A visit to the National Library of Wales

Last Wednesday the students from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff, gave a superb memorial concert for Mervyn Burtch, attended by a large and enthusiastic concert. Many thanks and congratulations to all involved. You can read more about it in this short review published by Ty Cerdd.

I've recently returned form a visit to the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth with Michael McCartney, Chair of the Mervyn Burtch Trust, to discuss the bequest made to them to them by Mervyn Burtch before his died of his manuscript scores.

At present the Mervyn Burtch Trust is sorting out the best possible way to deposit the original manuscripts whilst retaining good quality copies (you can find out more about the Trust from one of my previous blogs). Although many of Mervyn's works were published, these probably comprised no more than 10% of his output, some of which have long since gone out of print. In addition, many of the published works are amongst his smaller scale pieces. This means that the Trust needs to keep around 600 works available for anyone who wishes to perform or study them.

We had a fascinating day seeing around the library and how it works. Mervyn's manuscripts will be held in vaults that are virtually fire and bomb-proof.





















Here is Michael with myself and Dr Maredudd ApHuw, Manuscripts Librarian at the NLW.

Mervyn's manuscripts will sit alongside thoes of his contemporaries Alun Hoddinott and William Mathias.

The Trust's remit is to keep all of Mervyn's works available, so it is important to have master copies of each score. For many years, the scores deposited at the NLW have been safe, but not easily accessible. Now they are pioneering a new scheme where they will make high quality scans of the scores and make these available to the Trust. Here is one of the studios where the scanning is undertaken.

It's a very exciting and forward looking scheme in which Mervyn's bequest will play a major part.

However, there is still much work to do before the scores are packed up and delivered to Aberystwyth. Each score needs to  be checked for completeness and logged on the Trust's database, Although Mervyn left  his estate in very good order, there are anomalies as well as a number of missing manuscripts (where we only have photocopies). If anyone reading has, or knows, of the whereabouts of any of Mervyn's original manuscripts, we'd love to hear from you . Just drop a line to the Trust through the website.

Plenty of work to do now, but first, to end the day, a visit to Aberystwyth's seafront...

Mervyn Burtch Memorial Concert

Next Wednesday on 7 October at 1.15pm, the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama will put on a memorial concert for composer Mervyn Burtch who died last May at the age of eighty-five.

Given by various groups of college students, it gives a flavour of the huge number of different combinations of instruments for which Mervyn. He loved writing for young people and providing useful music for everyday use. When I used to programme Wales Millennium Centre's freestage (2004-07) I doubt if a week went by when something by Mervyn didn't turn up there played by the many professional, student and amateur performers who gave concerts there.

Mervyn was always intensely practical and much of the last year of his life was devoted to finding a way in which his music would remain useful after his death. To this end he encouraged and facilitated the setting up of the Mervyn Burtch Trust. The Trust now manage and make available everything by Mervyn that is not published elsewhere. Every one of his 650 or so pieces is listed there, ranging from children's operas and orchestral pieces, through choral and brass band works, to the many pieces for solo and smaller forces.

Do take a look at the website www.mervynburtch.com where you can find links to recordings of his music as well.

Details of and tickets for the memorial concert are available from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama

Links to some of the obituaries of Mervyn can be found here

Daily Telegraph 
Western Mail 

Kolumba

Peter Zumthor's Kolumba is a museum in the centre of Cologne, built between 1997 and 2007 on the site of the Church of St Kolumba, bombed during World War 2. Unlike so many of the Romanesque and medieval churches in the city that were lovingly reconstructed after the war, St Kolumba was left as a symbolic ruin and a smaller church was built amongst its ruins in the 1950s.

The museum encloses the 1950s church, the medieval ruins and is also a new multi-floor gallery space. The gallery and stairways are reduced to an absolute minimum of internal decoration of "reduced materiality" in which the art-works are given the space to breathe. 

The way in which space is organised and how visitors can move through it is breath-taking. The arts works themselves range from medieval to contemporary installation art.

Rebecca Horn: Berlin Earthbound, 1994

The fabric of the building itself is astonishing in the care and details with which everything is finished along with the attention to details - for instance, the wonderful brickwork or the wooden rails. 

Small openings have been introduced into the brickwork at certain point that allows the sound of the city outside to penetrate into the meditative quality of the space. 

Yet the impression left is quite different to most galleries and is a strangely quiet and meditative experience. 

On the top floor I came across a workshop of pieces by contemporary composers, but such in the nature of the building that it could equally well respond the requirements of medieval polyphony.

But where are the Swans?

I was in Antwerp, Flanders, recently and I thought I’d pay a visit to the city’s castle - the setting for Wagner’s Lohengrin. When Wagner eventually visited Antwerp in 1860, he realised that his ideas about its location were the rather wide of the mark (he imagined it was a fortress on a hill...). Here’s what the castle looks like today.

Its oldest sections date back to around 1200 (though built on an earlier site) and today only a fragment remains. It stands next to the mighty River Schelde and one of Belgium’s great  harbours.

It was presumably on the Schelde that Lohengrin arrived, his boat pulled by a swan.

Alas, there were no swans on the Schelde that day, so I visited the seaside resort of Blankenberge instead...

... to find where the swans had gone. I found them at an exhibition of work by the Flemish artist Roger Raveel at the city’s casino.

The exhibits included these splendid swans...

Raveel was one of the first Belgian artists to build work from everyday objects and the exhibition also included a magnificent painting through which one's own face can be displayed. 

                                                                     Photo © Marc Cauwenbergh

I wonder what Wagner would have made of it all...

Powerhouse at Presteigne

I've been in the sleepy little Welsh bordertown of Presteigne over the bank holiday weekend where conductor George Vass curates one of Britain's best contemporary music festivals.

It's a great festival where composers meet up and get together with discussions going on into the early hours at the various taverns around the town. Most of the concerts are held in St Andrew's Church in the town's centre (see below), as well as in various medieval churches in the surrounding villages. 

Presteigne is one of the most fascinating Welsh bordertowns, with lots of hugely characterful late eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses and cottages.

The concentration this year has been on the composer Matthew Taylor (who gave a fascinating "Desert Island Discs" type interview about his life and work on Monday afternoon) as well as marking the 150th anniversaries of Nielsen and Sibelius's births. I've been reviewing some of the concerts for the Hereford Times and Western Mail. You can read the reivews at the links below.

Western Mail Round-up (not yet online)

Bach to the Future. Fenella Humphreys. Hereford Times

Nararra Quartet in Presteigne. Hereford Times

Sunday Night Choral & Orchestral Concert. Hereford Times

Flights of Angels with Gillian Keith. Hereford Times

A Century of Piano Music

I was in York at the National Centre for Early Music earlier this week to record a new piano piece I've written for Duncan Honeybourne.

It's part of a CD project set up by composer David Power which features a selection of piano works by British composers written over the last century, culminating in recent pieces by David and myself. The other composers are Morfydd Owen, Evangeline and Leo Livens, Julius Harrison, Constance Warren, Arthur Butterworth, Christopher Headington, John Longmire, Peter Racine Fricker and Howard Skempton. All the pieces are being recorded for the first time. The National Centre for Early Music is based in a church dating back to the eleventh century church near to Fossgate. Here is Duncan in action.

And here is Duncan, David and myself listening to some playbacks along with Jez Wells who is recording and producing the CD.

My piece is based on the same idea as the film I worked on earlier this year, based around the abandoned chapel at Cippyn in Pembrokeshire, developing and carrying over some of the music for it (more details in this blog). I've written a piece which can only be realised as a recording with the piano is overdubbed and asked to do things that are not be possible live. Here I am helping Duncan play some of the internal strings with a drumstick.

Watch out for more details early next year when the CD is released.

Abandoned Chapel at ATRiuM

Last night was the showing of the installation in the theatre at ATRiuM, Cardiff, of the film I've been working on with Aaron J Cooper and Heledd Wyn Hardy. as part of my Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales award. Heledd set up four screens with back projections of the film into which an audience of about 60 visitors wandered, looking at the beautiful texture and images that Aaron has captured and put together. Here they are in the space just before the audience arrived.

Last night double bass player Ashley John Long was positioned high up above the installation, playing the score that I've written to go with the film.

 It was a thrilling experience to hear him emerging in and out of the soundscape drawn from the sounds of birds, wind and rain captured at the location which I put together with the help of Odlion Marcenaro. 

The audience wandered in around the installation itself and as well as sitting in the theatre, quietly listening to the music unfold.  

The film is shows a deserted chapel near Cardigan in the village of Cippyn which was abandoned thirty years ago. Extrodinarily it has never suffered any vandalism, is now just gradually fading away and eventully, I imagine will be reclaimed by the countryside. (you can see more information in previous blogs back last October and January).

The next stage now will be to record Ashley's double bass part in the studio and match it to the film later this month - when it's complete I will be posting it on You Tube. 

A big thank you to to Heledd in particular who's driven the scheme through and kept me on course; to Aaron for his wonderful film; to Ashley for bringing the score to life and Odilon for all his help and guidance with the soundscape.