British Composer Judith Bingham On Her New Choral Work 'Hidden City' - About Hiroshima - For London's St Paul’s Cathedral
'Hidden City'
Composer Judith Bingham and Photographer Malcolm Crowthers
...
Judith Bingham (JB)
I just always tell students you have to think about the quality of sound that you want before you actually put the chords down on the paper because, with voices in particular, but with anything really, but voices in particular, where you place the note in the voice, what register you place it, really, really affects the quality of the sound. You can soon create a very muddy sound by putting singers in the wrong parts or in the weak part of their register. If you want to create a certain sort of sound, you have got to think very carefully about where you are going to place those notes. It is true of everything, but singers more than anything. You can really ruin something. You can see students thinking, “Oh no, that’s not how I meant it to sound at all!” They just want a big, bright chord.
Malcolm Crowthers (MC)
You also love big, brash chords! You are fantastically fierce with brass. Your brass is savage. It is like those tanks that roll in at the beginning. There is an amazing piece called Prague, and it opens up with the tanks rolling in, and you feel you are going to be ground by them! It is lovely, because the piece ends with the tanks rolling out again.
JB
Initially, when people listen to a piece, in those first few seconds, how they listen is just about sounds. That sounds banal, but you are sucking people in with the quality of the sound.
MC
Absolutely, and I have picked up on something. Now, that piece, it does something, you do something in it which you do very interestingly in your two Japanese-related pieces for the City of London Festival, is that in a very theatrical gesture, you raise a curtain at the beginning. You have, in this case, the notes of the organ opened up, and it was beautiful; just suddenly you were in this fantastic world.
I don’t know how many of you heard the Cruelty of the Gods, the piece for oboe and koto, which was done at St Lawrence Jewry last week? That opened up with plucked sounds on the koto, as the implacable emperor about to send his poor old daughter into stardom, truly, he turns her into a star, but what happens is the notes rise up, and as they get to the top, one of the notes is taken over by another voice, and as the person’s voice falls away, that note is hanging in the air. It is incredible! It is like you are there! It is like you are in a world that has already been; it is like it is already going on, and you just raise the curtain on it. It is fantastic! You do that in your two Japanese pieces. I heard it on the piano yesterday. It is not quite the same as a harp, which we are going to have in the middle of St Paul’s. It did make me wonder: harps and fire; no relation to Brunhilda’s Rock or anything?
JB
No!
MC
Your Festival commission is very specifically for that acoustic, for that place. It is very specifically for St Paul’s Cathedral, and it was a very, very difficult commission in that it was a tough brief because it insisted on you making a link between St Paul’s and Japan, and links between St Paul’s and Japan do not spring to mind immediately, except perhaps the “Far East End”!
JB
I’m glad you said that and not me!!
MC
But you suddenly hit on a fantastic link.
JB
I didn’t suddenly hit on it. This piece was commissioned nearly two years ago. A lot of pieces are commissioned a long time before the concert, generally to give people time to raise the money to do it, but this piece, it was nearly two years ago when it was commissioned. My initial thought was simply that there is no connection between Japan and St Paul’s Cathedral. I went through a lot of ideas, I really did, before I got to the idea of fire, because I then just started thinking about St Paul’s Cathedral and the idea of fire and the Blitz. Then I immediately thought Hiroshima, and it seemed very obvious, and I just thought that’s an obvious link: fire. But, having just got to that point, you then think, what on earth am I going to use for a text?
MC
And that’s when you found that remarkable book.
JB
Yes, that’s when I found this book. Because then I got it in my head that it would be great to have an old description of Hiroshima before the bomb. I thought there must be a guidebook description somewhere. You set yourself these problems! One of the first places I went to was a bookshop in Bloomsbury which just does Asian books. I think it is called the Asian Bookshop. I could be wrong, but it’s on Museum Street or nearby. I found copy of this book, which is Murray’s Handbook to Japan. It was published in the 19th Century. The man in the shop, who was very helpful, showed it to me and I read it and I thought, this is just what I want, and then I looked in the front and it said £120, so I thought, oh no! I wondered if I could sit in the corner and just write it all out! I thought no, he will kick me out! So I went home and I did a big search on the internet. I went to abebooks.com, which is one of my favourite places, and I found there were only another four copies around the world. Obviously they did not print very many of these, because Japan had only opened up to the West in the 19th Century, so very few people were going to Japan. This was 20 shillings in the 19th Century, which was a lot for a book, so they must have only published a few of them. Anyway, eventually I did find it for a lot less.
MC
And then you opened it, and you looked up the index, and you found…?
JB
Hiroshima. What is brilliant about this description is that it is quite short. There was not very much to do in Hiroshima. It was just a little place. Because of the description of it, which is just a nice description, it is incredibly poignant. The person who wrote this could not possibly have known just how invested with poignancy this description would become. If I just read you the first little bit, it says – well, it recommends some hotels, and then it says: “Hiroshima: capital of the province of Aki, and seat of a Prefecture, stands at the mouth of the Otagawa in a fine position, protected by hills from the northern blasts.” Now, that just immediately is so poignant!
MC
So ironic.
JB
It goes on just to describe simple things. There is a beautiful description at the end, where it says you can go up the hill if you want to, the hill rising immediately behind the castle. Some tea-houses stand on it; it affords a beautiful view. And then there is just a lovely description. It says: “To the left is the sea, to the right rises a conical shaped hill. In front is the long road running down towards the pine-clad islet in the harbour. Beyond all spreads the sea, glittering amidst rocky islands, chief of which is Mijajima, with its feathery peaks.” It really gets you just to read that! That was what made me feel that I wanted the piece to be about loss, and about what we preserve after great loss, what is important to us, what we want to keep. Because I thought I must have something in Japanese in the piece, to have that link between English and Japanese, St Paul’s and Japan, I thought I would put some really ancient haiku in the piece. Ian Ritchie, the Director of the Festival, was really pleased because they were actually featuring what is called tanka, the very early haiku, by the aristocratic ladies of the court in Japan. So he was very pleased that I was putting in these haiku, because they are all by women and they are all at least a thousand years old. There are three of them, and they are at least a thousand years old, and one of them is 1300 years old." ...
Source: © Judith Bingham and Malcolm Crowthers, Gresham College, 12 July 2006
British composer and singer, Judith Bingham.
Photo credit: www.musicweb-international.com. With thanks.
Composer Judith Bingham and Photographer Malcolm Crowthers
...
Judith Bingham (JB)
I just always tell students you have to think about the quality of sound that you want before you actually put the chords down on the paper because, with voices in particular, but with anything really, but voices in particular, where you place the note in the voice, what register you place it, really, really affects the quality of the sound. You can soon create a very muddy sound by putting singers in the wrong parts or in the weak part of their register. If you want to create a certain sort of sound, you have got to think very carefully about where you are going to place those notes. It is true of everything, but singers more than anything. You can really ruin something. You can see students thinking, “Oh no, that’s not how I meant it to sound at all!” They just want a big, bright chord.
Malcolm Crowthers (MC)
You also love big, brash chords! You are fantastically fierce with brass. Your brass is savage. It is like those tanks that roll in at the beginning. There is an amazing piece called Prague, and it opens up with the tanks rolling in, and you feel you are going to be ground by them! It is lovely, because the piece ends with the tanks rolling out again.
JB
Initially, when people listen to a piece, in those first few seconds, how they listen is just about sounds. That sounds banal, but you are sucking people in with the quality of the sound.
MC
Absolutely, and I have picked up on something. Now, that piece, it does something, you do something in it which you do very interestingly in your two Japanese-related pieces for the City of London Festival, is that in a very theatrical gesture, you raise a curtain at the beginning. You have, in this case, the notes of the organ opened up, and it was beautiful; just suddenly you were in this fantastic world.
I don’t know how many of you heard the Cruelty of the Gods, the piece for oboe and koto, which was done at St Lawrence Jewry last week? That opened up with plucked sounds on the koto, as the implacable emperor about to send his poor old daughter into stardom, truly, he turns her into a star, but what happens is the notes rise up, and as they get to the top, one of the notes is taken over by another voice, and as the person’s voice falls away, that note is hanging in the air. It is incredible! It is like you are there! It is like you are in a world that has already been; it is like it is already going on, and you just raise the curtain on it. It is fantastic! You do that in your two Japanese pieces. I heard it on the piano yesterday. It is not quite the same as a harp, which we are going to have in the middle of St Paul’s. It did make me wonder: harps and fire; no relation to Brunhilda’s Rock or anything?
JB
No!
MC
Your Festival commission is very specifically for that acoustic, for that place. It is very specifically for St Paul’s Cathedral, and it was a very, very difficult commission in that it was a tough brief because it insisted on you making a link between St Paul’s and Japan, and links between St Paul’s and Japan do not spring to mind immediately, except perhaps the “Far East End”!
JB
I’m glad you said that and not me!!
MC
But you suddenly hit on a fantastic link.
JB
I didn’t suddenly hit on it. This piece was commissioned nearly two years ago. A lot of pieces are commissioned a long time before the concert, generally to give people time to raise the money to do it, but this piece, it was nearly two years ago when it was commissioned. My initial thought was simply that there is no connection between Japan and St Paul’s Cathedral. I went through a lot of ideas, I really did, before I got to the idea of fire, because I then just started thinking about St Paul’s Cathedral and the idea of fire and the Blitz. Then I immediately thought Hiroshima, and it seemed very obvious, and I just thought that’s an obvious link: fire. But, having just got to that point, you then think, what on earth am I going to use for a text?
MC
And that’s when you found that remarkable book.
JB
Yes, that’s when I found this book. Because then I got it in my head that it would be great to have an old description of Hiroshima before the bomb. I thought there must be a guidebook description somewhere. You set yourself these problems! One of the first places I went to was a bookshop in Bloomsbury which just does Asian books. I think it is called the Asian Bookshop. I could be wrong, but it’s on Museum Street or nearby. I found copy of this book, which is Murray’s Handbook to Japan. It was published in the 19th Century. The man in the shop, who was very helpful, showed it to me and I read it and I thought, this is just what I want, and then I looked in the front and it said £120, so I thought, oh no! I wondered if I could sit in the corner and just write it all out! I thought no, he will kick me out! So I went home and I did a big search on the internet. I went to abebooks.com, which is one of my favourite places, and I found there were only another four copies around the world. Obviously they did not print very many of these, because Japan had only opened up to the West in the 19th Century, so very few people were going to Japan. This was 20 shillings in the 19th Century, which was a lot for a book, so they must have only published a few of them. Anyway, eventually I did find it for a lot less.
MC
And then you opened it, and you looked up the index, and you found…?
JB
Hiroshima. What is brilliant about this description is that it is quite short. There was not very much to do in Hiroshima. It was just a little place. Because of the description of it, which is just a nice description, it is incredibly poignant. The person who wrote this could not possibly have known just how invested with poignancy this description would become. If I just read you the first little bit, it says – well, it recommends some hotels, and then it says: “Hiroshima: capital of the province of Aki, and seat of a Prefecture, stands at the mouth of the Otagawa in a fine position, protected by hills from the northern blasts.” Now, that just immediately is so poignant!
MC
So ironic.
JB
It goes on just to describe simple things. There is a beautiful description at the end, where it says you can go up the hill if you want to, the hill rising immediately behind the castle. Some tea-houses stand on it; it affords a beautiful view. And then there is just a lovely description. It says: “To the left is the sea, to the right rises a conical shaped hill. In front is the long road running down towards the pine-clad islet in the harbour. Beyond all spreads the sea, glittering amidst rocky islands, chief of which is Mijajima, with its feathery peaks.” It really gets you just to read that! That was what made me feel that I wanted the piece to be about loss, and about what we preserve after great loss, what is important to us, what we want to keep. Because I thought I must have something in Japanese in the piece, to have that link between English and Japanese, St Paul’s and Japan, I thought I would put some really ancient haiku in the piece. Ian Ritchie, the Director of the Festival, was really pleased because they were actually featuring what is called tanka, the very early haiku, by the aristocratic ladies of the court in Japan. So he was very pleased that I was putting in these haiku, because they are all by women and they are all at least a thousand years old. There are three of them, and they are at least a thousand years old, and one of them is 1300 years old." ...
Source: © Judith Bingham and Malcolm Crowthers, Gresham College, 12 July 2006
British composer and singer, Judith Bingham.
Photo credit: www.musicweb-international.com. With thanks.
posted by Garth Trinkl at 9:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home