Can't think which section this topic belongs, not classical you will all say, but here goes.

Personally what I've heard of Michael Nyman on Classic FM (mainly from the film Piano) has not impressed me, and I now find his music really annoying to listen to.

I don't think I've ever heard his music on Radio 3 so I was surprised to find a full page article in March BBC Music Magazine, and even more surprised to read that his latest orchestral/choral work A Handshake in the Dark, which receives it's premiere on 8 March, was commissioned by the BBC. It's an anti-Iraqi war work. The premiere performance will be broadcast on 12 March.

I read also that he has written a violin concerto and an opera Love Counts and likely a lot of other film scores, none of which I've heard I expect.

So what is Nyman's music. Is it New Music? Is it 'contemporary classical' for those who don't like New Music? Am I missing out?


John W

Anybody writing and anti-Iraq war piece would have a fair chance of the Beeb putting it on, John. That's the way things are, at the moment. An anti-terrorist piece wouldn't fare so well, of course!

I don't like it, all this mixing up music with political bias. OK, so I know I'm going to be told about "Si vuol ballare" etc., but it was never as widespread as it is today.

I think that music should take you away from politics and things to do with the daily round: it should be a means to escape, into a world of peace and bliss, where you can drift off on a sea of emotion and forget - rise above and beyond - worldly cares.

That's probably why I only like the kind of music that I do!

bws S-S!

And about FIDELIO, Simon.  And about A CHILD OF OUR TIME.  And about LE GRAND MACABRE.  And about most things written by HK Gruber.  And about nearly everything written by Henze     And Dallapicolla's IL PRIGIONERO. Rossini's MOISE (the Israelites in Egypt as an allegory of a divided Italy)... And about AIDA, UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, NABUCCO, ARALDO, MACBETH...   about Shostakovich #7, #11, #14, #15...   well, and the list goes on and on...

But back to Michael Nyman    I've followed most things he's done since The Draughtsman's Contract onwards, I've been to his premieres, I've been to his operas (hmmm, I see he scratched some of those from his list of works...).  I think he went through a grotty patch about 4-5 years ago and it was all sounding rather samey,  then he produced "Where The Bee Sucks" which went off in a rather more interesting direction...  I'm hoping he'll do more like that.  

I think the great danger with his output is that some of it is rather slight. I went to his (sold-out) Moscow concert in Dec last year, and came away rather disappointed that they had mostly played older works, and apart from material from "The Piano" it was mainly in the genre of "audience-pleasing" stuff.  (It was one of the few classical concerts I've been to where the audience has clapped in recognition at the start of pieces). This may be why he feels the need to take the woes of the world onto his shoulders and address the confrontation in Iraq?   MN is an extremely intelligent and perceptive man, and I think he's aware of the danger of producing a toothless liberal rant about the war...  in fact, what one would write about it becomes an extremely challenging question.  Political opinion polls indicate huge frustration with Mr Blair's leadership on this issue,  and I believe it's not only justifiable, but incumbent on figures in the Arts generally to reflect the mood of the times, and give voice to it.  Surely you wouldn't deny Nyman that role, SS?  Otherwise I think he might rightly be regarded as having fiddled whilst Rome burnt.  Complicity can also arise from complacency.

Over 200 British servicemen have been killed.  Here is not the place to discuss how these deaths occurred, or whether they were avoidable, but I believe the concert-hall, and tv/radio transmissions are an acceptable place for that discussion.  If they're not, then where is?  Dealing with the grief of the relatives, and the nation that has lost them, is merely one topic MN may strive to deal with.  There remains, however, the greater question - whether this war was ever justified or justifiable, whether the nation was lured into it by a pretext of known duplicity, and if so, what guilt Britain bears for its part in the massive slaughter of innocent life in Iraq that has unquestionably occurred.  Britain certain has a debt to its own war dead.  I personally believe it bears an even greater debt for the innocent Iraqis who have died, and continue to die, as a result of blunders which make Lord Cardigan appear a talented strategist by comparison - and make Lord Haig look a kindly old gentleman.

Yes - it is most certainly Michael Nyman's position to write on the theme of the Iraq War.  He may not do otherwise.  His difficulty will be to take a genre of music whose emotional associations arise most frequently by association with their alliance with moments in Peter Greenaway's films,  and hammer his ploughshare into a sword for justice.

I won't bore you with detail.  Nyman's derivative 'music' gets on my t**s.  please forgive me; I'm not normally so straightforward.

rachfan,

That's what I meant when I said 'I now find his music really annoying to listen to' 

I like his String Quartets 1-3. I've a CD by the Balanescu Quartet on Argo. Anyone know them?

But I don't like his Glass(es)

Hmmm, like he was writing the Iraq War piece, got someone at the BBC interested, and then they decided to commission it? 

Anyone hear tonight's Performance on 3 - the first performance of A Handshake in the Dark?

I can't remember the last time I was so angered by a new work. Naive, simplistic, technically gauche, embarrassingly under and overwritten by turns, grey and featureless, uninspired, structurally disastrous (those last couple of minutes - what was THAT about?!?)

I'm not going to waste any more time writing about it except to wonder why on earth the BBC commissioned a major, large scale work from someone who quite clearly wasn't up to the task.

Am I a lone voice?