There are plenty of biographical
details about Edward Cowie available on the Internet. However, a few pointers
may help the listener. Cowie was born in Birmingham on 17 August 1943. He began to compose at the early age of 11
years. Later, he had composition lessons with Alexander Goehr and Witold
Lutoslawski as well encouragement from Michael Tippett. Cowie has had several
academic postings including lectureships at Lancaster, Kassel and Wollongong
Universities. In 1995 he returned to England after residence in Australia. Here
he has had many musical appointments, collaborations and commissions. His
non-musical interests include painting and ornithology.
The composer’s catalogue is wide-ranging
and includes major orchestral and choral works, a huge amount of chamber music
as well as an opera. His musical style creates a satisfactory equilibrium
between an acknowledgement of past influences such as Bach, Debussy, and
Messiaen, along with an ever-developing exploration of new musical forms and
techniques. His music is regularly inspired by paintings (often his own) and
the structural aspects of physical science.
I am grateful to the composer for
some elucidations and explanations of this music, and his permission for me to
include them in my script.
In the opening paragraphs of the
liner notes, Cowie outlines his musical aesthetic in six points. Three of them stand
out (to me). In this philosophy he is
inspired more by natural history than musical history, secondly, drawing/painting
before composing helps him to create the ‘soundscape’ of his music and
finally for him ‘sound, colour, order, disorder, shape, pattern, form are all
connected in a kind of grand unification.’ The listener does not need to
subscribe to this manifesto to enjoy these quartets. However, these pointers
may help to form a working understanding of the music. From a technical point
of view, Edward Cowie was a proficient violinist before seriously injuring his
left hand during a University rugger match. That said, he had the experience of
playing many of the great masterworks of the string ensemble repertoire. It has
left an indelible impression on his compositional technique.
The opening work on this CD is
the earliest. It was composed in 1969 when the composer was in his
mid-twenties. The composer explained that this was his third attempt at writing
a String Quartet. Interestingly, this piece is not featured in the ‘works list’
included in Anthony Burton’s 1982 portrait of the composer (Musical Times
February 1982). Cowie explained the reason for this. He had kept the work under
wraps: it had not been published at that time. Last year (2019) he ‘re fell in
love with it.’
This Quartet is subtitled ‘Dungeness
Nocturnes’. It is not ‘descriptive’ or even ‘impressionistic’ music but draws
its essence from nature rather than pictorial representation. That said, anyone
who has explored Dungeness by day or evening will relate to this music. It
seems to be streaked with sunlight, seafoam and breeze. The contrasts of wide-open
spaces, the nuclear reactor and the intrusive wind turbines all seem to be
included in this musical response. Despite its ambiguous relationship to
modernity, this Quartet is perfectly approachable. I think that the technical strategy
underpinning of this work is Cowie’s rejection of the strictures of serialism. The
composer explained to me that he refused ‘to see dissonance or
consonance as distant cousins but instead as part of a palette of sound which
should be found through sensing and emotion and not systematisation.’ The formal structure of both the 1st
and the 2nd Quartet would seem to be based on what Cowie has called
a ‘tapestry of ideas and episodic variation’ like that used by the composer’s
‘greatest quartet love – Haydn.’
The String Quartet No. 2 was
composed in 1977. It is subtitled ‘Crystal Dances.’ The idea for this work
arose when Cowie was working as a physicist at university. He told me that he
had ‘always been interested in the structural and
dynamic properties of crystals, especially when quantum mechanics could set out
some of the secret glories of chance combined with geometry.’ It is not a concept that I understand in the
least, but the important thing is to realise that much of Cowie’s music results
from a combination of various seemingly disparate natural or behavioural
states. The present String Quartet No.2 ‘delves deeply into ultra-structures in
states of growth and change’ in this case to the ‘crystal.’ This work’s progress
could be said to represent a ‘time lapse film of crystal formation
when a kind of primal choreography seems to set in...’ Musically, it is
deliberately fragmented and seems to be throwing material around in a haphazard
manner. But this may just be the lively underlying ‘dance’. We all know that
this activity results in the perfectly formed crystal. Eventually, the String
Quartet finishes with a well-deserved sense of repose, but with ever-bubbling movement
just below the surface.
GAD is a ‘medical’ work: I had
never heard of this acronym before. For the uninitiated, like myself, it means
‘generalised anxiety disorder.’ For sufferers, this generates feelings like
stress, panic and worry which are ‘longer lasting, more extreme and far harder
to control.’ Edward Cowie explained to me that anyone suffering from it will know
what a battle it is to create and think clearly during bouts of severe anxiety.
Peter Sheppard Skærved had recently
(2016) asked for a large-scale solo violin works to partner one of J.S. Bach’
immortal Partitas. The genesis of Cowie’s response was inspired by the ‘marvels
of counterpoint and decoration and the great Bach[ian] architecture of
harmony.’ Unfortunately, work on the
piece was nearly halted by an onset of an episode of GAD. Fortunately, it did not stop composition as should
almost certainly have been the case. Cowie writes that the result of this
struggle resulted in music that ‘hunts for calm’ but is ‘thrown about like a
feather in the wind.’ The music sounds as if it might suffer a nervous breakdown
and subsequent collapse at any stage, but miraculously it doesn’t. This is (almost by definition) a strangely
disjointed work, that displays struggle, which is hardly surprising, but also
determination and final resolution. The musical language of this music is a
diverse as its emotional background.
Habitat, rather than landscape, underpins
the sentiment of String Quartet No.6 ‘Four Winds’. Edward Cowie has always been
inspired by the beautiful reaches of Morecambe Bay off Lancashire and
Westmorland. Now, he has not stated that this is the actual source of
inspiration for this work, but it is certainly a good possibility. Cowie has
regularly painted this part of the world, with his extraordinary Concerto for
Orchestra partially inspired by the Bay’s tidal patterns. The final movement of
his large Gesangbuch for mixed chorus and 13 instruments (1975-6) was
named after the village of Hest Bank which lies on the shore of Morecambe Bay. Anyone
who has explored this part of England will know about the relentless winds that
can engulf this land and seascape. It can blow from every direction at once! Nevertheless,
this is not a descriptive piece about weather or topography but reflects the ‘physical
as well as metaphysical properties of nature in action.’ Despite this
philosophical underpinning, this Quartet does make me think of Morecambe Bay.
And that is no bad thing.
The structural principle is one
of monothematic variation. Again, without the score I can only surmise that
this means that the ‘melody’ persists through each section and the ‘variation’
takes place around the theme rather than of it. The four movements are
titled after the ‘West’, ‘North’, ‘East’ and ‘South’ winds in that order. This
is my favourite work on this remarkable new CD.
The performance of these four
works are ideal. Clearly, I have nothing to compare them with, nor have I seen
the scores. But every bar suggests that violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved and
the other members of the Kreutzer Quartet have a great empathy with this music
and create a magical and engrossing performance.
The liner notes are impressive.
They begin with a presentation of Edward Cowie’s musical aesthetic and includes
a discussion about some of the difficulties he has encountered with the
reception of his work. This section includes his six-point ‘mind-sense map’
alluded to above. There follows some brief notes about each composition. Peter
Sheppard Skærved then presents a short essay about ‘Playing Edward Cowie: a
player-collaborator’s point of view.’ The usual composer and ensemble
biographies follow. The most interesting thing about this booklet is the
inclusion of the preparatory paintings Cowie made before starting work on his
quartets. They are excellent and would grace any art collection. My favourite picture
is of a fishing boat at Dungeness. Finally, there are a couple of photos of the
composer in action: birdwatching on the Farne Islands and score writing at his
music desk.
I understand that this is
effectively volume 2 of Edward Cowie’s cycle of string quartets. In 2016 the
NMC label released a CD of the Quartets Nos, 3, 4 and 5 (D222) performed by the
Kreutzer Quartet. I have not had the
pleasure of hearing this disc but it has been reviewed on these pages by Hubert
Culot. I understand that Cowie has three more String Quartets awaiting
performance and recording.
This present CD part of an
ongoing evaluation of Edward Cowie’s music that has been growing in the past
few years. The composer tells me that this reassessment is planned to continue:
The Concerto for Orchestra and the Clarinet Concerto No.2 are due to be
released later this year. Certainly, there are many tantalising works in his
catalogue that seem to cry out for recording. Let is hope that this is really
an ongoing project.
Track Listing:
Edward COWIE (b. 1943)
String Quartet No.1 ‘Dungeness Nocturnes’ (1969)
String Quartet No.2 ‘Crystal Dances’ (1977)
GAD for solo violin (2017)
String Quartet No.6 ‘The Four Winds’ (2012)
Kreutzer Quartet: Peter Sheppard Skærved (violin), Mihailo
Trandafilovski (violin), Clifton Harrison (viola), Neil Heyde (cello)
Rec. All Saints’ Church, Finchley, London 24 November 2017 (Quartet
No. 1); St Michael’s Church, Highbury, London, 16 February 2018 (Quartet No. 2);
13 January 2019 (GAD); 26 March 2019 (Quartet No. 6)
MÉTIER
msv 28603
No comments:
Post a Comment