Geoffrey King

Köln, St Aposteln, Tryptichon

How often have I written here “Listen to your feelings”. The statement is an echo of one I learned from a very wise man. So I felt very good and also very bad in the Cologne churches and these feelings are telling me that the Church is very important to me. In one church, delighted with the atmosphere, I drifted off to sleep like some old tramp. But when I woke, there was a service going on and a young woman was talking endlessly to a congregation consisting mostly of old ladies. Then another woman with a lower voice started up and I thought “Why do you have to talk so much? Why can’t you just perform ceremonies and go through necessary rituals and sing?” Fed up with the noise of these people speaking, I headed in the direction of a small chapel at the back of the nave where there was a statue of the Virgin, part of an elaborate altarpiece (a triptych). A man was kneeling there. From behind I could see his jaw moving and it looked mad. I couldn’t see if he was going through some litany or simply had some facial tic.

I looked at the golden altarpiece and asked myself whether it was really medieval or just a stylistic imitation from the 19^thcentury. I disturbed myself with this question and said “Why can’t you simply enjoy it, or not?” “Why is there always this issue: do I have permission to enjoy something: is it in good taste?” At that very moment the organist started up with a rendition of the Veni Creator. It was harmonized, yes, with that stupid soup of chords they use. “Okay” I said, “grin and bear it”. But to my indignation the musician then proceeded to alter the latter part of the melody, making it into something pentatonic and intolerable.  I said later to Michael Bonaventure “Why alter the melody of something which is already perfect, in fact, one of the greatest melodies we have?” I was altogether disturbed by these thoughts in the chapel and I said to myself pointedly that if the result of all my education is that I cannot enjoy an altarpiece unless I know its status and cannot enjoy some humble organ playing because it is “incorrect” then there’s something wrong with me. “Excuse me, professor, thank you for all you taught me, but where is my enjoyment in this world gone to at such moments of ‘knowledge’?” At such moments I am like some regimental type getting all worked up over whether the flag is upside down and whether the medals are hanging in the right order. Some joyless dried up grumpy old bugger, in other words.

So I left the church disturbed and with relief enjoyed the stupid tinsel of the shops which don’t claim to be anything other than stupid. And we all like stupid at the right moment. As I walked towards my appointment at the cathedral steps, I put the sour feelings behind me. Indeed the soupy chords are there so that those old ladies can sing along with the Gregorian melody. It makes it palatable to them. The shiny altarpiece exists for that man to mutter in front of it. I on the other hand live with a god who is difficult to reach and endure much that is unpalatable, so in these respects I have the problem, not those I have described functioning well in the church.

I have been wondering since Cologne if I am really a Catholic. Hamish sharply asked for an “explication” of this. I can’t say much about why the Church is important to me as it is an emotional thing and, of course, reasonably, one would assume that no gay man or woman would set foot near all that. I state my attraction, yet the point is drowned out by a”litany of moans”. Explicating that would be tantamount to defining oneself, yet how complex a thing is our life and feelings. We are defined with clarity BY our feelings and should not cast doubt on them. They are the guide. Probably a squirrel has the same problem defining himself as I do, but I do note that he is sensible enough to begin harvesting a walnut tree on the day that the walnuts become ripe.  So the creature feels, senses and functions exactly as intended by the Creator. The same goes for me.

Suffice it to say that during my Cologne trip my interest and attraction to the Church was alive at the same time as my annoyances in particular church buildings.  After all the pretensions and posturing and lies and manipulation are stripped away, one is left with feelings that tell the truth.  How I wish I had listened with more respect to this truth during my time.

Old Town Edinburgh from Calton Hill, G.W.Wilson 1870s

Hamish is my closest friend, albeit a fairly grumpy one. He has seen much of my joy and sorrow and commented on nearly all of what he has seen. There has been plenty of laughter along the way. It is now over 20 years since I left Edinburgh but the connection with him has grown stronger, not weaker. Artistic matters are the most personal of all and I have been able to discuss these with him, but not so candidly with others. Like everyone, I am guarded about what is most personal. Yet I have the necessary release of being able to share my private world with this one friend.

Though Hamish is not a musician, he hears me out on my ideas for writing music, saying what he finds positive and what he finds negative. And this is good as one wishes in any case to reach out to a public that does not comprise simply fellow composers. Our music descends into a purely professional activity if we are not careful. We speak to each other like doctors whose jargon excludes the general public. Yet music is intended for that general public just as much as medicine is. Indeed, is it not a sort of medicine? At college, where one sits in the auditorium amongst fellow students, listening to the work of other students, one acquires a taste for “purely professional activity”.

So, in a long conversation last night I explained what I have been planning for the group in Venice I am writing for. It is a radical departure for me, though in a direction I have tried to travel before. There is a point of departure, a direction, a route, a goal, and all things must align themselves if the voyage is to happen. Yes, I can be honest and admit that I have spent a great deal of time hanging around the harbour “getting ready” whereas I was actually “getting into trouble” of various kinds. After I talked to Hamish and he approved my ideas, I felt a nice puff of wind in my sails and some forward momentum as a result.

Geoffrey King

I have just returned from a trip to Cologne. It was uplifting and even an inspiration. I decidedly did NOT want to go, as I am about as enthusiastic a traveller as your average cat…….yet, when I am dragged unwillingly somewhere, like some moaning moggy, I frequently find I interact with the new environment at quite a deep level. That was the case this time. And as I mention cats here let me pay tribute to my dear little cat Tybert (she was Tibby for short). Having dragged her off once on holiday to the countryside, she did her best to fit in, poor darling. I still remember her astonished wide eyes the moment she saw her first cow.

Michael Bonaventure

I found somewhere cheap to stay and also made the journey in the delicious ICE train, so really I had no cause for complaint and should not have had to listen to my own whining about it. How does one silence these inner voices by the way? Yes, death.

The occasion for the visit was a concert by the organist Michael Bonaventure  -  a brilliant one  -  which included a work of mine mixing organ sound with electronic sound: Forbidden Mansions.

Michael played nine pieces and there in the middle was mine. I recognized it as soon as it started up, even though I have rarely heard it since the premiere in 1985. My mother attended that concert and after the piece she had a little cry whilst I was taking my bow, so the composer Ian McQueen told me. I was astonished when I heard about that as the work is really pretty grim, but I guess it was mainly the occasion that touched her. But I am not going to give an opinion of the piece here  -  if my mother was moved by it, if anyone is, all well and good.

The churches were open in Cologne, so I stepped into a number of them and prayed. And there was no fuss on the door  -  that stupid museum mentality we have with English cathedrals was absent. Well, the Cologne diocese is extremely well funded, apparently, so that explains that. These are working churches and getting on with the activities they were designed for. Catholic of course, thank goodness. By the way, I worked out why Cologne Cathedral looks so weird  -  every inch is covered in decoration and it could therefore be some alien spacecraft just landed there. I didn’t go inside this time.

I enjoyed the shopping streets and also the politeness of people working in cafés and restaurants and markets. In the Café Elefant on Weißenburgstraße I wrote a card to Roderik de Man, whose tremendous piece Crosscurrents ended Michael’s recital. An Egyptian man came to sit by me just at that moment and talked a long time about his divorce and various troubles. At first I found him an interesting prospect and then gradually realized he was just giving a tedious recital of his woes. I excused myself politely and carried on my way.

Luiz Henrique Yudo

I was lost in Cologne late at night several times and reproached myself bitterly about it as I didn’t bother carrying the map I had bought. My way of protesting I suppose.

As Michael said, the Germans are “our tribe” and so for that reason I guess one feels very much at home. So nice to have people obeying all the traffic rules and many other nice instances of courtesy. We were with composer Luiz Yudo too and the three of us were wholly delighted by the entire ethos. I was not as enthusiastic as they were however about the meal we had in a “pig restaurant”. I seemed to have an entire buttock on my plate propped up by some mashed potato and sauerkraut…………

(photos Huw Morgan)

The news of the death of my colleague and friend, the harpsichordist Annelie de Man, arrived today in a letter from her husband, the composer Roderik de Man.

Let me say something about what I most admired about Annelie. She was a first rate musician, a world class harpsichordist. I loved the way she could speak her mind and tell the truth about what she believed. She was everlastingly enthusiastic and positive and energetic. She dedicated herself to lifting up her instrument to a new level. She reached out and helped other musicians. I myself wrote a piece for her that certainly wouldn’t exist otherwise and she recorded it.

Notwithstanding the grief which is shared by many, I want above all to say to Annelie herself, congratulations. You achieved so much in this life. God blessed you with a high intelligence and high talent but you matched that with hard work and dedication. He is well pleased with you, we can be sure about that.

In 1987/88, when I was (briefly) doing a composer-in-residence job in the north of England, I started going out with a guy I met there. He wasn’t a student but was that sort of age. He’d left school and was already working. I was cheating on my partner, who lived in another city far away, so I was feeling uneasy about that. One day the young guy told me his favourite singer was Tracy Chapman. I smiled at him sweetly thinking to myself: “Why am I with this moron who likes pop music?” I assumed directly that Tracy Chapman was some pop bimbo of the moment. But actually I didn’t know anything about her………….so my reaction was pure prejudice, pure snobbery. And, as I indicate, it was deceitful, because my thoughts were not “sweet”. In fact it was deceit within deceitfulness, given the circumstances. Crystalline deceit, lies reflecting from every wall…..

Today, nearly 23 years on, I watched a video of Tracy Chapman’s song “Fast Car”. I’d been attracted to this song which was coming over the radio at work and elsewhere. I didn’t know what it was and I decided to track it down. Imagine my surprise when I found out…..

I loved it. It’s gorgeous. She’s gorgeous.

It’s a long time to be mistaken about something, but realizing the error is not an unpleasant experience. On the contrary, it’s interesting. Suddenly discovering such a “mistake”, if that’s the correct word, half a lifetime later shines a light on my then ignorance. And it shines a light on my then prejudice and snobbery. Also it shines a light on now. I think I am “open” today but perhaps I am simply “closed” in new ways. Am I open, am I closed? Am I good, am I bad? The questions are not futile, just tricky.

“Know thyself” seems to be a saying featured in nearly every religious text. I am guessing though that to achieve such an understanding requires opening up your heart and seeing everything that is there..

I believe that many artistic problems that crop up, either on the work table, or in the conversations of composers, are really only as problematic as we choose to make them. Many diverse things can be artistic, even a child playing with coloured bricks. But a mother would be foolish to come into a room and complain that her child should put two blues together, rather than combine a blue with a red. If she did, the child would be right to carry on playing, regarding his mother’s remark as bit more adult craziness to be ignored. So here at least there’s one “artistic problem” that can be discounted……….

Fashion and also money manifest as artistic issues. Rich people are perhaps uninterested in last year’s designs, so if you are out of date, and trying to sell to that clientele, you’d better watch out. However, there are those who are so poor that they are lucky if they own any clothes at all, so they are hardly likely to be concerned with fashion. Everyone needs clothes, but only a few need fashion.

Similarly, in music, if you compose like those long dead out-of-fashion composers (like John Ireland for example) then you are going to be shifted to the least prestigious venues (dusty church halls? – whatever). Whilst composers who write “cutting edge” stuff have their pieces done by the major ensembles and in the ritziest of surroundings. I like that hideous cliché “cutting edge” along with another overused term – “challenging”. “He is a cutting edge composer doing challenging work”.

There are those who say they write for themselves and those who say they write for others. I think it’s a false distinction. It’s not like making dinner in which you can say you cooked just for yourself and didn’t invite anyone along. A better metaphor is language. You don’t talk to a child the same way as you would talk to a pope or a princess. And you don’t talk to a pope or a princess the way you would talk to an intimate friend. The language differs. So it is right what Stravinsky says – he said he composed for the hypothetical other. We are always “addressing” someone – hypothetical, or real – it’s unavoidable.

The invention of musical ideas is the simplest of tasks. In my case the ideas are there the whole time and if I think about one, it just starts developing automatically. In the four minute movement I wrote over Christmas, I made for the first time a special point of using this automatic invention I have. Over the course of a few days I wrote down all the variations that occurred to me of a particular idea, in a long list, simply that. When this involuntary invention came to an end I incorporated everything I had invented into the piece. In fact I think nothing else was invented for the piece aside from the decisions about proportions and texture, instrumentation and so forth – the structural stuff. Well, put like that, it seems quite an unoriginal way of working, but as I say, it was a first for me.

I am troubled by some craft issues. It vexes me for example that I do not play a wind instrument and have to work so hard to imagine the physical actions required to play my wind music. In addition there are sound issues with regard to the combinations of elements that are hard work to imagine. Here though, I believe I made recent progress. In the new piece I included a few moments where the instrumental texture combines in such a way that distinct identities break down and the sound blends. I adore these moments. They have for me the status that “special effects” do in sci-fi films. This is an old art to be sure. Look for example at the first few moments of Stravinsky’s 1917 symphonic poem Le Chant du Rossignol. That is a model of this kind of writing and not the only example from the master’s work in that period of his career.

Up at 7, showered and dressed, then running for the tram a little before 8 as I had decided beforehand to do. Today is the centenary of my mother’s birth [1909-1993] and she, the breadwinner of the house, was forever running for the bus early in the mornings - the stop was just across from our house. She had strong legs and could run well. (Her father, by the way, William Biggar [1877-1935], had been a footballer and it is pleasing to see that there are some little biographies of him on the Net). In my case it is not necessary to run, as the tram stop is out of sight around the corner. Nevertheless I ran for a while and then was pleased as I neared the stop to find that I actually DID have to run for real, as a no.12 came racing along. Heh-heh. Nice that it worked out as planned.

Into the centre of Amsterdam only to find it more or less deserted and nowhere much to have breakfast. This is decidedly NOT Italy. I settled eventually on a place in Rembrandtplein and ate a rather poor 8 euro ontbijt. Anyway, it’s the thought that counts. I bought some lilies on the way home and went back to bed. Contrary to expectation I had had a nightmare during the night. Something about me being guilty of murder and sought by the police…………..oh dear………….

But later I completed one of the other tasks for today. I went to the children’s zoo in Rembrandtpark to look at the poultry because my mother adored hens. I sat there a long time and covered several pages of ms paper - I had also written a page in the café in the morning. Indeed it is now certain that the only way I really like writing music is in this manner. I developed it for my Grand Sonata for 2 pianos and 6 percussion (2004). That had to be written in about 2 weeks. I map out some sort of structure, including silences by the way – this is very important, and then write notes at lightning speed.

The “finale” for today was meant to be a trip to the cinema (The Tushcinski) to see the new Harry Potter. But I couldn’t face another trip to the centre so instead I hired a video of the charming movie Minoes which served more or less the same purpose. My mother adored cats and also she had a nice feeling for this kind of fairy tale. Incidentally, my companion at breakfast was a black and white cat. She did that lovely cat thing in totally ignoring me, though I was sitting on the same chair as she was. I didn’t have much room but she, of course, was not going to shift for me. I had to smile.

What does one say about one’s mother? “Thank you” is never going to be enough. Nothing is enough. Nothing can ever repay the debt, except perhaps, as Michelle Obama often says, in the action of Giving Back. I do a bit of that, but nothing like enough.