Interview by Julie Groves

 

Settled in the quiet on a bright day in April - having collared Edwin Roxburgh at a music festival a few weeks beforehand - our meeting at The Warehouse on London’s Southbank felt altogether more suitable and collected compared to the frenzied atmosphere of our initial meeting. Edwin had agreed in his unassuming, generous and patient manner, to take part in an interrogation for the Composers section of the BFS website. Roxburgh is, on first impression, a reserved, thoughtful man whose acceptance of my failing-recording-equipment scenario with utter calmness will always endear him to me! Many frantic scribblings later, I found myself incredibly grateful for an utterly absorbing hour or two of conversation in which I often got so carried away with our discussion that I actually forgot to make notes.

What strikes you after a few minutes in Edwin Roxburgh’s company is that the man himself is saturated in knowledge; knowledge within a fine, open mind that is constantly seeking the next exciting discovery – whether in the field of music or not. This is a man whose experience and knowledge of varying disciplines is immense. He is an author; an international conductor; a renowned oboist; a director of many new-music ventures and of course, an internationally acclaimed composer who possesses an evidently agile and absorbent mind.

Roxburgh’s pedagogical lineage is quite something, having received his composition tuition from Nadia Boulanger and Luigi Dallapiccola who received their tuition, in turn, from greats such as Fauré and Schoenberg respectively. Boulanger herself refused to take on any pupil who didn’t already have a sound and thorough academic foundation: high expectations that are also evident in Roxburgh’s gentle but firm attitude. For him, good performance is utmost and is inevitably the marker by which he writes. Performance in itself is his perception of composition – his experience of, and also the ultimate manifestation of, his writing.

The different areas of Roxburgh’s practices have undoubtedly, from their various threads, channelled into his writing. This is a composer who effectuates any branch of pursuit fully and with integrity. Hearing how he was once, in his early years, consumed by the piano revealed the manner in which he throws himself into different projects with complete enthusiasm: By the time he was 18, Roxburgh had already gained his ARCM in performance (on piano) and his LRAM in teaching. To this day, he cannot live without playing Chopin at least once a week – and here we are speaking of a man known significantly better for his oboe playing! This entirely thorough way of working means that his expertise spans various disciplines with absolute confidence.

Roxburgh is currently working on a new book Conducting for a New Era which focuses on how to conduct progressive music written since the 1950s. He describes how, often, so much new music is conducted without a real sense of the complete picture and is simply executed with a goal that requires you get from the beginning to the end in safety. He is passionate about the fact that progressive music needs to be addressed with the same progressive attitude in conducting-technique. If players are expected to perform in five against four and four against five simultaneously, then the conductor should also be capable of conducting both these time-signatures at once. He has the same outlook in the context of New Music performance, and the lack of learnt facility for the execution of new music concerns him greatly:

“So much rests on the quality of a first performance. You can do a terrible disservice to new music with a bad first performance.”

“There is too much concentration on ‘the repertoire’ in colleges and universities. Generally, there is not enough practical tuition focused on contemporary music. I don’t understand any musician who is not concerned about the music of our own time.”

 

His work as an advocate of new music performance manifests itself in work with the London Festival Orchestra and the Warehouse Ensemble; in his director’s role with the Park Lane Group; his work in forming the Department of Twentieth Century Performance and Study at the RCM and his creative involvement at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

His involvement with young, talented performers also fills him with immense gratitude, and his enjoyment in the individual responses of various musicians is evident:

“I feel fortunate to have young, gifted performers amongst those who play my music… I would hate to feel that there’s only one way of performing my music. There is the real importance of the performer and of the individual… One of the most important elements is the subjective artistry of the individual performer and what they bring of themselves to the piece.”

 

He has often, and often through circumstance of commission, written with a particular performer in mind. He explains, sadly, how he had always had the voice of the late English tenor Philip Langridge as the character of Abelard in his opera of the same name. A performance that, will now, never be realised.

Apt examples of flute pieces written for specific performers are his Flute Music with an Accompaniment for Michael Cox and the 1991 BFS commission for Susan Milan - Stardrift:

“I have been privileged to know and work with wonderful flautists all my life. Over the years commissions have come from: Michael Cox (Flute Music with an Accompaniment - recorded on NMC D161 Solos and Duos), Susan Milan (Stardrift for solo flute), James Galway (cadenzas for Mozart's G maj. Concerto (performed on all of his recordings), Sebastian Bell - very much missed (Quartet for Flute and Strings) and Christopher Hyde-Smith (Dreamtime). 

Dreamtime is particularly interesting because it was composed for Chris’s 6 different flutes: piccolo, flute in C, flute d'amore (in A), alto flute, tenor flute and bass flute. There are 2 versions, one for flute and piano, and the other for flute and strings. Both versions can be played on just piccolo, flute in C and alto.”

 

All of these flute pieces are published by United Music Publishers Ltd. for those wishing to explore them further.

The performances captured on the recently released NMC recording are virtuosic and compelling from start to finish, especially Cox’s rendering of the Flute Music with an Accompaniment.

Roxburgh’s experience of writing for specific performers “…is rather like doing a portrait of somebody, in which you paint or compose characteristics of the subject that the subject may not be aware of…”, and in writing for a specific instrument, his answer is equally energetic “they are all equally fascinating”.

 

On the subject of performers themselves, Roxburgh is particularly enthusiastic about the attitudes and work of performers such as Melinda Maxwell, Chris Redgate and Paul Goodey:

“They are tremendously inspiring. All of them treat the instrument as an imaginative adventure and that coincides with my own perception of composition as an adventure of discovery.”

 

This curiosity for sound itself is apparent in his use of extended techniques in both orchestral and solo contexts:

“The attraction of both multiphonics and electronics is like any other aspect of the character of an instrument. There are always new dimensions to explore. The distinctive sound of multiphonics is beautiful, if learned properly… The ‘funny noise’ syndrome irritates me.”

 

In writing extended techniques, he does consult performers but prefers to write what he wants to write, first!

“Composing is a way of thinking about music. Style and idiom constantly evolve. I try to think of a new vocabulary for each piece. I like to start with a blank page… There is no one way of beginning the process. Once you’ve started, like a novel the characters and substance dictate the direction of the piece.

When you are working on a piece, as said by Stravinsky, ‘to lose a day is to lose a week’. Composition is not a habit, it’s a compulsion and although it is very hard work it is inspiring in itself… I am pulled towards the profound. I abhor triviality in music and I aim to put profound thought and feeling into my work. We should have fun, of course, and I have had immense fun working with performers – especially with actors for How Pleasant to Know Mr .Lear and also in my writing for television.”

 

This concern for the profound and for writing with real meaning comes across in several of Roxburgh’s recent works relating to the Iraq invasion. He recently won a British Academy Award for his oboe concerto Elegy for Ur which addresses the humanitarian losses that took place during the conflict and also the terrible destruction of the ancient artefacts at the Baghdad Museum. Ur was the ‘womb of civilisation’ and the amount of heritage lost to the war was immense.

In light of Roxburgh’s evident concern for the loss of this global cultural-heritage it is interesting to find that his specialist subject during his time at Cambridge was the Renaissance. This particular passion for history has held a life-long appeal for him. As a composer, he differs entirely from Stockhausen who disconnected himself from any music written before 1940. Stockhausen had no interest in relating his work to any music of the past, but Roxburgh finds it incredibly important to see one’s own work in the context of history. He values greatly the influence of music from the middle-ages through to the present day as a perspective for his own imagination.

He emphasizes that he believes there is “the importance of the heritage within ourselves”, to the extent of the entirely unique experiences that someone brings to a work – the impossibility of ever listening to or creating or performing anything without this inherited knowledge and experience being present.

Roxburgh’s passions and fascinations saturate his work: he speaks of attentively following the progress of the new Hadron Collider, of his interest in the Saturn Cassini Mission which has revealed incredible information, and of the ‘physics of science and the physics of music’. Einstein’s work in searching for a single equation to explain the nature of the Universe has been a constant source of inspiration for him, especially Einstein’s assertion that ‘the imagination is as important as the science’ and in Roxburgh’s study of the Renaissance around the concept of the ‘harmony of the spheres’.

The Renaissance and mediaeval history as an inspiration have resulted in his opera Abelard which explores the life of mediaeval philosopher and scholar Pierre Abelard. Abelard’s relationship with Heloise is one of the most celebrated love affairs of all time, and Roxburgh also uses the opera to explore the construct of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance as ‘the first manifestation of the subjective inspiration in art’.  Subjective inspiration and the human condition are at the forefront of Roxburgh’s opera and in his Elegy.

Our discussion on the Renaissance brought us back around to the idea of period performance and this idea that every performer imparts a unique knowledge to a work according to their unique experience and heritage. Roxburgh has great respect for Harnoncourt’s methods when it comes to informed performances: “Style and idiom are adaptable things. Conclusions should be based on knowledge and good taste… We have no true proof of authenticity… Good taste is the marker.” And on Bach: “…the greatest romantic composer!”

 

Roxburgh does, however, remember his first experience of Bach’s St. Anne Fugue which, still to this day, is the greatest performance of this piece in his mind. The nine-year-old Edwin (a probationary chorister at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral at the time) was blown away by this particular piece being thundered out (with, most likely, little attention paid to ‘authentic’ performance practice) with the great 32 foot pipe at full force and the air vibrating around him.

Roxburgh is still busily winning awards, and his next commission, due to be performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican on 8th October 2010 is a result of the Elgar Trust Award. The work is a concerto for orchestra and is “a variety of expression in dialogue”.

When asked which work he would particularly wish to save in a disaster he replies: “Oh, most likely the concerto for orchestra as I haven’t heard that yet!”

 

As we finished up our afternoon’s chat Roxburgh closed by referring to a statement made by the philosopher Bertrand Russell at a 90th birthday interview. Russell had been asked what great conclusions he had come to in his long life, and the answer was always to doubt his conclusions:

“I think that this is how every aspect of art and culture should be treated. We should never be satisfied…”

 

© Julie Groves 2010.

 

For more information about Edwin Roxburgh:

http://www.ump.co.uk/composer%20pages/roxburgh.htm