David BEDFORD
Song of the White Horse also featuring Star Clusters,
Nebulae & Places in Devon
Nash Ensemble & Queens
College Choir conducted by Steuart Bedford, with Mike Ratledge and David
Bedford, keyboards, soloist Diana Coulson (Song of the White Horse) / Chorus
and Brass of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (Star Clusters…) * produced
and engineered by Mike Oldfield
Classicprint CPVP011CD
* [48:52]
Purchase direct
http://www.voiceprint.co.uk/index.htm
David Bedford is a composer with a foot in at least two camps. Born in 1937,
he studied at the Royal College of Music under Lennox Berkeley, in Venice
with Luigi Nono and at the RAI Electronic Music Studio in Milan. A contemporary
composer with the reputation to have Radio 3 devote a whole 105 minute programme
of late night broadcasting to his works in 1998, he is also a musician whose
collaborations with Tubular Bells rock-composer Mike Oldfield span
three decades, and who seems to be comfortable on that edge where progressive
rock has ambitions to orchestral seriousness. In conjunction with Kevin Ayers
of Soft Machine Bedford combined rock with acoustic music (their band
was Whole World).
Star's End was perhaps the most acclaimed piece to come out of this
period, and is just one of several to reveal Bedford's interest in the celestial
lights: other works include A Dream of the Seven Lost Stars (1964-5)
, Music for Albion Moonlight (1965), The Tentacles of the Dark
Nebula (1969), The Sword of Orion (1970) Some Stars Above Magnitude
2.9 (1971), Twelve Hours of Sunset (1974), Ocean Star a Dreaming
Song (1981), Of Stars, Dreams and Cymbals (1982), An Island
in the Moon (1985-6). Given that Mike Oldfield has released a concept
album based upon Arthur C. Clarke's Songs of Distant Earth, it is
perhaps no surprise to discover that Bedford is currently at work on an oratorio
based upon the same novel. Which brings us to this current disc, produced
and engineered by Mike Oldfield, and Star Clusters, Nebulae & Places
in Devon for mixed chorus and brass (1971).
The choir is divided in two. Choir one sings a text comprised of nothing
but the names of star clusters and nebulae. Choir two, a text which is simply
a list of place names in Devon (and progressive rock fans might like to note
that one of them is Yes Tor, the feature which helped inspire the name of
the 1978 album by the band Yes.) The only point of connection seems to be
that there are many Bronze age remains in Devon, such that (the anonymous
programme note, presumably written by the composer, explains), "When the
hut-circles of the Bronze Age people were in daily use, roughly three and
a half thousand years ago, the Globular Star Cluster in Hercules shone out
as they slept." To which I have to add, "so what!" The writer further tells
us, "When we look at it though a telescope, we are seeing exactly the
same light as shone out over the Bronze Age people, for the cluster is
some three and a half thousand light-years away and that is when the light
started on its long journey to us." (my italics). Of course, the light that
shone out over the Bronze Age people is not exactly the same light we see
three and a half thousand years later. The light the Bronze Age people saw
began its journey seven thousand years ago…
The whole concept strikes me as pretentious and pointless, and I am afraid
the music impresses me little more than the idea behind it. It seems typical
of late 60's experimental music, the concept given more value than the ears
of the unfortunate listener. The actual names in the text are so fragmented
into sung chords as to be unrecognisable, the result being a dissonant choral
sound almost certainly inspired by a viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) and the music therein by Ligeti, while the agitated brass at times
seems as if it may even have had an influence upon John Williams in his writing
for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The range of bizarre
vocal textures Bedford achieves is certainly accomplished, but in the end
it all sounds rather too much like the music from some very dark and unsettling
horror film, and I would happily never hear it again. The recording is vivid,
but there is some occasional peak distortion on the left channel which is
not really acceptable in a 1999 studio production.
The Song of the White Horse (1978) is in five sections but plays in
one continuous track running 24 minutes. Written for an edition of the BBC
series Omnibus, it is a musical evocation of the Ridgeway footpath
between Wayland's Smithy (beyond the Bronze Age to a Stone Age burial chamber)
and the old chalk hill feature, the White Horse of Uffington. Opening with
lugubrious electronic keyboards, soon joined by static woodwind, the atmosphere
evoked is not so distant from Bernard Herrmann's Journey to the Centre
of the Earth (1959) film score. After this beginning, much use is made
of delay effects, particularly on the trombones, combined with a comical
ship's siren effect which proves to be the composer blowing into The Blowing
Stone at the bottom of White Horse Hill. Then at 9:27 the song itself begins,
first with a solo vocal, soon joined by an uncannily detached and tranquil
children's choir. The words, taken from The Ballad of the White Horse
by G.K. Chesterton certainly offer more substance than those of Star
Clusters… In-fact, there are an awful lot of word to get though
in this epic tale of 'the days of (King) Alfred'. Unfortunately the music
is insufficient to maintain the interest as the choir wades its way steadily
forward, while some of the synthesiser lines seem terribly dated. This central
section lasts over ten minutes and does nothing but accelerate, becoming
increasingly frenzied with the addition of more instruments. Ravel's
Bolero, it is not. The Postlude, sung like the opening, by Diana Coulson,
has an otherworldly appeal, but is insufficient to justify what has come
before. At half the length this might be quite an interesting piece, but
stretched so far it is simply too much of not enough.
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
