"Taking Holy Orders": Yes, my friends, it's come to this. It's time for me to contemplate and rejuvenate. I have embraced Academia. I am up at Cambridge University, be-gowned, bespectacled, a fresher at large reading for an MPhil in composing. My aim is to create three orchestral interludes and three scenas as calling cards for a full length opera, my first. Such a grand project can only be contemplated in a special place and Cambridge certainly is that. Carillons of chapel bells ring uncharacteristically into the late evening. The central fountain of King's courtyard resonates with a curiously Italian balmy ease. But it will get colder as the Michaelmas term goes on, I know that. I have my cold-resistant jodhpurs ready for nightly descents down Magdalene street on my trusty Ridgeback bike, now coded with secret runes to deter thieves.
The meetings with other composers have so far been furtive. Getting to know them is like sweaty petting, it's warm hearted enough, but where is it going I wonder? Our leaders are exceptionally good, which is reassuring. The microtonal, esoteric music of Tristan Murail feasted our ears in the first seminar, heartily washed down with mathematical explanations of carrier notes and modulation notes, a far cry from the bitonal cycle of fifths I have unleashed in my first compositional workout "Meditation on the Nature of Love". God knows what "Musicology and its Debates" will throw at me tomorrow. The preparatory reading involves a lot of Californian Academics slagging each other off, but Mozart and the North American Blackfoot Tribe always seem to emerge unscathed. Never mind, perhaps I will find consolation at the Cambridge Union debates: I am now a life member. Or will I find calm in the new St. Edmunds (my college) women's boat, rowing with a body of gorgeous women down the river Cam at 7.am? This is guaranteed to be cool!
But will I write a better Opera in this rarefied atmosphere than in domestic bliss? I am immediately released all week from cleaning concerns. To compose an opera one must, I believe, be prepared to hone and throw away a lot of material that’s not up to the mark. So will this be the place to do it? I am reflecting hourly on my music as I walk through the exquisite grounds of St John’s College, between the music faculty and cosy teas in town. A job worth doing needs full commitment, so it's time to take up holy orders. I have a terrific contemporary novel as the basis for my opera...no, I am not going to divulge here its subject or eminent writer, suffice it to say it offers broad scope to compose a stunning "Big Country" musical landscape. I may even use some of these additional microtonal techniques. Then there are the multi-layered characters that will have "double" voices: a lyric soprano who can also sing in pop-singer belt voice, a tenor (male or female!) who can sing in manly chest and histrionic mezzo/countertenor. The percussion section will include bowed vibraphone, a donkey jaw from Peru, part of a car engine, razor shells. I will reveal more as I go on. But for now, let the distilling of compositional fluids start, my vessels filling, emptying, disseminating and transforming.
