The elegant pulsing scores of
Michael (Britain, 1944),
such as Water Dances (1985) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (1987), were a post-modernist version of renaissance music.
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Michael Nyman (1944), dopo un periodo trascorso a studiare musica folklorica romena,
si guadagna una reputazione come critico musicale (e' lui a coniare il termine
"minimalismo" nel 1968), componendo saltuariamente
musica assortita per teatro, cinema (nel 1967 ha inizio la collaborazione con
Peter Greenaway, su 5 Postcards From Capital Cities),
e conservatorio. Per il secondo, in
particolare, concepisce 1-100 (1973, variazioni e rallentamenti sul valzer
del "Danubio Blu" per solo pianoforte),
documentato su Decay Music (Obscure, 1976) con Bell Set No 1 (1971),
e Keep It Up Downstairs (1975), che proseguono il
progetto di "decadimento" del suono iniziato con Bells (1971) per
percussioni metalliche (campane, gong, triangoli, tamtam, eccetera). Assegnati
a ogni strumento una nota e un ritmo, il gioco consiste nel rallentare a
dismisura le
strutture ritmiche predefinite accumulando un numero crescente di volte
le unita' ritmiche di cui esse sono composte fino a lasciare soltanto un
flusso amorfo di risonanze dalla durata infinita. La "decay music" di Nyman
discende dallo "slow motion sound" di Reich, ma acuisce il senso di distacco
mediante una progressiva scarnificazione dell'armonia.
Rispetto all'ambientale di Eno quella di Nyman e' una musica molto piu'
rarefatta ed ermetica.
La transizione verso un'armonia piu' dinamica e trascinante
e' gia' evidente nei crescendo marziale di Bird Anthem, nella
frenetica marcetta minimalisma di In Re Don Giovanni
(quasi una parodia della In C), nel grottesco Waltz (condotto su
un tripudio assordante di imitazioni di uccelli), nella
demenziale musica da camera di Bird List Song (1981).
Sono tutte idee a seguire, incompiuti d'autore, scherzi composti
con piglio beffardo e goliarda; ma gettano le basi per una forma musicale
in cui non contano complicati equilibrismi armonici, ma semplici contrappunti,
cori e crescendo, ovvero tutto l'arsenale del sensazionalismo in musica
usato in modo al tempo stesso stereotipico e straniante.
Michael Nyman (Piano, 1981) contains
Bird Anthem,
In Re Don Giovanni,
Initial Treat/Secondary Treat,
Waltz in F,
Bird List Song,
and the 21-minute M-Work,
Michael Nyman (Piano, 1982)
contains In Re Don Giovanni and Last But One.
La lunga M-Work (1982) riassume
i principi della sua arte: una revisione in senso comico del minimalismo,
un uso prevalentemente ritmico dell'orchestra, una scansione marziale
degli accordi delle melodie, il ricorso a incalzanti crescendo di sezioni
d'archi, una spiccata preferenza per il tempo drammatico della marcia,
un'allusione continua a rondo', minuetti, salmi e requiem,
un convulso sviluppo tematico, una sovrapposizione caotica di diversi blocchi
armonici, la mancanza di una fine in cui culmini la trama del brano.
Nel segno del postmoderno piu' metalinguistico, il Wagner del minimalismo
erige torri di Babele musicali prendendo spunto dalle colonne sonore del
cinema e dalle bande di paese.
The Draughtsman's Contract (Charisma, 1982) contains seven fragments
of Nyman's soundtrack for the Greenaway film.
Queen Of The Night mixes the renaissance-like grace of the strings and the melancholy melodies repeated by the winds. Then the strings rise in a majestic, baroque largo and are joined by a harpsichord for the emphatic finale.
The Disposition of the Linen is even more baroque and uptempo, a breezy dance in a salon of mirrors. The minimalist repetition is subtle but induces much more movement than it is evident.
The technique is, instead, fairly programmatic in An Eye for Optical Theory and in
the longest theme, Bravura in the Face of Grief.
Elements of Albinoni's Adagio float inside the shimmering filigree of
The Garden Is Becoming a Robe Room (for strings and harpsichord) which
eventually bursts into a hymn-like frenzy.
Lanciato dalla colonna sonora di The Draughtsman's Contract, Nyman
diventa compositore serio, producendosi in tour-de-force orchestrali con
organici sempre piu' complessi di archi, fiati e voci recitanti, con i quali
viviseziona, decompone e ricompone la musica da camera (in questo caso Henry
Purcell). La musica si fa quasi neo-classica, se non addirittura
mozartiana, come nei narcisistici capricci di Images Were Introduced, per ensemble di
nove musicisti con Dagmar Krause lanciata in una sequenza di vocalizzi d'opera,
Water Dances, incalzante filastrocca seriosa sullo stile della
Penguin Cafe Orchestra con grandioso minuetto finale a perdifiato,
Nose List Song (1985), vorticosa danza in progressione con canto
operistico-brechtiano, nei crescendo epici e nelle sublimi melodie delle
quattro song (soprattutto la prima) di And Do They Do e nelle colonne
sonore di A Zed And Two Naughts (dodici miniature orchestrali), e
di Drowning By Numbers, una serie di variazioni sulla sinfonia
concertante di Mozart per ensemble di venti strumenti.
La tecnica di questi brani e' ormai cristallizzata: gli archi incalzano in
progressioni travolgenti che ripetono con sostenuta violenza e minime
variazioni frasi elementari perfettamente consonantil; uno e piu' strumenti
solisti intessono commosse melodie da adagio settecentesco. La musica
di Nyman scaturisce dal contrasto fra la tensione veemente costruita
dalle parti martellanti e ripetitive e la tenera serenita' delle parti
cantabili.
Drowning By Numbers appropriates elements of renaissance, baroque
and romantic music, and casts them in a firmly aseptic, modernist light.
(the melancholy adagio of Trysting Fields,
the elegant dance of Sheep and Tides,
the festive aria of Bees in Trees,
the plaintive melody of Drowning by Number 3).
Minimalist repetition turns those innocent tributes into harmonic catastrophes:
the string-driven progression in staccato of Wheelbarrow Walk is a
therapeutic trauma; while incursions in popular music cast a doubt on the
gravity of the proceedings (see the grotesque Wedding Tango).
The longer suites, such as Drowning by Number 2 and
the eight-minute Endgame, mix and balance the
postmodernist and the modernist urges.
Il coronamento della sua carriera e' l'opera da camera
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (1987), per settetto,
che continua e trasforma la grande tradizione britannica delle opere da camera,
facendo leva sul minimalismo romantico di Adams, sulla liederistica
espressionista di Britten, sulla canzone da musical di Sondheim, sui
brani-conversazione di Ashley.
The chamber opera
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (1987), scored for soprano,
tenor, baritone, harp, piano and string quintet, harks back to the British
tradition of chamber operas, but also to Britten's chamber lieder
(Your Husband's A Painter), to
Broadway show tunes (Pawn To King 4),
to Robert Ashley's conversational operas (I Cannot Tell You What's Wrong) and
even to baroque music (What's The Time).
There are relatively few Nyman-esque progressions (That's Why I'm Here,
But What Of The Parietal Regions).
The Cook The Thief (1990), ovvero la marcia funebre del maestoso
Memorial del 1985, completa la tetralogia di colonne sonore per il
regista Peter Greenaway.
Out Of The Ruins (1989) e' invece un requiem corale (per le vittime
del terremoto armeno) che si ispira al canto gregoriano e alla musica sacra
del barocco.
Queste ultime due opere sono condizionate da un umore molto
piu' depresso, paranoico, quasi apocalittico, nel segno di un fatalismo cosmico
di fronte al destino umano.
Benche' sia piu' anziano e abbia esordito con opere rigorosamente allineate allo
sperimentalismo degli anni Sessanta, da Water Dances in poi Nyman
appartiene ideologicamente alla generazione del secondo Glass e di Adams.
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After the successful collaborations with director Peter Greenaway, particularly
in The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), Drowning By Numbers (1988), The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) and Prospero's Books (1991),
Michael Nyman became one of the most prestigious composer of film soundtracks:
Monsieur Hire (1989),
La Traversee' De Paris (Criterion, 1989),
Le Mari de la Coiffeuse (1990),
Songbook (1992),
A La Folie (Virgin, 1994),
The Piano (Virgin, 1993), Carrington (Argo, 1995),
Diary of Anne Frank (1995),
The Ogre (1996),
Gattaca (Virgin, 1998), Wonderland (Venture, 1999), Ravenous (EMI, 1999), co-scored with Blur's vocalist Damon Albarn, The End Of The Affair (Venture, 2000), The Claim (2000),
Man With a Movie Camera (2000),
Subterrain (2001), La Stanza Del Figlio (2001),
Luminal (2002),
24 Heures De La Vie d'Une Femme (Maive, 2002),
Charged (2003),
The Actors (EMI, 2003),
and many, many others, of lower and lower quality. He soon became an
assembly factory of cliches for film soundtracks.
Film Music 1980-2001 (Venture, 2001) is an anthology.
Prospero's Books (1991) alternates between operatic arias,
orchestral adagios, and his
typical exuberant ascending repetitive-pattern instrumentals
(Prospero's Curse, Prospero's Magic, Miranda,
History of Sycorax);
but this is hardly innovative anymore. It often sounds childish and
derivative (of his own style).
The Piano is perhaps the most celebrated of Nyman's soundtracks.
It features both orchestral and piano pieces.
The orchestral ones range
from the nostalgic adagios of To The Edge of the Earth and
A Wild And Distant Shore
to the moving elegies of The Promise and Lost And Found,
with peaks of pathos in
the majestic crescendo of Deep Into the Forest
and
the final apotheosis of Dreams Of A Journey.
The piano pieces
(the romantic piano sonata of Big My Secret,
the rousing piano rigmarole The Heart Asks Pleasure First,
the mournful aria of The Sacrifice)
are not all that different in mood.
Live (Virgin, 1995) and Live in Concert (Virgin, 1999) show
how trivial his performances are.
Nyman has mostly failed to impress in the forms of traditional chamber music.
He has composed four string quartets, of which the first is a weak work
(inspired by some John Bull variations, it uses a Schoenberg fragment as
the building block for its 12 movememts), while the second (1988), in six movements, and the third (1990), in two long
movements, recycle themes from previous works (the latter from Out of the Ruins) aiming for the mainstream rather than for groundbreaking solutions.
The second movement (fast-paced and intricate) and
the playful sixth movement are the highlights of the second quartet,
The vigorous second movement of the third quartet is also notable, if nothing
else for the weay it fragments and then layers up its languid melody.
The fourth (1995), originally a solo violin composition, is by far the most significant: the performer is left free to choose five of the original 12 movements, and arrange them as she pleases.
The first three are collected on String Quartets 1-3 (Argo, 1991);
the last three are collected on String Quartets Nos. 2-4 (Black Box, 2002).
The Suit & The Photograph (EMI, 1998) contains the 12-movement
String Quartet 4 (1995) and Three Quartets (1994), which combines
a string quartet, a brass quartet and a saxophone quartet in one single piece.
Time Will Pronounce (Argo, 1993) contains three chamber works from 1992:
Time Will Pronounce, The Convertibility of Lute Strings,
For John Cage.
After Extra Time (Virgin, 1996) contains
After extra time,
The final score,
Memorial .
These are all mediocre works.
Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs (Argo, 1994) is the score for an opera-ballet based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (again).
Taking a Line for a Second Walk (Work Music, 1994) contains the 1986 work for orchestra and the Water Dances.
An Eye for a Difference (Tring, 1998) has compositions for the London Saxophonic.
His main compositions of the 1990s were the concertos:
the saxophone concerto Where The Bee Dances (1991),
Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings (1995),
Concerto for Trombone (1995), perhaps the most complex,
Double Concerto (1997) for cello and saxophone,
the Violin Concerto (2003),
etc.
Three of them (Harpsichord, Trombone, Double Concerto)
appear on Concertos (EMI, 1997).
The Piano Concerto (1993), which recycles music from The Piano, is well documented:
The Piano Concerto (Argo, 1994),
The Piano Concerto / On the Fiddle / Prospero's Books (Tring, 1995),
The Piano Concerto and other Themes (Las Nuevas Musicas, 1995),
The Piano Concerto / Where the Bee Dances (Naxos, 1998).
He also scored music for a multimedia event based on David King's book The Commissar Vanishes (Venture, 1999).
His operas include Facing Goya (2000), released on
Facing Goya (Warner, 2002),
and Man and Boy - Dada (2004).
Sangam (Warner, 2003) is a failed attempt to reconcile (improvised) Indian classical music and (composed) Western classical music. The result is mostly background muzak for cocktail party.
The Piano Sings (MN, 2005) offers piano-only versions of some of this film themes.
The Libertine (MN, 2006) is a mediocre film soundtrack.
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