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No (resistance and vision part 1) (1999-2004) |
For symphony orchestra
Detailed work on this composition was begun more or less at the same time as US and British leaders ordered the invasion of Iraq, supposedly as the next phase in their so-called ‘war on terror’. ‘Terrorism’, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, is defined by the US Army itself as ‘the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature… through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear’, in other words what the US government and its allies have been perpetrating throughout the non-Western world for decades, in their drive for global domination, and the wealth, control of natural resources and ‘security’ that come with it.
The question of whether and how an artist could respond to such a situation is far from clear. In what way can an artist’s response have any meaning? I am certainly not claiming to have answered such questions in the music. Can the music even ask them? I don’t know. I’m trying to understand, and not to be intimidated into a retreat to aestheticism.
My approach, such as it is, could be characterised as ‘resistance and vision’. That is to say, music which offers firstly resistance to the insiduous penetration of corporate values and, therefore, ‘dumbing-down’ into all aspects of culture; and secondly a vision of how music (and, by extension, its social context) could possibly be otherwise.
This composition is not absolute music. There is no such thing. On the other hand it isn’t a ‘description’ of a situation but a response to one. It might be objected that there is something contradictory about making a symphony orchestra, one of the most conservative of cultural institutions that presently exists in Western society, the vehicle for such a ‘progressive’ response. Indeed there is. But the first step in a strategy of ‘resistance and vision’ must be to expose contradictions. And part of the present ‘vision’ is the idea that, beyond those contradictions, an orchestra presents us with a rare model of a relatively large number of people working exceptionally closely together in pursuit of a shared aim. Thus each individual member of the orchestra has an essential contribution to make rather than being submerged in a ‘section’. In this sense the music is composed ‘against’ the orchestra rather than ‘for’ it, although at the same time it is intended to be composed ‘for’ the meaningful participation of musically-engaged people in a large group, which, whether this particular music even begins to achieve its objectives or not, is what an orchestra should surely be.
NO can be divided into six main ‘scenes’. The first consists of a six-times iterated sound-form on brass, woodwinds and percussion which becomes more internally differentiated as it expands in duration, with a high C sharp held by the violins throughout. The second expands downward in register from the high violins to an ‘impossibly’ complex string texture, which is then heard again, this time layer by layer, alternating with a sequence of harmonically static ‘choral’ events as its timbres gradually mutate. The third scene (beginning with an eruption from the percussion) generalises this alternation into a fragmented and interwoven form where the orchestra is divided into seven heterogeneous groups of between four and 25 instruments. The fourth, longest and ‘slowest’, focuses on unfolding further the melodic thread, which began with the high violins of the opening. The fifth builds up a canonic structure, which eventually collapses into the sixth, itself a continuation of the series of outbursts in the first, this time disintegrating into a ‘pointillism’ of noises.
NO was commissioned by the BBC and is dedicated to Edward Bond. It forms the first part of a cycle of compositions collectively entitled resistance & vision, which will comprise ensemble and theatre music as well as music for orchestra.
© Richard Barrett