Musgrave at 90 in 2018
2nd May 2017
© Kate Mount
Several performances and premiere recordings marking the occasion are already scheduled to take place in Europe and America in 2018 for which Thea will travel widely to attend. Having just completed a chamber reduction of her seminal opera Mary, Queen of Scots, she is now working on a new ten-minute work for piano and baritone which takes its text from Calderón’s La Vida Es Sueño, a Missa Brevis, and an organ piece based on J.S. Bach’s Orgelbüchlein.
Novello have brought together tributes, in-depth programme notes and previously unseen photos in a new celebratory brochure:
Alternatively, view Thea Musgrave at Ninety: A Catalogue of Operas
If you would like to find out more about Thea’s music, the plans already in place for the 2017/18 season, or have your performances lined up, then please do not hesitate to contact promotion@musicsales.co.uk. Find us on Facebook and Twitter using the official hashtag #Musgrave90.
An Interview with Thea Musgrave
In anticipation of the celebrations to come, Thomas Le Brocq of Novello & Co Ltd. put a few questions to the composer:
What was studying music like in Paris like right after the war?
There was such a positive feeling of hope and freedom in Paris right after the war that I have always considered myself to be lucky to be there at that specific moment. Coming after the horrors of the war and the occupation, it was easier to speak about important things and form lifelong friends.
What are your memories of Nadia Boulanger?
I have so many that it is hard to single them out. Her amazing focus on detail proved the importance of music on a daily basis to me, and her personal warmth and encouragement of me gave me the courage to pursue my own individual musical ideas.
It seems, looking back, that composing music in the twentieth century was a battleground for ideas, each artist looking to plant their flag as prominently as possible; was that important to you?
What was important to me at the time was hearing other people’s music and understanding the ideas that were behind the music. I was never part of an ideological group of composers, but was close to a few composers who are very important to me personally. Richard Rodney Bennett and Iain Hamilton were lifelong friends from the early years.
What inspires you to write? Art, poetry, everyday life?
I need to focus on an idea to write music. That idea can come from poetry such as Songs for a Winter’s Evening set to poems of Robert Burns, or The Voices of our Ancestors to poems from the ancient world; or paintings such as the Turners in Turbulent Landscapes; the inherent variety of percussion instruments in my Journey through a Japanese Landscape for Evelyn Glennie; or simply a dramatic idea for programme music – such as Orfeo, Pierrot, Narcissus; or even an abstract idea which then works itself into a ‘dramatic-abstract’ colloquy such as my Concerto for Orchestra, as well the concertos for clarinet, horn, viola and oboe.
To what extent does the work of other composers influence your writing?
I am drawn to composers who really have their own voice and something to say. I feel I can learn from the way they say it, but I feel I am always true to my own voice.
Has there been a performance of your work which has particularly struck you or taken on a new life that you didn’t expect?
Well, there hasn’t been a performance yet … but the piece I am writing on commission just now – a song for solo baritone and piano based on the famous soliloquy of Calderón – has literally transformed itself into a dramatic monologue similar to a full opera scene. It has gripped me increasingly, revealing more of its breadth and its depth and significance as I daily try to live up to its challenges and do it justice musically.
You have ten operas to your name; would you say that’s the form of music you are most comfortable writing? How important is ‘theatre’ in your concert works?
I tend to think of music as drama – moving from one place to another and usually through some kind of conflict. That is why I feel opera is so natural for me. But I also have always seen and felt the inherent drama of instrumental music which, as you know, has created in my catalogue a whole genre of ‘dramatic-abstract’ works without singers.
You have written such a large body of works but as yet no symphony, is there something about that form which does not appeal to you?
Although never a symphony and that kind of formal structure, I have written many orchestral works, though usually with a dramatic element.
You’ve recently made a new reduction of your opera Mary, Queen of Scots. What was it like returning to your score, your first grand opera, now?
I loved reliving my acquaintance with this watershed opera of mine. Of course it is an entirely different process to reconceive a work you’ve already written to composing it in the first place. But I admit to loving every minute of it and finding new solutions for the new version with reduced forces – which means reconsidering the proportions of scenes as well as the continuity of the story.
Over a long career, unsurprisingly, your compositional style has evolved. But do you see elements of your early work in what you are creating now, or was it different work for a different era?
If I look carefully from one early work to another I can see how I got to where I am now. However, I would never have seen this from where I stood looking forward from my early works. And yet the progression matches that of my own growth and development in life, where there are always new influences and the one constant is change. Whereas the form and notes my works take might have changed over the years, I feel that what I have to say has only become clearer and truer.
You’ve written so much for all types of ensembles, is there anything left to write? Is there a piece of music you are burning to compose?
I truly have not really contemplated this issue – being involved even these days in three commissions that loom in front of me. I always take my deadlines seriously, and know myself well enough to know that I must stretch my commitments out even more now to avoid pressure.
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