Michael Nyman - Strategies of the Sublime

It's the second time I've met Michael Nyman in Palermo, and this time I find myself at the Metropolitan cine-theatre. When I shake his hand to greet him, the Maestro seems to vaguely recall our previous interview at the end of 2006. The English musician is dressed in his usual style: black suit and red socks. The conversation begins in a cramped dressing room, but Michael Nyman soon complains about the heat and the excessive noise coming from the corridor; he asks if we can continue somewhere cooler and quieter, and I'm only too happy to oblige. I walk him outside, to the back of the cine-theatre where he'll be performing in just under an hour: the musician settles onto a makeshift seat and finally seems at ease, proving very open to dialogue and discussion. The result is a long conversation touching on the past and present of his musical career, running through his relationship with the avant-garde, American minimalism and rock music. Right up to his recent photographic work and the book "Sublime"...

The last time you played in Palermo, it was at the Teatro Politeama; tonight, though, it's a cinema: does anything change compared to when you play in an opera house?

To be honest, tonight, before arriving, I still didn't know it was a cinema. You know, sometimes it's a theatre, sometimes a concert hall, sometimes a cinema or something else: it's always a different venue. Last week we were in Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, and there we played in an indoor sports arena...

So the choice of repertoire isn't changed depending on the venue...

No, generally we play the music we want to play, or whatever the promoter requests. Sometimes we happen to be part of a festival: in that case, we might tweak the programme a little, but always within what our audience knows and loves.

Your music seems to show that today it's once again possible to produce art forms that aren't distant from the audience. Was that your aspiration, in the beginning?

It's more a kind of instinct, and I think I'm very lucky to have it. In 1977, when I started composing, I had an interest in formal problems, but also in melody, in rhythmic elements and in music with a simple pulse. All of that flowed together into a certain way of composing that's mine, and I don't think it's changed all that much today. Perhaps in the past I more often found myself writing music based on a rather rigid compositional process; the music I write today is instead more shaped by my personal taste: if I want a melody to go on longer than certain rules would dictate, I do it without a second thought. In any case, the aesthetic choices I made over the course of the Seventies were fundamental to who I am today. My music has always been aimed at an audience, then as now.

How do you approach the choice between simplicity and complexity?

Generally, the more music you write, the more expert you become; the greater the experience, the more complicated you also become. Often, though, it's the simplest, most direct music that has the greatest impact on listeners, while the more complex music ends up seeming impenetrable. Still, I enjoy writing both simple, direct music and more "advanced" music. It also depends on the context: if I'm writing a film score, I favor a simpler approach; in a string quartet or an opera, on the other hand, since there's more room to breathe, it's possible to adopt a more complex kind of writing than in music for films.

In 1969, you were the first to speak of "minimalism" in reference to a new musical aesthetic. Do you still use this term to define your own style?

Let's say I couldn't do otherwise: I know the origins of my style, and it would be misleading to think it no longer reflects certain aesthetic principles I absorbed from the American composers for whom I coined the term "minimalism." It's true that my music has sometimes developed further, in some cases breaking the rules that came to stand as the unspoken definition of "minimalism"; even so, I don't think I've ever strayed too far beyond those principles, certainly not far enough to say I've changed course. Obviously there's a limit to what can be called "minimalism," since the word has a meaning: once you cross that limit, it evolves into something else. But where exactly is that limit? And if it becomes something else, what is it? When I worked as a critic, it was my job to find names to define phenomena, and I took responsibility for that; today, though, I don't worry about it too much. Deep down, I don't think it's so important to arrive at a precise definition: it's enough to know that it's the music of Michael Nyman, or the music of Philip Glass... That said, though, as I mentioned, I'm convinced I've stayed faithful and true to those minimalist principles I formulated early on: in the sense that my aesthetic stance, my values and my musical tastes haven't changed all that much since then. So, in the end, my answer to your question is "yes."

Some people accuse you of no longer composing the kind of "experimental" music you wrote about in your 1974 essay, especially after the huge success of Lezioni di piano... how would you respond to that kind of criticism?

First of all, we need to ask whether it really matters if something sounds "experimental." Second, we need to understand what that term even means. There are parts of Lezioni di piano that I consider very experimental, though I admit others are more conservative. As for the music I've written outside of cinema, like the string quartets and concertos, whether you want to call it "experimental" or not, it's certainly bolder and more complex today than what I was writing in the Eighties. I don't want to use the term "experimental," because I'm not sure I am an "experimental" composer; even though my music is part of that same tradition, as I defined it back then in "Experimental music: Cage and Beyond." But what does "experimental" even mean today? The term doesn't mean anything anymore...

So what's changed, and what has stayed the same, since the days of that book?

In those pages, I dealt with music running from John Cage all the way to Steve Reich and Philip Glass; at the time, I believed it was possible to speak of a tradition of "experimental music." Since minimalism took hold, something has changed: today, very few people still talk about "experimental music." Even so, I'm well aware that my way of thinking still bears the mark of that tradition; even in Lezioni di piano there are parts that, on closer analysis, belong to that same current and wouldn't be conceivable without it, even though on first listen they might sound conventional. Most people who love Lezioni di piano wouldn't understand what I mean if I talked to them about "experimental music." They'd ask, "what on earth are you talking about?"

The twentieth century was defined by the word "avant-garde." And today?

Today, a lot of music that seemed exciting and revolutionary in the Forties and Fifties sounds sterile, tired, repetitive, self-referential. The music today's audiences seem to want to listen to is instead the kind that derives from American minimalism of the Sixties and Seventies. In part, that too is a child of the avant-garde; but, conversely, it went in a direction opposite to everything the avant-garde promoted and held dear. You have to picture this musical era as something beyond the avant-garde: both chronologically, but also in the sense that it adopts a different approach: simpler and more direct, with plenty of references both to popular music and to those harmonic traditions the avant-garde tried to do away with.

To what extent has rock music influenced your way of composing?

I think it's impossible to understand my music without taking into account that I've listened to a great deal of rock music throughout my life. In many of my pieces there's a kind of lyricism that can be likened to a rock melody; as well as a certain tendency toward repetition, a rhythm that's generally simple and regular, often in 4/4. I've also been influenced in the way I record music, building up sonic textures through overdubbing. Then there's a certain use of dynamics, as well as the fact that we use amplification, which brings us closer to a rock band than to a classical orchestra or a chamber music ensemble. So you could speak of a cross-pollination between my music and rock, even though you couldn't say I've ever actually composed rock music. There are, however, some parts of "Water Dances," particularly the final section, where I even used a rock drummer: Stewart Copeland.

Would you like to collaborate with a rock artist?

Less so than ten years ago. Maybe I could collaborate with a singer and write music for them, but I wouldn't know how to work with a songwriter, David Byrne, say. I might even try, but it's never come up and I honestly wouldn't know where to start.

There's an American rock'n'roll artist who has a very particular relationship with London… I'm referring to Brian Wilson. What do you think of his music? 

Brian Wilson… When he comes to London, I often go to his concerts: you know, first “Pet Sounds“, then “Smile”, and now this new musical cycle of his (“That Lucky Old Sun”, ed.). I find Brian to be courageous, and I appreciate the quality of his music, just as I greatly appreciate his work from the Sixties and Seventies with the Beach Boys. I'm amazed by the way he composes: I don't know what kind of process he follows, but the result is often just as good as it was in the past. You also have to give him credit for his intelligence, because he surrounds himself with young musicians who are ridiculously good! In the same evening, you see the same guy playing the violin, and a moment later he's tackling the French horn! You don't find musicians like that in England. But there's also a flip side to all this… you watch Brian singing on stage and you think: “This man is already dead!”. I mean: he's performing, and he's doing it with a good deal of passion and energy, and yet you have this constant feeling that something is missing… something that seems to be compensated for by the enthusiasm and warmth of his audience. But when the song ends, it's as if Brian slips back into a state of sadness and loneliness: he seems to lack full awareness of what's happening around him. He's probably still feeling the effects of the drugs he used in the past…

Do you think rock music can aspire to be considered “art”?

In some cases it can, and indeed it should. Often, it's a more vital art form than so-called “art music”. Nowadays, though, people past a certain age tend to think that the rock music of their day was better: the kind of talk along the lines of “in my day there were the Beatles, the Stones, the Grateful Dead, the Doors; nowadays it's all just business“. I think the real point is a different one: by now, certain DJs and their experiments have arguably become more interesting and creative than your average pop-rock bands.

What's the difference today between a pop artist and a musician like yourself?

The difference is that pop music still operates within a limitation, both in song format and musical language, whereas we classical musicians can achieve anything: not only what we choose to do, but potentially everything our imagination allows us to conceive. If I choose to, I can write a piece of music that resembles a pop song, in a simple key and with a direct approach, like “Franklin” from “Wonderland”. But I can also compose something that sounds unusual, strange, asymmetrical. So I have the entire range of possibilities available to my taste and imagination. If you're a pop-rock musician, on the other hand, you don't have the freedom to go beyond certain musical forms: you have to sell records, and to do that you're generally forced to write something that sounds conventional.

I'd like to close with a question about your recent passion for photography. What kind of relationship is there between the two activities, that is, between your music and your images?

This is an interesting topic… A lot of people assume I started taking photographs so I could later pair them with music, but actually the relationship works the other way around. I take photographs because I look around and see things that strike me, yet those same things I could never express in musical form. There's no sonic equivalent of a given image; nothing that makes me think I could use it as a musical idea. They're two completely different registers: you can't put the beauty of an image and the beauty of a sequence of notes on the same level. Leafing through my new book “Sublime”, though, maybe you can spot some connection with the music: but it's a fairly vague connection, based on the colour and intensity of certain pieces of mine. What's more, it's something I only noticed myself in the last couple of weeks, once the book was already in my hands. So these remain two separate activities; it's up to the audience, if they wish, to look for connections, just as I did myself. In the end, photography is the opposite of music: the art of sound consists of a series of moments lost in time; the photographic image, instead, extracts an instant from time, freezing it, and makes a comment on time itself. Photography is both past and present at once. Music, on the other hand, once it's present, is already past… That's something I'm thinking about for the first time right now, thank you for asking me this question.

Thank you very much for this pleasant conversation. By the way, are the photographs on www.michaelnyman.com your own?

Yes, as are the photos on my new albums released on MN Records.

(Palermo, 23/05/2008)

* * *

by Francesco Paolo Ferrotti and Ignazio Torres

On the occasion of his return to Palermo, his third concert since the year 2000, we're booked in at the Teatro Politeama for an exclusive interview with Michael Nyman.

I'd like to start with a question about how your music is defined: do you consider yourself a composer of “classical” music? If so, in what sense? 

I can certainly say I feel like a “classical” artist, because I'm neither a rock artist nor a pop musician. The way I write my music is traditional; mine are “serious” compositions, conceived in a classical way and written for classical musicians: I think all of that can be called “classical music”!

On the other hand, though, my audience isn't exclusively a classical music audience, nor an avant-garde one. My music seems to win over a wider, more diverse audience. I have to admit it's always a great surprise to see so many people at my concerts, some there for the first time, others who've already come back several times: I'm amazed by the way music acts on people and influences them, becoming not just part of the concert experience, but actually a component of their lives. That's also why I set up my own label, “MN Records”, so I could make my music accessible to an ever wider audience.

What happens when the soundtracks are performed live, like tonight? How does it feel?

Even though most of the music we'll be playing tonight wouldn't have existed if not for the films I wrote it for, at concerts you end up forgetting that it originally was part of a soundtrack, conceived in recorded form. For me, for the musicians, for the audience, and for you young people, it's renewed instead in the concert experience and takes on new life. Sometimes I even have to remind myself that the music we're playing is tied to the films: for me it's simply the soundtrack of my life… my music.

“The Piano” is the soundtrack that made you famous. In the film, it's the protagonist herself who plays those pieces on the piano; this means that, in some scenes, the soundtrack ends up being more internal to the film, an integral part of the “fiction” itself. Perhaps, in this case, the relationship between music and images is unusual compared to other soundtracks… what do you think?

Generally speaking, a film's soundtrack is a kind of separate musical commentary, and there's often no intrinsic need for a given piece of music to accompany a given scene; in the sense that, normally, there's nothing in the scenes that truly requires music: it serves to create tension or to express something in a more intense form. However, in “The Piano” the protagonist didn't speak, so she needed to express herself through music; that's why those piano pieces are, in a way, like monologues. I had the difficult task of creating an inner language for Ada, and since I had to do it before the film was even made, that presented a formal problem that the conventional way of composing soundtracks doesn't involve. I basically had to bring the character to life through music, and one of the most extraordinary things was that the role played by Holly Hunter ended up being influenced by the character I had created through music: there was no discontinuity between how she became music and how the music became her. That never happened with any other soundtrack of mine, and it's what made “The Piano” so special…

Do you believe every piece of music expresses a specific state of mind? Or, on the contrary, do you think the feelings expressed by music are undefined?

It depends… When I write a piece of music, I don't necessarily have to express my own feelings. For example, I might write an opera, in which the emotions constantly change because they reflect what's happening, following the narrative elements, the traits and the characters… More generally, I don't think my music expresses the same feelings that I express as a man. There can certainly be many connections, analogies, affinities… however, I believe the highest music communicates feelings that are exclusively musical, which can neither be translated into other art forms nor described; the only way to express them is through music itself.

Music is your life. How do you experience silence, though? As an absence of sound, or as a creative presence?

I'm troubled by silence… while we're here, I can hear the noise of sirens through the window [“sirens, not silence…”], cars, ambulances: there's no silence, and that reassures me. Life is completely immersed in noise. Of course my music also needs silence as a dramatic presence, but as a musician my job is to compose sounds; silence represents an absence… the absence of Michael Nyman.

Do geopolitical events influence your music?

Everything that happens in the world can have an effect on how I see life, and that, in my subconscious, can influence the way I compose. At times I've also written pieces with political content. Right now, I'm composing a piece for choir and orchestra, with a text written by a Moroccan poet, in the form of poetic letters sent to his brother during the First World War, when the latter had been captured by the Americans and held prisoner for two years.

Generally speaking, though, I think music is often powerless: when men like Blair, Bush and Berlusconi are in power, it really is inadequate…! It's very hard for music to actually make anything new happen: even living in our modern democracies, we are truly powerless…

The sound of a bell warns us that our time is almost up: in five minutes, Michael Nyman is expected on stage. There's just enough time for one last quick question:

What are your favourite works at the moment?

I'm very proud of “Six Celan Songs”, which recently came out on “MN Records”. My favorite piece is “Love Counts”, which I just performed in Modena and which will be released in the coming months; another favorite of mine is “Memorial”, which we'll be playing tonight… but there are others too.

(Palermo, November 7, 2006)

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