BY CYRUS MEURANT AS TOLD TO CUTCOMMON
Cyrus’ composition Concertino for Clarinet and String Quartet will be performed by the Omega Ensemble at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, October 25. Ahead of the performance, he reflects on his year filled with performances of his opera Herakleitos in Germany, Le Petit Prince in the Czech Republic, and working with the ACO Collective and Omega.
I had been working on the opera Herakleitos for some time. I started writing it back in 2016, actually, and it was a project that evolved gradually from a slightly broader initial concept. It’s the sort of project one thinks about doing for a long time and wonders: ‘How is this going to happen?’.
When I was studying in Paris many years ago, I would speak to conductor Rebecca Lang about writing an opera. Rebecca is a long-time friend and colleague and has lived in Berlin since around 2007 – we met each other in Melbourne in 2005 through the Australian Youth Orchestra’s Scenes and Arias program where I studied with Richard Meale. Rebecca worked on that project as repetiteur.
Last year, I sent Rebecca the near-complete full score of Herakleitos and once I secured some funding, it was decided that Herakleitos was going to happen! Rebecca, being a force of nature, became the guiding light for the production and suggested the premiere take place in Hamburg. And earlier this year, I met baritone Birger Radde, who would go on to perform the title role in Herakleitos. I played through the score from the piano with him in Berlin and this was followed by a photo shoot for the promotional material, which was imaginatively undertaken by Berlin-based photographers Matthew Coleman and Trevor Good.
I was later introduced to the Irish dramaturge Caroline Staunton, and then Hilton Jones’ production company Three in One Entertainment & Consulting GmbH, came on board for the lighting design and generously sponsored the production. We would then all assemble for the premiere at the Laeiszhalle, Hamburg in June with Birger Radde, Samantha Britt, Ziad Nehme, and the Kreuzberger Kamerata conducted by Rebecca Lang.
With regards to the project of Le Petit Prince in the Czech Republic, I’d been approached last year by dancer and director Macbeth Kaněra, who is a graduate of the Australian Ballet School and has been based in Europe for several years. Macbeth’s partner, the French dancer and choreographer Margaux Thomas, was at the time planning a ballet based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince (Malý Princ in Czech). Following on, I met both Margaux and Macbeth in the middle of 2017 in Sydney, and I was subsequently commissioned to compose the score for the premiere performance at the Divadlo F.X. Šaldy in the Czech Republic for February 2018.
Given my work with dance over the years, and almost always performing in my work, it was decided early on I would play violin and be accompanied by the F.X. Šaldy’s brilliant pianist Maxim Biriucov. It’s a big play for only two musicians, with a duration of 60 minutes. I felt the classic combination of violin and piano was perfect for the story of Le Petit Prince – written against the backdrop of World War II – 1943.
I had an incredible time during my residence in the Czech Republic, having long rehearsal periods, and really developing the work extensively for nigh on two months (I spent most of the time inside practising, and looking out my window at the snow!). The work is now running in repeat seasons (without me) and is in the company repertoire, it has been incredibly well received.
I just love collaborating with people – choreographers, dancers, conductors, musicians, theatre people in general. Both big theatre projects are about telling stories and exploring ideas. Le Petit Prince to me is an incredibly moving story, and it works particularly well being told through music and dance. Herakleitos too, I think, well that’s a totally different piece, but for me it was about finding a musical language that would serve to expand upon and open these amazing ideas about identity, change and our place in the world.
In the case of Herakleitos, I’ve learnt that it’s possible to present an uncompromising work of art that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time – but in doing so, it has been an enormous investment of time and overall commitment from everyone involved. Trust and belief in artistic collaborators are key ingredients in any successful production, along with a willingness to take a plunge into the unknown!
This time last year, I was down in Canberra and the Momentum Ensemble conducted by Ariel Zuckermann performed a new chamber orchestra work of mine at the High Court of Australia – so I think it’s great too that these spaces more generally are being utilised for concert presentations. I pretty much associate visits to Canberra with going to the galleries and museums there, and I’ve always found it very stimulating.
Having performed solo concerts of my own music in art galleries for exhibition openings, to me that’s such an exciting thing to be doing. I’ve spent a good deal of time in the art galleries in Germany and France this year, just as I have in the United Kingdom in years gone by. I really love the idea of concerts in art galleries generally, or visual art works that utilise music in some way. To me it just seems right.
I love photography and painting as an admirer, rather than a practitioner. I’ve always had an uncritical interest in film and photography courtesy of my father, who has a large stockpile of cameras and a rather encyclopaedic knowledge of them – ranging from 8mm film through to digital video, 35mm, and countless instant cameras. He has kept 8mm and 16mm film projectors through to digital video projectors too.
I suppose the adage that pictures are for looking at, and music is for listening to – that’s the starting point for me. Musical meaning – that’s an enormous subject now. But the idea of encapsulating an essence of character through sound versus, say, a portrait capturing someone’s character, that’s an interesting discussion to have.
With regards to the concert at the NPG, my Concertino was written for David Rowden. The other composers involved, Holly Harrison and Stuart Greenbaum, have written works for Matthew Kneale (bassoon) and Merial Owen (harp) respectively. I’ve written three works for Omega Ensemble over the years, performing in two of them. I’ve known David Rowden for many years, so I was really writing the Concertino having established an admiration for his playing and his commitment to commissioning contemporary music – and knowing that he was going to perform the work, of course, so it was developed in consultation with him.
For me, writing for an individual player, you’re thinking of them and the music that inspires them, as well as thinking of their performing. I’m reminded now of the Ysaÿe Six Sonatas for solo violin, which were each composed with a particular player in mind, and they really are tailored for the violinist in question – whether it was Kreisler, Szigeti or Enescu, and their musical and stylistic predilections.
In my ballet score for Le Petit Prince, it’s a case of music driving character pieces in an abstract narrative. To me, despite its fantastical nature and openness to interpretation, it’s a deeply personal piece when considering Saint-Exupéry’s own life. We have the personal relationships of his life laid bare in the characters on stage, The Pilot, The Rose, The Fox, etc. Ultimately, however, the work is haunted by the knowledge of his subsequent death whilst flying reconnaissance for the Free French Forces in 1944.
As I progress in my writing, I’m really interested in putting myself in situations that are always different – writing for new contexts – challenging myself to compose music for different collaborators and utility. I find myself always returning to reconsider ideas of the generation of form through content – that is, how we arrive at musical forms through the material we express ourselves with.
Now the ‘sound’ of my opera compared to my recent ballet work, or the works I recently composed for ACO Collective or Omega Ensemble…maybe there’s some musical DNA there that’s always me, inevitably. But often, the way that material develops can be unique to the piece, the instrumentation, and the ways these instruments interact is always different.
I write often for strings, and then there’s usually always winds and percussion in the mix to some degree. I also love amplification (I play electric violin and write a lot of dance-theatre music, which may explain that). In the case of my work Vessel for the ACO Collective and the opera Herakleitos, the music exists in relation to ancient source texts – either as an attempt at musical metaphor – that is, in relation to a text as abstract music or literally setting a text to be sung.
I suppose to expand a little more on this idea of ‘sound’, I spent a good deal of time in the writing of my opera Herakleitos in considering the finalised line-up of the instrumentation – it was critical to the work in as much that it had to be a formulation arrived at through a deep desire to express what it was I wanted to express in relation to the ancient fragmentary texts. Herakleitos was ultimately scored for baritone, tenor and soprano voices with an ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, saxophone, electric organ, percussion, violin, cello and bass guitar.
Formulating the ensemble from the ground up in the service of an aesthetic impetus is a very different place to be in comparison to writing a commissioned work for a quintessentially ‘classical’ pairing like violin and piano, or a fixed ensemble like a clarinet and string quartet. In those latter instances, you’re having a dialogue with historical genres as much as writing your ‘own’ music, and you have a considerable body of literature already available to you to consider drawing influence from. In the case of opera and dance, you’re having dialogues potentially with narrative forms.
Music about music
My Concertino is a concert work, so it’s really ‘music about music’. But in terms of how I arrived at some of the conceptual undertows – being literally ‘a small concerto’ – I felt that in writing a concertino it was going to be about the typical duality of soloist versus ensemble; in this case: clarinet and string quartet, how the soloist relates to the tutti, but then how the form develops these ideas of duality. So, there are two movements, but the material is constantly evolving and there is no formal movement break. It’s not until the coda actually that the ensemble really converges together, and a kind of unity is achieved – through a harmonic and rhythmic convergence, towards stability and resolution, after constant change and instability.
I’m really excited about music in art galleries, and NPG is one of the nation’s great places of art. It serves as a reminder of the contribution of prominent Australians and where we’ve been and where we’re going as a society. The previews I’ve seen so far of the portraits for the 20/20 look tremendous. We also have some incredible musicians to admire in Veronique Serret, Airena Nakamura, Neil Thompson and Paul Stender along with soloists Matthew Kneale, Meriel Owen and David Rowden.
Listen to Cyrus’ Concertino in the Gordon Darling Hall, National Portrait Gallery, in celebration of 20/20 (20 years with 20 new portrait commissions). You’ll also hear works by Holly Harrison and Stuart Greenbaum. More detail online.
Images supplied.
