Compositions

When Martin Anderson asked me to contribute a piece for string orchestra to an album to be dedicated to his fiancée Yodit Tekle and their son Alex, I was touched and moved by accounts of the tragic death of Yodit from cancer, leaving Martin bereft with a five-year-old son. A photograph of Yodit, showing a beautiful young woman of Eritrean descent, immediately brought to mind the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, whose name means ‘the beauty has come’, and I wrote the piece in response to gentle and noble qualities that I saw in Yodit’s image, without ever having met her. The music, in the form of a small vignette, is wistful but optimistic for Alex’s future.

As with my previous essays in this medium, Tango in Blue and Almost a Tango, this new chapter intends to simulate the spirit of the tango, more for reflection than for the dance floor. A quality of nostalgia is typical of most tangos. 

I wrote Last Tango before Sunrise at the request of publisher-critic-entrepreneur Martin Anderson, who asked for a work memorialising the love of his life, Yodit, recently deceased. I met Yodit only once, for a brief moment, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Martin introduced her thus: ‘meet the mother of my son’. Martin’s devotion merits the more than 100 compositions he has inspired to honour her memory.

It seems to me that modality is a sure and appropriate musical response to grief at the death of a beloved person. The Mixolydian melody of the Irish folksong ‘She Moved through the Fair’ underscores with rare poignancy a text that tells of a woman who comes as a ghost to the chamber of her lover, and announces that their ‘wedding day’ will shortly be held upon his joining her in death.

I thought for a long time before embarking on this piece, mainly because I realised that my bag of ‘tools’ (taking a cue from my late father – who in early life was an apprentice carpenter, and whose joiner’s tools I still use for practical tasks) was not fit for the purpose I had in mind. I therefore took time to fashion new ‘tools’ to address the material that had presented itself, and to shape it through a valid formal undertaking that would do justice to the solemn procession of grief through the human system.

To this end the work charts a progress through an organised series of sentiments, where abysmal horror and loss are not transformed but studied and endured, and as a result find a less threatening place to exist within the human mind. My purpose here was always to live with the ambiguity of providing a static monument to the beloved while at the same time showing that organic growth away from tragedy is what Nature demands that we accomplish in the name of equilibrium. A state that I believe we are all called to – grief or no grief.

Symphonic Song is a lyrical, at times dramatic, threnody for string orchestra. Commissioned by Martin Anderson as part of this recording project to commemorate the life of his late fiancée, Yodit Tekle, the work was composed in May 2015, in Tangier, Morocco. It is cast as a continuous dark-hued narrative, and incorporates some material from my Tenth Piano Sonata, dating from the same year. The sonorous fortissimo ending is marked Grandioso

There are a number of depictions of angels in music. There’s the solitary angel which accompanies Gerontius as he journeys from this life into the next, and in Elgar’s oratorio (and Newman’s poem) there is also a chorus of angels which sing ‘Praise to the holiest in the height’ around the heavenly throne. A host of angels is featured in settings of the Mass, which includes the Sanctus, where the words of the angels are taken from the Christmas story of the birth of Christ as they proclaim ‘Hosanna in the highest’.

Thinking of these hosts of angels made me think of the sound that might be made by the beating of their wings and my Wings of Memory represents this fluttering of angels’ wings. The fast-moving semiquavers provide a drone effect, rather like an intense murmur and notes of a different pitch are picked out in a pointillist way to represent the movement of the various angels. The piece has a three-part structure, with the opening material returning after a middle section which presents a melody in longer note-values, not quite like a hymn, but a song of reverence and love. The work is intended as a joyful commemoration of Yodit and a celebration of her life and it asks the listener to imagine her soul on its journey accompanied by a crowd of angels.

Single Malt, scored for string orchestra, was commissioned in 2015 by Martin Anderson in memory of his partner, Yodit. Cast in a single movement, the piece is more or less in two parts. The first, marked by an aggressive introduction which, after some contrapuntal tossing of themes across the strings, settles on a series of chords which might be characterised as unsettled. Divided violins later introduce a diatonic melody of an aching tenderness, and the section reintroduces segments of music heard in the first half. After an isolated solo violin intones the slow theme, the piece ends on a muted, divided chord. This young work has already enjoyed several performances in the USA, Russia and at the Edinburgh Festival, where Misha Rachlevsky led the Russian String Orchestra.

The piece is dedicated to Martin Anderson, in friendship, and in memory of Yodit – hodie tibi, cras mihi

‘Eritrean Love Song’ was composed by Beraki Gebremedhin, and when Martin Anderson invited me to contribute to his ‘Yodit’ project, I was delighted to discover the florid nature of this lovely composition and so obtained permission to arrange it. Although not imitating the original score exactly, I have tried to keep to the spirit of the piece, passing the main melody between the instruments, and keeping the soul of the piece constantly in mind, trying not to make it too ‘western classical’ in style. 

The traditional Eritrean song ‘Tigrinya Dance’ appears in many different versions. After an introduction the main tune, accompanied by a drum, present a charming, flowing tune in three-time. Again, I have passed the tune between the instruments. The second part of the song contains five beats, and the song drifts towards a dreamy ending.

  Although I never met Yodit, these pieces are dedicated to her memory. Martin tells me that the ‘Tigrinya Dance’ was one of her favourite Eritrean songs, and I hope this tribute to her life would have made her smile!

Once upon many a time, I was enjoying dinner with Martin in a Chinese restaurant in London, and the conversation turned to Music for My Love. An idea emerged to include a short, light and lively piece in the project, specifically dedicated to Alex, Yodit’s and Martin’s young son. I remembered a piece I had written as a youngster but had never finished, and so, for Alex, I completed the arrangement, recorded a demo with a friendly violinist, sent it to Martin and, with a helping hand and a sprinkle of magic from amanuensis Paul Mann, Alex’s Waltz emerged to pay tribute to a family that is held together through Music for My Love.

My piece in memory of Yodit was written in June 2015, a time of fulfilment, and I hope my piece expresses that feeling as well as sadness for her loss. It is a more or less continuous melody, passing from violas to violins; starting again on cellos then, after some mysterious pianissimo chords, continuing on violins and violas and finally coming to an end on a quiet D major chord.

An expanded version of A June Song for full orchestra later became the central slow movement of my Ninth Symphony.

Forty-four string players. All playing the same melody. Fragments into two. The new melody doubles the tempo but diminishes the dynamic. Then it splits into three. Then four. Then six. Then nine. Then thirteen. Then 22. Each time the new voice will be quicker than the previous one and will drag the dynamic down a notch. Until a point is arrived at where all 44 players are playing individually, and at the quietest dynamic of the piece, with the newest voice playing at the fastest rate. Total dissolution. Then, inevitably, everything begins to reassemble: the players start very gradually to play the same material as their neighbours, with decreasing speed but increasing volume. However, now they do not play unisono but in harmony, until a fortissimo tutti arrives, comprised, unlike the opening single line, of massive chords. A chorale.