BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Place your trust in Christopher Healey as he takes you through seven days and nights of purgatory.
The Queensland composer’s latest offering Purgatorio draws inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the introspective work for flute, piano, percussion and strings will be performed by Ensemble Ardor this month.
Learn about Christopher and his string of commissions and awards here, and read on to learn about what you can expect from his newest spiritual and musical journey.
How did Purgatorio come about and why were you inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy in your composition?
Purgatorio came about because there are three musicians who are not just exceptional musicians, but who have been supportive towards me and my music, generous with their time and energy, and just overall wonderful to work with. Those people are Adam McMillan (pianist), Brent Miller (percussionist) and Brijette Tubb (flautist). And I thought: ‘How great would it be to write something for all three of them?’. At the time, I imagined a concerto; a real virtuosic dazzler.
When I started writing, however, I was just drawn in a much more introspective direction. I decided that as much as I still do want to write that concerto for them some day, this piece would be more about inviting them and the audience to come into quite a personal inner space. So it became a piece not about showing, but about sharing; not about ability or craft so much as it is about honesty and connection.
The Dante connection arose after I began writing, because for me the piece started to feel like a journey through a succession of days; possessed of a certain timeless quality, but with each day different, unique, strange. It’s not really purgatory in Dante’s depiction of it – visiting the deadly sins and so forth. That is all far too literal for my liking. This is connected more at the experiential level.
You’ve described this as a ‘spiritual’ piece. What ideas did you incorporate to create an other-worldly feeling? What are some of your favourite musical devices for spiritualism?
Okay, tough one to answer. When I refer to a more ‘spiritual’ style or perhaps mode of writing, I’m referring in a lot of ways to how I approach the work. Some works, you find your material, you work your material with whatever tools you have in your composer toolbox, and you end up with a piece.
Another term I could use is perhaps ‘soul painting’. You look inside and see what is there, what whispers to you from who knows where, and you try and capture that. There is certain knowledge and technique involved, but it’s completely subservient to the goal of trying to realise something that existed before you ever thought to look. If you look in that direction, things suggest themselves to you.
There are levels to it, too. I listen to Takemitsu and it really seems to me like I’m hearing something that lives inside him, being share via music, rather than the composer trying to craft something. You know, he’s not building a chair, he’s growing the forest where the wood comes from.
It’s something that words can’t capture very well, and neither can music, really. But the point of either is that it allows for that experience to be shared. The music can be the story of the artist looking inside.
Of course, Takemitsu, I think, was probably hanging out in the penthouse. I’m still down on the ground floor trying to work out how to operate the elevator…
You’re open about your works being notoriously ‘difficult’, with musicians complaining to you about some of your pieces in the past. How do you feel the balance should be placed between composing what you want, and composing what others want?
The composer is God, all others are but his mortal subjects…just kidding! The performer is not really separable from the composer: one without the other is mute! Which is why it’s so unbelievably vital for a composer to find musicians who are willing to be the advocate for our work that we, as composers, can’t be ourselves. Without the musicians, I have no voice at all. I can have the most beautiful thoughts and feelings to express, but no way of sharing those.
Personally and idealistically, I think a composer should always write exactly what they want to write. And if we didn’t also have to, at some point, try to earn a living from this – be successful, popular, etc. – we probably all would. It’s kind of the Charles Ives argument: When you don’t have to worry about the career, because you have oodles of money, etc., you can relax into your own authenticity.
Of course, I’d also like for elves to come out at night and clean my apartment for me, but that’s not how it works. So, for now at least, I have to compromise and clean my own apartment, and write music that is not always about exploring the deeper inner mysteries of the human experience, but just about writing a piece of music that doesn’t make people want to throw stuff at you.
Tell us a little about the work itself – are there seven movements to capture the seven days and nights of purgatory? How can we hear the journey from start to end?
The work opens with a gentle blossoming of sound from the three soloists, which then becomes an extended string exposition. You might think of this as transcending into purgatory. From there, the journey is predominately a flowing, linear experience where things blossom and wilt, although not always. I think many people will get the sensation of timelessness but also of passing days, it does this for me. The work is richly melodic, but not in a developmental way. It’s more like walking through a field of flowers, they are there to gaze upon; the order that might be imposed by a gardener (or a composer) would be a fake beauty; I’m more interested in seeing the thing in its true environment.
For those that come along, I hope this Q&A we’re doing will help illuminate the work. This isn’t really like most pieces you will typically go to a concert to hear. If you go into it trying to intellectually understand it, you will probably leave hating the work. Instead, if you can, sit like you might on a park bench, watching the trees blowing in the wind, and just let that feeling take you where it will. There is the potential to catch a glimpse of something quite beautiful, I think.
From gong to castanets and everything in between, your work has some heavy activity happening in the percussion section! How did you choose these specific instruments and what function do they serve?
All of the percussion has been carefully written to be playable by one very good percussionist. I started writing without consideration for instrumentation in this regard, but realised that I wasn’t too interested in using any of the usual keyed percussion like xylophone, glockenspiel, or marimba. Fortunately, this worked out well because we are very limited on space. So much of this piece is about colour and texture, but I had to be economical because of space. I’m not really sure why I chose which instrument, it’s just what occurred to me while writing, although at times I chose to reuse the same instrument rather than adding additional similar ones to save space.
As an introspective work, what does it tell us about Christopher Healey?
More than you probably wanted to know! But in all seriousness, it’s not any easy thing to articulate. It is complex. In a philosophical sense, it tells you that I think there is a mystery to the human experience – some call it God, which is a very loaded term – and that I think there is something of value in looking in that direction. The best way I can point that way is with a piece of music. The music isn’t the thing, it’s just a ‘finger pointing at the moon’, but it’s a real finger, and a real moon.
Parting words?
Thank you for the questions! There is also a work by another Brisbane composer, Catherine Likhuta on the program. I believe the work is for clarinet and piano, with Cathy on piano. If I haven’t convinced you to come yet, you should definitely come for Cathy’s performance of her own work. It’s always very special when a composer performs their own music.There’s also Hindemith’s Kammermusik on the program. The line up of players in string ensemble is just fantastic. I wish I could list them all by name, but you can find that all out on the program notes at the concert!
Christopher Healey’s Purgatorio will be performed by Ensemble Ardor at 6pm August 26, Ian Hanger Recital Hall. More info on the Facebook page.
Also from Christopher Healey:
.See more works from the composer.
Images supplied.
