CONVERSATION WITH LUKE DEANE 16 OCTOBER, 2016, BY PHONE

EC: Thanks for calling me Luke. Could I ask you just a few questions, before you read the transcription of Howard's conversation with me on “teaching composition,” rather than having you influenced by what he says there, though you will be interested to read it later not least because Howard mentions you several times?

LD: That sounds great. It is really quite confusing to talk about composition teaching. You don't really know what it is exactly, and all the while you have this feeling of learning and of developing, but you couldn't really put your finger on exactly what it is. So, go ahead.

EC: Well, this maybe sounds a bit corny, but could I ask if there are any particular moments you recall from your meetings with him that changed your perception of what it is to be a composer? Could you give me a particular instance of where you brought something to him, and with just a word or a comment, or the lifting of an eyebrow, he made a difference?

LD: There are loads of those. One of my favourite examples was in the very first lesson we ever had. I brought him one of the first pieces I've ever written down, and up went the music on the piano, five or six pages, and really I wanted to ask about how you decide in what order things needed to happen. Quite vague questions. He said to me in that first lesson “you have got to try and think about your music outside of time.” I think I'm quoting him right. I went away a bit mind-blown, thinking, “Wow what does he mean?” Now I understand he means that the material doesn't necessarily have an order when you first encounter it. It is not necessarily organized at that stage. You have an initial encounter with it and then later you might organize it differently. So, I still think about that today, and what that means. It was a mind-boggling experience to hear him say that when I'd first arrived to study with him.

Howard Skempton celebrated his 70th birthday on 31 October, 2017. The occasion was marked with a celebratory concert at Kings Place curated by the choral director David Wordsworth. The event featured music by Skempton in an appropriately wide range of genres – his authorized worklist includes almost 600 pieces (depending how one counts collections of independent pieces) for many instrumental and vocal combinations. Accordingly, solos for piano and clarinet, chamber and choral music were performed by a broad spectrum of British new-music specialists: composer–pianists Michael Finnissy and Morgan Hayes; leading lights of contemporary music Thalia Myers and John Tilbury; pianists Esther Cavett and Jonathan Powell; the Gildas String Quartet; clarinettist Jack McNeill and the Addison Chamber Choir. Images of this gala event are included here, as Plates 5.1 and 5.2.

After politely observing this canonizing homage from a seat near the end of a row, Skempton slipped out for an after-show jam with the jazz ensemble Notes Inégales, performing, among other favourites, his comic patter song In Cuba they play with maracas (1988). No single concert could pay tribute to the breadth of Skempton's on-going composing and performing, and the entire evening passed without mention of his most famous work, the orchestral elegy Lento (1990), and his signature pieces for solo accordion, the latter distinguished by pathos, abstraction and folksy allusion. As a composer, but also as an accordionist, publisher, singer, teacher, and broadcaster, Skempton occupies a unique and central place in British new music, even as he complicates those simplistic categories (“centrality,” “British music,” and “new music”).

Skempton's musical style is lucid yet sophisticated, appealing to both lay and specialist listeners in equal measure. His voice is as fresh and immediate in the increasingly ambitious and varied compositions of recent decades, as in the piano and accordion miniatures written in his early days as an experimentalist. As such, his contribution to contemporary music stands apart from that of the new complexity school, yet it is also distinct from the minimalist composers with whom he has been associated. The bittersweet quality of some of his pieces, the austerity of others, and above all their uncompromising focus on sonority, project a seriousness of purpose combined with tenderness and charm.

FOCUSING ON FUNDAMENTALS

EC: Today we plan to talk about teaching composition, but may I start by asking what you yourself learn from teaching it?

HS: Cardew once said that he regarded the Scratch Orchestra as a sort of oracle. What he meant was that it raised questions and it was almost a way of focusing his own thoughts. I think teaching focuses your thoughts because again it takes you back to the questions you had when you were young. It takes you back to fundamental questions which you might not normally ask yourself, that you feel obliged to ask yourself when you are faced with a group of young people.

EC: With composition teaching, as with teaching of other subjects, particularly perhaps practical ones, you are presumably influenced by the way you have been taught? In recent years of course there has been a move to teach people how to teach. Previously, if you were a good practical musician (including a composer) you were then asked to teach and left to get on with it. The assumption was that you could teach something you could do well yourself.

HS: Yes, I was certainly influenced as a teacher by the way Cardew worked with me. Being practical, but not imposing his ideas, for example.

EC: My recollection of being taught composition by Nicola LeFanu is that she said at the beginning, to her group of green undergraduates, don't intellectualize it too much. Don't think of composition as taking a line for a walk. Instead take a note for a walk. So, she was seemingly trying to help people who were not necessarily aspiring to be composers for the rest of their lives to get something on the page. Presumably you're teaching people who are more experienced than that?

HS: Increasingly I'm teaching graduates, but when I started at the Birmingham Conservatoire as a visiting composer, I was teaching all the undergraduates, seeing each student once or twice a year. And then I would see possibly one or two postgraduates eight to ten times a year, and then I might have one or two people I have seen over the whole degree course.

Unless annotated otherwise, all items are on a single compact disc. Abbreviations for voices and instruments follow Grove Music Online.

Audio Arts (1976)

John Tilbury [pf]. Recent English Experimental Music [cassette tape]. W. Furlong (Ed.), Audio Arts Magazine, 3/2, with Audio Arts Cassette. Includes: Waltz. Reissued in 1983.

Hill (1986)

Peter Hill [pf]. Piano Music by Osborne, Skempton & Young [vinyl LP]. Merlin Records, MRF 86585. Includes: Second Gentle Melody; One for Molly; Simple Piano Piece; Chorale; Colonnade; passing fancy; Rumba; Trace; Seascape; Postlude.

Molasses (1986)

Mark Lockett [pf] and Janet Sherbourne [pf, woodblocks]. Slower Than Molasses: New English Music for Pianos, Voice and Percussion [vinyl LP]. Practical Music, Pr. 3. Includes: Tree Sequence; Second Tree Sequence.

Leininger-Gymnasium (1988)

Arbeitsgemeinschaft Neue Musik am Leininger-Gymnasium, dir. Gerd Hauser and Manfred Peters. An Arnold Schönberg [2 vinyl LPs]. Murawski- Zimmermann, MZ 9999. Includes: A Humming Song [pf, perf. by Christiane Cochrane].

Metalworks (1990)

Mark Lockett and Janet Sherbourne [Gamelan instruments]. Metalworks – New Gamelan. Practical Music, Pr. 6. Includes: The Beauty of the Morning.

Wiegold's Songbook (1991)

Composers Collective, dir. Dominic Muldowney, with Mary Wiegold [S]. Mary Wiegold's Songbook. NMC Recordings, D003. Includes: How Slow the Wind.

Finnissy (1992)

Michael Finnissy [pf] Plays Weir, Finnissy, Newman and Skempton. NMC Recordings, D002. Includes: Eirenicon 1; Eirenicon 2; Eirenicon 3; Eirenicon 4; Even Tenor.

Lento (1992)

BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Mark Wigglesworth. Howard Skempton: Lento. NMC Recordings, D005. Includes: Lento.

No Strings Attached (c. 1994)

No Strings Attached – Neyire Ashworth [cl], Nick Hayes [cl], Sara Lee [cl], Andrew Sparling [cl]. J. S. Bach: Music from the Well-Tempered Clavier with Baroque Realisations by Richard Barrett, Aidan Fisher, Gabriel Jackson, Howard Skempton, [and] Mark Anthony Turnage. Ensemble Music Label, EML 011. Includes: Aria (from Leclair, Sonata in G major, Op. 9/7).

Gemini (1994)

Gemini, dir. Ian Mitchell. Collection 1 [cassette tape]. N.publ. Includes: Lullaby (1983) [perf by Ian Mitchell [cl], and Jo Cole [vc]].

Tapestry (1994)

Tapestry – Andrew Sparling [cl], Katharine Durran [pf], and Sandra Lissenden [S]. Songs from the Exotic: New Works for Voice, Clarinet and Piano. British Music Label, BML 012. Includes: Colomen.

Tilbury (1996)

John Tilbury [pf]. Howard Skempton: Well, Well, Cornelius. Reissued 2002 as Howard Skempton: Piano Works. Sony, SMK 89617.

BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL COMPOSER

HS: What our earlier conversations show, in a way I hadn't quite focused on before, is how completely committed I was from very early on to doing composition. I had an unerring sense of what was what. I never stopped connecting and trying to plug gaps. Without being careerist about it, I sort of steered myself to the position of being a professional composer, but very much on my own terms.

EC: Beyond your internal musical development, what were the practical things which helped this transition?

HS: There was a change of control at the BBC, and John Drummond was in charge from 1987, and so experimental music was being heard again on the radio. John Drummond was very open to what the producers had to offer when he arrived; he gave the producers more permission to talk, even to pop up and say things on their own programmes. He said, “I'm not absolutely sure how things are going to develop, but I want to see what you're doing.” Martin Cotton was one of the producers, and he produced two programmes involving my music. The little Lullaby for clarinet and cello, that I had written in 1983, and Michael Finnissy playing my piano music, along with music by John White and [Cornelius] Cardew and so on. Martin then became the producer of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. And Martin commissioned Lento which I wrote in 1990, though Martin and I would have had lunch together the year or so earlier to discuss it.

I always felt that I want Lullaby to be played at my funeral. I was very happy with that piece. It was an accordion tune, to which I added something like a Bach Prelude, so it was almost like my Ave Maria [2016], you know. I was very happy with it. I'd written Chorales [1980] earlier, but Lullaby exploited that purely melodic aspect which the accordion music had released.

The way I became established involved a chain of events, and Martin Cotton was a crucial link in that chain. Because of my work in publishing and being an experimental composer, I was invited to join the music panel at the Greater London Arts Association.

ORIGINS

This book grew from a gift, a leaving present of money given to me with the wish I use it for the commissioning of a new piece of music. I decided to use it for something that could be performed in schools and other community contexts. As a novice commissioner, I started searching for a composer whose music I enjoyed and wanted some part of. After much listening, I felt my commission would be safe with Howard Skempton. Several years later Promenade, the score Skempton wrote for me (for piano and optional violin, or, as we subsequently agreed, any other melodic instrument within the range), was the result (see Plate 3.9). It exemplifies what I admire about his music: how he delights the connoisseur yet pleases the more casual listener in equal measure. An apparently innocent melodic gesture saunters into existence only to be deliciously transformed through rhythmic and then melodic re-orientation. Promenade exemplifies austerity and discipline, with perhaps a nod to the constructivist painters Skempton so admired. Skempton turns in the smallest space, making the slightest detail count; yet there is lyricism as well, even pathos (given the title), in the lopsided, optional countermelody.

MOTIVATIONS FOR THE PROJECT

What makes someone compose? This question, at once both naive and profound, crossed my mind as I developed the commission for Promenade. I was, of course, aware that the stories composers tell of their “origins” and “intentions” may be just that – stories – and that musicologists no longer believe it possible to arrive at definitive answers about creativity, if they ever did. At the same time, there is an enduring school of thought, newly bolstered by psychological theory, which claims we need to make sense of the world in teleological, narrative terms. Whatever my ideology, it is hardly surprising that, finding myself in the privileged position of being in contact with such a creative mind, I wondered if I might try to deduce something essential of how Skempton came to be a composer, and how his compositions come into existence.

As our discussions continued, I found Skempton to be a searching and reflective composer with profuse and profound ideas going far beyond his own art. He is also a wonderful raconteur, with a prodigious memory for detail. In short, I felt he had a book about music in him.

The original recordings of the conversations between Skempton and Cavett were transcribed and edited by Cavett. The Conversations omit pauses and other markers of time, thought or consideration that may have occurred, as well as exchanges felt irrelevant to the task at hand. The Conversations, therefore, are not diplomatic representations of what passed between Skempton and Cavett, and text or references enclosed [thus] are provided by way of editorial intervention.

Each paragraph in the Conversations is attributed to its speaker by way of their initials: HS for Howard Skempton, EC for Esther Cavett. The paragraphs are also identified in the margin by way of a number, allowing for any of the contributors to point to a specific part of a Conversation within their Reflection: C2 §3 directs the reader to Conversation Two, paragraph 3, for example. First names of composers and other creative artists, other than those who are widely familiar, are generally given when they are initially mentioned in each Chapter and (if applicable) Reflection but not thereafter. Dates of compositions are typically provided on first reference in each Chapter and Reflection but not thereafter.

Full bibliographic details for in-text references can be found in the select bibliography. Works referred to in the text are italicized and capitalized according to normal guidelines, except capitalization of the titles of Skempton's works, which follow the composer's preferences, as displayed in the authorized worklist.

Where appropriate, notes in pitch-class set notation are referred to as “(125)” rather than “[125]” or “[1–2–5].”

Order of the worklist

INSTRUMENTAL

Orchestral

Ensembles

MIXED DUOS AND ENSEMBLES

BRASS DUOS AND ENSEMBLES

PERCUSSION DUOS AND ENSEMBLES

DUOS, OTHER (INCLUDING PIANO DUET)

Solos

ACCORDION

BRASS

ORGAN

PERCUSSION

PIANO

STRINGS, BOWED

STRINGS, PLUCKED

WOODWIND

Other

OPEN SCORES

TAPE MUSIC

VOCAL

Choral, accompanied

Choral, unaccompanied

Solo voice(s) and instrument(s)

Solo voice(s), unaccompanied

FORMAT OF THE WORKLIST

As can be seen, the worklist is organized by forces. Within each category, the order of pieces is chronological, by year, but within each year, works are not strictly in order of composition.

Entries take the following form: work title; date of composition; author of text, if any; number and titles of separate movements; forces, unless specified by the category heading; current publisher, if published, and first publisher, where different; first commercial recording, if recorded; dedication, if any; other information, if any.

Capitalization of titles follows the composer's preference.

MUSICAL ABBREVIATIONS

Abbreviations for voices and instruments follow Grove Music Online

LOCATING PUBLISHED WORKS

The following short titles identify published works:

RECORDINGS

First commercially distributed recordings are identified by a short title and date. Consult the discography for full details.

INSTRUMENTAL

Orchestral

Chorales (1980); full orch; OUP

Two Preludes (1986); str orch; ded. Stuart and Jutka [Deeks]

Suite for Strings (1986); 4 movements; str orch or str qnt (with db); ded. Stuart [Deeks], Andy [Sherwood] and friends; also known as Little Suite for Strings

Chorales 2 (1987); full orch; ded. Malcolm [MacDonald] and Libby [Valdez]; Malcolm also went by the professional name Calum

Lento (1990); full orch; OUP; rec. Lento (1992); ded.