Michael Nyman

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a composer. Born in London, he studied at the Royal Academy and went on to make his name as a writer of music criticism. But the writing of music itself was to reclaim him. Mixing scholarship and innovation, he's created a new and exhilarating sound. On the one hand, his string quartets, concertos, and opera have attracted the attention of serious music lovers. On the other, his film scores, including The Draftsman's Contract, Prospero's Books, and The Piano, have encouraged a following from a wider public. But popularity hasn't brought him acceptance from the musical establishment. I get angry about how I'm excluded, he says. I'm cast into a Twilight Zone. He is Michael Nyman. It's quite a comfortable and lucrative Twilight Zone, though, Michael. I mean, selling three million copies of the album of the Piano. I mean, does that help dissipate the anger?

Michael Nyman1:22

I don't know when I said that, but it is the exceptionally brilliant Twilight Zone. I think it's the Twilight Zone.

Michael Nyman1:29

That most other composers would love to be in. But it's one of those things basically you want everything.

Presenter1:34

But why do you think you're cast into it? Who's cast you?

Michael Nyman1:37

Well that's a very good question. I used to call them the cultural commissars.

Michael Nyman1:44

And I think it's the the simplest answer could be that.

Michael Nyman1:48

The people that make those choices, whether it's programming or commissions, don't like my music. Simple as that.

Presenter1:55

So it's pe it's people at the Royal Opera House, it's people at the ENO, it's people at the BBCs.

Michael Nyman2:00

Could well be. But then there may be other agendas, which is the fact that

Michael Nyman2:04

Because the draftsman's contract was so well known, because the piano was so well known.

Michael Nyman2:09

And because film music is something which kind of washes over you.

Michael Nyman2:13

People don't bother to listen.

Michael Nyman2:14

But if you do listen to a string quartet or the trombone concerto,

Michael Nyman2:18

There's kind of interesting stuff going on which all composers do.

Presenter2:21

But what are you saying, that the commissars, as you call them, won't let you in because you write film music, and that's something that serious classical musicians are not supposed to do?

Michael Nyman2:30

That has been said.

Michael Nyman2:32

It's very interesting. One of the next pieces I'm doing is this is something called The Commissar Vanishes, which is not really connected with this, but with the way that Stalin airbrushed out of our history politicians that he didn't like.

Presenter2:44

Let me ask you the question then. Do you feel that music is under too tight a control in this country?

Michael Nyman2:52

No, I don't think so.

Michael Nyman2:54

No, I th I think when when when there are personal fiefdoms, when when a single person who works for may work for a corporation has particular likes and particular dislikes.

Michael Nyman3:08

And you happen to be one of those dislikes, it's kind of unfortunate, but can't have everything.

Presenter3:16

Tell me about your first record.

Michael Nyman3:18

It's an Okinawan

Michael Nyman3:20

Popular song

Michael Nyman3:22

Written and played by

Michael Nyman3:25

Someone who is still alive called Rinskay, and I think it was it was he wrote it in the 1950s, this is yet to fail at the anti-depression test.

Speaker 43:35

Haki haki shi wa du mutio nunde sei sei do do nudi

Speaker 43:49

Kangeya Shigodo Munu Ijimasanu Akto Wanande Soton Naranguyasu.

Presenter4:06

That was an artist called Rinsuke from Okinawa singing a local song which he wrote in the 1950s and which will cheer up my castaway Michael Nyman on his desert island. Michael, let's talk about the piano, which was of course the story of a young Scottish woman who's sold, this was the 19th century, to a New Zealand backwardsman. She's mute and the piano is her voice. So effectively, you were writing a film role, aren't you?

Michael Nyman4:30

I think that's

Michael Nyman4:33

never done before and something which

Michael Nyman4:36

If I'd actually thought about what I was doing

Michael Nyman4:40

Would possibly have made it even more difficult to write the music than it was. I mean, as you said, this was actually.

Michael Nyman4:47

what she was saying. The music was was was her m mode of communication. And um it occurred to me early on that she should be the composer of her own music because sh she w if she was speaking, she wouldn't be speaking Shakespeare or Browning or whatever, which made things sort of somewhat easier for me. I'd sort of had to pitch the musical language somewhere.

Michael Nyman5:14

In the nineteenth century, but I was writing in the nineteen nineties. So there had to be this this it had to be Michael Nyman, I suppose, writing Holly Hunters, writing Ada's music.

Presenter5:26

With its Scottish origin.

Michael Nyman5:27

Which is Scot which is well the Scottish origins actually really helped me out because

Presenter5:31

Yeah.

Michael Nyman5:32

Yes, um I found these this book of Scottish popular songs and I played through a few of them, they're absolutely beautiful. So this was the key to her composing.

Presenter5:41

But you obviously wrote far more than ever was played in the films used in the film.

Michael Nyman5:45

That is one of the one of the the kind of generic problems of writing film music.

Presenter5:50

So, Jane Campion, the director, would take your music and use the bits she wanted and discard the bits she didn't? They tend to do that. Does that hurt?

Michael Nyman5:58

Well, no, because there's always a soundtrack album which sort of shows the score as written. It's a very complicated thing when you think that a director may have lived with this project for, say, three years and they've shot the film and they may be editing six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen weeks. And then suddenly right at the very, very end of the process, someone like me is brought on

Michael Nyman6:19

I had

Michael Nyman6:21

To add a new art form.

Michael Nyman6:24

you know, something from a totally different expressive dimension.

Michael Nyman6:28

to something that that they know and love intimately and they know they can hear every, you know, the whisper of every blade of grass and then suddenly it's it's dumped on with with, you know, in my case, I hope, some powerful music.

Presenter6:41

But it's a difficult leap for them to make it.

Michael Nyman6:43

It's very different which is why sometimes they're they're a little shy about uh using all the music you write.

Presenter6:49

I want to come back to that point, but just to continue for a second with this music, because you now play that, don't you? As you say, you record the full C D album of the piano music, you play it in public. Your work does get reprocessed in that way quite a lot, doesn't it? And the music I think that you put to the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, was a rewrite of some earlier music you'd written about the Hazel Stadium disaster.

Michael Nyman7:13

Yeah.

Presenter7:14

And you have no no shame about recycling.

Michael Nyman7:14

Yeah.

Michael Nyman7:18

Music critics and commentators.

Michael Nyman7:21

who object to this.

Michael Nyman7:25

they lose their historical perspective, because in fact composers have been doing that, you know, since day one, you know, whether it's Gregorian chant or whether it's a you know, a parody mass from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, or whether it's

Michael Nyman7:41

Bach rewriting Vivaldi or Vivaldi rewriting

Michael Nyman7:46

Corelli or

Michael Nyman7:48

Nothing more.

Presenter7:48

Nothing wrong with

Michael Nyman7:50

Stravinsky the greatest composer of the twentieth century.

Presenter7:53

Tell me about your second recording.

Michael Nyman7:54

The second record.

Michael Nyman7:56

As we'll discuss, I had a very severe

Michael Nyman8:00

Classical music upbringing during the fifties. And so that meant that during the fifties I missed.

Michael Nyman8:08

Every piece of classic pop music. You could imagine. I think I.

Michael Nyman8:13

I don't remem remember Bill Haley and I don't remember Elvis and I don't remember whatever. I do remember Skiffle and I do remember Trad Jazz.

Speaker 28:17

Whatever.

Michael Nyman8:22

And I do remember this.

Michael Nyman8:24

Dwayne Eddy song because it must have been playing on jukeboxes when I think I

Michael Nyman8:32

I had my first infatuation with with somebody called Linda, I think, and uh Station Road, North Chingford.

Speaker 28:36

Linda

Presenter9:11

Dwayne Eddy, and because they're young, in the hit parade when Michael Nyman was a teenager and falling in love. Must have been late fifties, I should think.

Michael Nyman9:17

I think, yeah, I think so. But it's great hearing that sound of the guitar again. Also the little sort of repetitive riff at the end. You know, maybe it suggested something that I've talked about.

Presenter9:28

So this all went on in in Chingford, you say, North East London.

Michael Nyman9:31

North East London, yeah.

Presenter9:32

Northeast Island. Was it a musical family? Was there any music in the family at all?

Michael Nyman9:37

None at all.

Presenter9:37

What's with the piano?

Michael Nyman9:38

There was no piano.

Presenter9:39

What did your parents do for a living?

Michael Nyman9:41

My parents were in the artisan section of the fur trade. They cut skins and sewed them together to make, you know, larger skins, which I suppose were then sent off to to fur coat makers.

Presenter9:48

My

Presenter9:58

And at what point then did your musical talent begin to show itself?

Michael Nyman10:02

This is the bizarre part of the story. I went to primary school, changed primary schools at about the age of seven or eight, and I had shown absolutely no musical talent whatsoever.

Michael Nyman10:15

Some people might say it's continued like that. And there was a music teacher there called Leslie Winters who.

Michael Nyman10:22

For some reason I s I never really talked to him about it. Unfortunately, he died very recently. I don't know what he saw.

Michael Nyman10:29

But he thought.

Michael Nyman10:31

I had

Michael Nyman10:33

Potential. And he proceeded, I would say, from about the age of seven or eight.

Michael Nyman10:38

To the time I went to the Royal Academy of Music when I was seventeen or eighteen, to give them this phenomenally rich, detailed, disciplined.

Michael Nyman10:46

Musical education.

Presenter10:48

And did your relationship go beyond school, as well? Did he take you home to meet his family?

Michael Nyman10:53

Since I didn't have a piano at home

Michael Nyman10:55

I used to practise on his piano and I was basically sort of

Michael Nyman10:59

Introduced into his family. So I was the kind of eldest son in a bizarre sort of way. So there's a strange kind of double life of, you know.

Michael Nyman11:08

North Chingford, which is where the middle class people lived, and South Chingford, where, you know, the working class people lived. So I would, you know, do this trip sort of every day.

Presenter11:17

How did your parents react to all that?

Michael Nyman11:19

That must have been

Michael Nyman11:21

astonishingly difficult for them. But, you know, since I was in the middle of it and since I'd, you know, loved being taken to the opera and you know, Leslie Winters also, he

Michael Nyman11:31

taught me to speak proper.

Michael Nyman11:33

Uh'cause I would have kind of been a very good EastEnders actor, I think, without having to put on the accent. He taught me to write italic handwriting, which I still do to this day.

Michael Nyman11:43

He

Michael Nyman11:44

You know, personally put me in touch with Alan Bush, who I studied composition with.

Michael Nyman11:50

at the Academy. So there's a whole kind of chain of events that that would not have happened without him. And in fact, I could say that, you know, three or four of the records I'm taking with me, three, certainly wouldn't have happened without him.

Presenter12:02

Tell me about the third one.

Michael Nyman12:04

Carcell. Uh the frozen music from

Michael Nyman12:07

King Arthur, funny story behind this, I've only ever heard it once.

Michael Nyman12:13

And I suppose it sort of symbolises my musicological studies with Thurston Dart in the mid-sixties after I left the academy. I was.

Michael Nyman12:23

Not a devoted musicologist, though I did.

Michael Nyman12:26

put out scholarly editions of Handel Concerti Grossi and also For My Sins I put back all the dirty words into into Purcell's catches. And I discovered the sheet music of this Purcell.

Michael Nyman12:45

piece when I was writing in nineteen eighty five.

Michael Nyman12:49

At large, a sort of one and a half hour piece which became a memorial for.

Michael Nyman12:55

The victims of the Hazel Stadium disaster, and about a year ago.

Michael Nyman13:01

I gave a lecture about this particular piece, which was then taken up had then been taken up by Peter Greenaway as the main theme for The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover.

Michael Nyman13:15

I confessed to the person who asked me to to do this lecture that I'd never actually heard this piece. I was actually rather apprehensive. So he went out and bought this and I played it and I just sat there thinking, what an amazing piece of music.

Michael Nyman13:29

And I'm really glad that I made something

Michael Nyman13:32

pretty memorable out of it because one of the problems with

Michael Nyman13:36

recycling other composers' music is that um

Michael Nyman13:41

It it has to be an enrichment and not a diminishing.

Speaker 413:45

Ha art thou from me low hast made me and slow

Speaker 414:15

From their eggs of their

Speaker 414:29

Earth thing small.

Presenter14:45

What power art thou from Purcell's King Arthur, sung by Peteri Safona, with Les Ars Florissant, directed by William Christie?

Presenter14:54

Tell me about working with Peter Greenaway, whom you met when you were at the Royal Academy, I think, and you became friends and you were to go on to collaborate with him in the making of of the draftsman's contract, the cook, the thief, and so on. You said before now that that working on that first big success, the draughtsman's contract, was bliss. How was it bliss?

Michael Nyman15:14

It was blessed because

Michael Nyman15:16

I was allowed to and encouraged to do more or less what I wanted.

Michael Nyman15:21

Obviously, since it was a film that was set during Purcell's time, we decided that Purcell's music would be the best model, the best resource to recompose. And he basically said, you know, I'm a composer, he was an artist, I was a composer, write 12 pieces of music. Each one would be linked to one of the drawings that the draftsman made of the house.

Michael Nyman15:47

Uh you know, just let them

Michael Nyman15:50

Develop in any way that seemed suitable to me. So I wasn't really a film composer.

Presenter15:56

So you both did what you wanted to do, you did what you do, and it came together and it worked.

Michael Nyman15:57

Yeah.

Michael Nyman15:59

Exactly.

Michael Nyman16:02

They changed our lives.

Presenter16:03

And you went on and you did many more films and you had many more successes until you got to Prospero's Books, a film version of of The Tempest, and you fell out big time.

Presenter16:14

Why?

Michael Nyman16:15

Why did we fall well because having been friends and having been colleagues and having been so close and having had

Michael Nyman16:23

Very deep and genuine mutual respect for each other's work. And having written on Prospero's books a score which I thought was the richest, the best performed, the most expensively recorded score that I'd done for him, when I saw the film, I've only ever seen it once, I just found that he had not used the music with the respect that he'd used my other music. He fiddled about. He fiddled about.

Presenter16:49

It's little demand.

Speaker 216:49

Yeah.

Michael Nyman16:51

Partly because his attitudes towards the film changed, which is fine. You know, there's no reason why in the process of making the film you don't look at your film differently, you look at your film differently and the music has a different role. All I expected, I suppose, was Peter to ring me and say, Look, things have changed, the different film, the soundtrack is is magnificent, but I'm going to use it differently.

Presenter17:16

Record number four.

Michael Nyman17:17

Record number four, Bob Dylan, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. What is interesting about this and why it's a very interesting token of sixties culture.

Michael Nyman17:32

is that, you know, one day you can be hearing hearing this at a Bob Dylan concert, and the next day I would go to a lecture by Wilfred Mellers, who was professor of music at York University, who would give a very, very serious analytical

Michael Nyman17:47

Lecture about this song. And when in 1968 there was a prom which has a new BBC commission for three orchestras by Tim Souster and the soft machine and a piece by Terry Riley, and when you think that today it's a very bold gesture to introduce the Beatles music into the proms sung by the King's singers, then, you know, thirty years ago we were living on the edge.

Speaker 218:23

With your mercrimount

Speaker 218:27

In the missionary times

Speaker 218:31

And your eyes like smoke And your prayers like rain

Presenter18:40

Bob Dylan and Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands from his album Blonde on Blonde. Spooling back in your career, Michael Nyman, to the sixties, you know, the Royal Academy of Mention, King's College, and then rubbing shoulders with Harrison Bertwhistle, Peter Maxwell, Davies, and the generation of modern composers ahead of you, being introduced to radical music. Why after all of that education, on top of the the kind of constrained bit that you've talked about, did you suddenly decide, because you'd been composing from the age of

Michael Nyman19:02

You talked about

Presenter19:07

thirteen, I think. Why did you suddenly decide to stop composing?

Michael Nyman19:11

This was a kind of historic moment. Not that I stopped composing, but a historic moment for.

Michael Nyman19:16

new music. I've been at the Academy sixty one, sixty four.

Michael Nyman19:21

Possibly the newest music we ever heard was Indamid. Suddenly in 1964.

Michael Nyman19:26

There was a summer school in Wardore Castle in Wiltshire that was run by

Michael Nyman19:32

Peter Maxwell, Davis, Harrison Burke was also Sandy Gerr.

Michael Nyman19:35

And they introduced this the new radical post-Waban serial music, whatever, you know, modern music as we would call it.

Michael Nyman19:43

stimulating performances, stimulating lectures, wonderful chat, dialogue, etcetera, etcetera. But it was made pretty clear that this was the only music that you were permitted to write. It was a sort of fascism in a way.

Michael Nyman19:56

And if you didn't write this kind of music you were

Michael Nyman19:59

considered to be a kind of

Michael Nyman20:01

comp composition of imbecile, I suppose. And so I was very excited by this and I learnt all about serialism and twelve tone and manipulating tone rows and started writing my first twelve tone piece. And then after about thirty minutes I thought

Michael Nyman20:16

This isn't for me. And I suppose I wasn't. I couldn't. It didn't really interest me. And I suppose I wasn't.

Speaker 420:17

Yeah.

Speaker 220:17

Yeah.

Michael Nyman20:22

A strong enough composer to resist this and say, no, I still want to use my tonal chord sequences. So I just started.

Presenter20:29

So it's a bit of a crisis, really. Because you then started to be a music critic instead. You were commissioned by the spectator. Nigel Lawson was the editor at the time. You kind of put composition on hold. Just tell me a bit about being a critic. Do you think you were a fair one in your time? Or could you be as rough on people as they are on you?

Michael Nyman20:48

Uh

Michael Nyman20:49

I was a kind of proselytizer, I suppose. So initially I sort of proselytized for Stockhausen and Burke Wistler and Maxwell Davis, although I had rejected

Michael Nyman20:59

uh the possibilities for composing like them. I still hung out with them and I still interviewed them and I still was very involved. I was only horrible about some performances of, say, Wagner's Ring where Rita Hunter came on dressed like Barbarella, but not quite with the figure for it.

Presenter21:20

Tell me about record number five.

Michael Nyman21:24

When I was a critic I discovered

Michael Nyman21:27

Purely by chance, a piece by Cornelius Cardew, which was music-making of a kind that I'd never thought about before, which was a lot of very inexpert performers doing something very, very seriously, almost like a religious rite. And

Michael Nyman21:46

Subsequently be became involved with Cardew and Cavryn Bryars and John Tilbury and joined the Scratch Orchestra, which was a wonderful organisation or disorganisation of like minded people who got together.

Michael Nyman22:01

To perform with whatever music with whatever skills they had.

Presenter22:05

So you're on this piece somehow.

Michael Nyman22:06

I am on this next recording of um paragraph seven.

Michael Nyman22:11

At the great learning my voice is there.

Michael Nyman22:14

Somewhere and this is a

Michael Nyman22:16

A brilliant piece of kind of socialized music making. Anybody could do this piece. There are, say, twenty lines of text. Each singer, who doesn't have to be a singer, sings a note of his or her choice, and you use that note to sing at a length of breadth the first line. You then move on to the second line, and you don't choose the note you sing, you walk around and you listen to what someone else is singing. And in a way, it represents a kind of

Speaker 222:19

Anybody

Michael Nyman22:46

sort of paradise, a kind of innocence, that we were

Michael Nyman22:51

We were modest and we worked together and there was a kind of communal sense of of music making which has now been lost because we're all kind of careerists, we're all kind of

Michael Nyman23:00

You know, we will want that film score, we will want that commission. This is a sort of

Michael Nyman23:07

A period of paradise, although politically underneath all their singing, there are lots of potent things happening.

Presenter23:44

Scratch Orchestra conducted by Cornelius Cardew playing part of paragraph seven from his composition The Great Learning.

Presenter23:51

Stories of you around that time, Michael, late sixties, early seventies, being pretty strapped for cash, picking up old lettuces in the Portobello Road, is that right?

Michael Nyman24:00

Yeah, one particular occasion when I was

Michael Nyman24:03

You know, about six o'clock picking up these discarded lettuces, which made wonderful lettuce soup. Being um.

Michael Nyman24:10

confronted by a more permanently employed music critic who said, you know, tomorrow lunchtime there's going to be a party at the British Institute of Recorded Sound. You know, you obviously need feeding. Why don't you come?

Michael Nyman24:25

So I did, you know, but it wasn't really that bad.

Presenter24:27

It was really Harrison Burtwhistle, wasn't it, who got you back into composition because he was musical director of the National Theatre and he rang you up and commissioned you.

Michael Nyman24:27

Uh

Michael Nyman24:35

Well, but commissioned me as a musicologist.

Michael Nyman24:38

Harry knew that I was a musicologist, rang me up, said they were that the opening production at the Olivier Theatre in front of the Queen would be Il Campiello by Goldioni. Would I go to the British Museum? I obviously knew my way around.

Michael Nyman24:52

The music library in the reading room and transcribe Venetian gondol gondolier's songs.

Michael Nyman24:58

of the um eighteenth century.

Michael Nyman25:01

And then he was going to give this research to

Michael Nyman25:04

to another composer, I think it was Nino Rotta. And um

Michael Nyman25:09

He came back a few weeks later and said that since the production was happening very soon, would I arrange these tunes? And I hadn't done any arranging and I'd set about making

Michael Nyman25:21

This

Michael Nyman25:22

wacky, noisy street band out of

Michael Nyman25:28

Medieval instruments, Renaissance instruments, folk instruments on the one hand, rebecks and kirtles, and on the other hand.

Michael Nyman25:36

loud contemporary instruments like saxophones and banjos.

Michael Nyman25:41

put them on the stage, sounded fantastic, and then thought I would like to play in the foyer before you know, main productions, you know, the the the the plays. So we had a date, and I had the musicians, but I had no repertoire.

Michael Nyman25:57

And I remembered when I was about thirteen or fourteen that Leslie Winters had taken me to see

Michael Nyman26:02

Don Giovanni at The Old Shadow as Wells, and I remembered this amazing chord sequence.

Michael Nyman26:08

And I couldn't remember much else about it, so I again went to the score.

Michael Nyman26:14

took the repeated notes and uh and played those on the piano and I suddenly discovered that I became a sort of rock and roll pianist playing these repeated notes and then there was a bass part and then there was a part on the violins which was like imitated the bass part and then there was there was the

Michael Nyman26:30

leprolo's malady. So what I did was was to

Michael Nyman26:33

To extend all these things by repetition, introduce each element one at a time.

Michael Nyman26:38

But my next choice is is the original.

Speaker 426:44

Hispania Sunchan in Italy.

Speaker 426:55

Contability.

Speaker 426:57

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 426:59

I'm prisoner.

Speaker 427:13

Seeking the Goram Power.

Speaker 427:16

In Lamagna.

Speaker 427:18

Which is

Speaker 427:22

Brand joint brigand.

Speaker 427:34

Espagnas in John B. Italy.

Presenter27:41

Michele Pertuzzi as Leporello singing his catalogue aria Madamina from Act one of Mozart's Don Giovanni, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte. So we've had Niyman on on Purcell, Nyman on Mozart. Let's have Nyman on on football. You are beyond all reasonable doubt a fanatic, yes?

Michael Nyman27:59

Uh yes, and being a QPR supporter it's difficult to keep one's fanaticism on the boil. Uh I did write a piece in uh nineteen ninety one which is the best

Michael Nyman28:10

Project I ever did was a piece called The Final Score for a Channel 4 documentary on QPR in their golden days in the early 70s. So all the research.

Michael Nyman28:20

involved watching videos of matches that I'd kind of

Presenter28:24

You do such research.

Michael Nyman28:25

Well no, I did for this, for this film, yes,'cause I really wanted to see Stan Boards and Don Givens.

Presenter28:25

Uh

Michael Nyman28:31

Yeah, I want to see the team beating Liverpool and Leeds.

Presenter28:33

But what do you do? Do you read that? Do you soak it up and then just

Presenter28:39

See what comes out musically, or do you

Michael Nyman28:41

Yeah.

Presenter28:41

Yeah.

Michael Nyman28:41

It can be quite sometimes it quite can be quite abstract, for instance the Hazel Stadium piece memorial.

Michael Nyman28:49

I I was just writing a a concert piece, and I'd chosen the King Arthur segment and I was working on it.

Michael Nyman28:57

And I sat in front of a television one night and saw what I wanted what I thought was going to be a football match, but it was a massacre. And it was not like an an earthquake, it was something that was very close to me because, you know, I could have been at that match, for instance.

Presenter29:09

But you also could have been having in mind at that time any other kind of music. It's just the coincidence was yours then.

Michael Nyman29:14

It was yes, it was. So I was writing this piece of music which, because it was going to be performed in a very reverberant industrial space, had to be kind of slow and processional. And this piece of purcell that I was in the process of transforming just

Michael Nyman29:31

became a kind of signature tune for the way that I felt about the these uh these Juventus fans who died.

Presenter29:40

Record number seven.

Michael Nyman29:42

I owe the B B C a debt of gratitude for this piece when I was writing for the listener.

Michael Nyman29:47

Whatever happened to the listener? A column called Last Week's Broadcast Music. It became more and more desperate as I would go through the Radio Times trying to find music that interested me. And suddenly there was a concert on a Tuesday afternoon or a Wednesday afternoon of Mexican symphonic music about which I knew nothing. And there was Chavez and Ravueltas. If you can imagine Stravinsky living in Mexico and being kind of politically committed to Mexican history and Mexican peasants, you can sort of imagine this music, but it's much more individual and more idiosyncratic than that.

Presenter31:25

Part of Sensa Maya by Silvestre Revueltas, played by the New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Eduardo Mata.

Presenter31:32

Your next film out, uh Michael Nyman, is The End of the Affair, based on the Graham Greene novel. Are are you pleased with it? Do you still enjoy writing film music?

Michael Nyman31:40

So actually I've got three. Ravenous, Wonderland by Micah Winterbottom, and The End of the Affair, Neil Jordan, which I'm so pleased with. And I think the film is such a mature, grown-up piece of work.

Michael Nyman31:56

That I could

Michael Nyman31:57

I'd be quite happy to say, okay, this is my last film score, because it's actually, as with the piano, it's very difficult to know what to do next.

Presenter32:04

But you don't stop doing films because it muddles your reputation with the establishment.

Michael Nyman32:08

Well

Michael Nyman32:09

I think, you know, I'm it's too far gone really. The interesting thing is it's all the same process. And although I think slightly differently when I'm writing a film score, I don't become another composer. I don't you know, I'm not putting on another suit of clothes. There are composers around who who basically had two lives. Uh Elizabeth Lutyens is one of them. She wrote music for Hammer Horror films and then you know serial music for the concert hall. So for good or for bad

Michael Nyman32:37

All my whether it's a concert piece or an opera or a film score, it's all the same material, all the same idea.

Presenter32:45

And underneath it all, are you waiting for the commission still that doesn't come from the PROMS or the ENO or the ROH?

Michael Nyman32:53

There are certain things I would like to do, and I have a certain way with orchestral music that I just really thrills me to do something that isn't limited, as a film score is, to a particular time, particular space, a particular way of dealing with the fact that your music is coupled on the soundtrack with dialogue and effects. An orchestral piece enables you to go for broke, and I like going for broke. But as I say.

Presenter33:23

So when it comes you'll accept it.

Michael Nyman33:25

I will. If it's in your gift, Sue, I will accept.

Presenter33:29

Tell me

Michael Nyman33:29

Um quite simply Kathleen Ferrier singing

Michael Nyman33:35

Part of the last movement of Mahler's Daslied von der Ede, which I haven't heard since I was about twelve or thirteen. Again, part of the Leslie Winters phenomenal music education, which makes it worth taking, I think.

Speaker 433:50

We shall see

Speaker 434:09

Me too.

Presenter34:38

Kathleen Ferrier singing part of the Farewell from Mahler's Das Liet von der Erde, the Song of the Earth, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Bruno Walter. If you could only take one of those eight records, Michael

Michael Nyman34:49

possibly take that because apart from the the quality of the tune and the voice and the melody kind of not really

Michael Nyman34:57

Comes into being but also disintegrates. Harmonically, there's so much going on there, and I can actually learn.

Michael Nyman35:05

to orchestrate rather more sensitively. I think for my own self-education

Michael Nyman35:11

And pleasure I would take.

Michael Nyman35:13

The Mala

Presenter35:13

And what about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Michael Nyman35:16

Tristam Shandy by Lawrence Stern.

Michael Nyman35:19

been trying to turn it into an opera for twenty years and it is so vast and it's so confusing. I think I could for the first time in my life sort of take a big bit of bit of beautiful sandy beach and actually plot the structure of the narrative or non-narrative and try and work out how I was going to do it. And then it might also be a sign

Michael Nyman35:43

Planes flying over that there was this was not an uninhabited island.

Presenter35:47

And your luxury.

Michael Nyman35:49

I suppose for kind of ritualistic purposes amongst other things.

Michael Nyman35:54

A fully plumbed in flushing.

Michael Nyman35:56

Lavatory system would take a lot of beating.

Presenter36:00

Michael Niemann, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 436:12

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.