BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Ever wondered what goes through the minds of composers when they hear their own work premiered?
We do. So we asked award-winning young composer Cyrus Meurant what it feels like to hear his own music played live for the first time.
The Sydney Conservatorium of Music graduate, who received a Churchill Fellowship in 2006 and whose works have been set to choreography across Australia, London, and Switzerland, will have two compositions premiered and three others performed in Sydney this month.
Cyrus, who will play electric violin and keyboard in the concert, has teamed up with cellist Michael Bardon (Essener Philharmonic), saxophonist Andrew Smith (Nexas Quartet), flautist Nicky Crowe (Sydney Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony), and percussionist Alison Pratt to present five works written from 2012 to this year including ‘Loure for solo flute’ and ‘Four Pieces for soprano saxophone and electric organ’ as premieres.
“Generally speaking, I think it’s a case of working with musicians who are interested in new work, are creative themselves and are enthusiastic collaborators. And don’t mind playing your music, of course,” Cyrus says.
As a composer, what do you need from musicians when they bring your work to life?
I think the performer shouldn’t underestimate just how much they can bring to a new work. Performers who lend their accumulated knowledge and experience are invaluable to composers. There are many and varied expectations composers will have in regards to the role of the interpreter, though from my perspective I don’t feel a great need to over prescribe or stifle the performer.
How does it feel to hear your works performed for the first time?
It can be very startling, sometimes wonderful and affirming – occasionally even like remembering a dream, or déjà vu. Musicians inevitably inflect, colour and shape the music in ways the composer will not have considered. Upon hearing my music, I’m sometimes reminded of the time or context in which I wrote the work.
This concert features your compositions exclusively – have you worked on them so much that you’re sick of them? Is it nerve-racking to wonder: ‘What is the audience thinking?’?
I don’t get sick of the music – I actually really like what I do, and find the work sustaining. I enjoy writing music and performing it.
Having worked increasingly in theatre and dance over the years, I’m often working with collaborators, so my first duty is often to them and the work. I’m particularly interested though in opening up the space for the audience to reflect and think about form and ideas.
With regards to nerves, I haven’t had to deal with that too much as a performer, though I’m familiar with the feeling. If I’m well rehearsed and prepared, I just try to enjoy myself and make it to the end. I recall Fred Astaire’s great advice about performance: ‘Don’t get nervous and don’t make any mistakes!’.
Do any of your works tell a story about you, a time in your life, or an inspiration for your music?
‘Klash’ was commissioned for the National College of Dance in 2012 with choreography by artistic director Brett Morgan. It’s cast in nine movements and runs for about 30 mins, scored for an amplified ensemble of electric violin, alto/tenor saxophone, cello and multi-percussion. In the full theatrical version, the musicians are on mobile platforms which are moved into different configurations for each section. It’s ultimately an abstract work without a narrative, though my one brief was to write a piece of music which would serve to physically exhaust the dancers. It’s a work that demands considerable concentration and endurance from the performers, and ranges in moods from introspection to extreme extroversion. More recently, I’ve begun to think of the works main themes as being about bravery in the face of adversity, overcoming fear, and leaving nothing in the tank, so to speak.
‘Pars Pro Toto’ was commissioned for the Dance Makers Collective and choreographer Roz Wythes. It has a totally different conceptual basis: focussing on the human breath and repetitive structures. It’s a shorter, somewhat brooding and intense work in three sections for flute/piccolo, cello and electric organ. There was a period of development where I would compose and perform music in the studio and the dancers would create movement.
‘Loure’ for flute and ‘Yen’ for vibraphone are examples of a more personal, chamber style of composition.
How would you describe the sound in an aesthetic sense?
I like the idea of there being a sound world that is particular to each work, in the same way a baroque suite will be in the same key throughout or an opera or film score will have a particular flavour. While there may be a particular ‘sound’ in each piece, I’m also interested in formal structure. I value clarity, economy and elegance of expression.
There’s some musical DNA common to all the works, and they’re all composed by me, so I can’t escape being ‘me’, I suppose – but each work has its own character and rather different formal parameters. I find there’s a certain amount of self-realisation that takes place after a work is written and with time I become more conscious of what it is I have created.
Saxophone and electric organ. What even? How does one think of this combination, of all the combinations in the world, and decide: ‘That’s the one’?
With regards to the genesis of the work, I’m currently composing a new dance score titled ‘R&J’ for the Nexas Sax Quartet, in collaboration with Matthew Hindson, Brett Morgan and the National College of Dance, based on the story of Romeo and Juliet. It recently occurred to me to arrange some of this saxophone quartet music in a new concert piece for soprano saxophone and organ.
I’ve written quite a lot for the saxophone over the years (and saxophonists, like percussionists, are often on the lookout for new music). The instruments in question also feature in various eras of music that I’m particularly fond of – whether it is the organ music of Bach and Bruckner, or saxophonists like John Coltrane and Stan Getz. Musicians I admire such as guitarist Wes Montgomery and violinist Jen-Luc Ponty were sometimes accompanied by a chamber organ and drums in the 1960s.
When I was younger, I particularly enjoyed writing for unusual combinations of instruments – the only problem with that approach is the unlikelihood of getting repeat performances, but you do end up with some potentially unique sounding music and you learn a great deal. I was always struck by Morton Feldman’s idea of instrumentation being the foundational idea of a work– to the extent, in his case, of making the instrumentation the title of the work.
It’s a fundamental reminder, too, that imagination is the underpinning of all art. Like John Cage said: ‘I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones’.
For tickets to Cyrus Meurant at the Sound Lounge, 8pm November 14, click here and for more about Cyrus visit his website here.
Image supplied.
