MAX RICHTER the Blue Notebooks “Everyone Carries a Room About Inside Them
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MAX RICHTER The Blue Notebooks “Everyone carries a room about inside them. This fact can be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say at night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.” 2 MAX RICHTER The Blue Notebooks 1. The Blue Notebooks 1:20 Back in 2003, when he composed The Blue Notebooks, Max Richter had few expecta- 2. On The Nature Of Daylight 6:12 tions. His first album, Memoryhouse, had appeared in 2002 to limited fanfare, and its 3. Horizon Variations 1:53 maverick mix of styles and influences – born of Richter’s rigorous classical training 4. Shadow Journal 8:23 and his fascination for electronica (which had led, in previous years, to collabora- 5. Iconography 3:39 tions with The Future Sound Of London and Roni Size) – had proven too great a leap for 6. Vladimir’s Blues 1:19 most people’s imagination. In fact, as Richter recalls, his debut had already been 7. Arboretum 2:54 deleted by the time its successor arrived. “No one cared”, Richter says of that early, 8. Old Song 2:11 doomed effort. “The world was not ready for this language.” 9. Organum 3:13 10. The Trees 7:53 These days, it’s hard to believe that The Blue Notebooks might have suffered the same 11. Written On The Sky 1:40 fate. Released two years later by 130701 Records – a small imprint of a not-much-big- 12. A Catalogue Of Afternoons* 1:51 ger independent label, FatCat Records, who’d made waves with Icelandic band Sigur 13. On The Nature Of Daylight Rós – it’s since helped pave the way for a generation of successful young composers, (Orchestral Version) 6:36 and, as a pioneering piece of work, elicits enviable superlatives. Some, to Richter’s 14. Vladimir’s Blues 2018* 1:30 delight, even appeared upon its release. America’s Pitchfork website, for instance, 15. On The Nature Of Daylight (Entropy)* 6:54 named it “one of the most affecting and universal contemporary classical records in 16. Vladimir’s Blues (Jlin Remix)* 3:45 recent memory”, while Mojo’s David Sheppard – author of Brian Eno’s biography, On 17. Iconography (Konx-Om-Pax Remix)* 3:57 Some Faraway Beach – defined it as “an album of pure, meditative loveliness”. 18. This Bitter Earth / On The Nature Of Daylight w/ Dinah Washington 6:13 Such praise derived, in part, from Richter’s approach to its composition, which, in turn, drew at least somewhat upon his response to Memoryhouse’s reception: “‘No one’s listening’, I thought. ‘I may as well do exactly what I want because I’ll be selling *Previously unreleased no records.’” The Blue Notebooks, however, was neither a last, desperate throw of the dice by the British composer – born, in 1966, in West Germany, but by now living in Hackney, East London – nor a self-indulgent exercise in emancipation. Instead, it was carefully conceived as “a meditation on violence and its repercussions, inspired both by the Iraq war – which was looming – and my own experiences.” Given its contemplative nature, this may seem surprising, since political works like Beethoven’s Fidelio, Sibelius’ Finlandia and Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony have depended – partially, anyhow – on volume for their rousing effect. Richter notes 3 too that he was inspired by songwriters like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, plus the The milestone recording – much of it achieved, remarkably, in just three hours – late-1970s punk movement. The Blue Notebooks, however, was not intended as dissent wasn’t merely radical in its thematic approach. It was also defiant in its arrange- of such kind. “I didn’t want to lecture”, Richter says. “I wanted to invite the listener ments and structure. While its dominant instrumentation suggested it was conceived in, allowing them space to reflect rather than be beaten into submission. The world as classical music, Richter also employed delicate, contemporary electronic flou- is tough enough, and I don’t want to add to the brutality. Over the years, I’ve realised rishes – something unprecedented at the time, at least in the manner Richter pursued that there’s a balance to strike, and that actually, as our world spins into something the idea. Additionally, his decision to work with familiar popular music forms – quite threatening, increasingly based on loud and vicious rhetoric, I want to talk including strict, if unhurried, 4/4 rhythms, which later memorably allowed Dinah about quiet protest.” Washington’s This Bitter Earth to be incorporated into ‘On The Nature Of Daylight’ (for the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island) – made it significantly more The Blue Notebooks is also intimately personal. The political sphere, sadly, doesn’t accessible. have a monopoly on cruelty, and Richter recalls that, as “a very sensitive child, I reacted to the violence around me by internalising everything. I closed all the “I come from a high-modernist classical music training,” Richter concludes, “where shutters, built up walls, became as perfect as I could be, in order not to be hit. maximum complexity, extreme dissonance, asymmetry and impenetrability were badges My only refuge was music, and I totally disappeared into the internal landscapes it of honour. If you wrote a single tonal chord – even by accident – people would mock opened up to me.” Indeed, an air of no stalgia permeates The Blue Notebooks, some- you, and concerts were more like the issuing of manifestos. I wrote a lot in that thing acknowledged in the texts Richter selected for actress Tilda Swinton’s crucial tradition, but came to feel that, for all its technical sophistication, this language monologues. “Everyone carries a room about inside him”, she begins, the words taken was basically inert. It reached almost nobody beyond the new music cliques. I didn’t from Franz Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks – whose title Richter adapted for his suite – want to talk to just those people. I deliberately set out to be as plainspoken as and later she recites Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, blurring past and present in vivid possible.” fashion: “I was here when she, with whom I walk, wasn’t born yet.” The tactic brought Richter overwhelming, overdue success. The Blue Notebooks remains “I chose the texts”, Richter says, “to reflect on my sense of the politics of the time. not only a landmark release, but also a staple of his concerts, with excerpts performed Facts were beginning to be replaced by subjective assertions in the build-up to the in recent years alongside, for instance, parts of 2015’s magnum opus, Sleep. war, which seemed to be viewed as inevitable and justified in spite of all the evidence In addition, its widespread use in TV and film – ‘On The Nature Of Daylight’, in to the contrary. Kafka’s use of the absurd to investigate power structures struck me as particular, played a further pivotal role in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival – has ensured highly relevant. He is, of course, the patron saint of doubt, and doubt – about poli- it’s become part of the public consciousness, helping all but demolish boundaries tics, and the way society was heading – was what I was looking to express. The texts between contemporary classical and popular music. were specifically picked because they refer to childhood, or the passing of time, when everything around is failing.” Nonetheless, the greatest blessing afforded by this reissue – which comes with three previously unreleased recordings, as well as two remixes, underlining the work’s As Richter points out, this is something buried in The Blue Notebooks’ very archi- crossover appeal – is the renewed opportunity it offers to contemplate today’s deeply tecture. “‘On The Nature Of Daylight’ uses a palindromic structure,” he says, offering divided political and social landscape. Richter may have been concerned, all those the suite’s most famous piece as illustration, “so the present and the past coexist.” years ago, that he was working with a language for which no one was ready, but it’s one Moreover, he adds, “There were certain pieces that were central to my musical ‘refuge’, that, in 2018, we need more urgently than ever. and these make an appearance, as though I’m revisiting that experience, but through a half-remembered haze. The most obvious example is ‘Old Song’, which quotes the whole Wyndham Wallace of the tenth song from Schumann’s Dichterliebe.” Berlin, 2018 4 5 6 7 8 ℗ 2004 (1–11), 2014 (13), 2018 (12, 14–17) Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin Executive Producer ℗ 2018 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin / 1959 The Verve Music Group (18) Studio Richter Mahr: This compilation ℗ 2018 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin Yulia Mahr Composed + Produced by Max Richter (1–17) · “This Bitter Earth” (18) Written by Clyde Executive Producer Otis + Published by Third Side Music Inc. · “On The Nature Of Daylight (18) Written Deutsche Grammophon: by Max Richter · Recorded by Philip Bagenal (1–11, 16, 17); Steve Parr (1, 3–11, 16, Christian Badzura 17); · Rupert Coulson (12, 14, 15) · Pro Tools Engineer: Tom Bailey (12, 14, 15) · Mixed by Max Richter (1–11, 12, 14); Rupert Coulson (12, 14, 15); Robbie Robertson Product Management (18) · Remixed by Jlin (16); Konx-Om-Pax (17) · Mastered by Mandy Parnell (1–11); Deutsche Grammophon: Götz-Michael Rieth (16, 17) · Recorded in 2003 (1–11, 16, 17) Nanja Maung Yin Recorded at Scoring Stage, Babelsberg, in 2010 (13) and at Air Studios, London, on 9 January 2018 (12, 14, 15) Product Coordinator Deutsche Grammophon: Reader: Tilda Swinton (1, 4, 7, 8, 10) · Piano: Max Richter (1, 3, 6, 8, 10,