OUR EXPERIENCE

While it may not seem like much of a task—especially after composing—deciding on what to say about a piece, any piece, but especially one of my own creation, is exceptionally difficult because no matter what you say (or don’t), you’re influencing the listening experience and consequently defining the piece before a single note sounds. This is no small matter.

So what to say? Most program notes talk about the form, the themes, the history surrounding a piece. Though that can certainly be interesting, I think it ultimately does a disservice to anyone listening to a piece for the first time because it tempts them into a rather static mode of listening and interpreting. Even more insidious is the potential of such program notes to define how music should be and, by exclusion, how it shouldn’t be listened to—who’s  to say that just because a theme is the focus that the pure sound isn’t just as compelling or important? I really believe that there is no ‘correct’ way to listen and that no expert can say otherwise. At the same time, saying nothing leaves the listener either completely unprepared, prejudiced, or otherwise weighed down with previous experiences. So what to say? I think I’ll stick with some ‘facts’ and a humble request:

The Facts:

The piece is called If Winter and it is a setting of Thomas Ang’s poem of the same name. The text is delivered exactly as it appears in the poem with no words moved, changed, repeated, or omitted.

While quite free in many respects, there are structural elements that are quite rigid and (hopefully) readily identifiable.

Speaking of elements, there are quite a few for a piece that is only about four minutes long. Some change. Some stay the same. Sometimes it’s not the elements that change but the relationships between them.

The Request:

Don’t listen for the facts. At least don’t listen to the facts your first time; it’s not about them. Just listen. Listen and explore, as a child might, allowing each moment to just happen, then respond, intuitively, openly. Ooh that’s ugly! That’s kinda nice…and this bit makes me want to wiggle—I wish it would do that more! Don’t listen as a spectator, listen as a participant. When I handed over the music to The Hermes Experiment, it was no longer mine. When they play it for you, it’s no longer theirs. Each individual that listens to this piece, and any piece of live music, is engaging in a creative act: a composer’s idea, becomes the performer’s piece, which becomes the audience’s memory. Don’t listen as a spectator, listen as a participant: anticipate and react! My idea, becomes Hermes’s performance, which becomes your memory, and our experience. Let it be a diverse one.

For some people, it is difficult to justify tampering with music from the classical canon. I imagine it’s even less defensible to the same people to starting messing about with the music of Bach – his music is of course held in such reverence and, from a compositional point of view, it’s almost always seamlessly put together. Yet, I confess – I’ve done it, and on September 9^th, The Hermes Experiment will give the first performance of my transcription of Bach’s aria ‘Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not’ from his cantata Ich Hatte Viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21 in their exciting ‘Inspired by Bach’ concert at St John’s, Notting Hill. I imagine I’m less squeamish than some, though, about doing it. After all, we know that composers of Bach’s time thought about a musical score as material to be remorselessly adapted, rescored or downright stolen, and composers throughout the history of classical music have always rearranged, transcribed and generally had a good time messing about with music of the past.

Nevertheless, when approached by The Hermes Experiment and having suggested this aria for the concert, I did have to ask myself in what way a contemporary rescoring for a singer and a handful of instruments (one of which, the clarinet, post-dates Bach’s own time) could possibly illuminate or enrich the original. The aria itself is a true gem, and interesting in that it has no contrasting middle section, as most Baroque arias did. The opening material – falling, expressive gestures over steady but rich harmonic motion – is present in the aria from start to finish, with direction and momentum provided by extraordinary subtleties of texture and harmonic rhythm. It’s funny to think he probably wrote it in his lunch break, or between two choir practices or similar.

Anyhow, these characteristics have great implications for the transcriber (a more useful word here I think, by the way, than arranger, which seems to carry connotations of functionality). In this case, for example, contrast is clearly not the aim of the game, and it seemed more appropriate to support Bach’s original intentions by exploring the different possibilities especially of texture offered by the instrumentation of The Hermes Experiment than ending up disturbing the characteristic unity of the piece by trying to tamper with the actual notes and rhythms. It becomes clear quite quickly that it’s absolutely vital for any transcriber to begin the process by analysing the music in question in this way, so as to support or enhance the original, to let it speak in a new guise, than to betray or twist it.

On the issue of enhancement, there is another factor at play, and a more personal one at that. I’m fascinated by moments in music history where you can see a composer working absolutely at the limit of the musical language available to him or her. There are many examples, and I’m sure readers will have their own – the ‘Tuba Mirum’ from Berlioz’s Requiem springs to mind, as do many of Wolf’s Lieder. A particular favourite of mine is actually a moment at the centre of Thomas Weelkes’ motet ‘When David Heard’, when David mourns with the words ‘O my son Absalon, would God I had died for thee’. Weelkes sets the text with utter simplicity, and as sparsely as he possibly could have in the early 17^th century – a single note, a single chord, another single note, a short phrase, a single triad, and so on. It’s an amazing moment, and in a way transcription (if practised sensitively) offers an opportunity to imagine what those moments would be like if the composer had access to a more extensive musical language. How far would Weelkes have gone? How far do we dare to go today? Whatever some might say, for me good transcription is perhaps less about messing around with the notes and rhythms of these great pieces, and more about engaging in a fruitful, illuminating (and hopefully fun) dialogue with great music of the past.

Héloïse on learning the Aperghis:

“How on earth did you memorise all this?”

This is always the first question I get from people who’ve watched me perform this piece. Well, the trick comes from the way the ‘music’ is written; it looks like this:

Now, you may think this looks incredibly complicated, but once you get it, it really isn’t. If you follow the ‘score’ line by line, you’ll realise that at the start of every line, a new bit of text or sound is added. So it’s just a matter of memorising the fragments and in which order they come.

However, although Aperghis’ score is very clearly notated, a lot is also left open for interpretation and so I came up with my own narrative. This, for me, was the most fun and fascinating phase of the learning process. But I won’t reveal what this narrative is – it would take away from the fact that interpretation is left open to the audience as much as to the performer…

Enjoy!

What was your personal motivation for forming The Hermes Experiment?

For me, the founding ideas of Hermes, especially the emphasis on extending the boundaries of ‘new’ music and improvisation, were really exciting. As a bass player specifically, I knew that the technical demands of the new repertoire would be challenging, but this virtuosic element was also an attractive prospect. By pushing yourself to have a technique without limits, you give yourself the ultimate freedom of expression in improvisation.

Apart from the instrumentation, what would you say makes The Hermes Experiment unique?

The status of each group member as a mini composer/arranger; this could be in the traditional sense of putting pen to paper to create something for the group, but also in the sense that each member is a composer in real time during group improvisation. Each member also has a strong creative input into both the in-rehearsal musical decisions as well as the artistic direction of the group.

What do you see as the key to The Hermes Experiment’s artistic identity?

Open-mindedness to new scenarios for musical communication, be this new venues for performance, unusual collaborations or new musical structures. Rather than our instrumentation and lack of repertoire being a limitation, it is actually incredibly liberating for us as a group as we know that we are creating something entirely new, with few existing conventions, so in a sense we don’t feel like there are many creative barriers for us.

How do you plan to tackle the potential inaccessibility of contemporary classical music?

Another key element we hope will always be at the core of our artistic identity is the insistence on making our performances communicative and compelling, in both their musical and extra-musical content. We all feel that new music should never be an in-joke, and audiences should be able to relate to a piece without being patronised.

What would you say is the most interesting part of the creative process you go through with each commission?

In our most recent project, it was a real pleasure having the composer present as an active participant at nearly all rehearsals; in most of our previous experiences of new music projects, composers tended to be brought in at the last minute. There was an amazing stage we got to once the piece had really taken shape and we were fine-tuning exactly how to make the performance most effective. We all felt invested in the piece and the composer’s vision, and had equal input into performance decisions.

Thinking of the ensemble’s future plans, what are you most excited about?

I’m excited about several new collaborations in the pipeline for our next season, including projects with artists from other domains. In the next year, we are commissioning works from new composers whose music I already know and love, and it’ll be fascinating to see what they produce for us. It’s really exciting to be part of a group that is evolving so much with each new project.

My piece is a setting of a poem by American poet Mark Strand, called Black Sea. I really love Strand’s poems – I remember when I got his book New Selected Poems, as usual I put in bits of paper to mark inspiring poems I might set, and at the end finding the book completely full of paper scraps with more poems marked than not! I’ve set several of his poems before, including his poem XXXV in my piece The Sickness of Angels: http://youtu.be/3A35ucEYIWA.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what in his work appeals to me. Certainly in XXXV and Black Sea there’s a profound and intense emotional sense, which is nuanced and detailed but still has a big impact. They both have a beautiful, lyrical flow and are full of colour and expression, with phrases like “…watching the slow swells of the sea / break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear…” (Black Sea)  and “the feel of kisses blown out of heaven, / Melting the moment they land” (XXXV).

There’s often a sense of loneliness too – in Black Sea the subject tells us how they went out into the night and gazed over a wide open empty sea, waiting and longing for someone (‘you’), before resigning themselves to disappointment and questioning why they could ever have expected the ‘you’ to come to them.

Read the whole poem at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2012/05/01

Black Sea has a clear, powerful emotional theme which helps suggest musical atmospheres and ideas for the whole piece; those expressive colourful phrases – ‘sky strewn with stars’, ‘whispering night’, ‘hair mingling with the sea’ which give so much scope for expressive vocal lines and development of ideas from moment to moment; and a very clear build of expectation and hope and imagination through the piece before the resigned final section, which gives a clear structure for the piece.

When I picked this poem to set I was looking for something that I thought work really well for The Hermes Experiment line-up and the personalities of the performers. I’ve worked with them before and during the writing of the piece, discussing ways to realise my ideas, use the instruments and voice effectively, how to best express in sound what I see in poem, for example a very clearly defined, almost brittle harp sound used particularly around the opening lines about night and stars, and a rising, faltering sound on the bass which sounds almost as if it’s disappearing, slipping beyond reach.

Ed’s piece will be premiered on 5th June at the Shacklewell Arms, 8pm.

More details here: http://www.nonclassical.co.uk/index.php/2014/05/june-5th-2014-graphic-score-special-with-the-hermes-experiment/

Jonathan Woolgar, one of our composers, talks about the first rehearsal of his new piece, Scenes from the Garden of Love, with the ensemble:

My piece for The Hermes Experiment, Scenes from the Garden of Love, is quite a substantial one at over 15 minutes long, compiling William Blake poems and biblical texts into a series of dramatic tableaux. All in all I worked on it for over four months, and indeed was rather sad to see it go when I finished it and sent the parts to Héloïse, Oliver, Anne and Marianne ahead of our first rehearsal on 29th April. First rehearsals are always a strange experience for a composer. The music which was so crystalline in my head suddenly becomes something real and fragile — it can be a disconcerting experience, but also a thrilling one. There is often a degree of relief when things work just as you wanted them to, or frustration when you realise that you hadn’t made yourself as clear as you thought. The 29th, though, was a wholly positive experience, each performers’ contributions already sounding polished. Indeed, it’s been a joy to write not only for the unusual combination which is initially so striking about The Hermes Experiment, but for the four individuals who bring it to life. The feeling of confidence in writing for such trustworthy players is joyous, especially with regard to Héloïse’s dramatic capabilities (see the performance of Récitation No. 9 by Aperghis on this website!) which initially encouraged me to create a dramatic piece in the first place. I am truly excited about the upcoming rehearsals as increasingly we all become co-creators in this drama, as each tableau goes from being a section of music to being a living theatrical event. Thanks to the versatility and experimentalism of an ensemble like this, the potential is endless. What a treat for a composer.

Jonathan’s piece will be premiered on 14th May at the Notting Hill Mayfest. More details here: http://nottinghillmayfest.org.uk/concert/hermes-experiment/

On behalf of the rest of the group, Anne talks about why improvisation is key to The Hermes Experiment’s musical identity, and sheds light on how it all works:

At The Hermes Experiment, we love new music, and live improvisation is probably the newest music you will ever hear – created in the moment, as fresh to our ears as it is to those of the audience. As an ensemble, we really enjoy the musical interaction of improvisation, but the question we asked and continue to challenge ourselves with is ‘how do we make this as enjoyable and interesting for the audience as it is for us as performers?’ One of the primary tenets we came up with was to create some sort of vaguely perceptible structures and qualities for the interaction. So as a starting point, we developed a game a bit like musical tennis doubles, where we play in two pairs, batting musical ideas back and forth; if both members of the same pair play together, there is a choreographed forfeit, and Oli can initiate moments of calm, while Héloïse can initiate phases of hysteria. As we became more practised at improvising together, we became freer to move away from these structures whilst bearing them in mind as a backbone.

Another key feature of our improvisation is that we like to use motifs from the works featured in the concert as root musical ideas. What you don’t see in this video is that we used an initial game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ in front of the audience to determine which motif would be used. In this improvisation, it was Oli’s chosen motif from Messiaen’s ‘Abime des Oiseaux’ for solo clarinet.

Our harpist, Anne, reflects on her relationship with Sally Beamish’s Awuya:

Awuya was commissioned by Glasgow University to celebrate the groundbreaking work of Professor Keith Vickerman in the field of African Sleeping Sickness. There are three main themes at the root of the work; firstly, the changing forms of the deadly pathogens of the disease – trypanosomes. You’ll hear repeated, slightly varying, pitch and rhythmic patterns within the dense substance of the music. Secondly, the sounds of African drums are incorporated into the work via a vocabulary of percussive effects using different parts of the hands (yes, it hurts to practise!). The third key feature is the central lullaby that originated in a central African tribe decimated by sleeping sickness during the 1940s. ‘Awuya’ is the name of the young girl to which this lullaby was sung, and the original words are as follows:

Awuya, eh, your mother does nothing
She crushes no ground nuts and draws no water
Awuya, eh, your mother goes nowhere
Neither to catch fish nor to look for snails.

I have been working on and performing this piece since 2009, and last year had the honour of working with Sally Beamish on a film project of the work. Awuya is one of the pieces in my repertoire that calls me to think about how we as performers build relationships with pieces that we engage with, especially if we work on them over months and years. I see and hear different patterns and shapes each time I return to the work, and in each performance there is a different balance of speeds, sounds and atmospheres. When I walk on stage to perform Awuya, I feel that I go on with a long-standing, much respected friend, with whom I have a living, developing relationship.

For Anne’s recent film project of Awuya, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux3YosKD-9I

What was your personal motivation for forming The Hermes Experiment?

During my time at university, I was very involved in both the performing and production sides of various musical and theatrical events. I really loved doing both, though I would sometimes get frustrated when I didn’t have any artistic input into the shows I was producing. I knew that after graduating, I would somehow want to combine performing and producing to make it my job! So after spending a long time over the summer thinking about how I could make it happen, I came up with the idea of forming an ensemble which would somehow involve all the things I enjoy doing: performing, producing, music and theatre …

Apart from the instrumentation, what would you say makes The Hermes Experiment unique?

As a result of our unusual instrumentation, the music we play is very ‘unique’. Indeed, none of the pieces we perform have ever been played by anyone else before, since we either commission them or create them ourselves. So yes, what we offer artistically is pretty special!

What do you see as the key to The Hermes Experiment’s artistic identity?

The great thing about Hermes is that, apart from the instrumentation, we haven’t set any limitations: we can arrange pretty much anything for our combination as we want. For example recently, we came up with the idea of arranging Bach preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier (both ourselves and by collaborating with composers). And it really works. When talking to composers, we also like to give them a lot of freedom as we are all extremely keen to try out new things and explore new sound worlds. Because there isn’t any existing repertoire for our combination, we’re having to build our own as we go along; and that I believe is one of the keys to our artistic identity.

What would you say is the most interesting part of the creative process you go through with each commission?

I find all stages of the creative process really exciting; but perhaps it becomes even more exciting once we’ve all got to know the music well and can properly start work on interpretation and performance. It’s truly fascinating to be able to work, with the composer, on the performing side of things to try and really make the piece live. And often, this relies on understanding how the different parts interact with one another. This requires so much focus and energy (which might be why I am always starving after two hours of Hermes…) but to me, it is the most fun!

Thinking of the ensemble’s future plans, what are you most excited about?

I think we are currently in this great position where all of us are very keen to make Hermes a major part of our musical career. Whenever we discuss our future plans, which include projects involving collaborations with other art forms such as photography or dance (those are the ones that I’m looking forward to the most and are to be revealed soon), we get so excited and I am confident that we will make them all happen in the near future…

What was your personal motivation for forming The Hermes Experiment?

When Héloïse suggested forming the ensemble, I was keen from the start. I have always loved contemporary music, and the small forays I had made into free improvisation in the past had been really stimulating and affirming. Also, I was (and still am) at a stage in my career where I am looking to invest in collaborations and projects that I can see forming a core part of my future. It also didn’t hurt that the other prospective members were already valued friends!

Apart from the instrumentation, what would you say makes The Hermes Experiment unique?

For such a ‘niche’ looking ensemble, I think we are exploring a relatively broad range of avenues, the three main categories being new commissions, arrangements, and live free improvisation. I think we are offering a concert experience that is at once all about contemporary classical music, and very dynamic and diverse. Our approach to working with composers and other collaborators is also important in that we are as interested in the process behind each work as in the end product.

What do you see as the key to The Hermes Experiment’s artistic identity

I think the main key to our artistic identity is in the name – experiment; in all areas of our work, whether improvisation, performance, or collaboration, we aren’t afraid to try new things. This has already led to new ideas and discoveries, and this is a core part of what we have to offer.

How do you plan to tackle the potential inaccessibility of contemporary classical music?

The main reason that contemporary classical music is potentially inaccessible is that it is largely written in an unfamiliar musical idiom. In other words, audiences find it hard to relate to. Of course, we can’t make the new sound worlds of contemporary music suddenly familiar. However, we can aim to make them as engaging as possible, through successful collaboration and performance, and also as interesting and contextualised as possible through spoken programme notes and writing, such as in our blog.

What would you say is the most interesting part of the creative process you go through with each commission?

For me, the moment when we first see the initial draft, or key ideas behind a work, is incredibly exciting – it’s like opening a present early, but knowing that it is only going to get better and better. But perhaps what I find most interesting – in fact it amazes me every time – is looking at the overall trajectory from the first read-through to successful performance. Both as individuals, and as an ensemble, we spend extensive time getting to know each commission, investing effort not only into realising the composer’s ideas, but also into presenting an engaging performance for audiences. I take great joy in becoming so deeply acquainted with a work – I believe that it is through this level of investment that vivid performance is born. I also hugely enjoy the fact that with new commissions, it’s always possible to talk with the composer in order to explore and clarify ideas – a luxury that we are unfortunately denied for most classical music today.

Thinking of the ensemble’s future plans, what are you most excited about?

I am generally very excited about everything we are doing! In the longer term, I am really looking forward to potential collaborative projects with other types of artist, as well as exploring what we can offer in a creative learning context.

What inspired you to join The Hermes Experiment?

I think The Hermes Experiment has great potential. It’s an interesting and well though-out combination of instruments, which really works! There are a number of ensembles that venture into contemporary music, a great example being the Britten Sinfonia, but there aren’t many ensembles that have a fixed and unusual instrumental line-up – so I like to think we’re working with something quite new and exciting here!

I’m joining The Hermes Experiment in the role of Director (Marketing and Development). As part of my remit I have reworked the ensemble’s approach to marketing, which will now focus on offering insights into the creative process behind each commission, as well as insights into the members’ perceptions and interpretations of the pieces in the group’s repertoire. My role also covers planning and implementing a longer term strategy for the group, which so far has included coming up with ideas and planning our 2014/15 season. Read on for a preview of our plans….

What do you see as the key to The Hermes Experiment’s artistic identity? 

Due to the combination of instruments being so unique, new commissions naturally form a key part of the ensemble’s identity. I think Hermes could become a truly great platform for creating new art and music, and the feedback we’ve already received about the idea of Hermes, whether audience members, composers or other established musicians, has been overwhelmingly positive.

How do you plan to tackle the potential inaccessibility of contemporary classical music?

I think contemporary music can very easily become inaccessible – people get scared off by a programme where they don’t recognise the name of a single composer. But one of the things I want to introduce and establish with Hermes is really engaging its audiences, which will be done in a variety of ways. We’re launching a new blog that gives the players’ and composers’ insights into the ensemble’s new commissions – discussing the creative process, as well as impressions of the finished product. During performances, we’ll have spoken programme notes for each piece being performed to contextualise them, and increase the overall accessibility. This idea has already been road-tested on a couple of the works in previous concerts, e.g. Beamish’s Awuya, and the feedback on this has been very positive.

What are your plans for the group? 

At the moment, we’ve been planning our 2014/15 season. One of my new initiatives has been to give each concert a specific theme, around which we’re commissioning new works. The idea is to create really solid programmes, which vary from concert to concert; by theming each concert, we’ll be able to focus the discussion of the pieces in the spoken programme notes, further engaging our audiences with the music, and to  really explore the ensemble’s artistic potential. To give a sneaky preview, our first concert of the season (scheduled for early autumn 2014) will be themed Inspired by Bach, and it will feature Bach arrangements, as well as new commissions of works inspired by the composer. And this is just the first of four themed concerts we’re planning overall, so look out for the other exciting themes as and when they are revealed……..

Thinking of the ensemble’s future plans, what are you most excited about?

The Hermes Experiment is just getting started – the whole journey ahead of us will be challenging, but mostly really exciting! But what I’m excited about the most is creating a new way of presenting contemporary classical music – I think with some hard work and determination we can create something truly unique here, something that is very attractive to the ensemble members, composers and audiences. I’m very much looking forward to what lies ahead!