Alan Cooper reviews: Ensemble Thing
ENSEMBLE THING with JOHN DE SIMONE: Composer
ABERDEEN ART GALLERY
Saturday, 01 November 2014
Independence, a new work by the Glasgow based composer John De Simone was supported by the Katherine McGillivray Get a Life Fund and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The work was premièred in Glasgow on the 17th September – the night before the referendum. This explains a great deal regarding the genesis of this work. As the composer explained, it is not intended as a political polemic. The music should be allowed to speak for itself – and that it did – most eloquently too. De Simone’s own national background is most interesting. He was born and raised in England of Scottish and Italian parentage. Nothing all that unusual there, but what is unique is that his Grandfather was John McCormick the actual founder of the Scottish National Party. Independence therefore is a musical journey that attempts to examine the musical, cultural and national identity of a composer now living in Scotland.
There was a time when this was not a problem for composers. Their cultural identity was almost entirely dictated by the time and place where they were born. Even then, however, there were interesting anomalies. Consider Dvořák and Mahler who were born very close to one another in what was then Bohemia. Dvořák then became very much a Czech composer while Mahler moved to Austria and followed the German tradition.
Today, when every possible kind of music is available, often free, at the click of a button without moving from your armchair, composers are all faced with an identity crisis – will my influences be French, German, Russian, American or what? Some give up altogether but for John De Simone his background cultural or musical is full of opportunities rather than problems expressed in this work.
His eight movement piece, Independence, was performed by the fantastic musicians of Ensemble Thing also based at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The line up comprised violin, cello, double bass, bass clarinet and accordion. This might seem unusual but its sonorities reminded me, in some of the movements, of the work of Kurt Weill. The music in Independence was unashamedly tonal though often at the more spicy edge. Here again I was reminded of some of the more adventurous composers of the Weimar era – a wonderfully varied and exciting time for music – possibly mirroring the wide variety of musical influences easily available in Scotland today (Lunchbreak and Sound) offering so many different paths to go down.
John De Simone enticed us down some of these paths which mean a lot to him personally. There was a slow thoughtful opening movement followed by a lively reel. He called it jokingly “an unreel”. A trip to Mull began busily, perhaps suggesting the sea crossing then opened out into more expansive music. De Simone’s Scottish Grandfather was also a composer – of bagpipe music – and the violinist played one of his tunes though she said later that there were some Swedish influences in the ornaments that she put in as well. A Tango suggested Latin influences. I thought of Kurt Weill here (the instrumentation took me there) though De Simone felt Piazzolla was more appropriate – and of course the accordion which was well to the fore in this movement is a favourite Italian instrument.. A pipe lament was a tribute to his Grandfather. The bass clarinet took up the melody for a moment then the whole ensemble suggested the sonorities of a full pipe band – a wonderfully powerful emotional crescendo point in the music. Some new ideas as De Simone said introduced some marvellous slap bass playing and in the final movements, if a return to more melancholy music suggested a response to the result of the Referendum, then a very cheerful and upbeat ending suggested that whatever the result, we should all work towards a positive outcome for Scottish culture and music.
Are you listening there, Creative Scotland?
© Alan Cooper
