The name’s Barry: John Barry

A sad weekend for music: news of the death of American composer Milton Babbitt, Welsh soprano Dame Margaret Price, and this morning also of the death of film composer John Barry.

Man with the golden touch: John Barry

Barry is perhaps best known for scoring eleven films in the Bond franchise, as well as the Oscar-winning soundtracks to, amongst other films, Born Free and Dances With Wolves.

Everyone has their own favourite Bond-Barry soundtrack: for me, it’s Mooraker from 1979. MGM’s answer to Star Wars, which had premiered two years previously, and an attempt to take Bond into space, the music is a rich tapestry of sound which capture the grandeur of space, as well as the slow-moving rotation of megalomaniac Hugo Drax’s epic space-station.

(In 1998, Barry also wrote the music for Play It By Heart, an altogether different, non-Bond movie, which to my ears seems to use ccast-offs from the Moonraker music, as though there were bits lying around on the floor which Barry re-used; I love that soundtrack as well.)

A sad weekend for music: here’s to all of them.

Was It Good For You: Robert Rumble.

Continuing the series profiling musical alumni of the University of Kent. This week, Robert Rumble.

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Robert Rumble

When were you at Kent ?

2003-2006

What subject did you study ?

BA in History

What occupation are you now engaged in ?

Business Archivist – Marks & Spencer.

If music is not your profession, do you participate in any musical experiences now ?

No, but I’m considering joining my local choral society.

How were you involved in music whilst at Kent ?

University Chorus 2003-2006, Choral Representative 2005-2006

What did you gain from your University music experience, and has this helped you in any way since leaving Kent ?

It is certainly an excellent feature of my CV in the ‘hobbies and interests’ section.  I feel this has helped in job interviews.

What was your most memorable musical experience at Kent ?

The 2005 & 2006 Colyer-Fergusson concerts (Verdi Requiem & Mozart).

What would you say to current musical students at the University ?

Embrace and enjoy the Kent Music Society – I have nothing but happy memories from my time in the society.

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If you’re an alumnus and would like to be featured, get in touch via the Music Department website: we’d love to hear from you!

Feeling All Rite? Frith-Hill unleash Stravinsky’s monster in lunchtime concert

Four-hands, one piano, one twentieth-century masterpiece ; internationally-acclaimed pianists Peter Hill and Benjamin Frith unleash Stravinsky’s monster, The Rite of Spring, at the Gulbenkian Theatre.

The first of this term’s lunchtime concerts on Monday 31 January in the Gulbenkian Theatre is an unmissable occasion: two of the country’s leading pianists grappling with Stravinsky’s notorious, barbarous tour de force. More commonly heard in its orchestral incarnation, the piece caused a scandal at its premiere in 1913; this is an opportunity to hear it in its piano-duo arrangement, which loses none of its vibrantly destructive energy.

The concert starts at 1.10pm.Admission free, suggested donation of £3.

If you can’t wait a week, here’s a clip of the last part played by Michael Tilson Thomas and Ralph Grierson…

See the department’s on-line events diary for further details here.

Furley Page logo
Sponsors of the Lunchtime Concert series

Was It Good For You: Suzy Walton

Continuing the series profiling musical alumni of the University of Kent. This week, Suzy Walton.
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When were you at Kent?
September 2007 – July 2010

What subject did you study?
Mathematics

Suzy Walton
She's got your number: Suzy Walton

What occupation are you now engaged in?
I am currently doing a PGCE at Canterbury Christ Church University – training to be a Secondary School Mathematics teacher!!!

If music is not your profession, do you participate in any musical experiences now?
Kent University cannot get rid of me as I’m still involved in the Concert Band and Big Band this year! Having recently acquired my own tenor saxophone, I could not pass up the opportunity to continue playing in the Big Band. I’ve also become involved in the school bands at my first placement school which gives the students an opportunity to see me out of a teaching role.

How were you involved in music whilst at Kent?
When I was looking at universities to apply to, one of the most important things to me was whether or not they had a Music Society for me to continue playing my clarinet, hence why I fell in love with UKC. During my first week at university, I sought out the society and joined the Concert Band. In my second year I joined the committee as the Darwin College Rep. and in my final year I managed to juggle being the Music Society Secretary with my Maths degree! I also borrowed a friend’s tenor saxophone during her year abroad and taught myself enough to join Big Band!

What did you gain from your University music experience, and has this helped you in any way since leaving Kent?
During my time in the Music Society, I met so many new people who all had a passion for making music – like me. Without being involved in the bands I would not have had as good a time at Kent as I did. It’s lovely to still be in contact and to still be able to take part. Being able to play in the bands on a Wednesday is exactly the break I need from a stressful course!

What was your most memorable musical experience at Kent?
My most memorable musical experience has to be Artsfest 2010. Knowing that it would be my last official Artsfest as a member of the University of Kent made it more special than any other. Despite the fact that I was running round all over campus sorting things out, I still thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. Performing on the main stage was fantastic and being able to see my friends in the audience. I was also asked to do the honourable task of pulling the party poppers during the Champagne Polka. Thank goodness it all went according to plan! Finally, being outside, watching the fireworks with the rest of the committee was the best bit. I’d worked closely with Yasmeena Daya, the President for 2009/10 and standing there with her, reminiscing on the year was so lovely.

What would you say to current musical students at the University?

Get involved whole-heartedly in the University of Kent and get a well-rounded experience. But most importantly, get a good mix between studying and enjoying yourself.

Satie: the Classical style gone mad

In 1917, amidst the latter stages of the horrors of the First World War, with the guns echoing over the disastrous offences in Ypres and Passchendaele, and the introduction of a new weapon by the British called the tank, Satie was writing his Sonatine bureaucratique.

Representing a return to the civilised values of the Classical period (and anticipating Stravinsky’s much-vaunted neo-Classical phase by three years), the piece also confronts those same values head-on and takes them apart. The work is full of forbidden ostinati, passages of needless repetition, and juxtaposed blocks of material in Cubist fashion. All these techniques serve to undermine a Classical sense of order and organic unity, where material is unified through a system of related keys and formal principles.

The piece parades a series of parodies and inversions of well-known Classical ideas, especially melodic material from Clementi’s piano sonata Op 36 no.1.

Yet, as listening to the piece proves, it’s all done with a sound Classical sensibility; texturally, Satie’s evocation of the Classical piano sonata is rooted firmly in the appropriate sound-world. But other rules have been overthrown: there are no formal development or recapitulation sections, the system of related keys has been usurped, and the Classical sense of never repeating an idea in exactly the same way is confounded by blatant, almost defiant, passages of repetition.

Erik SatieComposed in  1917, at a time when the rest of the world had gone mad with wholesale slaughter and  mechanised forms of destruction,  Satie’s evocation of the Classical period is a reminiscence of, almost a hankering after, an old order where unity and structure prevailed; at the same time, his usurping of its principles reflects the breakdown of society and its values which was going on around him: despite its apparent jocular tone, the shadow of the Western Front is never far away.

A turn to neo-Classicism was on the cards musically for others: Stravinsky’s Pulcinella would not appear until 1920. Debussy’s re-appraisal of Classical principles in the very late set of instrumental sonatas, of which he only lived to complete three of a projected series of six, still had its foot firmly in the Impressionist world. Satie’s neo-Classical sonatina represented a much more deliberate assessment of Classicism’s sound as well as its forms. Of course, he had already taken on Mozart (and won) in his Tyroliene Turque written four years before, parodying Mozart’s famous Rondo alla turca. But his appraisal and ensuing dissection of Classicism is much more involved in the Sonatine bureaucratique; it may be poking fun at Clementi in a similar fashion to his earlier ribbing of Mozart, but this is much more serious. It’s not just about Clementi, it’s about the very essence of Classical values at a time when values seemed to be disappearing everywhere else.

Eat your heart out, neo-Classical Stravinsky: Satie got there first.

Rites of spring: new brochure published on-line

The new brochure for Spring into Summer has now been published on-line, with details of all the musical events at the University over the coming months.

The Lunchtime Concert series kicks off with Stravinsky’s four-hands piano version of The Rite of Spring performed by the internationally-acclaimed duo of Peter Hill and Benjamin Frith; later in the term, the Colyer-Fergusson Cathedral Concert includes more Stravinsky, as the Symphony Orchestra plays the 1919 version of the Firebird Suite alongside Mozart’s Requiem with the University Chorus; the Concert and Big Band will present their usual barn-storming Gulbenkian Theatre concert in February; the Chamber Choir explore choral music from England, Scotland and Wales in the Cathedral Crypt in February and will give a second concert, in Wye, in April; the Camerata performs Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll in March; plus three Jazz @ 5’s.

Big Band team up with St. Edmund’s School for a charity gig in March, and keep an eye out later in the term for details about the Cecilian Choir concert and also the Music Theatre Society’s annual production at The Playhouse, Whitstable.

It promises to be a cultural cornucopia: don’t miss it! Click here to download the brochure as a PDF.

Bartok’s Bluebeard: centenary year

2011 sees one hundred years since Bartok first began writing Bluebeard’s Castle, a dark and brooding masterpiece; begun in 1911 when Bartok was thirty, it was first performed in 1918. It’s his only opera, a one-act work in which only two characters appear on-stage: the secretive Duke and the inquisitive Judith, whose desire to discover what lies behind each of the seven locked doors in Bluebeard’s castle will eventually be her doom.

It’s a masterpiece: the visual element is so brilliantly rendered in the orchestral score that it almost makes a staged realisation unnecessary. The glittering yet bloody armoury, the sweeping views of Bluiebeard’s seemingly limitless kingdom, the dazzling treasury where the priceless artefacts are tinged with blood, the lake of tears – the music creates these scenes so well, you almost don’t need to see a stage production’s version: better to leave it to the imagination.

The arguments rage over whether Judith deserves her fate – her curiosity uncovers an ever-deepening nightmare as each door is opened, until the final door is opened to reveal all Bluebeard’s previous wives, whom she is to join – and the psychological or pyschosexual analysis of Bluebeard himself. Does Judith’s nosiness make her fate inevitable ? She knows Bluebeard is a private person, yet she seduces and wiles him into giving her the keys and letting her open each door: does she get what she deserves ?

You can see each act on YouTube: explore the dark and dangerous world of Bartok’s Bluebeard, and decide for yourself.

In the picture: Jazz @ 5 photos

And a belated Happy New Year! With various technical issues resolved, it’s back to work, and we start the new blog-year with an album of photos from the last Jazz @ 5 in December – the snow-and-ice-ridden gig that defied the weather to go ahead.

There’s lots of musical events to look forward to in the coming months; the new on-line calendar and downloadable brochure will be published to the website soon. With not one, but two concerts featuring Stravinsky (always the sign of a good term!), contemporary choral music from the Chamber Choir, the usual roof-raising Gulbenkian gig with the Concert and Big Bands, European sacred music from the Cecilian Choir, and the small matter of a Mozart Requiem in the Cathedral: it promises to be a packed several months.

Stay in touch!

Images

Photos as usual from the creative artistry of Mick Norman.