Friday 3 September 2004

on a train
I had a day at home yesterday, the first to myself for several months. So it was a chance to get ahead with lots of tedious paperwork, accounts and unanswered mail. I also managed to fit in recording some piano overdubs that we didn't get done at Crichton in March, and choose a pitch at which to play Tobias Hume on the melodica, this latter done with me sitting in my study window, on the phone to Alison in a village square in the south of France. Working as a composer, I used to spend endless hours on my own recording with a computer, but now I find it frustrating. I want another pair of ears in the room for instant feedback: yesterday I couldn't even be bothered to listen back to what I'd recorded. Come to think of it, that was a bit stupid really. I'd better check it tonight.

On Wednesday I had lunch with Mark Padmore and we talked about his upcoming John Passion project with the OAE and the function of the conductor. (On our way down Byres Road we spotted John Butt sitting in a cafe, which is kind of fortuitous when you're going to talk about Bach.) It made sense of a lot of bad musical experiences I've had recently playing with orchestras. The root cause hasn't necessarily been the orchestral set-up or the personalities concerned, but rather that in some kinds of music, and Bach in particular, the conductor has no useful function other than as a rehearsal manager, assuming of course that you have a group of sensitive and engaged musicians. Bach doesn't write filler parts, so everyone has a contribution to make, and it's difficult to assess and fulfil your role as part of a very complex whole, when there's this guy up at the front getting in the way and homogenising the overall result. Now some conductors and directors have a more contributory attitude, and know how to leave space for the musicians to get on with it, but many don't. I remember not long ago going to a rehearsal of Bach's cantata Wiederstehe doch der Sünde: a wonderful piece which should have been excellent fun, with Michael Chance singing. And on the way there I said to Greg that although it was one of my favourite pieces of music and the performance would probably turn out very well, I'd rather stay at home and put a record of it on, than be here playing in it. I couldn't work out why at the time, but now I can see that listening to a CD was a more participatory way of being involved in the piece than trying to play it with some bloke waving his arms around and taking essential responsibilities away from the people in front of him.

All of which made it quite easy to turn down the offer yesterday of a tour to Spain just before Christmas playing for a choral conductor ...

The other thing about Bach's music is that the consensus is growing that it should be played and sung by small numbers of people. I started the day yesterday by digging out my LPs of Joshua Rifkin's B minor Mass recording, recorded over 20 years ago with single voices and a minimum of instruments. It's extreme in some senses, in that he tends to iron out any attempts at expression, emotion or character, and some of the playing is clunky and the singing a bit shapeless, but it's a fascinating listen because it has honourable intentions. You hear the sound of all these personalities engaging with this very complex music, rather than having an overall shape imposed upon them. I don't think the intentions of someone like John Eliot Gardiner in the music of Bach are honourable. Well-meant perhaps, but ultimately misguided.

But having said that, my favourite Bach remark comes from a B minor mass rehearsal some years ago with Frans Brüggen. In the opening 'Credo' movement of the Symbolum Nicenum, he turned to the orchestra and said firmly 'no opinion'. He meant (I think) that there were so many things going on in the music that if everyone 'expressed themselves', confusion would be the result. But it was a great way to say it.