Events
Composers and Orchestras
Composers and Orchestras
Orchestras are important to our culture, and some theorists have argued that they provide positive social models (e.g. models of collaboration). Orchestras have exciting repertoires and libraries which in many ways represent highpoints in western musical invention; orchestras contribute to education as well as providing aesthetic experiences; they develop young artists and sustain their careers through regular employment. However, changes in the consumption of music can make the skill and habit of orchestral listening harder to acquire; music literacy which typically helps people to understand orchestras is in decline; younger audiences may be less likely to engage therefore.
These are recurrent themes - but how can we develop them? This short symposium argues that composers’ voices could be relevant here. We ask if the experiences of composers with orchestras complicate these issues, or even suggest ways to solve problems or try new approaches to the practices and cultures of orchestral music. Composers, historically, have provided the music that orchestras use; but the use of living composers’ ideas and creative work in the practice of living orchestras can be marginal. Four speakers, including three composers and a documentary film-maker, who have worked with orchestras of various kinds, will open up the debate through statements, examples of their practice and a screening:
1pm Ed Hughes (composer, head of music at Sussex) - the orchestra as a social model and do orchestras need living composers? And a recent example of a participatory orchestra (collaboration with film-maker Lizzie Thynne)
1.15pm Evelyn Ficarra (composer, lecturer in music at Sussex) - on working with orchestras and different experiences of musicians’ receptiveness to experimentation
1.30pm Gerard McBurney (composer) - what I discovered about the state of new music while working for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (this is both a political and a technical question - i.e. who wants this music anyway, and why composers have no clue about writing for orchestra)
2.30pm Barrie Gavin (film-maker) will introduce a screening of his one hour film on Harrison Birtwistle ‘The Triumph of Time’, a documentary on Birtwistle with comments from the late Alan Hacker, and from Pierre Boulez, which includes a complete performance of the work, conducted by Boulez with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (for many years a crucial partnership in the revealing performance of contemporary music). (Around 70 of Barrie Gavin’s films for BBC and Channel 4 have recently been acquired by Sussex and are being prepared for viewing in the Media, Film and Music Resources Centre: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/crcpa/archives/barrie-gavin)
3.30pm Comments, questions and discussion
4pm Close.
For further information, please contact Ed Hughes, e.d.hughes@sussex.ac.uk