Eatock Daily (blog)

Anna Meredith (New Music I Like No. 17)

4/23/2025

It’s not often that I find myself with an “ear-worm” after attending a concert of contemporary classical works. In my experience, catchiness isn’t exactly new music’s strong suit.

Yet it has been about a week since I heard Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra play Nautilus, by the Scottish composer Anna Meredith – and I can’t get the sound of the thing out of my head. Indeed, this short piece is one of the most intense and arresting “orchestral" works I’ve ever heard. It wears its debt to 1970s minimalism as a badge of honour – but it also embraces such disparate influences as film music, pop dance music and the sheer brutality of the Rite of Spring.

I put the word “orchestral” in quotation marks because Nautilus began its life as an electoacoustic work, in 2011, and was later arranged for orchestra by Jack Ross, ten years later.

On YouTube, I found a video of the original version, in all its synth-y glory, as well as the live orchestral performance by Esprit.

But wait – there’s more! I also found a marching-band version, which has to be seen and heard to be believed.

You’ll find links to all three versions, below.

© Colin Eatock 2025

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Florence Price and the Test of Time

8/11/2024

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Composer Florence Price.

I heard a performance of Florence Price’s Piano Quintet in A Minor the other day, and very much enjoyed it.

But such has not always been the outcome of my encounters with her music. When I first heard of her, a few years ago, I listened to her Symphony No 1, and I thought the piece was a very strange thing. Indeed, I felt uncomfortable with its derivative style that owes so much to Dvořàk and other 19th century European composers (with some superficial African-American touches thrown in). How, I thought, could this piece possibly have been composed in 1936 – the same year in which Edgard Varèse wrote his Density 21.5 for solo flute?

And when I encountered the opinion (often found in program notes and reviews) that her music was suppressed because she was a woman of colour, I thought, “No doubt, that didn’t help. But there’s obviously a much bigger problem than race and gender prejudice at work here: her blatant rejection of her own Zeitgeist!” In other words, I dismissed Price’s music as anachronistic and “chronologically incorrect.”

The idea that the most admirable composers are the ones who boldly press forward into new aesthetic territory – such as Monteverdi, Beethoven and Debussy, to name just three – has deep roots in the culture of classical music. And according to this view of music history, any composer who doesn’t contribute significantly to “musical progress” is a lesser artist.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that, like all Ex Cathedra orthodoxies, the artistic and even moral imperative to “make it new” (in the words of Ezra Pound) could do with a little examination.

It occurred to me that, taken to extremes, this belief-system makes it impossible to judge the artistic value of any piece of music without knowing when it was written. And this kind of thinking can lead to dubious conclusions.

Imagine, for example, that you have just turned on a radio and are listening to a piece of music already in progress. And imagine also that a] you like the piece, but b] you don’t recognize it, and c] based on your perceptions of musical history, you strongly suspect it was written by a contemporary of Beethoven, about 200 years ago. Yet, when the music ends, the radio announcer says that it was written quite recently. How would you react to this surprising information? Would you change your mind and decide that you actually don’t like the piece?

I submit that many people would be honest enough with themselves to acknowledge that, even though they are surprised by the date of composition, they still like the piece. And I also submit that any listeners who manage to reverse their initial favourable opinion because they believe there’s something fundamentally wrong with music that “doesn’t belong to its time” have elevated an ideology over personal authenticity. Simply put, they are lying to themselves.

With these thoughts in mind, when I found myself in a concert hall about to listen to Price’s Piano Quintet, I made a little promise to myself. I resolved to ignore the date of the work’s composition, and ask myself how I would feel about it if I had no idea when it was written.

And it made a difference! What I heard was a elegant and sophisticated work of art, full of invention and dramatic impact. (And, I might add, its African-American influences are more successfully integrated into the European idiom than in her First Symphony.)

At this point, gentle reader, you might think that I could tie this essay up in a neat bow with a conclusion like, “I now realize that it doesn’t matter when a piece was composed; only whether it’s good or not.” But in fact, my position is somewhat more complicated.

You see, I still see value in Pound’s admonition to “make it new.” And I think of it whenever I hear newly composed works that sound like they could have been written in the 1970s. Such pieces – they are not uncommon in the contemporary music world – often strike me as exercises in nostalgia for a bygone era. Composers who take this approach seem aesthetically stuck: as if they are tacitly acknowledging that the history of classical music is somehow “over.” Such “new” works are usually a disappointment to me. When I go to a new music concert, I want to hear something new.

I freely admit that I’m invoking a double-standard: it’s okay for a composer in the 1930s to embrace 19th-century Romanticism; but it’s not okay (with me) for a composer today to embrace the High Modernism of the mid-20th century. Yet I have my reasons, and I will try to explain.

Earlier, I cited Monteverdi, Beethoven and Debussy as composers much admired for breaking new musical ground. But I think it’s also useful to remember there’s at least one highly celebrated composer whose esteem doesn’t rest on his efforts to “advance” music. I’m talking about J.S. Bach – who was, in his day, widely dismissed as hopelessly out of date. For this reason (among others) his music was largely forgotten, after his death – only to be revived in a later era, when it no longer mattered that he was a musical dinosaur in his own time.

And this is the model I’m invoking when I consider Florence Price today. It may have mattered to the musical world, back in the 1930s, that she was behind the times. But that was then and this is now. To criticize her today for this would be like criticizing Bach for his old-fashioned-ness. And nobody does that.

Below, you’ll find a link to Florence Price’s Piano Quintet in A Minor.

© Colin Eatock 2024

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Murray and Me

5/1/2024

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On April 23, I was at the Canadian Music Centre, in Toronto, for a CD launch. The new disc unveiled that evening is called R. Murray Schafer: You Are Illuminated. It’s a collection of choral works by Schafer, some of them quite rarely performed.

It might seem surprising that this music was recorded by an American choir: Coro Volante, of Cincinnati, Ohio. However, this choir’s co-directors – Brett Scott and Krista Cornish Scott – are Canadian. Scott is also the author of the biography R. Murray Schafer: a Creative Life, so his interest in Schafer runs deep.

The event made me reflect on my own contact with Schafer, and on his influence on me.

I first met him when I became his student for one semester, at the University of Western Ontario, back in 1980. As I recall, his contract with Western – where his gigantic choral / orchestral / poetic / theatrical / choreographic spectacle Apocalypsis was being produced – required him to teach a composition class. And I was lucky enough to be in it.

Throughout my student years (at three Ontario universities) he was the only authentic, card-carrying genius I encountered. And that one semester had a profound influence on me.

That said, I didn’t learn any of the conventional stuff that a student composer needs to know, like harmony, counterpoint, or orchestration, from Schafer. (I learned those things from other people, who taught them very well.) And my music doesn’t sound much like Schafer’s. So how, exactly, did he influence me?

Here’s a list of artistic values that I believe “rubbed off” from my encounter with Schafer.

The arts are inter-related, and there is much to be learned from visual art, literature, dance, etc.
The modern world lacks the depth and richness of the ancient world. Immerse yourself in something old.
Religions are wonderful things (as long as you don't actually believe in one).
Artistic technique is necessary, but it is nothing without artistic vision. An artist without artistic vision is a jobber, or a hack.
Universities are okay, and a composer might gain something from an association with academe. But do not let yourself be drawn entirely into that world. The goal of a true artist is not to become respected enough to land a good teaching job.
The “Canadian musical establishment” is not your friend. Distance yourself from the “politics” of the classical music world, as much as you can.
Compose the music you need to compose, whether anyone is paying you to do it or not.
For a composer (or any kind of artist), a healthy ego is a good thing to have.
Play a long game.
Be brave!

There are also some things I didn’t absorb from Schafer, even though I was exposed to them. For instance, I don’t share his love of collaboration, or his fondness for working with amateur artists – and the grandness of his larger “go-big-or-go-home” artistic projects has never found its way into my own work. (I’m more of a “small-is-beautiful” kind of guy.) As well, I certainly haven’t gone off to live in remote seclusion, on the edge of the wilderness.

Sadly, Schafer passed away in 2021. So it’s gratifying to see this new CD, with performances so well recorded by Coro Volante. I take this disc as encouraging evidence that Schafer’s works will survive him – an honour accorded to only a handful of Canadian composers.

© Colin Eatock 2024

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Gavin Bryars: (New Music I Like No. 16)

3/29/2024

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British composer Gavin Bryars

Good news! It’s time for another fun-filled instalment of “New Music I Like”.

Gavin Bryars is a big star in the contemporary music world, so he hardly needs a bump from me. Yet I’m here today to talk up a percussion piece he wrote back in 1994: One Last Bar and Then Joe Can Sing.

Works for percussion ensemble can be tiresome things: leaden, clunky and static, with lots of noisy thrashing around, and a “when-in-doubt-hit-another-cymbal” approach to compositional structure. But One Last Bar isn’t like that. It’s subtle, nuanced and fluid, with a strong sense of harmonic direction. Beautiful!

I discovered the piece through an excellent YouTube video, in a performance by four Hungarian percussionists: Lajhó Gyula, Hlaszny Ádám, Janca Dániel, Tóth Péter and Halmschlager György. But apparently, the piece was originally commissioned and premiered by Toronto’s recently retired Nexus Ensemble.

Here’s the video:

© Colin Eatock 2024

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Christopher Cerrone (New Music I Like No. 15)

10/9/2023

32 Comments

Christopher Cerrone

Has it really been eight years since I wrote a blog in my "New Music I Like" series? Apparently, yes – but rest assured, this is not because I haven't heard anything I like since 2015. Rather, it’s because I’ve been on an extended break, where critical comment is concerned. “I think I’ll stop writing about music,” I decided, a few years ago, “unless I hear something that really makes me feel compelled to do so.”

Fast-forward to 2023, and my discovery of a composer who makes me feel “compelled to do so.”

Christoper Cerrone is already a well-known figure in contemporary music in the USA – with commissions and premieres from major orchestras, opera companies and other ensembles. If I hadn’t heard of him until a few days ago, that says way more about me than it does about him.

Fortunately, Cerrone is well-represented on YouTube, Spotify, and in other online media. Not yet 40, he’s a productive composer, and the scope of his oeuvre is impressive.

So what’s his music like? A lot of things: it’s bright, buoyant and sparkly – but also delicate, bold, wistful, joyous, mysterious and disarmingly direct. He possesses a clear and distinct style (you can’t hear eight bars of his music without knowing it’s his) that draws on such diverse sources as Indonesian gamelan, the subtle sonorities of George Crumb, a touch of “Pierrot Lunaire-style” modernism and good old American minimalism.

In particular, I’d like to draw readers’ attention to Goldbeater’s Skin, a kind of song-cycle for vocalist (soprano or mezzo) and percussion quartet. In it, luscious and tintinnabulating bells, cymbals and mallet instruments gently accompany the singer, contrasted with more urgent movements for percussion alone.

The texts are based on the poetry of G.C. Waldrep. His language is sensual and evocative, and Cerrone underscores these qualities in his setting of lines such as, “My love, there is no winter but the winter of the heart,” and “I cannot help myself, before I know it, there is something like delight.”

Here’s a score-video of Goldbeater’s Skin. It’s well worth the 20 minutes it takes to listen to!

© Colin Eatock 2023

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Dance No. 4 for Saxophones

3/5/2022

52 Comments

The Whoop Group of Warsaw, Poland, has made a pretty cool video of my Dance No. 4 for Saxophones.

The piece is an arrangement of the fourth movement of my Quartet of Dances (2004), for string quartet.

The short, lively piece adheres to no established form or genre: it is not a waltz, a tango, a foxtrot, or any other specific kind of dance. I call it a “dance” because it is essentially rhythmic rather than melodic in its conception, with an irregular yet emphatic pulse throughout.

As well, the piece comes with its own built-in little manifesto: there is too much seriousness in contemporary music. I claim no exemption from my own criticism, as some of my own works unabashedly strive for profundity and gravity. But in this piece, I have tried to inject some joie de vivre into new music.

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A Salute to Young Composers

7/13/2021

17 Comments

This young composer already knows the value of a good eraser.

Moving from one apartment to another is never easy. And in my case, it’s been made more difficult by the fact that I haven’t moved in over 30 years. And while I’ve always prided myself on my non-materialistic nature – acquiring as little stuff as possible, as I travel through life – the accumulations of three decades can add up.

This is especially apparent in my storage locker – where I’ve stashed things that I’ve felt the need to “archive” over the years. There are boxes in the back of my locker that I literally haven’t looked inside since I abandoned them there in 1990. Often, I don’t know what’s in them until I open them.

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Four Elizabethan Songs About Love (2016-2018)

6/12/2021

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With most nations in some kind of lockdown or restriction, due to Covid-19, I had to search to the ends of the Earth to find a vocal ensemble that could record my music. But I found them! Western Australia is nearly Covid-free – and the Giovanni Consort, of Perth, was able to create this brilliant video of my Four Elizabethan Songs About Love (2016-2018). I don’t think it gets any better than this.

© Colin Eatock 2021

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A meme for music nerds ...

4/2/2021

69 Comments

I would be lying if I claimed that the Covid lockdown isn't having a strange effect on me. How strange, you ask? After all due consideration, I created this meme ...

© Colin Eatock 2021

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Don Trumpo

2/9/2021

40 Comments

I used to work for an opera company, and one of my duties was writing synopses for operas. I enjoyed it, and I soon warmed to the glorious stylistic traditions of the genre. Where else, but in an opera synopsis, do you find words like “lascivious,” “impugns” or “absconds”? And thanks to my years of experience, the following synopsis for a yet-to-be composed opera pretty much wrote itself:

Don Trumpo, ossia il tiranno arancione – an opera in three acts.

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