A composing retreat week in Languedoc: June 2025

It’s complicated, my aunt died 3 years ago and left her humble cottage in the hills of Languedoc near Lodève, to her best friend. I, singing at her life celebration in Hampstead was generously invited to return to the stone cottage when free. This is the 4th trip since sitting with my aunt in a coma three years ago. She rotated her hands balletically in her state-of-the art hospital bed only to die two days after my visit. Now her ashes watch from a meadow over-looking the property. It is too shocking to admit how many years have gone by since our first visit when we drove through France in our student mini via the Dordogne.

View from the terrace

The view from the terrace over the verdant sandstone hills toward the limestone cliffs is stunning. No better way to appreciate the enormity of the limestone geology of the area than visit the Cirque de Navacelles. Even if your husband winces as you circumnavigate every turn, it is still worth it for the giddy view and cold Weiss beer in the café. 

Cirque de Navacelles

I am composing every morning, a glorious Gloria. Choral music just slips off my soul, no effort, no fuss. And I read Austerlitz by W.G Seabald, deliciously enigmatic and evocative like a Northern limbed Proust, full of reflectiveness and implausible connections sparked by an artistically chaotic and factual mind. 

 

For the experience of death, said Evan, diminishes us, just as a piece of linen shrinks when you first wash it.

Austerlitz: W.G Sebald

Day two of our composing retreat and I am on a roll especially on a soul felt movement for soprano. Diana, my dead aunt in ash form watches from a field above the glorious terrace with its stunning view. Late afternoon I swim is the silky waters of Lac de Salagou, my skin feels soft. Then after giant prawns in garlic I partake of an online dream group organised by the Cambridge Jungian Circle where the goddess in one person’s dream is very much present.

Lac De Salagou

Day 3 is more enigmatic and frankly a mistake. Up the limestone cliff behind Diana’s cottage lies Lerab Lynge, a Tiebetan Buddist temple and the promise of a meditation day. But it’s boring because rather than mostly meditate, the majority of the time is taken up with two men answering narcissistic questions on meditation! 

Inside the temple

A naughty white Magnum from the gift shop overlooking the temple slightly picks me up but my heart is now siding with the locally exterminated Cathars circa 12/13^th century and their gnostic view of spirituality which puts one’s own experience at the centre of spiritual engagement. I mean am I really prepared to accept arbitrary explanations of how many minutes of meditation work? I am left too tired by the non - experience to compose today so return to my blog and Sebald who coincidently talks in depth about many grand buildings that I know: Antwerp Station, Palais de Justice in Brussels and Liverpool Street Station in London which was built over the site of Bedlam. Sebald , suggests that big buildings express the insecurity of their organisations. This observation is Interesting in relation to  all the cathedrals being built when the Cathars, whose beliefs were a threat, were exterminated.

Lerab Lyng, Languedoc

Day 4: The Cathars and Knights Templars were a big presence in Languedoc before being exterminated. Did you know that Wagner visited Rennes Le Chateau near Beziers and Carcassonne just before he started composing Parsifal? Some believe the Holy Grail is buried in Rennes Le Chateau. On a personal note, curiously here is Richard Leigh who Michael and I used to serve in the Belsize Park Deli where we worked part time when we had just left the Royal College of Music. Leigh was part of the cohort of three men who wrote the book Holy Grail, Holy Blood, the precursor to the Da Vinci Code. Curious coincidence that Leigh appeared most days to always order a corn beef and corn salad sandwich. Anyway, I am re-reading Holy Grail, Holy Blood in the context of this area.

Richard Leigh

 

Today’s work on Gloria went very well, I will have a good 15 minutes of the work mostly completed by the time I return to UK. It is interesting composing for string orchestra which I have now segmented like Vaughan Williams in to the main orchestra and a string quartet. This will be my last setting of a Christian religious text for a while as we are moving out of the Lady Chapel in Ely to West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge next year and the following year to Cadogan Hall in London, very grand but necessary to build my product. Also, I want to develop a more Universal choral work for Cadogan Hall and I began this integration this year by infusing my Magnificat with two poems by Rumi. This afternoon there was thunder in the mountains, very exciting as we walked up to Diana’s field.

Day 5

Light rain and an exploration of the village Les Plans. I discover an enticing path down to the valley below, probably constructed when the castle was built in the 12^th/13^th century. There is an overwhelming scent of honeysuckle and softly caressing intermittent rain.

The path downwards

 Hidden corners

Here the structure under my aunt’s cottage, the foundations of the castle.

The Kitchen with my aunt’s hat still in place

Day 6 and the composing retreat is nearly at an end but I wake up early and after a power walk, I decide to compose an entirely new opening movement for the Gloria as well as re-ordering my musical material. I now have over 20 minutes of rough  score for a 45 minute work , not bad going for a 6 day retreat. Then I recap the opera I was working on last year and realise that it was going nowhere! Final two swims in Lac De Salagou. I love it here. 

Lac De Salagou

Back home to Norfolk with Tristan

The Position of Women in Music in the UK 1900-2025.

 

“Hi Susie I am preparing a Talk on UK the Position of Women in Music 1900-2025. Most is based on statistical research, but I thought a few observations by individual women in the profession, today, might be interesting additions. Do you, or have you ever experienced (or know of others who have experienced...) discrimination or professional difficulties on account of gender? Any thoughts would be appreciated. I will not be referencing contributors by name.   I hope you don't mind me asking? 

 

My response

 

I have a few instants in my career where I feel that I was definitely held back because I was a woman. When I started at the Royal College of Music I went in as a joint first study composer and singer but near the end of my studies I was hauled into the principal's office and he said that I would have to make a decision between composing and singing and that in his opinion I would be better off becoming a singer because he didn't believe that a woman could make a career as a composer at that time. This was in the early 1980's. So, this led me to pursue a career as an opera singer even though I really wanted to be a composer. It's not such a terrible story, in the sense that I had a great singing career and I also did a lot of composing out on my job's abroad. So, in many respects it was the perfect combination for a composer. 

 

When I made my career shift 11 years ago to full-time composer, I sang my Swan Songs at Luxembourg and Lyon operas and sold out my small pension from the Royal Opera House to fund an MPhil in composition at Cambridge University. So, I went in as a mature composer and I was delighted to find that the faculty, although still dominated by male composers was very empowering. I subsequently went on to get a scholarship to study for a PhD in composition at the Royal Birmingham conservatoire and again I felt well supported by my male supervisors and I was also lucky to have Errollyn Wallen as one of my supervisors. 

 

Going back to Cambridge. I entered the conducting competition and this is perhaps is the most egregious experience of sexism I had in 2014. I prepared my work well for the competition and made it into the semi-finals where the adjudicator said two things which were highly disturbing: 

 

The first was "you conduct quite well for a ....." and then he stopped. 

 

The other was" I don't like it that you are so tall as a conductor " 

 

Both these comments struck me as highly sexist and discouraging. Even my fabulous conducting coach, a top international conductor who took the greatest care to teach me all the techniques of conducting so that I am now pretty good, finished by saying "of course you won't get anywhere because you're a woman and nobody will respect you. " The comment left me with a feeling of doom as I entered my first rehearsal. But I learned from another conductor a new way of working with orchestras which is less dominating and more as a colleague and this has served me well.

 

 

So, these are examples of things that really were very discouraging to me as a woman composer and conductor. Now, I generally feel well supported. However, I have noticed that in terms of getting on in the serious world of contemporary composition there still seems to be a bias towards young male composers and if women get a chance, it is often younger women in a marginalized form of composition such as song writing or soundscape design. This bias was particularly reflected in choices at the recent Ivor awards last autumn. I sense for example that at Cambridge where I composed quite muscular music that it was deemed too strong meat coming out of a woman and I noticed that the women composers that we're championed at the Cambridge Faculty tended to compose softer not such challenging music. I've also noticed that women composers in general put on a persona of great pleasantness which seems in stark contrast to a male composer such as Thomas Ades for example who speaks more definitively. So, I feel still under duress to have to be an overly pleasant person when really, I just want to be a composer. As far as my life as a composer now, I think in many respects it is very similar to many of my male colleagues of course Michael my husband being one of them. It's tough being a composer. But I am very happy to say that I am making headway. I have two publishers: Composers Edition and I've just been taken on by Universal Edition. I've managed through my own effort particularly to put on big choral works but I've also had some modest commissions and I'm making quite a big breakthrough at the moment in terms of opera composing but I can't say any more about that yet. 

 

Last week I was in Barcelona at the Opera Europa conference and I was talking to a top agent who has taken an interest in my career and he said "this really now is your time to shine " well, I hope it is. But I still feel I would like as a mature woman composer to be able to present myself as a real person dressed simply in a pair of jeans and a sweater, that I wouldn't have to feel under duress to glamorise myself. I feel in contrast that a male composer can still be very much himself like Mark Anthony Turnage. 

 

Let's talk about how to put on your own projects without public funding

QUILT SONG: Dr Self at The Birmingham Old Rep, 2018

This has become a necessity for contemporary artists and the reason is that it is very hard now to get public funding. The only way you will get public funding is if you comply with very stringent criteria for your project. 

Now as an artist you may have your own vision and that is precious and that is why you may struggle with getting public funding. Also, there is the question of how much psychic and physical effort it takes to apply for these funds. In the case of an arts council funding application it can take up to a week of your time. 

 

Just step back for a minute and think what you could do with that week instead of preparing an application. Are you're scratching your head? Wondering how you can fit in with this? and if so, how do I do it? 

 

Instead let me first tell you about my largest project which was putting on my opera Quilt Song at the Birmingham Old Rep and more recently, three large choral works with orchestra, two choirs and soloists in the lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. 

 

For each large project, I made sure that I had all the fees necessary for the professional musicians and singers fees in place before the concert. This relieved me of a lot of stress because I wouldn't want to feel that I would have to dig into my own pocket to pay the musicians and singers.

 

In the case of Quilt Song at Birmingham Old Rep, the magic project figure was 25K, But for the projects in Ely Cathedral they come in at about 6 to 9K and last time I recorded the concert with the wonderful support of a professional recording engineer and this made all the difference to the product, so I think it is really worth spending that extra money to get a good recording that you can put it on SoundCloud, Spotify and YouTube for promotion. 

 

The main bulk of the money raised until recently has been to pay the players and the vocal soloists. So, the budget for a small orchestra is in the region of about 3 to 4 K and for four soloists in the region of about £1,200. So, you're getting a picture, it's about 5K to 6K to cover two concerts and rehearsals plus the venue hire and recording fees circa 2 to 3 K.

 

Up to now I have raised the money in this way:

 

I have run singing courses for amateur singers who come and stay with me. Because they're residential courses I am able to charge quite a lot of money for staying. This has largely funded the orchestra and soloists. 

 

In addition, I get a great amount of joy and stimulation from painting, it is part of my practice as a composer to paint. I have far too many paintings so I have an art exhibition on average about once every two years and usually I am able to generate between 2 to 3K. 

On top of that, I have had some luck quite unexpectedly in the sense that I have a sponsor who for the last three years has given two thousand pounds towards each choral project and the reason she says she does this is because she likes my music. So, it comes down in the end to what you're able to make as a product, in my case my composition. I feel pretty confident that my music is highly regarded and I was lucky enough to get a very good review in Musical Opinion last year which also helped.

 

“Sea Requiem was a substantial score, yet the material flowed naturally… the extended silence which followed this conclusion…. was a tribute to the audience’s rapt concentration and the cumulative effect of Susannah Self’s fervent, directly expressive music.“

Paul Conway, Musical Opinion 2023

On top of what I've said so far about raising funds, I also have put in an enormous amount of elbow effort and forming and training two choirs of amateur singers who have quality. In other words, they have had to audition or I knew their worth because I want to create quality concerts and quality recordings. I can't afford to have anybody as a hanger on. For these two choirs I charge a modest fee per term of £45 a term. If you have 20 members in one choir and 10 and the other that's getting on for over 3K in subscriptions and that makes a huge difference. 

 

Now because I am not really famous, to put on a concert in Ely Cathedral of a new work is a risk in terms of raising an audience so to help ameliorate this I have twinned my choral works with well-known, well-loved choral works. So the first year my Sea Requiem went with the Faure Requiem, this year my Stabat Mater went with the Vivaldi’s Gloria and then next year my Magnificat is twinned with Duruflé’s Requiem. And I think there is a longer term aim here, in the sense that these established works would go very well with my new works because I use the same orchestration. 

Stabat Mater in Ely Cathedral 2024

https://youtu.be/YZwU3PJYTic?si=C9B3xjz_vPq3E2oP

 

However, I know that my choirs are not famous in the sense that the Monteverdi Choir is. Charging for tickets is therefore quite a gamble. And so, for the last two years we have actually made the concerts free. And this has enabled a full house which I think is actually more valuable than a half house because that can be very dispiriting.

 

 All this activity is born out of a vision as an artist and therefore an audience is a key part of that. 

 

Sadly, next year the hire cost of the Lady Chapel has gone through the roof. So, two years ago, it was 600 pounds, this year it was 1200 pounds and next year it will be 2,000 pounds. But I'm glad to say that we have the money in the bank already for the project. 

 

I also want to tell you about a community project that has helped fund the next major project and that is my opera ARTEMISIA which we put on with amateur singers in the local art centre in Norfolk and two village halls. Now for this project I was able to again charge the amateur singers a subscription of 45 pounds a term. A lot of that money, I used to make really lovely costumes for the singers but then I created the opera so that they were either accompanied by me playing the piano. or by backing tracks, which I created with technology and so there were no professional fee costs. I also asked two singers to help run the events because I cooked food for the two Village Hall events and this meant that we could charge significantly more money per ticket than just having a performance of an opera. So, at the end of the day we actually made 1,300 pounds out of this project. Which I think was terrific and I looked forward to making more community work. 

One final thing I haven't mentioned so far is bartering. Bartering is a great way of not having to actually raise the cash. For example, in Quilt Song at the Birmingham Old Rep I got the hire of the theatre for a week which was five thousand pounds for free on the back of training young singers at Birmingham Ormiston Academy for two years. I went every Wednesday to train these singers and then I inserted them into my opera. This is a great example of bartering, It was though hard work. Also, for my choral concerts because I'm sometimes short of the very best singers particularly men so I have to pay for stiffeners. But I also found a way of offering a series of free singing lessons in return for them singing in the concert, and this works very well and has really empowered them because I'm a very good singing teacher and they've got a lot out singing in the Choir and this year some of them will also be singing the solos. 

 

I hope this blog helps explain how I go about fund these ambitious projects. I think that people might imagine that I'm funding this concerts out of my own private trust fund. However, I can assure you that I have am a self-employed musician and have been all my life. It has been quite a struggle at times and I continue to teach and conduct to earn a living . I don't have a private pension in place for the future so I have to keep myself nice and fit. But that's another blog! I just want to wish you the best if you decide to put on your own project. I believe it’s worth it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quilting as a model of new operatic compositional practice.

This blog provides a short overview of the research I did for my practice-based PhD as a composer at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire 2016 to 2020 and the further developments born from that research. 

 

My research was entitled Quilt Song: Quilting as a model of new operatic compositional practice. Through it, I investigated via the composition of Quilt Song how to open up opera to new practices in the 21st century. 

 

Quilting has proved itself to be a flexible model of practice on many levels which allows for experimentation via organic processes. Compositionally this means that music does not necessarily have to be created in the order of a dramatic narrative, which in turnenables thematic material to be cross-fertilised and developed in unexpected ways. This process of compositional quilting as amethodology is not easy to explain via a neat table of rules, rather it involves submitting to an intuitive process.

 

“All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear that Iknow nothing.”

John Cage (Larson, 2012: 239)

 

Ten-minute introduction to Quilt Song

https://youtu.be/Yu2LeU87oHw

Marina Sossi at the opening of Quilt Song, 2018.

I have now been a full time composer for 12 years, following on from a career as an opera singer. I composed throughout my operatic career and as an undergraduate, I was a joint first study voice and composition at The Royal College of Music. 

 

I have sung solo roles in many of the opera Houses of Europe, however one of my frustrations was in the area of the creation of new opera which seemed to follow old-fashioned principles, particularly in the areas of plot development and production. Many facets of new opera promote outmoded stereotypes.

 

Creating opera for broader audiences focusses on developing an approach to composition that will provide the tools to produce an opera that promotes inclusivity. To some extent I am subversively led by the views of non-opera goers to choose approaches that do not conform to current trends in contemporary opera.

 

As my research at Birmingham developed, I became more and more excited about the possibility of using interdisciplinary techniques and modes of collaboration. In Quilt Song I incorporate a lot of technology particularly in the area of creating abstract soundscapes and video.

 

To create Quilt Song, I intentionally surrendered my compositional output to embrace eclecticism. From quilting flowed many compositional possibilities which I have continued developing since I completed Quilt Song, in particular, the way in which materials can be organically developed, cross-related, juxtaposed and transformed. Resonances with this approach can be seen via the iconic artist Robert Rauschenberg’s imaginative practice in which he observes 

 

“the objects not only suggest new possibilities, things I would have never thought of if I’d stayed in the studio - they also set up resistances that I find very useful.” Rauschenberg, 2017: 235 

 

1. Embodied in quilting practice is the potential to develop artistic and compositional process in concert with sociological issues.

2. Diverse materials, musical themes and peoples can co-exist within the framework of a pattern, a score or a social structure.

3. By developing a structured notated score alongside improvised-sound technology, contrasting textures can be simultaneously woven to establish an architecture which is underpinned in a similar way to a quilt’s template. 

4. The psychological substructure of a libretto’s plot can be subliminally embedded into the quilting musical grid to convey themes, dramaturgy and individual characterisation.  

5. By placing quilting’s methodology within the field of minimalist and post-minimalist techniques incorporated by composers like SteveReich, Philip Glass, John Adams, Louis Andriessen and Max Richter, its innovation is supported by a significant body of compositional practice.

6. By applying collage techniques as used by György Ligeti and Charles Ives, atonality and polytonality can simultaneously exist to express differing time frames, cultures and narratives. Ives ‘layered up’ music by juxtaposing polytonality against well-known tunes, while Ligeti’s eclectic approach resonates with quilting in that, according to Searby, ‘the music in Le Grande Macabre is unusually varied in style and compositional process, and tends to be built from short, fragmentary sections.’ (2010: 29)

7. By allowing paradoxes of compositional style to rub up against each other, welcoming access points for the listener are opened up such as positioning familiar consonance beside abstraction.

I am interested in promoting diversity and involving audiences. Traditional opera house-based companies can feel hemmed in by the criteria of size, cost of the administration, orchestra and the chorus. All this means that opera often equals a narrower artistic presentation than is desirable. Through research I discovered many different expressions outside opera houses. For example, I composed Freedom Bridge for Birmingham Opera Company, which was performed in the Central station and in a shopping mall. This reached out to normal people who wouldn't ever go near opera. I love this kind of approach.

Alison Rose in Freedom Bridge: Self, Birmingham Opera Company, 2017. 

https://youtu.be/RjOWeXBKbIU  

I am fascinated to use technology. I currently use Logic Pro, Ableton Live, and make my own videos. I regard all these activities as part of the composition. It is also part of my interdisciplinary to work with people who aren't opera singers.

 

Opera might enhance its accessibility to a broader spectrum of audience if it included singers of different genres. The field of alternative approaches to voice in new opera reveals exciting departures from traditional opera singing such as in Andriessen’s Writing to Vermeer (2004) which features a high vibrato-less soprano. This further demonstrates that ‘for many years now microphones easily allow a singer with a pure non-vibrato voice to be heard over an ensemble’ (Reich, 2002: 173). Technology leads on to a wealth of possibilities which could incorporate singers from other traditions and allow them to be heard over a large orchestra, such as the jazz singer in Goebbels’s Surrogate Cities in ‘Where the dogs dwell’ (2000). Integrating other approaches to voice has been extensively taken up in the field of contemporary music such as Meredith Monk’s Gotham Lullaby (Monk: 1981) sung by Björk, who demonstrates extended vocal technique unwrapped in the throat of an expert pop singer. Monk herself also sings with amplified extended voice.  

 

For my latest opera Corset Story, I have been working and collaborating with the performance artist, Marina Sossi. I love it that she is also singing part of the opera even though she's not a trained opera singer. We would never say that modern dance could only be danced by classically trained ballet dancers. I see the potential to use a vast range of vocal performers from all walks of life, disciplines and cultures in new opera. 

SELF & SOSSI rehearsing Corset Story 2024

Particularly, I want to compose music that will appeal to a broader audience but still use abstract ideas. I also want to compose music that will be enjoyable for the players and singers to perform: Since I finished my PhD three years ago I have composed four operas, three of which were commissioned by Tête a Tête:

HER BODY: 2021

https://vimeo.com/615142400

 

I am currently working on my third large choral work in three years, Magnificat.

 

Sea Requiem was a substantial score, yet the material flowed naturally… the extended silence which followed this conclusion…. was a tribute to the audience’s rapt concentration and the cumulative effect of Susannah Self’s fervent, directly expressive music.  Paul Conway, Musical Opinion 2023

 

STABAT MATER 2023 in Ely Cathedral

https://youtu.be/YZwU3PJYTic?si=C9B3xjz_vPq3E2oP

I am also lucky to be teaching young composers at Guildhall Young Artists on Saturdays. I have learnt from them about audio, virtual reality, AI etc, an area that I want to explore more myself. Another aspect of my work at Guildhall Young Artists is to run improvisation / composition workshops. Here I have been developing a methodology of curating their musical ideas to create a collective piece. This is a fascinating area to develop further with audiences so that they could have more ownership of creative material. 

Earlier this year I created a new opera about the artist Artemisia Gentileschi from the Renaissance. I worked with amateur singers in North Norfolk to put on three performances. I collaborated with the singers so that we put the production together as an ensemble rather than having a director. This created a great atmosphere in rehearsals and performances. This exemplifies my principles of compositional quilting technique, in other words I am working at every level of a work right down to the politics! 

 Ultimately I seek to demystifying the role of composer as heroic creator, by instead reframing the role as a collaborator.