Output details

Half of Life: settings of selected poems by Friedrich Hölderlin. BBC Radio 3 ‘Jazz on 3’ live recording, Kings Place, London, 9 February (broadcast 25 February) 2013; studio recording (10 February 2013) for CD release 2014 (Whirlwind Records). Scores not appropriate.

This composition, performance and recording project represents an integrated programme of original compositions based on selected poetry by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, with English translations by Michael Hamburger (‘Hälfte des Lebens’, ‘Heimath/Und Niemand weiss’, ‘Heimath/Froh kehrt der Schiffer heim’, ‘Und wenig Wissen’, ‘Wenn über dem Weinberg’). Two principal research foci connect to the relationship of music and text: firstly, the phrasing and melodic rhythm of the text as a starting-point for generating melodies; secondly, the meaning of the narrative as generating shape and design of the tension contours, in both phrase structure and larger-scale dénouement. For example, the first half of ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ has melodies that have largely even stress, but are freely played in canonic imitation over a steady, open-form pulse. The main motif is conceived taking George Russell’s ‘Ladder of Fifths’. All twelve notes are horizontally sounded according to increasing tension (‘out-going’), to characterise a sense of journey. The overall feeling of freedom, in-the-moment marvel, and inclusiveness/openness that characterizes the first half of life stands in contrast to sentiments of limitation, melancholy and introspection of the second. Here, one long melody is played in uneven phrasing, in measured time. ‘Heimath/Froh kehrt der Schiffer heim’ taps into a timeless blues language which the music reflects with the formal use of call-and-response in the structure, and also by the use of melisma and varying time and stress values to interact with the meaning of the narrative.

The specially created ensemble brings together jazz musicians from the music’s important cities and scenes (Paris [Francois Theberge], Copenhagen [Jakob Bro], New York [John O’Gallagher, Jeff Williams], London [Phil Robson, Christine Tobin, and more], and Birmingham [Percy Pursglove]); it is the engagement with the place-less poetry of Hölderlin that binds the collective energies.

CD (studio recording) to be released 2014 (Whirlwind Records).