Tempo 67 (265) 37–49 © 2013 Cambridge University Press 37 doi:10.1017/S0040298213000454 ‘resonance and distance’: simon bainbridge in conversation Malcolm Miller Abstract: This interview, based on a conversation with Simon Bainbridge at London’s City Literary Institute in June 2011, presents something of a rounded portrait of the composer while covering a good deal of ground. We began our conversation with a discussion of a recent work for orchestra, Concerti Grossi, going into some detail in matters of scoring and structure. The discussion then broadened to cover such topics as the creative process, formative influences (for example, his parents’ activity in the visual arts, Debussy’s Jeux, John Lambert and Gunther Schuller), instrumentation and the relationship of music and text. This led on specifically to Bainbridge’s settings of Primo Levi, in for example the cycle Ad Ora Incerta, and to a consider- ation of the composer’s relationship with the audience. The British composer Simon Bainbridge marked his 60th birthday with the world première of his Garden of Earthly Delights, given at the BBC Proms on 18 August 2012. Whilst in the early stages of work on that piece Bainbridge generously agreed to an interview and a discussion on 24 June 2011, in a class as part of my course ‘New Music: Where is the Avant-Garde Today?’ at the City Literary Institute (Holborn, London). I am grateful to all students for their stimulus and enthusiasm in our discovery of Simon Bainbridge’s oeuvre. Since the interview took place, Bainbridge has composed several chamber works and is currently involved in a projected col- laboration writing a concertante work for the legendary American-Puerto Rican jazz bassist Eddie Gomez. Simon Bainbridge (photo © Andrew Palmer) MM: Over the last three and a half decades you have enriched the repertoire with some boldly innovative large scale works for orchestra including concertante works for various instruments. Your most recent large-scale orchestral work, premièred on 4 June 2010 at the Sage, Gateshead, by the Northern Sinfonia, for whom you composed it, bears the intriguing title Concerti Grossi. How did it come about and what were your aims in this work? SB: This was a very exciting commission for me. Some years ago at the Proms I heard the most wonderful performance by the Northern Sinfonia with their Musical Director Thomas Zehetmair, playing the Bach Concerto for Two Keyboards in C minor, BWV 1060 in an arrangement for violin and oboe, with Heinz Holliger as oboist. I remember being knocked side- ways by the strength of all the musicians in that orchestra: there was a sense of a group of soloists at work. Several years later I was commissioned by the Northern Sinfonia, and I decided that Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Athens, on 28 Sep 2021 at 23:05:18, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040298213000454 38 tempo I wanted to write a concerto for chamber orchestra. I used the title Concerti Grossi in the plural since it was really a collection of different concerti. I took as my starting point the idea of a con- certante group and a ripieno group, so there is a sense of solo music which is being commented on by a background ensem- ble, and it was that sense of distance and perspective that I wanted to bring out. My initial sketch for the piece was a map of metrically related tempi which provided a starting point for articulating each of the instrumental sections. This gave me a means of creating a continuity for the composition. MM: Could you describe how you achieved this? SB: I wanted to establish a very audible difference between fore- ground and background textures. For instance in the first section, you hear the four solo violins present very busy and active musi- cal gestures, full of complex rhythmic details, which radiate into the rest of the string section. This larger section of divided first and second violins and double basses – there are no violas and cellos – marked ‘con sordino’, provides a type of echo chamber for the solo violins, heard against a further layer of vertical chord structures in the rest of the orchestra, woodwind, brass, harp and percussion. The next movement features two solo horns with a ripieno ensemble comprising a pair of flutes and clar- inets, and lower strings, with cellos and violas dominating the texture. A transformation in timbre, a gradual shift into a new world and a new tempo leads to the third movement, in which a multi-layered linear texture for, predominantly, two solo oboes, is reflected by muted trumpets and orchestra, again with a tempo relationship modulated from the previous section. The fourth movement features solo violin and solo double bass, with woodwind and brass creating a reinvented Big Band, coloured by a jazz feel, which emerged from the particu- lar instrumentation and tempi that I was using at this point in the piece. The movement leads into the slowest point of the composition, almost an interlude, a moment of repose, which focuses mainly on solo viola and solo cello, with the rest of the orchestra in the distance as a composite ensemble of blended textures. In the sixth section, a complex harmonic interaction is created through the superimposition of pulsing woodwind and brass chords shadowed by related quarter-tone string harmonics. This leads to the climactic seventh section, where, out of a highly explosive and rhyth- mically propulsive orchestral tutti, a distant string sextet emerges, sul ponticello, from the background into the foreground. It creates once again a sense of perspective and leads the listener towards the con- cluding section, which is a palindrome of the first section. MM: Why did you use a palindrome? SB: I chose to retrograde the whole of the first movement as a literal palindrome since it returns the listener to the world of the work’s beginning, and thus evokes a sense of memory. Whereas in the beginning the music is gradually evolving, when it is retrograded there is a gradual dissolution of rhythmic energy. It creates a circular journey which indeed could start all over again! MM: I’d like to focus on ‘Beginnings’–when you begin work on a new piece, such as Concerti Grossi, do you have a clear idea of the com- position as a whole? Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Athens, on 28 Sep 2021 at 23:05:18, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040298213000454 ‘resonance and distance’: simon bainbridge in conversation 39 SB: One of the things we are all confronted with, not just compo- sers but any creative artist, is a process of discovery. Finding the grammar and the sound-world for the piece is not some- thing that happens instantaneously. I have to investigate it very thoroughly, and that process can take a long time. It is very important that at this stage of a composition it is a very intuitive experience, of throwing music out onto the page, and beginning to see what it may give. What I am interested in, in the pre-compositional stage, is thinking about the music in a spatial rather than temporal way. By placing musical objects onto an empty manuscript page, and exploring each of them in great detail, I eventually will find connections and indeed discover a formal structure which emerges out of the content of the musical material. MM: In the pre-compositional stage, you have a clear idea of the ending? SB: Successful endings are probably the most difficult part of a compo- sition, and are rarely in my head when I start a piece. When I am over halfway through, I begin to think about how the particular piece is going to conclude. I think that was very much the case with Concerti Grossi,wherethedecisiontogooverexistingmusic in reverse was something I was quite nervous about. I wanted to give a sense that it could actually go on indefinitely. I was a student at Tanglewood in the 1970s and recall how the American composer Seymour Shifrin spent two weeks talking about endings! He would play music ‘cold’ without any of us having heard it before, and say ‘is this a beginning or a middle or an end?’ It is interesting to see how a composer deals with that situation. MM: The Guardian critic noted in Concerti Grossi touches of Miles Davis and Debussy. You did write a piece inspired by Davis, but how impor- tant is Debussy to you? SB: It is interesting that Debussy’s name came up, since one of the most important pieces of the 20th century is his orchestral piece, Jeux, which has obsessed me for many years. I am fasci- nated by its complex form, and how Debussy builds two- and three-bar phrases out of tiny and constantly transforming elements. He is one of the very few composers whose works continue to inform and influence my compositional thinking. MM: You dedicated Concerti Grossi to the memory of your mother, who died in 2010. I wonder whether you could talk about your family background and youthful musical influences? SB: Both my parents were involved with the visual arts. My father1 was a painter, and I remember when I was very young spending hours fascinated by his sketching processes. He also worked with an advertising agency in London, and my mother2 was also involved in advertising and was a graphic artist as well.