Issues of Style and Postmodernism in the Music of Richard Ayres

T. Jack Coleman

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of BMus (Hons)

Department of Music University of Huddersfield

27/04/2009

This essay aims to address several of the issues surrounding Ayres' music and the position it

occupies in contemporary society. The main issues I will address are 1: his diverse musical style with regard

to postmodern criticism, 2:the significance of this inclusive stylistic approach in late capitalist-culture, 3: the

way musical form relates to these materials and the significance of these forms and 4: the role of the soloist in

Ayres' 'noncerti'. N.B: To avoid excessive footnotes I have not referenced the interview that I conducted with

the composer in December 2008 which can be found in the appendix. An mp3 CD with the complete recorded

works of Richard Ayres (that I know of), as well as other audio examples, can be found at the back of this

essay.

Richard Ayres (born Cornwall, 1965) had a creative childhood and was initially drawn to theatre until

an encounter with Morton Feldman at the Dartington Summer school when Ayres was 21 led to a change of

heart. That year he enrolled at Huddersfield polytechnic to study music and then went on to do Louis

Andriessen’s composition course at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He has lived in the Netherlands

ever since. His music is characterised by an often extravagant orchestration, ornamental detail, roguish

melodies and a British sense of humour. His earlier pieces, such as No. 8 Piano (solo) and No. 9 MacGowan

(both 1991) contain an obsessive fixity to their cool, brittle material. In 1994 he won the Gaudeamus

Composition Prize for [A] Penny O’[FA] (1992), an event which for better or worse thrust him into the wider

‘contemporary music’ circle. His subsequent compositions tended to be more theatrical, humorous and,

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although Ayres denies this, ironic.1 Most recently this trajectory has led his music towards compositions for

orchestra, such as No. 30 NONcerto for Cello, Soprano, and Orchestra (1998-2001), and collaborations with

the Quay Brothers on his opera, The Cricket Recovers (2005) and with filmmaker Guy Maddin on Glorious

(2008).

I

In many ways No. 35 Overture (2000) is a piece that typifies Ayres’ maniacal style, and his use of

‘other’ styles. As well as an overture, it is apparently a ‘wedding piece’ written for a friend, and so the listener

may begin somewhere near Mendelssohn’s ‘Nuptial March’, Lohnegrin, operas, musicals and wonder what

sort of drama this is an overture to. As with most overtures the sections move suddenly from one to another,

they are juxtaposed without the pretence of transition, directionally developmental or modulatory passages

and yet there are clear tonal and thematic relationships within the structure, which I will discuss later.

The piece opens with brash I-IV-V-I chord progressions in what appears to be the tonic, C major. The

crude intensity of the pianos’ polyrhythmic, yet very ‘square’ voicing of C major triads reminds one of the

above mentioned ‘Nuptial March’ and Ives at his most psychotic. After this densely homogeneous material,

several devices lead one to think of B-movie horror music; the direction ‘on tip-toe’ to the euphonium’s

chromatic ascension, the shift to the flattened dominant Gb, stactissimo octaves in the pianos’ bottom registers

beneath amplified heavy breathing.

Without continuing through the piece detailing every stylistic juxtaposition, it is suffice to say that

Ayres uses the small ensemble in such a way so there is a collective commitment toward the idiom of each

section. While there are stylistic features throughout the piece that are personal to Ayres (see the introduction

above), it is the points at which juxtapositions occur that may suggest poetic meaning. Jameson, after Lacan,

has argued that in a postmodern artwork the meaning may come ‘not from a one to one relationship between

signifier and signified’ but from the movement between signifiers.2 Whilst we may look to tonal, thematic or

even stylistic relationships for narrative it would perhaps be more appropriate to alter our mode of listening to

accept discontinuity. To write an ‘overture’ that does not have a drama to accompany it, or at least not one the

audience will see, suggests a wilful formal decision against continuity (I will discuss Ayres’ approach to form

later).

1 ‘Ironie ist der Fiend der Liebe’ Peters H., ‘jede note wie ein freund’ Neue Zeitschrift Fur Musik No. 168 (2007) pp.45 2 Jameson F., Postmodernism (London, 1991) p.26

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Ayres claims to hear all music as programmatic,3 and we may assume that (what Meyer terms) a

‘referential’ mode of listening is appropriate for his own music. How do we move from crude IV-V-I cadences

to the trite B-movie (b. 34) to Wagnerian tremolando chords beneath a passionata euphonium(!) melody (b.

70)? The narrative, if there is to be one, alludes to several emotional states using musical clichés. The

harmonic strength of the major triads and the heroism of the tremolandos and timpani rolls is frequently

mediated and undermined by devices that suggest fragility, embarrassment and the twee, such as directions

to the euphonium player like ‘out of breath’ (b. 84), ‘stuttering’ (b.91) and a Loony Toons-esque piano interlude

(Ex.1).

Ex.1: No. 35 Overture, b242-5.

For a composer to hear music programmatically implies not only that they may compose in this way

(as opposed to say a structuralist or process-based approach), but that they may bypass the reification of

abstract music into a programme and compose whilst hearing other music. Lutosławski once described

listening to music as a 'schizophrenic experience.’ He spoke of listening to something, and in the

same instance composing something new. I asked Ayres if this was something he experienced:

Absolutely! This happens nearly every time I listen to music (or read a score). I'm either re-arranging what I'm hearing, or a bar or two or an interesting sound might set me off composing a fantasy composition, or I might be trying to work out how to re-create what I hear, or picturing it notated, or improving the piece that I'm hearing if it has problems...its not an entirely conscious thing, my imagination just romps away and I'm lost to the world for a while... I don't listen to music when I'm driving.

One possible implication of the listener being/becoming a composer follows from ideas of Barthes’s (which

Ayres has echoed)4: the listener acts out the psychological contextualising (a referential mode of listening) of a

piece in a subsequent piece of their own music, thereby attaching themselves to the ‘tissue of quotations’5,

3‘Ich höre jede Musik als Programmmusik’ Peters H., ‘jede note wie ein freund’ Neue Zeitschrift Fur Musik No. 168 (2007) pp45 4 “Sie berührt meine Erinnerungen, Gefühle und Gedanken und ich bzw. jeder andere muss das für sich in einen Kontext bringen.” Peters H., ‘jede note wie ein freund’ Neue Zeitschrift Fur Musik No. 168 (2007) p45 5Barthes R., Music – Image – Text (New York, 1988) p.146

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and perhaps with a greater awareness of their own position to/within the work. Of course, artists have always

been inspired by other works, but the proximity is now greater. Accepting the ‘death of the author’ allows

greater freedom of materials – ‘if I wake up tomorrow and it appears there should be an herd of elephants

running across the string quartet, they will appear’.6

How does Ayres’ musical style relate to other contemporary music? Many would agree it is not ‘avant

garde’ in the ‘traditional’ sense. It does not subscribe to a structuralist post-Darmstadt sound-world, it tends to

eschew atonality and extended instrumental techniques and the listener often feels she/he has heard or half-

heard it before. Ayres claims not to consider style when composing. However much of his audience does

believe in style, and that is what gives these works this contextualised dimension. The features of postmodern

art may not be new but they have new positions in society, whether the artist likes it or not. Chris Fox relates

an anecdote of being played some Ayres for the first time with an ‘innocent ear’:

…they played me a tape of some bagpipe music. Obviously folk music - Scottish, Irish? But there were other instruments there too - a harp? some sort of sustaining string instrument? So definitely Irish rather than Scottish, but progressively less and less like anything I knew from there. Perhaps a forgotten cousin of Carolan? No, too abrasive. But I liked it very much and said so. Gleefully my hosts explained that this wasn't folk music but a piece called MacGowan by Richard Ayres.7

In No. 9 Macgowan (1991) (named after the singer of Celtic punk band The Pogues), Ayres does not ‘quote’

from Celtic folk music but incorporates its stylistic features, namely drones, instrumentation, a mixolydian

seventh and portamento melody into his own work. This is different to quotation in a piece such as Michael

Finnissy’s English Country Tunes (1977) which mutates the source material, recognisable folk tunes, to

express his ‘anger at the taboos and hypocrisy concerning sex and sexuality in England’.8 In a more

modernist vein is Schoenberg’s devotional9 use of an Austrian folk song in the scherzo of his Second String

Quartet or Wagner’s portrayal of tepid, oppressive courtiers in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg using

diatonicism, compared to the hero’s expressive, chromatic music. Of these three examples Wagner makes

qualitative judgments of style, namely that his ‘new’ style is superior to the old tonal style. Finnissy’s and

Schoenberg’s use of pre-coded material is more specific, Finnissy’s criticism of parochial English culture

ensnares the source material in his own style. Schoenberg makes a very personal, almost subconscious

reference. All three engage dialectically with their quotations.

There is not this sense in Ayres’ music, his position to the material (or at least its style) is not made

clear to the listener. This mode of composition and listening which denies/does not require a connection

6‘Interview with Richard Ayres’, Richard Ayres, 1999. http://richardayres.com/words/interview.htm (7/10/2008) 7Fox C.,‘Richard Ayres in Focus: Life Is Beautiful’ The Musical Times, Vol. 142, No. 1875, (Summer, 2001), P39 8Pace I., ‘The Panorama of Michael Finnissy (II)’ Tempo No. 201 (July, 1997) p12 9Neff suggests that the quotation may be linked to Mahler, who associated that very song with a traumatic childhood experience. See Schoenberg A., The Second String Quartet in F-Sharp Minor: Opus 10 (Norton Critical Scores) ed., Neff S. (New York, 2005)

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between the signifier and the signified is what Jameson calls a ‘perpetual present’, the signifier is dislocated

from a cultural location or temporality so exists only in its own present10. This can allow a liberation of style or,

in Ayres’ own words, ‘what is around now, is of now’11. If one can listen to CDs of Janáček, The Pogues and

Donatoni in one morning, why forget the first two when one sits down to compose that afternoon? Do the

differing aesthetics of Shane Macgowan and Franco Donatoni exclude the sound of their music to those who

may take inspiration from it?

To cautiously continue to use the polarity of engaged/neutral (modernist/postmodernist) stylistic

appropriation we can compare parody with pastiche. Pastiche has been defined as ‘the disappearance of the

individual subject, along with its formal consequence’,12 an appropriation of other styles and forms but without

the critical vocation of parody. We may describe Finnissy, Wagner and Schoenberg as parodists. Ayres’

rejection of irony, and my (somewhat superficially modernist) view that his music is too unoriginal and also too

clever to be naïve, lead one to categorise it as pastiche.

How does a contemporary (small ‘c’) composer justify this ‘what is around now, is of now’ attitude?

We have moved beyond the notion of self-imposed autism, the artist locked away working on The

Masterpiece. Andy Warhol was as much a consumer of culture as he was a creator of it and this tendency is

reflected in the works that he and others have since produced. In music, and culture generally, there are now

so many idioms variously ‘accepted’ and still created by separate parties, that there is no longer a ‘neutral’

style. This was not the case 100 years ago. Furthermore, it is common for Mozart, Ligeti and an anonymous

young composer to be programmed in the same concert. Should this composer fight her/his predecessors (as

a young Boulez may have), or reflect their situation in their own music. This argument suggests Lyotard’s

definition of realism- the 'anything goes' mentality of consumerism is the realism of a late-capitalist society,13

rather than the arbitrarily used postmodernist label.

10Foster H. (ed.), The Anti Aesthetic (New York, 1998) p137 11Fox C.,‘Richard Ayres in Focus: Life Is Beautiful’ The Musical Times, Vol. 142, No. 1875, (Summer, 2001), P49 12Jameson F., Postmodernism (London, 1991) p.16 13See Lyotard J. F., The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982-85 (London, 1992) pp.13-17

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Ex. 2: Richard Prince’s Tell Me Everything (1987) the monochrome canvas, so beloved of the minimalists, is the setting of a tacky one-liner. In a not so distant manner, Ayres uses the established concerto form as a basis for satirical comedy.

Does Ayres’ music reflect a society locked in a perpetual present? Would his compositional output

change under different socio-economic circumstances? Before the advent of Romanticism, an event as

socially important as the French revolution had almost no effect on the Viennese style and following the ‘death

of the subject’ this is again the case. But is art really so dislocated from society? It may be more fruitful to ask

why is art so connected to its own history? The relationship of postmodernity to modernity is partly

reactionary- a reaction to preceding art. Perhaps this is a commonality between Richard Prince’s monochrome

‘joke paintings’ (see Ex.2), which use a Minimalist style to tell prosaic jokes, and Ayres’ ‘noncerti’, which I shall

address later. Such concerns may also arise from learning one’s craft with ever-greater awareness of what

has come before, usually as part of an educational establishment, which often allows a budding composer to

historicise their work before they have written it. But the pedagogical is waning in art14, many Western

composers (including Ayres) continue to teach, perhaps partly so they can keep the pedagogical and creative

aspects of their lives separate. ‘I don’t want to give a theory lesson15’ would perhaps not be Boulez’ approach

to a program note. Is this attitude the result of society’s inertness in the face of art? Is there no hope for a

14 This thought is further explored in Jameson F., Postmodernism (London, 1991) p.50 15 Peters H., ‘jede note wie ein freund’ Neue Zeitschrift Fur Musik No. 168 (2007) pp45

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‘Sacre Du Printemps moment’ in postmodern society so it is better to cower under the long held acceptance of

the ‘purely musical’? I hope to show that Ayres’ music can have value beyond pastiche or a superficial

reflection of late-capitalist society.

II

I don't even think about style or styles. I'm finding out how music works and trying to grasp its essence. – Richard Ayres

What style of music do you like? Is piece of music x ‘true’ to a style, to a ‘sound-world’, to its own

identity? Western music has been dominated by holism since just intonation through Wagner’s Ring (a ‘firmly

entwined unitiy16’) to Babbit’s total serialism. There is not nearly enough space here to discuss the rise of

(stylistic) unity so I will surmise that there is still great faith in self-contained styles, which are wrapped in

swathes of aesthetic, political and aural rhetoric. A survey of all these genres, sub-genres and sub-sub

genres of music would tally an infinite taxonomy of musics, written by and for people of different times, parts of

the world, political values, class etc. As power and influence shift among these groups so styles move in and

out of favour (fashion). This has also led to a greater fixity, a fortress surrounding the mainstream of each

style. The folk musician who used an electric guitar was a sell-out and a ‘Judas’, the guitar band that dabbled

in Max MSP was trying too hard to be ‘arty’. It is safer to stick to one style and do it well, be more Metal than

any other metal band. The artist’s creativity is eventually oppressed by their audience, benefactors and the

‘market-orientated’ branding that befall them. And where does this leave Ayres, who honestly(!?) doesn’t think

about style when everyone else places such faith in it?

In recent years aesthetic values in music, and particularly the ‘sound-worlds’ that accompany them,

have become depoliticised. Rock music is now used to sell trainers, Live Aid, the Republican Party, to Rock

against Racism and to Rock against Communism. This too is partly tied up with increased fragmentation and

specialisation of cultural groups; from Oi! punk to Christian rock, the fans of each probably not overlapping.

This does however ‘weaken’, and often reconstruct, the signification of the distant ancestor Rock Music

(whatever that was…). If artistic styles are now so slippery they can be used for very disparate means, what is

their value (beyond sounding or looking stylish)? The fragmentation of styles has also aided their

commodification, as composers try to align themselves with important musical currents lest posterity forget

them (see Beethoven-Wagner-Schoenberg), a market has sprung up to allay those unoriginality fears (see Ex.

3). ‘Stop using those default sounds’, one can buy the fashionable sound of The Neptunes, sounds that were

16Quoted in Dahlhaus C., Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas (Cambridge, 1979) p23

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once the default and will surely be the default preset again someday.17

Ex. 3: ‘Get the best Neptunes Style sample drum kit on the market today… Stop using those default sounds and get some samples with CRUNK in them.’ 18

The problem is not the sheer amount of different musics or their associated audiences and modes of

dissemination, it is the barriers between them. Frederic Jameson argues for this open plurality in his critique of

Thomas More’s Utopia: ‘Of Islands and Trenches: Neutralization and the Production of Utopian Discourse’:

The operation [of creating the island of Utopia] is of course not only that of disjunction but one of exclusion as well: indeed, the other basic feature of Utopian economics (not touched on above) provides for the location of many of the unpleasant tasks associated with market and commercial activity-such as the slaughter of animals-outside the city's walls.19 The utopias imagined by More and his successors20 do not solve societies conflicts and problems, only

exclude them. Everyone is happy in the same way. Jameson posits that an inclusive collection of misfits would

be an ‘ideal’ world for everyone and not just the few. Ayres’ music does not employ 'positive discrimination',

contrived to tick as many style boxes as possible, rather it ignores such boundaries in pursuit of something

more transcendental.

This aesthetic should not be confused with the approach of someone such as John Zorn, who

certainly does consider style, and collages many of them in such a manner to achieve expressivity in his work.

17 Listen to the drum sound of the Roland TR-808 on "Best Dress" by LL Cool J 2006 from the album Todd Smith, produced by The Neptunes. The TR-808 sound has been ubiquitous in Hip-Hop since the late 1980s. 18 ‘Neptune Style Sample Drum Kit’, Ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com/Neptune-Style-Sample-Drum-Kit_W0QQitemZ270342100043QQcmdZViewItem-QQimsxZ20090209?IMSfp=TL090209227002r32594 (25.2.09) 19 Jameson F.,‘Of Islands and Trenches: Naturalization and the Production of Utopian Discourse’ Diacritics, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer, 1977), p. 20 20 H.G. Wells chillingly advocated the extermination of the ‘unfit’ non-Europeans as part of attaining a global ‘New Republic’ in Anticipations (1901). See Carey J., ed., The Faber Book of Utopias (London, 1999) pp.367-9

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Zorn’s Forbidden Fruit (1987) is a piece that consciously mixes at least ten disparate styles. He argues: ‘we

should take advantage of all the great music and musicians in this world without fears of musical barriers…

that’s the strength of pop music today. It’s universal.’21 Ayres’ approach is not necessarily less idealistic, but it

is certainly less explicitly political (or touristic, depending on one’s perspective) than Zorn’s approach. The

extreme plurality of Zorn’s music, or at least the way in which he deploys his ‘cue cards’, re-orientates the

listener so frequently that the result is stylitic neutrality. It is like the legislative even-handedness of BBC

News, each opinion is represented without any depth of discussion so the viewer is left no wiser as to each

party’s perspective or motives. But for Ayres there is ‘very little distance emotionally’ from his material, while

one may struggle to contextualise the sounds into a ‘cohesive’ sound-world there is too much of a personal

relationship with them to be neutral. Each sound has value of its own, not as part of a shock-juxtaposition

structure. His attitude of a perpetual present does not exclude the ruggedness of music whereas in Zorn the

listener is granted only the surface, the outcome refinement- stylistic paradigms.

In chapter one I insinuated that one could listen to Ayres’ music with or without the political baggage

of associations that each harmony, each gesture carries. He told me that he composes without such things in

mind, but the music is often not received as such:

I have been made acutely aware by experiences during concerts that the act of composing in the way that I do, does have certain political implications. It does seem to confront people’s expectations and accepted feelings about what music is, and what it should, or could do. This is not a primary consideration, but I do enjoy the dialogue.

It would seem that since his work has become better known following the Gaudeamus Prize in 1994 his music

has increasingly questioned the fetishes of Contemporary music. No. 24 (NONcerto) (1995), No. 30 (2001)

and certainly No. 43 (Glorious) (2008) are more open to humour than the comparatively dry No. 5 Untitled or

No. 8 Piano (both 1991), Ayres says he has ‘shaken off several rather heavy chains... chains that were given

to me by my particular cultural environment.’22 His attitude toward much of his audience (a cultural

environment), which I shall generalize as the contemporary classical music establishment and those who

attend its concerts, is ambivalent. Winning the Gaudemaus prize was not devoid of controversy23, but any anti-

establishment rebellion perceived in No. 11 [A] Penny o' [FA] (1992) (major harmonies!, an inscrutable and

obsessive 30 minute structure) seemingly stems from the audience rather than the composer.

21 Quoted in Kramer L., ‘Beyond Unity’,Concert Music, Rock and Jazz since 1945 (Rochester, 1995) p.22 22 Fox C., ‘Richard Ayres in Focus: Life Is Beautiful’ The Musical Times, Vol. 142, No. 1875, (Summer, 2001), p.49 23 ibid, p.40

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III

Similarly to ‘style’, the commodification of music benefits from socio-historically prescribed ideas, this

time of form and duration. Much of the classical music composed since the 1950s is between 10 and 20

minutes, easy to programme, to commission and to consume. What is wrong with a 21 second orchestral

piece such as James Saunders’ Like Wool (2000), or a seven-day, virtually unstageable opera cycle? More

localized formal decisions also seem limited; the obsession with ‘development’ seems to have survived Cage,

Lamonte Young and even Stockhausen’s ‘moment-form’ works. Ayres’ music seems to eschew development;

relationships are set up, often through repetition and reiteration, and through these smaller motifs a larger

form eventually comes into view, perhaps not until the piece is over, perhaps not at all. A friend who once

studied composition with Ayres told me how he had taken a new piece to him in one of his first lessons. My

friend told Ayres how his piece would begin (and I’m simplifying here) slowly, quietly, a solo instrument and

then gradually develop into a loud fast tutti section, the ‘main’ theme of the piece. Ayres stopped him and

advised him ‘to always write the best you can write… if that is where you want to go [with the music], begin

there’.

Much music takes its formal design from stimuli outside of the musical material. For example

‘organicism exists for the purpose of validating a certain body of works of art’24: Cage’s use of Chance, Ligeti’s

use of ‘chaos theory’, Nono’s use of the Fibonacci series, Murail’s use of natural sound spectra, Musorgsky’s

verbatim vocal writing, Messiaen’s transcriptions of bird song… one could continue. Composers from many

different aesthetic standpoints have used, and continue to use, organicism (which, as Cage exemplifies, is not

the same as unity) or other scientific/ philosophical theories to testify to their work’s merit. Who requires music

to have these extra-musical formal stimuli? Now that it’s not enough to point at the score and say ‘look, no

parallels!’ should a composer and her/his music couch themselves in aesthetic/formal maxims?

No. 11 [A] Penny o' [FA] is perhaps Ayres’ most formally impenetrable piece. He told me that during its

composition ‘I was exploring “context”, or trying to make “time passing” an interesting musical experience...I

had been experimenting with tape loops and noticing how my listening changed as exactly the same music

was repeated.’ Nothing in the material suggests the tension/release contrast or teleology a Western ear is

used to hearing, and yet it is far removed from the semi-static textural music of 1960’s Ligeti or process based

music (minimalist or otherwise). Material repeats (see Ex. 4) seemingly regardless of what else is going on.

One may expect a long bass-drum roll to lead somewhere, but during 87 bars (b.117-204), it seemingly has

no bearing on the rest of the ensemble. Ayres cuts from one idea to another, sometimes interpolated by a

silence, sometimes not. Almost 30 minutes pass, but there are no clues for the listener to orientate

24 Kerman J.,‘How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,’ Critical Inquiry Vol. 7, No. 2 (Chicago, 1980) p.315

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themselves with.

To return to the Zorn dialectic, [A] Penny o' [FA] ’s juxtapositions and aggregations of material are non-

didactic. The manner in which Zorn jumps from Xenakis-like gestures to late 18th century Viennese material (

listen to Forbidden Fruit excerpt on disc) is perhaps ‘meant’ to be comic, shocking, maybe even satirical – but

such easily describable feelings are not offered in [A] Penny o' [FA].

Ex. 4a: No. 11 [A] Penny o' [FA], b.1, woodwind only (Score in C). Ex. 4b: b.187. Note the similar harmony in these extracts.

Its form fulfils Lyotard’s objective of art, i.e. ‘to question the rules of art’25 - the unnecessary ideology of

musical coherence. Similarly to Zorn it ‘undermines the desire of the work’26 in that its material is not allowed

to develop as we would expect. For example there are particular assumptions about what will follow a leading

note, dominant chord or a bass-drum roll, assumptions which are culturally conditioned. But unlike Zorn, Ayres

seemingly disregards the attached nostalgia of sounds/styles. The attitude of ‘what is around now, is of now’

percolates through [A] Penny o' [FA] ‘s material, only referential effects can come from juxtaposing disparate

cultural temporalities because as long as Elvis impersonators perform, Google’s cache is renewed and Mozart

is performed in programmes with Ligeti, the material is both contemporary and nostalgic. Ayres does not

allow the listener to consume history in this way; the focus is on non-didactic relationships between sounds

and, similarly to late Feldman, how one remembers these sounds within the piece, not within a cultural history

retrospective. The emotionally exhausted sound of an F# minor-seventh (Ex. 5) is reinvigorated once taken

out of a ‘functional’ context. It’s the difference between listening to traffic and listening to Cage’s William’s Mix.

25 Lyotard J.F., The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982-85 (London, 1992) p.15 26 Malpas S., Jean François Lyotard (London, 2003) p.48

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Ex. 5: [A] Penny o' [FA], b.50, woodwind only.

This intuitive, ‘illogical’ approach to form is not a feature of all Ayres’ works. The ‘noncerti’ (his

pluralisation, not mine!) use not only the soloist-ensemble dialectic and structural signifier but also the

traditional three movement form. For the most part the traditional (read: baroque or classical) concerto form

has been abandoned since the advent of high-modernism, a form seemingly as dead as the symphony. There

are of course exceptions; Elliot Carter has composed concerti all his life, the most recent ‘Flute Concerto’

completed in 2008. Ligeti, Lutosławski, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and more or less all the European composers

that met Rostropovich have written concerti, although most have brought their own individuality to the form

and/or material (excluding perhaps Stravinsky). No. 31 for Trumpet solo and Ensemble (1998) is among

Ayres’ clearest demonstrations of classical concerto-form. The three movements; Burlesque (with long scale),

Elegy for Alfred Schnittke and Rhapsody correspond to the fast-slow-fast structure one would expect, with the

outer movements following a warped ritornello form.

For instance, the first movement begins with the trumpet alternating two ‘themes’. The first is comprised

of low pedal notes with ‘wah-wah’ and the second is introverted, alternating minor thirds, out of which the rest

of the ensemble begins it’s long descending scale and an ‘intensely lyrical’ melody begins on the trumpet. The

structure is every bit as obsessive as the trumpet material, which does not condescend to ‘develop’, its

material consistent except slight rhythmic alterations. This opening theme is 14 bars long each time, a

stubbornly unalterable unit, that the rest of the form (and ensemble) will just have to accommodate. This fixity

of material soon makes the listener aware that she/he will not be given an ‘exposition’ or ‘development’ of

subjects. By the time the ensemble finally wrests control of the music with gloriously juvenile orchestration

(see the ‘savage’ F-major triad of b. 76) the trumpet has found the lyricism expected of it. The title of the

movement implies this sort of ‘variety show’, a fast changing drama. Of course, it could equally refer to a wild

exaggeration, a parody, but I will address this later. Whilst there are some thematic relationships among the

materials of the three movements, one feels they are not so important for one’s understanding of the work.

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The mantle of ‘concerto form’ is almost superimposed onto Ayres’ way of working: ‘I collect fleeting musics or

feelings or atmospheres and put them next to each other... very quickly one sees a larger scale formal

structure appearing from the bunch of smaller things.’

The drama of this piece, and many of the ‘noncerti’ would not be possible with the wholly ‘disunified’

form of [A] Penny o’ [FA], it requires the dialectical soloist – ensemble relationship. Ayres makes it clear from

the outset, and of course the punning titles, that this is related to the concerto and the audience will

presumably have particular expectations regarding this. The three movement ‘form’ is not strongly linked to

the structure of the piece. Rather, it is a cultural signifier, placing the work in a genre and in this regard its

most important role is narrative, where the ‘history of concerti’ and the ‘(musical) story of the soloist/hero’ are

two separate but parallel narratives. Ayres claims to think of the structuring process as narrative, ‘how we

connect events in our minds’. That these events are also within an ‘inter-textual’ context, ‘the history of

‘concerti’, is structurally significant. The ‘noncerti’ do not begin at bar one but perhaps in 18th century Weimar.

IV

If one interprets the noncerti apolitically, without historicisation then the obvious questions facing the

listener are: what is the role of the soloist?, What is the role of the ensemble? What is the relationship

between these two parties, how is the material divided between them? No.24 (NONcerto) (1995) was the first

of Ayres’ ‘noncerti’ and, as is often the case with the initiate of a genre, paradigmatic of ‘noncerti’ as a whole.

What sets these pieces apart from many other classical and contemporary concerti is the ‘anti-hero’ rather

than hero-virtuoso role of the soloist. No. 24 begins with solo alto-trombonist rummaging in a plastic bag

searching for the right type of mute, beneath which the piano plays a limp major-arpeggio in the left hand,

occasionally playing the first note of a bawdy melody that takes several minutes to get beyond this hurdle.

This initial marcato note, placed at the start of some bars (Ex. 6) perhaps sounds like a cue to the soloist, who

never responds because she/he is still finding the correct appendage for their trombone.

Ex. 6: b.11-12, piano only. The repeated 3/4 C major arpeggio is occasionally broken up with sudden accented Gs and quaver rests, inviting the soloist to begin.

Jack Coleman 14

It’s funny. It’s a joke about music and the established hierarchies we expect in this ensemble. But as

the piece progresses over 15 minutes one becomes aware that the trombonist is not like zany Eric

Morecambe circling around Greig’s ‘Piano Concerto’27, nor like his ‘straight man’ Ernie Wise or the even

straighter André Previn. This is a different sort of clown. The joke in the first ‘scene’ (b.1-63) quickly loses its

sheen in an uncomfortable manner28, when the soloist does find the mute they don’t seem to have much to

play, the comedy (of failure) soon takes on a tragic pallor. ‘The NONcerti are all somehow about failure, about

prolonging the time before the inevitable… we all eventually fail’.29

Adorno argued that the ‘failure’ of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is due to attempting to combine the

classical/modern notion of consistency (thematic development) = truth, and the ancient, rigidly strophic form of

the mass. However, the marks left by Beethoven’s failings, the gaps in the thematic development testify to the

work’s truth content, its authenticity. Authenticity stems from the external world, a residue of the artist’s

creative process. Adorno maintains that the most authentic works of art are those that fail because the

subjective content(s) has a higher order of suffering than that which the objective form is capable of

reconciling.30 But can the ‘noncerti’ be evaluated in this respect? The failure is heaped on the performer

(external expectations of a soloist) rather than the composer. Is an individual who has dedicated a lot of their

life to learning to play their instrument well expected to make a fool of her/himself? This is of course a staged

failure, the soloist is not merely a musician, a means of getting sound out the trombone, but an actor in a

drama. Never-the-less, the soloist does ‘fail’ as their assigned character, does not display any virtuosic

technique, and the form as a whole also ‘fails’; it loses its way, raucous voices start singing, Romantic piano

figurations intervene, causal relationships and connections are forgotten.

The failure is evident, but the audience still has to make that judgement. Ayres’s dramaturgical

approach sidesteps this grey area that Richard Barrett finds himself in. Whereas an author like Beckett could

describe failure, Barret’s I Open and Close can only enact its ‘entropic disintegration’, the sincerity of concert

practice concealing any border between technical struggle and ‘unsuccessful’ performance.31 For the

audience in Ayres’ noncerti, they supposedly need not make this distinction, the ambiguity comes instead

27 Morecambe E. and Wise E., ‘Morecambe & Wise: Andre Previn’ YouTube, 1971. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP8TUe993uo (18.04.09) 28 ‘Whenever the piece is performed the reaction is always the same: the audience laughs at first but very soon the embarrassment of the situation becomes clear. By the time it ends you can cut the tension with a knife’ - Richard Ayres talking about No. 24. Ayres R., Composer’s Voice Portrait, MusikFabrik. Donemus CV138. 2002. 29 Fox C., ‘Richard Ayres in Focus: Life Is Beautiful’ The Musical Times, Vol. 142, No. 1875, (Summer, 2001), P51 30 See Paddison M., Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge, 1993) p.56 and pp238-40. 31 The composer is not forgotten in this ‘successful performance’ spectacle: ‘how can we judge which failures are intentional (and so are in fact successes) and those which are unintentional (and therefore really are failures)? How can we make sense of Barrett's assertion that the first version of his Illuminer le temps 'totally failed to do what I was intending to do when I wrote it'?’ And does it necessarily matter who is to ‘blame’? See Hewett I.,‘Fail Worse; Fail Better. Ivan Hewett on the Music of Richard Barrett’ The Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1813 (1994), pp. 148-9.

Jack Coleman 15

through the soloist’s role in the drama and ensemble. Is she/he a musician, actor, comedian or/and a victim?

In the noncerti the ensemble seemingly fulfil their role as ‘the crowd’. The orchestra is fairly

standardised in its instrumentation and orchestration32, there is no particular sonic element to the ensemble to

distract from the soloists. One or two instruments may add some background texture (such as harp at the

beginning of No. 31) but for the most part the rest of the ensemble is reserved for tutti ritornellos, which

always soar to a brilliance the soloist is denied, all of which adds to the soloist's characterisation.

The transition from funny to irritating/tragic relies on non-developmental fixed material. The obsessive

reiteration of material, common in much of Ayres’ music, portrays the characters in his composition as equally

obsessive. Are they testing the material, practicing it until something ‘clicks’, as if playing it more will trigger

some sort of aural revelation? The first minute of No. 30 Noncerto for Cello and Soprano has the cellist striving

to create some sort of musicality from her/his instrument by bowing as hard as they can. They are rewarded

with an overly dazzling Bb major theme, but it is the preserve of the orchestra, the solo ‘cello can only look on.

This opening ‘cello material is not so different to a passage (b.82-111) in Richard Barrett’s Ne songe plus à

fuir (1985-86). A muscular yet nauseous double-stop idea is played out for 90 seconds then repeated with the

direction ‘continue exactly as before’ (Ne songe plus à fuir excerpt on disc). Whilst the reiteration is every bit

as obsessive, one feels Barrett’s cellist is depicting one of the separate ‘anthropomorphic figures’ of Matta’s

painting33 whilst Ayres’ cellist is a character in her/himself and the material is an action of that character rather

than expression. Yet this fixed identity is somehow altered through the course of No. 30 as some inner voice

transcends the fetters of tone-production, a soprano (figuratively) floats above the cellist and a strange

transcendence takes place. Whilst both Ne songe plus à fuir and No. 30 are partly concerned with

‘desperation, imprisonment [and] oppression’34, this sort of reconciliation would be unthinkable in the former. Is

this an optimistic dramatic choice, perhaps an extension of the reconciliatory structure that dominates double

concerti? Essentially it offers a finality to the drama and musical structure that the other noncerti avoid.

Some of noncerti may even be interpreted as partly autobiographical, particularly No. 24. Ayres

studied trombone at university and perhaps this first noncerto details the exertion, obstacles and bathos of

performance. The programme note to a solo trumpet piece, No. 27 Blue (1997) reads:

32 Orchestration is perhaps one of Ayres’ most personal aural signposts. From No. 24 onwards it tends toward lyrical brass melodies and burly woodwind ornaments that often threaten to undermine the thrust of the music. If the ensemble is not in the midst of a pounding tutti section then the texture is often a shrill but delicate high string harmonic/woodwind note, but somehow without the austerity of Nono et al. 33 Ne songe plus à fuir is named after Roberto Matta’s painting from 1951. 34 See the liner notes to Barrett R.,Chamber Works, Elision Ensemble. Etcetera KTC1167. 1993.

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Mark Flanders beat me through the door of the music room and was rewarded with THE TRUMPET – my dream instrument – a beautiful gold trumpet in a leather case. I was given the only instrument left in the cupboard – a pile of smelly, green tubing the teacher called a trombone – it didn’t have a case… Now I listen to all my trumpet dreams played by virtuoso trumpet players, and only occasionally think of what might have happened if I had been first through the music room door when I was thirteen.35

Further ‘bad’ performance practice is dictated for both dramatic and timbral purposes. The solo trumpeter of

No. 31 is to play ‘into stand’ (b. 40), introverted both visually and aurally. Not only is this part of the character

but maybe a broader denunciation of the ‘CONcerto’ virtuoso; the effortlessly astounding cadenza masking

years of practice at each prestissimo arpeggio, 'proof that the performer is worth the price of admission'.36

Such Romantic ideologies have little to do with how Ayres sees the world and should positively be challenged.

* * *

But it is hard to discuss “postmodern theory”… without recourse to the matter of historical deafness.37

– Fredric Jameson There is a tendency to judge all post-Enlightenment composers by their relationship with history, and

it is often a complex relationship. As the noncerti show, Ayres clearly does have a relationship with music

history. It is not something he disregards but returns to, for the sake of those voices which have been ignored

and oppressed38 – the ‘failures’ amongst the ‘hero and crowd’ concerto. As suggested above, this fulfils

Lyotard’s roles of art: by questioning the rules and expectations of an art-form. The sounds (and styles) that

comprise these forms may not be ‘new’ but they have new positions and meanings by virtue of the obsessive,

non-developmental forms they comprise, or a dramatic scenario that refutes the listeners expectations.

The attitude of a perpetual present is one that is mainly attributable to stylistic concerns. Whilst

formally each sound/idea has its own significance it is part of a structure based around dramatic pacing and,

particularly in longer works like [A] Penny o' [FA], memory. The style(s) of Ayres’ music needn’t be interpreted

with a view to a political/psychological unconscious and Style’s decreased significance in recent years

suggests this is increasingly unhelpful. His attitude seems to be that of a liberated approach to sound, a

stylistic innocence and a tendency toward pacing that holds the listeners attention.

How do Ayres’ pieces end? No. 35 tacks a triumphant finale on to material that seemingly doesn’t

suggest one. But this gratuitous recapitulation, the weakness of Janáček ‘Sinfonietta’, somehow makes formal

sense in Ayres’ Overture. However, in general they deny any grand apotheosis and rather than ‘ending’ just

stop.

35 Ayres R. ‘No. 27 Blue’ Blaauw, Marco Blaauw. BVHaast CD0805. 2005. 36 Veinus A., The Concerto (New York, 1964) p.41 37 Jameson F., Postmodernism (London, 1991) pp.x-xi 38 See also MalpasS., Jean François Lyotard (London, 2003) p.80

Jack Coleman 17

Appendix

Interview with the composer conducted via email in December 2008. I have amended some spellings but the grammar is intact. Lutoslawski once described listening to music as a 'schizophrenic experience'. He spoke of listening to something, and in the same instance composing something new. Have you ever felt this way about music you have heard or past experiences in general? Absolutely! This happens nearly every time I listen to music (or read a score). I'm either re-arranging what I'm hearing, or a bar or two or an interesting sound might set me off composing a fantasy composition, or I might be trying to work out how to re-create what I hear, or picturing it notated, or improving the piece that I'm hearing if it has problems...its not an entirely conscious thing, my imagination just romps away and I'm lost to the world for a while....I don't listen to music when I'm driving.

You once said 'I'm just re-arranging what exists'. Is a piece such as Macgowen or Noncerto for Trumpet intended to make a personal political/aesthetic comment on the styles they assimilate? No, not at all. I don't even think about style or styles. I'm finding out how music works and trying to grasp it's essence. This isn't a matter of technical observation, although that is necessary. It's more an attempt to find out how a music has moved or excited or enchanted me, and then an attempt to absorb and recreate that feeling in my own music. Stylistic thinking is a distant and technical exercise that has nothing to do with the way I experience music. In the two pieces you mention I don't think it is even possible to isolate a specific style. The pieces are both somehow familiar and "remembered", but I couldn't say "that bar is written in xxxxx style". On the other hand, I have been made acutely aware by experiences during concerts that the act of composing in the way that I do, does have certain political implications. It does seem to confront people’s expectations and accepted feelings about what music is, and what it should, or could do. This is not a primary consideration, but I do enjoy the dialogue. What is it that appeals to you about the work of Terry Gilliam, Guy Maddin and the Quay brothers? What role, if any, do such artists have in 'Postmodern Art'? That is different for each: With Gilliam I love the excess of ideas and the spirit of flamboyant energy that fills his films. "why settle for one ordinary looking thing when you can fill the screen with hundreds of weird and wonderful coloured things instead". With Guys work I feel liberated from the technical, the polished, the superficial. He makes films with old, cheap cameras, with his friends, and with very little money, and yet they are dazzling in their creativity and are like nothing else that exists. I'm left with excitement at the possibility of being creative. The Quays are able to turn what is actually inanimate junk in to magical living beings, beings that I care about, and that fascinate and enchant me. They are also the most perfect and perfectionist technicians in the business...totally dedicated. Very humbling to be around them. I guess what attracts me to them all is their liberated and highly imaginative ways of thinking, stripped of commercial cliché. They’re all dreamers and magicians and are comparatively free thinkers. I've heard so many definitions of post modernism that It could mean everything or anything....very postmodern....Answer: I don't know.

Why is your music described as ironic?

I don't really know. I genuinely love every sound and every note....there is very little distance emotionally. I suppose it may be because I choose not to exclude humour from my music as so many other people do. Humour needs an appreciation of context in order to become humour, a sort of standing apart from the

Jack Coleman 18

subject. This is probably what they feel. But humour is just one very small part of any particular piece. Lightness of spirit, and joy are very frightening things for people who are very busy with their personal problems, or who are, for some reason not capable of seeing a bigger picture...music must somehow transcend the composer if it is to be of use to other people. Many people, especially recent composers, seem either ignore these treasures or treat them as irrelevant and call them instead “superficial” and undesirable...it is easier that way. Your music is, superficially at least, stylistically anarchic, however many of the pieces have clear formal designs. Is this contradictory relationship important to your music and do you find this approach liberating? It's not at all anarchic when I am writing it. I'm a very slow and very precise composer I think.... One piece a year is all I can manage. A lot of time is spent trying to become fully aware of the implications of every note, every choice. This perhaps highlights a personal paradox; Personally speaking I don't want to hear composition in a concert, I want to listen to music. There is a big difference, like engine mechanics and driving. I would hate it if my plodding precision was audible, I want my stuff to transcend my ineptitude and fly....this demands a lot of attention to detail, and awareness of reality, which takes me a long time to develop... Structurally I work on two levels. I like to have the freedom to flip around and work on anything which comes along that day, rather than planning anything before I compose...this is a personal choice...I would find planning something and then spending ages “filling in the boxes” really tedious...it’s not my character...I become worried if I know what will happen too far ahead in all areas of life. So I collect fleeting musics or feelings or atmospheres and put them next to each other....very quickly one sees a larger scale formal structure appearing from the bunch of smaller things. Although these subjects are important on the smallest level, on the larger scale I am dealing more clearly with issues of pacing and memory; Pacing is the illusion of speed of time passing, which music creates in the mind of the listener, and which can be played with by controlling by the speed and amount of new information. Because physical time is also really passing I am also having to deal with memory...larger scale structure deals more clearly with memory. On all levels I am dealing with narrative, which is how we connect events in our minds. Is this formal approach present at the beginning of the writing, or is at applied later, once the material has been 'composed'? I think I answered this.... What role do you feel reiteration has in your music? How does reiteration of material in [A] Penny o' [FA] differ from the reiteration in something like a late Feldman piece? Nowadays I think this is part of the structuring process described previously. In [A] Penny o' [FA] it was more obviously important because at that time I was exploring “context”, or trying to make “time passing” an interesting musical experience...I had been experimenting with tape loops and noticing how my listening changed as exactly the same music was repeated. This interest grew from my Feldman studies. How influential has Feldman been to your music and compositional approach? What does he offer to contemporary (small 'c'!) music? He was hugely important to my own growth as composer. He started me off on this adventure with the tools that have helped me most: a desire for musical sound rather than musical idea, that is, a desire for practical, conscious, awareness through listening and feeling what’s there, rather than relying on a theory. Also a love of instruments and colour, an interest in form, in time, in perception, in history, and an understanding of notation and communication. I don’t know what other people learn from him. What is the role of the soloist in your 'Noncertos'? Why use this soloist-ensemble relationship in a piece? How do your 'Noncertos' relate to other classical concerti? The concerti are about the relationship between the individual and the group. In a concerto the soloist is

Jack Coleman 19

always a virtuoso, the relationship is one of hero and crowd. In the Noncerti the soloists represent the misunderstood, neglected, or underdog, and the crowd. The relationships are all difficult for various reasons, and are far closer to the world as I see and experience it, than to those portrayed in a CONcerto. It’s a personal (political?) choice. Bibliography Ayres R., No. 8: for piano solo (London, 1991)

No. 24: a ‘NONcerto’ for alto trombone (Amsterdam, 1999) No. 30: A NONcerto for orchestra, cello and high soprano voice (Amsterdam, 2001)

No. 31: for trumpet solo and ensemble (Amsterdam, 2000) No. 35: Overture (Amsterdam, 2000) [A] Penny o’ [FA] (Amsterdam, 1993)

‘Interview with Richard Ayres’, Richard Ayres, 1999. http://richardayres.com/words/interview.htm (7/10/2008)

Barrett R., Ne Songe Plus á Fuir (London, 1988) Barthes R., Music – Image – Text (New York, 1988) Baudrillard J., Simulacra and Simulation (Michigan, 1994) Carey J., ed., The Faber Book of Utopias (London, 1999) Dahlhaus C., Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas (Cambridge, 1979) Eco U., The Name of the Rose (London, 1983) Foster H. (ed.), The Anti Aesthetic (New York, 1998) Fox C., ‘Richard Ayres in Focus: Life Is Beautiful’ The Musical Times, Vol. 142, No. 1875,

(Summer, 2001), pp. 39-52

‘Crickets, myths and magic’ Alderburgh Festival of Music and Arts Programme Book, (2005) pp.16-17

Hewett I., ‘Fail Worse; Fail Better. Ivan Hewett on the Music of Richard Barrett’ The Musical

Times, Vol. 135, No. 1813 (1994), pp. 148-151 Huyssen A., After the Great Divide (Indiana, 1986) Jameson F., ‘Of Islands and Trenches: Naturalization and the Production of Utopian Discourse’

Diacritics, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer, 1977), pp. 2-21

The Political Unconscious (London, 1981)

Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London, 1991) Kerman J., ‘How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,’ Critical Inquiry Vol. 7, No. 2

(Chicago, 1980)

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Kramer L., ‘Beyond Unity’, Concert Music, Rock and Jazz since 1945 (Rochester, 1995) Levitas R., The Concept of Utopia (Hertfordshire, 1990) Lochead J. and Joseph Auner (ed.), Postmodern Music, Postmodern Thought (London, 2002) Lyotard J. F., The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, 1984)

The Postmodern Explained to Childdren: Correspondence 1982-85 (London, 1992) Malpas S., Jean François Lyotard (London, 2003) McClary S., Conventional Wisdom (California, 2000) Millar P., ed., Sound Unbound (Cambridge, MA., 2008) Meyer L., Music, The Arts and Ideas (Chicago, 1967) Morecambe E. and ‘Morecambe & Wise: Andre Previn’ YouTube, 1971. Ernie Wise, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP8TUe993uo (18.04.09) Nikolska I., Conversations with Witold Lutosławski (Stockholm, 1994) Pace I., ‘The Panorama of Michael Finnissy (II)’ Tempo No. 201 (July, 1997) pp. 7-16 Paddison M., Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge, 1993) Peters H., ‘jede note wie ein freund’ Neue Zeitschrift Fur Musik No. 168 (2007) pp.43-5 Schoenberg A., The Second String Quartet in F-Sharp Minor: Opus 10 (Norton Critical Scores) Neff

S., ed. (New York, 2005) Spector N., Ricahard Prince (New York, 2007) Veinus A., The Concerto (New York, 1964) Watkins G., Pyramids at the Louvre (London, 1994) Unknown Author ‘Neptune Style Sample Drum Kit’, Ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com/Neptune-Style-Sample-

Drum-Kit_W0QQitemZ270342100043QQcmdZViewItem-QQimsxZ20090209?IMSfp=TL090209227002r32594 (25.2.09)

Discography Ayres R., ‘No. 27 Blue’ Blaauw, Marco Blaauw. BVHaast CD0805. 2005.

Composer’s Voice Portrait, MusikFabrik. Donemus CV138. 2002. [A] Penny o’ [FA], Ives Ensemble, c. Rijnvos. Donemus CV45/46. 1995. No. 30: Noncerto for Cello and Soprano, No. 36, No. 33. Unknown ensemble. Unreleased. No date.

Barrett R., Chamber Works, Elision Ensemble. Etcetera KTC1167. 1993. Zorn., J., Spillane, Kronos Quartet, Ohta Hiromi and Christian Marclay. Rhino Entertainment.

2005