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Total Immersion - Murail Composer Day: Barbican Centre, London 7.2.2009 (CR)

Talk and Film: Julian Anderson and Tristan Murail

Concert 1: Guildhall New Music Ensemble, Steve Smith (electric guitar), Rolf Hind (piano), Ian Dearden (sound projection) Pierre-André Valade (conductor), Jerwood Hall, LSO St Lukes.

Talk: Music and Acoustics: Julian Anderson and Tristan Murail

Concert 2: BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Pascal Rophé (conductor), James Morgan (conductor), David Sheppard (sound projection), Barbican Hall


The BBC’s Total Immersion series covers three composers, Stockhausen, Murail and Xenakis, each with a day dedicated to exploring the works of each individual composer. The day incorporated two concerts and two talks, which served as an excellent introduction to Murail’s works for the uninitiated, as well as a chance to gain a deeper insight for those who were already familiar with his works.

The day began with an informative talk, during which Julian Anderson, past pupil of Murail and composition professor at the Guildhall School of Music, interviewed Murail about aspects of his life. The talk was lively and humorous, and covered a range of topics, including Murail’s family background (his father was a poet and painter, and although his mother enjoyed music neither parents played instruments), and his journey towards his formidable compositional career. Murail studied with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, and, upon winning the Prix de Rome, spent two years at the Villa Medici, where he encountered composers such as Scelsi, Sciarrino and Grisey. At the time when Murail was a student in Paris, contemporary musical life seemed to be split between followers of Boulez’s serialism and Cage’s indeterminacy. For Murail and some of his colleagues, neither of these seemed like the ideal solution, so they set up their own ensemble, L’Itinéraire, to perform their own works, as well as works by international composers who were not known in France at that time. Murail’s working relationship with Grisey was discussed; despite the different musical backgrounds of the pair, they shared a common desire to use sound itself to form a musical composition, and an interest in acoustics and the transformation of textures. Murail made a perhaps unexpected move to the USA in 1997, to take up a post at Columbia University, where he still works. When asked to give advice to first time listeners of his music, Murail said “Don’t try to understand because there’s probably nothing to understand. Let the music lead you; listen to the sound, open your ears and be receptive. Sometimes close your eyes.”  This was a fascinating introduction to Murail and served as an opportunity to get some idea of the personality of the man himself. The talk was followed by a screening of a DVD of three of Murail’s works, Winter Fragments, Le Bois Flotté and Treize Coleurs du Soleil Couchant, with visualisations by Hervé Bally-Baisin. The multi-layered visualisations were timed precisely to fit with the transformations in the music, moving between recognisable objects (such as sea-scapes, clouds and birds) and abstract imagery, with creative use of colour at certain moments to enhance the atmospheres. The rate of change fluctuated in time with the music, sometimes chaotic and at other times working through the processes slowly and gradually. For new listeners to Murail’s music, the visualisations could be extremely useful in terms of making sense of the movement and change within it. For seasoned fans, the images give a new dimension to the works, offering an additional perspective to the music.

The first concert of the day was held at LSO St Luke’s, and included some of Murail’s smaller scale works. Winter Fragments (perhaps appropriately performed during probably the coldest week in the UK for twenty years) depicts not only icy, cold weather, but was written in tribute to Gerald Grisey at the time of his unexpected death in 2000. Small sections of music are created through changing rates of transformation between activity and stillness. This is a moving and atmospheric work, which was given an excellent performance by the Guildhall New Music Ensemble under the capable baton of Pierre-André Valade.

Territoires de l’oubli is a 24 minute work for solo piano, composed in 1977. Repeated figures in the treble set the scene, allowing the bass notes to control the pace of harmonic change. The work takes the listener on an exploration of the sound, using the resonance of the piano to create microtonal pitches (through the use of harmonics). Moments of exquisite stillness give the music space to breathe before once again speeding up the rate of transformation, and Rolf Hind’s deeply expressive playing helped to create a hypnotic, thought provoking and multi-layered performance, with building and dissipating tensions and an apparent suspension of time.

Treize Coleurs du Soleil Couchant is a work for small ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and electronics. At time dark in character, Murail’s music is always clear, making use of extended techniques such as multiphonics, breath sounds, microtones and bowing techniques in an organic and seemingly natural way. Hugues Dufourt’s Hommage à Charles Nègre was the only work by another composer to feature in this concert.  Dufourt is a French composer, born in 1943, who was involved with L’Itinéraire and responsible for the origins of the term ’spectral music’ in relation to Murail, Grisey and their colleagues. Composed in 1986, Hommage à Charles Nègre is a musical tribute to the social documentary photography of Charles Nègre, composed for an exhibition at the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. Featuring many instrumental doublings, such as bass flute, contra bass clarinet, oboe d’amore, with the instruments asked to play in unusual parts of their register, Dufourt creates an interesting sound. He combines an electric guitar in the ensemble, which adds a further unusual dimension.  The overall effect of the work is one of slow moving evolving chords, with a sense of resolution at the end of the piece. This seemed to be an extremely difficult work to perform, with the wind players particularly having to make rapid changes between instruments of various sizes. The ensuing effect of the intonation, although at times unsettling, was perhaps part of Dufourt’s intention for the piece, relying on these problems to occur for themselves in place of the notation of microtones.

The final work in the programme was the UK premiere of Pour adoucir le cours du temps for large ensemble and live electronics, composed in 2004-5. Here, Murail uses the synthesis of complex sounds, such as bells or breath sounds as the basis for the music. The electronic sounds were at times integrated into the ensemble, and at other times provided an additional layer to the music with bell-sounds coming out of the texture and moving around the room. Murail uses warm brass sounds which are reminiscent of early jazz, and flurries of high pitched activity were cut off by the electronics, almost as if the limits of human playing are reached and technology takes over. The sectional arrangement of the piece gives a sense of temporal organisation, moving towards and then away from the centre of the work.

This was a convincing performance by these students, many of whom may have encountered Murail’s work for the first time in preparation for this event. Valade was clearly an important part in the rehearsal process, giving the students and excellent understanding of the music and the instrumental techniques required to give such a convincing performance.

The second talk of the day was entitled Music and Acoustics and went some way to explain Murail’s compositional techniques, covering topics such as additive synthesis, harmonic spectra, complex sounds and microtonal composition. These concepts were clearly explained in simple terms. Murail and Anderson also discussed the practicalities of performing microtones on instruments which were not necessarily designed for them, and looked at some of the strategies Murail employed to assist with consistency in this area. A detailed discussion was also made of the similarities between timbre and harmony in Murail’s aesthetic. This was an interesting talk, which helped to clarify many of the important areas of Murail’s output. As the key educational elements of the day the two talks were less academic than some similar events I have attended (for example, some of the talks at the South Bank Centre about composers such as Stockhausen or Nono), and I could have handled more information or longer talks, especially as they were so fascinating. Much of the information about the pieces themselves was contained within the programme notes for the day, so perhaps a deeper exploration of some of the works might have been a worthwhile addition. However, as an introduction to Murail’s works, these were an excellent part of the day, which helped to prove that one does not need a degree in music, maths or physics in order to appreciate the music of our time.

The evening concert, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers, contained four of Murail’s seminal works. Gondwana is considered to be one of the major spectral orchestral works, and this performance was its first professional public performance in the UK (the two previous performances were a studio performance by the BBC and a student performance at the Royal College of Music). I was fortunate a few weeks ago to catch the US premiere in New York, and there were some big differences between these two performances. Gondwana is a true adventure in sound, which provides a feast for the ears.  One of the things Murail likes about using live performers is the ability to create a different performance each time. From an audience perspective, there are perceptual changes between performances too, particularly between a first hearing of a piece and any subsequent hearings. While both performances were dramatic and exciting, I felt the American performance had a wider dynamic range, more precise microtonal intonation, and the players seemed to be more committed to the music (I noticed some of the players looking disengaged while not performing – or perhaps I mistook their expressions of concentration for expressions of boredom). Despite these minor points, however, this remained a highly enjoyable performance, with the orchestral canvas painting a diverse range of colours and textures.

Time and Again requires some of the instruments to tune down a quarter tone to avoid the use of unusual fingerings. The percussive opening and fusion of electronics with blended string sounds which grew out of each other was breathtaking. Composed five years after Gondwana, there is an apparent development of Murail’s compositional style, which in some ways seems more defined here. The electronic sounds enhance the orchestra’s palette, and provide reference pitches for the de-tuned instruments which assisted with intonation. Murail’s blurring of harmony and timbre allowed for some especially wonderful moments, with one at times wondering what was coming from the electronics and what was from the live instruments. The vast percussion section also added further colour to the orchestral sound, and the piece contained some magical moments of gradual transformation, as one has become accustomed to in Murail’s music.

Following the interval, the BBC Singers’ performance of …amarilis et dulcibus aquis… was, for me, the most enjoyable of the day. This was a stunning work, which was less complex than some of the other works heard during this event, with returning fragments of material which perhaps helped to guide the listener through the work. The performance was committed and highly convincing and the electronics were a welcome addition to the choir sound. The Latin text, taken from a 12^th century ‘guide for pilgrims’ which Murail describes as ‘a Michelin Guide of the Middle Ages’ was hard to follow but this did not detract from the music in any way. The male voices produced almost didgeridoo-like sounds, with waves of changing timbre blurring with the electronics. The female voices had a more narrative role, and some rhythmic unisons between the choir as a whole were dramatic and effective. Following Murail’s Michelin Guide comparison (and taking into account his passion for cooking – perhaps unsurprisingly of the Heston Blumanthal style), if this were a restaurant, I have no doubt that it would be awarded three Michelin stars.

The final work of the evening was Terre d’Ombre, composed in 2003-4 with close links to Scriabin’s Prometheus. There is a clear difference in style from Gondwana, with the processes more fragmentary, although the music still inhabits a haunting world where there is a constant state of motion. Certain sections stand out as being deeply memorable, such as the slow moving long-note timbres passing around the orchestra. Rich low strings blend with low brass and electronics; high strings blend with woodwind and tuned percussion. There is a slow evolution between tension and resolution, with the pace of change gradually increasing through an organic crescendo before the wind erupts into flurrying fast movement. This music is essentially all harmony, but rhythmic devices help to give definition to the overall work.

In Murail’s music, the ensemble as a whole sounds as one – his music is a difficult test for orchestras. The BBC Symphony Orchestra gave a convincing performance this evening, but I wonder how much better it would have sounded had they approached this music with the expressive range that they would have used had they been performing Debussy or Messiaen.

This was an excellent event, which served both educational and entertainment purposes, and it is fantastic to see Murail’s music getting the exposure it deserves and attracting healthy audiences. Hats off to the BBC for organising this event and the other days in the Total Immersion series – long may it continue.

Carla Rees


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