although I can't hear it in person for the time being, I decide to give Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony another chance when I return home. Taking MacMillan's words on board, I finally begin to see its shape emerge. I shouldn't be trying to follow its music along a linear line; instead I need to stand back, aurally speaking, and assess the bigger picture in its collage-like entirety. It's the listener, not the music, that needs to change position. Perhaps that's the function of Sound as a festival. It doesn't redefine what music is; it just exposes audiences to a wider definition of music that already exists out there, waiting to be discovered.
