WILDERNESS TRACKS ELIZABETH ALKER RESOURCES Here Are
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WILDERNESS TRACKS ELIZABETH ALKER RESOURCES Here are some resources linked to projects and topics discussed during this episode. Track list from this episode: See all the tracks mentioned in this episode here. https://timberfestival.org.uk/the-wilderness-tracks/ Unclassified: Tune in to Elizabeth’s show on BBC Radio 3, where she celebrates a new generation of unclassified composers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b02sl2 SPEAKERS Elizabeth Alker, Geoff Bird TRANSCRIPT Geoff Bird 0:09 Welcome to Wilderness Tracks recorded at the Timber Festival in the National Forest. In each edition a writer, artist or musician, tells me Geoff Bird about six songs that somehow connect them with nature. Elizabeth Alker broadcasts on BBC Radio Three and Six Music. She's a great champion of those artists taking the best from both classical and pop traditions to find new and exciting ways of creating music. The reason I was really keen to get you to do this is because you seem to me the future somehow, in that you work as nimbly on six music, as you do on radio three. And maybe it's something to do with my age. But that's exactly where my crosshairs at the moment is a past in popular music and a future into more classical stuff that's borne out by these selections. And I'm wondering, how conscious are you of the fact that you kind of seem to be straddling all sorts of musical worlds in the work that you do? Elizabeth Alker 1:13 Yeah, I'm aware of it. I think it's always been part of my life, because my parents are both classical musicians. They're both music teachers. So I was raised kind of listening to classical music and playing classical music. And there was always classical music played in the house. And, and, erm, but my parents were kind of punks. They were sort of teenagers at that time. And, and they were very young when they had me. So those things have always been, to be a fan of both things has always made sense to me. And I've never seen any, I didn't understand why it was almost like you couldn't be a fan of both and, and why classical music seemed to be for a certain type of person. And rock music seems to be for another type of person, which it is, strangely, I didn't think that until I started working at the BBC. And then I realised that's how it was, kind of how people thought about it. So that's it felt quite, it feels quite natural for me to be kind of listening to both. All kinds of music. 1 Geoff Bird 2:19 I found it really interesting because I didn't listen to classical music growing up, we had an anonymous story album and there was no music in the house really. And I had a bird spotting panel on earlier on and all the panel was saying how kind of slightly embarrassed they were about the fact that they were bird spotting into bird spotting, when they discovered it for themselves. That kind of that day, they looked in the mirror and said I am a bird spotter. I'm a twitcher. And when I started getting into classical music, I wasn't I wouldn't say I was ashamed of it. I just didn't know what to do with it. And it was only because... but it's become very important to me and, and then I think back to, we grew up in similar places. I grew up in Preston. And in the 80s it was very factionalized, you go to the flag market and there'd be the punks. And then they'd be the Goths and then they'd be the sport casuals and then they'd be the hippies. And there would never be any kind of communion between any of them and and and you would join your tribe, you take your choice, in my case that donkey jacket and Doc Marten boots and The Fall. And you would never move around. And I find that really annoying now looking back. And now that I'm that listening to your programmes and hearing all those wonderful things. Elizabeth Alker 3:37 Where were the classical music kids, what are they doing? Geoff Bird 3:40 They were the.. Elizabeth Alker 3:41 What corner were they in? Geoff Bird 3:42 See I'm doing that now I'm calling them the weedy ones. Terrible. It's really terrible. But anyway, that's all by way of preamble to your first track. If you'd like to tell us about it. Elizabeth Alker 3:56 Peter Warlock and the Curlew and I chose this. A lot of the tracks that I've chosen actually kind of to me completely of all the composers that I've chosen. And the people that I've chosen, the artists, they're completely evocative of a landscape and I'm really interested in how music can kind of conjure a landscape immediately. And I'm not sure whether some of it is, because we're so used to associating that music with that place and the two become kind of inseparable, but I'm sure there's something about the way certain composers write and and the place where they are that just finds itself into the music in a way that's magic. And, you know, Vaughan Williams, we were hearing Erland talk about his Tallis Fantasia, that's all his music. I mean, his English folk songs suite as well. I guess part of it is he's quoting folk songs and there's instruments that can kind of mimic animals and, but there's something about them. Just, it just sounds like England. It sounds like that countryside. And... 2 Geoff Bird 5:01 This particular piece Warlock's Curley which landscape was he evoking, what landscape do you see? Elizabeth Alker 5:06 He was in Wales when he was writing this. He wrote it in Wales. And I think there's something about all those composers though those kind of first world war time composers, R.O. Morris and Butterworth, my Dad listened to them a lot. He was a big fan of those of composers of that generation. And I think there's something about all those composers that and Bolton as well that is immediately just very English. And I think Warlock evokes the countryside. I chose him. He's kind of the bad boy of that generation well I mean, that's under slightly... Geoff Bird 5:37 Understating it. Elizabeth Alker 5:40 And he's actually called Philip Heseltine, but he was, he became interested in the occult and black magic and he changed his name to Peter Warlock. It's got associations with the occult, and he lives in Eynsford for a time, he certainly dragged Moeran off the rails. And, yeah, and it's a sad story. He was very young when he died and got up to all sorts that we can't say while there's children around. Geoff Bird 6:08 I love the fact that there are these characters who disprove this silly idea that sex and drugs and rock'n'roll were invented in 1963, after The Beatles you know, that he was kind of doing all of that stuff way before then and there are plenty of those individuals around who disproved that. Elizabeth Alker 6:26 Yeah, and I mean, a lot of my favourite artists and for better or for worse, pushed themselves to the edge and I think sometimes that's where the most interesting work is made often, maybe they go too far. And he's a very personal composer, I think. I think we get highs and lows with him. He's capreol sweet. It's very sort of light and a bit more pastoral. This is quite dark, the Curlew kind of represents unrequited love it's in the Cor Anglais as well in the English horn so you can hear again, there's that kind of, there's a sense of Englishness or I don't know he was he wrote in Wales. So music of the British Isles, I suppose. But, um, yeah. And also, Yeats, poetry. Geoff Bird 7:12 I was gonna say you've done it, depending on which way you look at it. You've cheated magnificently. Unknown Speaker 7:15 Yeah, I know. 3 Geoff Bird 7:17 You know, sneaking in Yeats there. All you could say is it's a glorious economy you've only got six choices so load them up as much as you can. Elizabeth Alker 7:25 I was quite keen to pick ones that were actually about nature. Not that I'm like getting annoyed with Erland, who didn't. Geoff Bird 7:32 Oooh, oooh. Elizabeth Alker 7:35 I thought he was just an interesting person to kind of connect to that to that whole world. And, and the Yeats poetry is about unrequited love as well. And I just think it's, it sounds so beautiful. It's in the Severn Woods and Wind Amongst the Reeds are the poems, I think. And they met while they were both escaping conscription in the First World War. He was a conscientious objector Warlock, he fled to Dublin.