Bright Futures, Dark Pasts: Michael Finnissy at 70 – Jan 19/20, Conference/Concerts at City University
Posted: January 13, 2017 Filed under: Art, Culture, Film, History, Literature, media, Music - General, Musicology, New Music, Politics, Theatre | Tags: aaron einbond, alexander benham, alexander lingas, andrew toovey, ben smith, bernice chitiul, chris newman, christopher fox, christopher redgate, city university of london, claudia molitor, gregory woods, howard skempton, ian pace, jonathan powell, larry goves, lauren redhead, laurence crane, maarten beirens, marcel duchamp, matthew lee knowles, max ernst, michael finnissy, morgan hayes, nancy ruffer, Patrícia Sucena de Almeida, roddy hawkins, roger redgate, the history of photography in sound, tom wilson 1 CommentClick here to book tickets for the conference and/or the concerts.
On Thursday January 19th and Friday January 20th, 2017, City, University of London is hosting a conference entitled Bright Futures, Dark Pasts: Michael Finnissy at 70. This will feature a range of scholarly papers on a variety of aspects of Finnissy’s work – including his use of musical objets trouvés, engagement with folk music, sexuality, the influence of cinema, relationship to other contemporary composers, issues of marginality, and his work in performance. There will be three concerts, featuring his complete works for two pianos and piano duet, played by the composer, Ian Pace, and Ben Smith; a range of solo, chamber and ensemble works; and a complete performance (from 14:00-21:00 on Friday 20th) of his epic piano cycle The History of Photography in Sound by Ian Pace. The concerts include the world premieres of Finnissy’s Zortziko (2009) for piano duet and Kleine Fjeldmelodie (2016-17) for solo piano, the UK premiere of Duet (1971-2013) and London premieres of Fem ukarakteristisek marsjer med tre tilføyde trioer (2008-9) for piano duet, Derde symfonische etude (2013) for two pianos, his voice/was then/here waiting (1996) for two pianos, and Eighteenth-Century Novels: Fanny Hill (2006) for two pianos. There will also be a rare chance to hear Finnissy’s Sardinian-inspired Anninnia (1981-2) for voice and piano, for the first time in several decades.
Keynote speakers will be Roddy Hawkins (University of Manchester), Gregory Woods (Nottingham Trent University, author of Homintern) and Ian Pace (City, University of London). The composer will be present for the whole event, and will perform and be interviewed by Christopher Fox (Brunel University) on his work and the History in particular.
The composer and photographer Patrícia Sucena de Almeida, who studied with Finnissy between 2000 and 2004, has created a photographic work, continuum simulacrum (2016-17) inspired by The History of Photography in Sound and particularly Chapter 6 (Seventeen Immortal Homosexual Poets). The series will be shown on screens in the department and samples of a book version will be available.
Patrícia Sucena de Almeida, from continuum simulacrum (2016-17).
The full programme can be viewed below. This conference also brings to a close Ian Pace’s eleven-concert series of the complete piano works of Finnissy.
A separate blog post will follow on The History of Photography in Sound.
Click here to book tickets for the conference and/or the concerts.
All events take place at the Department of Music, College Building, City, University of London, St John Street, London EC1V 4PB.
Thursday January 19th, 2017
09:00-09:30 Room AG09.
Registration and TEA/COFFEE.
09:30-10:00 Performance Space.
Introduction and tribute to Michael Finnissy by Ian Pace and Miguel Mera (Head of Department of Music, City, University of London).
10:00-12:00 Room AG09. Chair: Aaron Einbond.
Larry Goves (Royal Northern College of Music), ‘Michael Finnissy & Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: the composer as anthropologist’.
Maarten Beirens (Amsterdam University), ‘Questioning the foreign and the familiar: Interpreting Michael Finnissy’s use of traditional and non-Western sources’
Lauren Redhead (Canterbury Christ Church University), ‘The Medium is Now the Material: The “Folklore” of Chris Newman and Michael Finnissy’.
Followed by a roundtable discussion between the three speakers and composer and Finnissy student Claudia Molitor (City, University of London), chaired by Aaron Einbond.
12:00-13:00 Foyer, Performance Space.
LUNCH.
13:10–14:15 Performance Space.
Concert 1: Michael Finnissy: The Piano Music (10). Michael Finnissy, Ian Pace and Ben Smith play Finnissy’s works for two pianos or four hands.
Michael Finnissy, Wild Flowers (1974) (IP/MF)
Michael Finnissy, Fem ukarakteristisek marsjer med tre tilføyde trioer (2008-9) (BS/IP) (London premiere)
Michael Finnissy, Derde symfonische etude (2013) (BS/IP) (London premiere)
Michael Finnissy, Deux jeunes se promènent à travers le ciel 1920 (2008) (IP/BS)
Michael Finnissy, his voice/was then/here waiting (1996) (IP/MF) (UK premiere)
Michael Finnissy, Eighteenth-Century Novels: Fanny Hill (2006) (IP/MF) (London premiere)
Max Ernst, Deux jeunes se promènent à travers le ciel (1920)
14:30-15:30 Room AG09. Chair: Lauren Redhead (Canterbury Christ Church University).Keynote: Roddy Hawkins (University of Manchester): ‘Articulating, Dwelling, Travelling: Michael Finnissy and Marginality’.
15:30-16:00 Foyer, Performance Space.
TEA/COFFEE.
16:00-17:00 Room AG09. Chair: Roddy Hawkins (University of Manchester).
Keynote: Ian Pace (City, University of London): ‘Michael Finnissy between Jean-Luc Godard and Dennis Potter: appropriation of techniques from cinema and TV’
17:00-18:00 Room AG09. Chair: Christopher Fox (Brunel University).
Roundtable on performing the music of Michael Finnissy. Participants: Neil Heyde (cellist), Ian Pace (pianist), Jonathan Powell (pianist), Christopher Redgate (oboist), Roger Redgate (conductor, violinist), Nancy Ruffer (flautist).
19:00 Performance Space.
Concert 2: City University Experimental Ensemble (CUEE), directed Tullis Rennie. Christopher Redgate, oboe/oboe d’amore; Nancy Ruffer, flutes; Bernice Chitiul, voice; Alexander Benham, piano; Michael Finnissy, piano; Ian Pace, piano; Ben Smith; piano.
Michael Finnissy, Yso (2007) (CUEE)
Michael Finnissy, Stille Thränen (2009) (Ian Pace, Ben Smith)
Michael Finnissy, Runnin’ Wild (1978) (Christopher Redgate)
Michael Finnissy, Anninnia (1981-82) (Bernice Chitiul, Ian Pace)
Michael Finnissy, Ulpirra (1982-83) (Nancy Ruffer)
Michael Finnissy, Pavasiya (1979) (Christopher Redgate)
INTERVAL
‘Mini-Cabaret’: Michael Finnissy, piano
Chris Newman, AS YOU LIKE IT (1981)
Michael Finnissy, Kleine Fjeldmelodie (2016-17) (World première)
Andrew Toovey, Where are we in the world? (2014)
Laurence Crane, 20th CENTURY MUSIC (1999)
Matthew Lee Knowles, 6th Piece for Laurence Crane (2006)
Morgan Hayes, Flaking Yellow Stucco (1995-6)
Tom Wilson, UNTIL YOU KNOW (2017) (World première)
Howard Skempton, after-image 3 (1990)
Michael Finnissy, Zortziko (2009) (Ian Pace, Ben Smith) (World première)
Michael Finnissy, Duet (1971-2013) (Ben Smith, Ian Pace) (UK première)
Michael Finnissy, ‘They’re writing songs of love, but not for me’, from Gershwin Arrangements (1975-88) (Alexander Benham)
Michael Finnissy, APRÈS-MIDI DADA (2006) (CUEE)
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912).
21:30 Location to be confirmed
CONFERENCE DINNER
Friday January 20th, 2017
10:00-11:00 Room AG21.
Christopher Fox in conversation with Michael Finnissy on The History of Photography in Sound.
11:00-11:30 Room AG21.
TEA/COFFEE.
11:30-12:30 Room AG21. Chair: Alexander Lingas (City, University of London).
Keynote: Gregory Woods (Nottingham Trent University): ‘My “personal themes”?!’: Finnissy’s Seventeen Homosexual Poets and the Material World’.
14:00-21:00 Performance Space.
Concert 3: Michael Finnissy: The Piano Music (11): The History of Photography in Sound (1995-2002). Ian Pace, piano
14:00 Chapters 1, 2: Le démon de l’analogie; Le réveil de l’intraitable realité.
15:00 INTERVAL
15:15 Chapters 3, 4: North American Spirituals; My parents’ generation thought War meant something
16:15 INTERVAL
16:35 Chapters 5, 6, 7: Alkan-Paganini; Seventeen Immortal Homosexual Poets; Eadweard Muybridge-Edvard Munch
17:50 INTERVAL (wine served)
18:10 Chapter 8: Kapitalistische Realisme (mit Sizilianische Männerakte und Bachsche Nachdichtungen)
19:20 INTERVAL (wine served)
19:35 Chapters 9, 10, 11: Wachtend op de volgende uitbarsting van repressie en censuur; Unsere Afrikareise; Etched Bright with Sunlight.
What characterizes the so-called advanced societies is that they today consume images and no longer, like those of the past, beliefs; they are therefore more liberal, less fanatical, but also more ‘false’ (less ‘authentic’) – something we translate, in ordinary consciousness, by the avowal of an impression of nauseated boredom, as if the universalized image were producing a world that is without difference (indifferent), from which can rise, here and there, only the cry of anarchisms, marginalisms, and individualisms: let us abolish the images, let us save immediate Desire (desire without mediation).
Mad or tame? Photography can be one or the other: tame if its realism remains relative, tempered by aesthetic or empirical habits (to leaf through a magazine at the hairdresser’s, the dentist’s); mad if this realism is absolute and, so to speak, original, obliging the loving and terrified consciousness to return to the very letter of Time: a strictly revulsive movement which reverses the course of the thing, and which I shall call, in conclusion, the photographic ecstasy.
Such are the two ways of the Photography. The choice is mine: to subject its spectacle to the civilized code of perfect illusions, or to confront in it the wakening of intractable reality.
Ce qui caractérise les sociétés dites avancées, c’est que ces sociétés consomment aujourd’hui des images, et non plus, comme celles d’autrefois, des croyances; elles sont donc plus libérales, moins fanataiques, mais aussi plus «fausses» (moins «authentiques») – chose que nous traduisons, dans la conscience courante, par l’aveu d’une impression d’ennui nauséeux, comme si l’image, s’universalisant, produisait un monde sans differences (indifferent), d’où ne peut alors surgir ici et là que le cri des anarchismes, marginalismes et individualismes : abolissons les images, sauvons le Désir immédiat (sans mediation).
Folle ou sage? La Photographie peut être l’un ou l’autre : sage si son réalisme reste relative, tempére par des habitudes esthétiques ou empiriques (feuilleter une revue chez le coiffeur, le dentist); folle, si ce réalisme est absolu, et, si l’on peut dire, original, faisant revenir à la conscience amoureuse et effrayée la letter même du Temps : movement proprement révulsif, qui retourne le cours de la chose, et que l’appellerai pour finir l’extase photographique.
Telles sont les deux voies de la Photographie. A moi de choisir, de soumettre son spectacle au code civilise des illusions parfaits, ou d’affronter en elle le réveil de l’intraitable réalité.
Roland Barthes, Le chambre claire/Camera Lucida.
Eadweard Muybridge – A. Throwing a Disk, B: Ascending a Step, C: Walking from Animal Locomotion (1885-1887).
Patrícia Sucena de Almeida, from continuum simulacrum (2016-17).
Click here to book tickets for the conference and/or the concerts.
Ian Pace, May 2016 – Finnissy Concerts and Lectures
Posted: May 3, 2016 Filed under: Academia, History, Music - General, Musical Education, Musicology, New Music | Tags: alexander lingas, amanda bayley, andrew toovey, experimental music, folklore, ian pace, john cage, laudan nooshin, laurence crane, luke stoneham, michael finnissy, michael spitzer, morton feldman, nicholas cook, percy grainger, simeon solomon, stan brakhage, steve crowther, tore lind 1 Comment[Please note: the lecture on May 25th has now been cancelled due to industrial action. It will now take place on Wednesday October 12th]
Ian Pace will be playing several major concerts featuring the music of Michael Finnissy during May 2016, following the great success of his recital on February 16th, the first in his series of the composers’ piano works (in this concert including English Country-Tunes and other pieces), to celebrate Finnissy’s 70th birthday.
(From Song 9)
Saturday May 7th, 19:30. York Late Music Series, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York YO1 8NQ.
See this link to book tickets.
Beethoven, Rondo in A, WoO 49
Percy Grainger, My Robin is to the greenwood gone [Settings of Songs and Tunes from William Chappell’s ‘Old English Popular Music’ Nr.2]
Michael Finnissy, Beethoven’s Robin Adair (2012-15) (World Premiere)
Andrew Toovey, First Out (2016) (World Premiere)
Steve Crowther, Piano Sonata No. 3 (World Premiere of revised version)
Luke Stoneham, Magenta Cuts (1994)
Laurence Crane, Slow Folk Tune: Sheringham (2014)
This concert features a major new extended work written by Finnissy for Ian Pace, Beethoven’s Robin Adair, a set of free fantasies and variations on the folk song ‘Robin Adair’ as set by Beethoven in his Verschiedene Volkslieder WoO 157 No 7. The remainder of the programme was picked by Finnissy, and includes works by long-term associates and colleagues Luke Stoneham, Laurence Crane, and Andrew Toovey (with a new work written for Finnissy’s 70th), as well as the new version of Late Music artistic director Steve Crowther’s Piano Sonata No. 3, originally premiered by Ian Pace in the series in 2015, and other works of Beethoven and Percy Grainger with which Finnissy feels a strong affinity.
Tuesday May 10th, 19:30
Michael Finnissy at 70: The Piano Works (2)
Hollywell Music Room, Hollywell Street OX1 3SD
See here for further details. Tickets available at the door.
Song 5 (1966-67)
Song 6 (1968, rev. 1996)
Song 7 (1968-69)
Song 8 (1967)
Song 9 (1968)
Nine Romantics (1992)
– Interval –
Ives-Grainger-Nancarrow (1974, 1979, 1979-80)
Liz (1980-81)
B.S.-G.F.H. (1985-86)
Ethel Smyth (1995)
Joh. Seb. Bach (2003)
Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sind (1992)
Rossini (1991)
What the meadow-flowers tell me (1993)
Preambule zu “Carnaval”, gefolgt von der ersten und zweiten symphonischen Etüde nach Schumann (2009-10)
One Minute W… (2006)
This is the first chance to hear all of Finnissy’s Songs for piano for twenty years, when they were played by Ian Pace in part of his 1996 cycle of Finnissy’s piano works. These works (part of a wider cycle for various instruments) take their cue from a series of films by the director Stan Brakhage), which can be viewed here. Also featured in the programme is Finnissy’s little-known Nine Romantics, a bleak tribute to the Victorian artist Simeon Solomon, whose career was ruined after arrest and imprisonment for cottaging. The second half of the concerts features a series of short ‘portrait’ pieces of various composers to whom Finnissy is drawn, short fantasies on the names of Bernard Stevens and Georg Frederic Handel, two very different reflections on a cantata and an organ chorale prelude of Bach, a rather unhinged setting of an aria from Rossini’s Semiramide, a mysterious assemblage deriving from a movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony, and more recent free transcriptions based on works of Schumann and Chopin (Finnissy’s rendition of the Minute Waltz).
[Postponed to Wednesday October 12th]
Lecture: ‘Ideological Constructions of ‘Experimental Music’ and Anglo-American Nationalism in the Historiography of post-1945 Music’
Room AG09, City University, College Building, St John Street, London EC1V 4PB
Abstract: Since the publication of John Cage’s essay ‘Experimental Music: Doctrine’ of 1955, a dichotomy has informed a good deal of historiography of new music between ‘avant-garde’ and ‘experimental’ musics, especially following the publication of Michael Nyman’s book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond in 1974. Nyman very clearly portrayed ‘experimental music’ as a fundamentally Anglo-American phenomenon, allowing almost no European composers into his pantheon. This opposition was itself foreshadowed in various writings of John Cage and Morton Feldman, and since the appearance of Nyman’s book has remained a prominent ideological construct, even feeding into other oppositions such as ‘high/low’ music, ‘uptown/downtown’ or ‘modern/postmodern’.
In this paper, I trace the history and development of the concept of ‘experimental’ music in several types of literature published in Europe and North America from the 1950s until the present day: general histories of music of this period, histories of American music, the writings of Cage, Feldman and Wolff, secondary literature on these figures, and other work dealing specifically with ‘experimental music’. I argue that from the late 1950s onwards, there was such a large amount of cross-fertilisation between composers on either side of the Atlantic that the opposition is unsustainable, but its perpetuation served an ideological and nationalistic purpose. Above all, by portraying a group of British and American composers as occupying an aesthetic space at an insurmountable remove from a (simplistic) picture of a European ‘avant-garde’, this facilitated special pleading on the part of the former for programming and other purposes. Even as some writers have grudgingly conceded that a small few continental European composers might also be considered ‘experimental’, they have constructed them as utterly on the margins of a perceived European mainstream to such an extent as to question their very ‘Europeanness’. Remarkably, this opposition has also been continued by various European writers, especially in Germany.
I also argue that the rhetoric of ‘experimental music’ has some roots in mythologies of the US frontier which have informed constructions of its canonical musicians. In place of this, I stress the strong European (as well as American and Asian) provenance of Cage’s thought and work (via that of Duchamp, futurism, Dada, the Bauhaus, Joyce, Satie, Varèse, Webern and Meister Eckhardt), and suggest that Feldman’s romantic, anti-rational individualism can be viewed not only in a clear lineage from nineteenth century European aesthetic thought (not least in Russia), but also in stark opposition to Cage’s anti-subjectivism. And finally I paraphrase Cage’s preface to Lecture on the Weather (1975) to argue that the music of the U.S.A. should be seen as just one part of the musical world, no more, no less.
Friday May 27th, 18:00 and 19:15
Michael Finnissy at 70: The Piano Works (3)
Performance Space, City University, College Building, St John Street, London EC1V 4PB
See here for more information and to book tickets
Concert 1, 18:00
Svatovac (1973-74)
Three Dukes Went A-Riding (1977, rev. 1996)
To & Fro (1978, rev. 1995)
We’ll get there someday (1978)
Terrekeme (1981, rev. 1990)
Taja (1986)
Hikkai (1982-83)
Cozy Fanny’s Tootsies (1992)
John Cage (1992)
Five Yvaroperas (1993-95)
Tell-Dirais (1996)
Vanèn (1991)
all.fall.down (1977)
Concert 2, 19:15
Folklore I-IV (1993-94)
The centre piece of the third concert in Ian Pace’s Finnissy series is the 70 minute cycle from the early 1990s, Folklore. This work takes its initial cue from what Finnissy himself describes as ‘Gramsci’s imperative to compile an inventory of the ‘infinity of traces’ that historical processes leave on ‘the self’.’ The work navigates its way through a variety of ‘regions’, defined in terms of their musical folklore (Norwegian, Rumanian, American, etc.), interspersed with extended passages imitating Scottish piobaireachd, as well as the African-American spiritual ‘Deep River’, and also intercut with moments of extreme passion and violence, as well as allusions to early influences, representing the composer’s own personal ‘folklore’. The early evening concert contains a series of other pieces taking their cue from folk music (Macedonian, Azerbaijani, Sardinian, Australian Aboriginal), a series of three pieces all revised from his earlier (now withdrawn) Piano Studies, and a few more portraits or tribute pieces, including a series of five in memory of the late pianist Yvar Mikhashoff. There is also a very rare chance to hear one of Finnissy’s most pianistically demanding pieces, the hyper-virtuosic all.fall.down.
Preview for June 1st, 18:00, Public Debate, ‘Are We All Ethnomusicologists Now?’
Performance Space, City University, College Building, St John Street, London EC1V 4PB
In a now-notorious 2008 article (‘We Are All (Ethno)musicologists Now’, in The New (Ethno)musicologies, ed. Henry Stobart (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008), pp. 48-70), Nicholas Cook suggested that the boundaries between subdisciplines of music had become more porous so that “distinguishing between musicology and ethnomusicology seems … as hopeless as it is pointless.” This led to his oft-cited statement: “we are all ethnomusicologists now.” Does Cook’s provocation stand up?
The panel will consist of (in alphabetical order) Amanda Bayley (Bath Spa University), Tore Lind (University of Copenhagen), Laudan Nooshin (City University London), Ian Pace (City University London), and Michael Spitzer (University of Liverpool), and will be chaired by Alexander Lingas (City University London).
Desiring Progress 