The evocative music of award-winning composer, JONATHAN DAVID LITTLE, BMus(Hons), ThA, PhD, FLCM, FISM, FRSA, is notable for its mystical beauty, intensity, richness and intricacy. ...
WORLDWIDE CRITICAL OPINION:
- “a major new, original and quite brilliant classical voice” – Lynn René Bayley, citation in “The Want List 2008”, Fanfare (Nov-Dec 2008, USA)
*** A FANFARE MAGAZINE RECOMMENDED RECORDING FOR 2008 ***
- “this heart-rending panorama with an exceptionally hypnotic array of musical colour … immensely poetic – almost otherwordly” – John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, October 2011, UK)
- “An inspired creation ... beautifully expansive ... voluptuous sonorities” – Patric Standford, Music & Vision (May 2009, UK)
- “This is music that brings to mind so much else but at the same time isn't quite like anything you've heard before. … [a] whirling kaleidoscope of sounds. … An extraordinary range of sensations. ... This is certainly novel stuff and I suspect time will prove it to be a good deal more than that.” – Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008, UK)
- “Little’s music sounds like no one else’s. Not anyone’s. ... to put it into words degrades the astonishing range of colors and moods he creates. … Trust me, once you’re about halfway through the title work, you won’t be able to take it off. … Mr. Little is quite a talent indeed.” – Lynn René Bayley, Fanfare (May-June 2008, USA)
- “innovative music … incandescent … a positively dynamic musical palette … moving the listener irrevocably onward to a brightly illuminated plain of poetic splendour, rhythm and ecstasy” – John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, January 2008, UK)
- “immense creativity and innovation while remaining accessible to new listeners” – ASCAP Playback Magazine (Summer, 2006) (New York, USA)
- “innovative and accessible to both musicians and audiences” – Keith Lowde, former Deputy Managing Director and Company Secretary, Music-Copyright Protection Society [MCPS] (London, UK)
- “Here, Little demonstrates his command of orchestration ... lush and at ease with the tropes of modernist tonal music … the crafting of orchestration is finely honed” – Helen O’Brien, Music Forum (May-July 2009, Australia)
- “touching music … a unique voice” – Maestro Robert Ian Winstin, Executive Director of the Foundation for New Music (Virginia, USA)
Artists who have performed or recorded the works of Jonathan Little include: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra; Moravian Phiharmonic Orchestra; Soloists of the Sofia Opera; mezzo-soprano Veronica McHale (Chicago); Vox Moderne; Bath Camerata; Tallis Chamber Choir.
Jonathan Little's Performing Rights are assigned to ASCAP (for clearance see: www.ascap.com – “ACE Title Search” – “Search the Database” – Writers / Find “Jonathan Little”)
Press
NAVONA RECORDS update ARTIST PAGE for JONATHAN DAVID LITTLE
(external link)
Includes updated Bio and details of Recorded Music by Jonathan David Little released on the Navona Records label (USA) [featuring "Polyhymnia" and "Woefully Arrayed"].
Now available on PODCAST: Composer interview with Jonathan David Little on POLYCHORALISM
(external link)
Now available on PODCAST: Composer interview with Jonathan David Little (on creating and recording contemporary "polychoral music"?).
Interview on WCPE, The Classical Station (North Carolina)
(external link)
If you missed the interview with composer Jonathan David Little on Preview yesterday evening, you can hear it anytime here [LINK ABOVE]. In the interview, Rob Kennedy and Jonathan talked about his compositions in the 17th-century polychoral style. You can hear several of these works on his CD Woefully Arrayed.
https://theclassicalstation.org
[CONVERSATIONS WITH COMPOSERS]
https://theclassicalstation.org/listen/conversations-2/conversations-with-composers/
World première performance of "CRUCIFIXUS"
(external link)
World première performance of Crucifixus by Jonathan David Little, an anthem for Triple Choir (in 12 parts) with organ accompaniment.
Performed by the massed voices of the Chichester Singers, also joined by the Grand Choeur du Conservatoire de Chartres, the Southern Pro Musica Brass, and Richard Barnes (organ), directed by Jonathan Willcocks (in his 40th anniversary concert as Music Director of the 120-strong Chichester Singers).
Given 22 June 2019 - in Chichester Cathedral, to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the twinning of Chartres (France) with Chichester (England).
https://musicinportsmouth.co.uk/noticeboard/music-to-celebrate-60-years-of-twinning-of-chartres-with-chichester/
AUSTRALIA PRIZE for Distinctive Work 2018 - FINALIST
(external link)
2018 CHASS AUSTRALIA PRIZES Shortlists Announced: The [Australian National] Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) has announced the shortlists for its prestigious 2018 Australia Prizes, which will be presented on 29th October in Melbourne, and are Australia's leading prizes in the Arts and Humanities.
Professor Jonathan David Little is nominated for his "International Polychoral Music Research, Creation and Recording Project", in the "Distinctive Work" category (one of four Australia Prize categories).
Sponsored by Routledge, the "Distinctive Work" Prize is for an exceptional artistic performance, exhibition, film, television show, play, composition or practical contribution to arts policy.
This same two-year polychoral music project (2015-17), part-sponsored by the Australia Council, has already seen its subsequent CD release, "Woefully Arrayed" (on Navona NV6113, USA), receive the highest international plaudits.
"Woefully Arrayed" - which features three leading choirs from the US and USA - was nominated in America for "Best Classical Music Recording" at the inaugural RoundGlass Global Music Awards 2018 (26th January, Edison Ballroom, New York), while its "Kyrie" was British winner of a BBC Radio 3 / Royal Philharmonic Society "Encore Choral" Award.
This was the first new, large-scale polychoral music research, creation and recording project of modern times. Works produced involve intricate, multi-part, multi-divisi and unusual spatial "split choir" effects – reimagining ancient techniques in contemporary contexts, all captured via cutting-edge recording technology, and promulgated worldwide. Ancient techniques were re-invented, derived from those once so brilliantly employed to create extra depth for choral performance in large spaces in the 16th and 17th centuries, so realising "surround-sound"-like effects. In order to aid performers and listeners, diagrams showing the disposition of all the vocal forces involved are printed in the CD booklet (see: http://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6113/booklet---woefully-arrayed---jonathan-little.html ). Leading British polychoral expert Hugh Keyte argues that the lost potential of "the acoustics of performing spaces" is rediscovered in these works, and is impacting upon the aesthetic direction of new choral music.
For further details of the 2018 CHASS AUSTRALIA PRIZES, which are designed to honour distinguished achievements by Australians working, studying or training in the HASS (Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences) areas, see: http://www.chass.org.au/chass-media-releases/
International Polychoral Music Research, Creation and Recording Project (Jonathan David Little)
(external link)
AWARDS AND AWARD NOMINATIONS now received in the UK, US and AUSTRALIA:
* WINNER (UK): "ENCORE CHORAL" AWARD: BBC Radio 3 / Royal Philharmonic Society
* NOMINATION (USA): "BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC RECORDING": RoundGlass Global Music Awards 2018 (26th January, Edison Ballroom, New York)
* NOMINATION (AUSTRALIA): "CHASS AUSTRALIA PRIZE for DISTINCTIVE WORK": Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (29th Oct., Storey Hall, Melbourne)
FULL WORLDWIDE REVIEWS LIST NOW IN:
POLYCHORAL MUSIC RESEARCH, CREATION & RECORDING PROJECT
"WOEFULLY ARRAYED" (issued on NAVONA NV6113, 2017)
[USA, UK, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, ITALY, FRANCE]
Fanfare (USA):
* (1) ‘The disc of sacred and secular choral and polychoral music by Jonathan David Little, Woefully Arrayed … is nothing short of remarkable. Stunningly recorded, the pure sonic joy is visceral. On a personal level, I haven’t experienced such revelation in choral terms since the Tallis Scholars’ first recording of the Allegri Miserere. … Woefully Arrayed is a masterpiece … radiant … full and reverberant … magnificently handled … A superb disc … shot through with spiritual light and which speaks on a very deep level to the listener.’ – Colin Clarke, “The Profundity of Polychoralism: Exploring the work of Jonathan David Little” (extended interview), and “Little, Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Fanfare, Vol.41, No.2 (Nov./Dec. 2017) (USA)
* (2) ‘Jonathan David Little’s music walks the same path as that of Arvo Pärt and Morten Lauridsen … and Little’s style is natural and organic. He does not offer a contrived veneer of ethereality, but rather employs polychoral-inspired and spatial techniques to create a warm wash of sound with some substance behind it. … Little uses familiar musical materials and processes to craft music that is at once simple and complex. … The music’s underlying structures provide a solid framework compositionally, and Little is surely adept at writing for voices; this music is lush, relaxing and meditative. As enjoyable as the music is for listeners, I suspect that it is even more rewarding for the choirs. It is easy to imagine any one of the selections on this disc becoming a perennial favorite for choirs of all kinds, from amateur community choirs to professional ecclesiastical ensembles.’ – James V. Maiello, “Little, Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Fanfare, Vol.41, No.2 (Nov./Dec. 2017) (USA)
Audiophile Audition (USA):
* ‘This album is a delight on all fronts. … Little achieves unique and beautiful effects through spacing and arrangement of vocal groups. It seems that Little’s techniques are well grounded in both very careful construction of harmonies and voicing as well as in acoustics and the physics of sound. … In fact, two of the most fantastically beautiful works in this collection—Gloria, op.18 and Wasted and Worn, op. 6, also have atypical and unique placement of the singers. … Of the six selections herein, I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite … When I hear music of this sort it reminds in the best possible ways of when I have actually had the pleasure of hearing music by Tallis or Dunstable in a large old marble clad cathedral … The three groups performing here—Vox Futura, the Thomas Tallis Society, and The Stanbery Singers—are all amazing; some of the best groups you will ever hear. Very enjoyable, highly recommend!’ – Daniel Coombs, “Jonathan David LITTLE: Sacred and Secular Choral & Polychoral Works”, in Audiophile Audition, August 1st, 2017 (USA)
Cinemusical (USA):
Reviewing great classical and film music
Recording: ****/****
Performance: ****/****
* ‘One need look no further than the excellent essay by Hugh Keyte which appears in this new Navona release to further discover some historical perspective on this unique sound. … Each of these moments sort of bursts forth from the slowly-built verses in rather beautiful colors. … the stunning quality of the work … has this sense of coming into one central space only to go the far reaches of the space. Carefully-managed dissonance also adds to the emotional depth of the piece. … The album is filled with this rather engaging music … The polychoral approaches are managed well in the recording and in fact, the well-thought-out booklet even describes placement of singers for each piece. The overall production is rather stellar with excellent art work and overview of the style of music. It is a most fascinating release.’ – Steven A. Kennedy, “Polychoral Music by Jonathan David Little”, in Cinemusical, August 28th, 2017 (USA)
Choir & Organ (UK):
****
* “Little writes very much in the manner of the renaissance masters, creating what a modern sensibility would identify as ‘immersive’ music of strongly mystical aspect. That mysticism and muscularity can go hand-in-hand is confirmed by the title piece, which is reprised in condensed form at the end of the disc. … The pieces are performed in very different acoustics … [which] makes sense of the sacred/secular split and of the virtuosic disposition of voices.” – Brian Morton, “Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Choir & Organ (Nov./Dec. 2017) (UK)
Gramophone (UK/NORTH AMERICA):
* ‘The Australian-born composer has cast his resplendent sacred and secular pieces in the polychoral style of the Renaissance and early Baroque, calling for choral forces to be placed in various configurations and spaces to achieve the intended sonic and expressive effect. Although much of the impact can be discerned through speakers or earbuds, hearing them in an actual acoustic environment would add even more lustre.
The booklet notes include drawings of the different placement of voices, helping greatly to convey what Little intends. … What is most important is the music itself, which sounds at once ancient and modern. Little shows masterly command of the choral idiom in the luminous interweaving of voices and occasional solo flights. … The repertoire is performed by Vox Futura (Boston), The Stanbery Singers (Cincinnati) and the Thomas Tallis Society Choir (Greenwich, London), all of whom sound mesmerised by Little’s engaging music.’ – Donald Rosenberg [Editor, Early Music America], “LITTLE Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Gramophone, Vol.95 (Jan. 2018) [North American edition, “Sounds of America” supplement, iii] (UK/NORTH AMERICA)
Limelight (AUSTRALIA):
***
* ‘Little has been particularly influenced by the polychoral writing of the late Renaissance, which he blends with the often blurred, slow-moving harmonic architecture of minimalism. This style is further enhanced by resonant acoustics and an often high vocal tessitura to create a sense of the other worldly. This programme features sacred and secular works with performers from America (Vox Futura, Boston and The Stanbery Singers, Cincinnati) and England (The Thomas Tallis Society Choir, London). The most substantial piece is Woefully Arrayed, a 25-minute setting of an early Passiontide poem, in which the verse refrain structure allows for the alternation of varying textures and an effective, cumulative build-up of ecstatic utterances. … this is carefully crafted and considered music ... ’ – Tony Way, “Back to the future sees a postmodern take on polychoral” (CD review), in Limelight (Jan./Feb. 2018), p.97 (AUSTRALIA)
Kathodik (ITALY):
****
* “Tra le varie etichette che sono state affibbiate al compositore di origine australiana, ma ormai da tempo stabilizzatosi in Gran Bretagna, Jonathan David Little (classe 1965), quella di “minimalismo estatico” mi sembra la più appropriata, quanto meno in riferimento ai lavori corali presentati in questo notevole ? anche per ciò che concerne la veste grafica e il corposo booklet ? Cd della Navona. A partire dal brano che dà il titolo alla selezione, Woefully Arrayed, per proseguire con le altre composizioni sacre e profane, a colpire è innanzitutto la luminosità delle linee vocali ? anche laddove il tema è dolente ?, la cui ripetizione si arricchisce, gradualmente, di decorazioni strumentali e delicate increspature ritmiche. Il linguaggio armonico è principalmente modale, ma la scrittura di Little si avvale delle più disparate e raffinate tecniche, dalla “poli-coralità” di ascendenza rinascimentale ai contemporanei “cori spezzati”, che aggiungono effetti di avvolgente spazialità a una musica già di per sé emozionante e personale.”
[‘… remarkable … the first thing to strike one is the luminosity of the vocal lines … Little's writing takes advantage of the most disparate and refined techniques – from its "polychoral" Renaissance ancestry stem contemporary "split choir" procedures, which create effects of spatial envelopment within a music, which is, in itself, already intimate and exhilarating.’] - Filippo Focosi, “Jonathan David Little ‘Woefully Arrayed’” (CD review), in Kathodik (2nd November, 2017) (ITALY)
Music & Vision (UK):
* ‘trance-like … well-crafted and original … also features two fascinating secular choral works … This really is Australian music with a difference … sheer beauty. ’ – Keith Bramich, “Practical Experiments? …” (CD review), in Music & Vision (27th June, 2018) (UK)
Des Chips et du Rosé / Nova Express (FRANCE)
* ‘… c'est tellement beau’ [“so beautiful”] – (20th August, 2017) (FRANCE)
La Scena Musicale (CANADA):
****½
* ‘Little’s musical proposition is to write in the manner of polyphonic composers of the Renaissance such as Palestrina and Josquin des Prés.
However, Little is not content to imitate the language of his predecessors. He absorbs the general technical characteristics, like contrapuntal writing and melismas, but takes some liberties in his own writing by introducing, for example, strong dissonance between the voices. Additionally, Little is inspired by the Venetian tradition of polychoral singing, and creates dynamic interaction between different choral groups. … The composer also uses astute means of playing with the acoustic properties of the recording space. The placement of singers within that space is meticulously calculated to create certain sonorities. …
In summary, Little’s musical style is arrestingly beautiful, and manages to strike a delicate balance between tradition and innovation.’ – Arnaud G. Veydarier, “Jonathan David Little, Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in La Scena Musicale (Feb./Mar. 2018), p.32 (CANADA)
Review Graveyard (USA):
* ‘The sound is strikingly contemporary, yet also intertwined with choral traditions of the past ... Fans of choral music are in for a huge treat … Several of these beautiful and moving settings of profound and poignant texts feature intricate “polychoral” techniques: multi-part, multi-divisi, solo, echo and spatial effects. … This is a truly sensory rich album. You won't regret adding this to your collection.’ – Darren Rea, “Woefully Arrayed: Sacred & Secular Choral & Polychoral Works”, in Review Graveyard, 1st September, 2017 (USA)
Infodad (USA):
* ‘Kyrie and Gloria on this CD are both sonically impressive and show understanding of older vocal forms … On the secular side of things, Wasted and Worn, intended as a memorial to painter John William Godward (1861-1922), features some beautiful vocal writing …’ – Infodad (6th July, 2017) (USA)
iTunes (USA):
* ‘Another time, another place! When it comes to transporting you to a different place, WOEFULLY ARRAYED is in a class of its own! I’m taken to a faraway place and age with so much tranquility and peaceful feelings there, assisted by the smooth transitions in the music. It’s a lovely composition, beautifully performed with detailed dynamics keeping one gently engaged - lovely!’ – Grammy-Award winning composer and flautist, Wouter Kellerman (18th October, 2017) (USA)
WOEFULLY ARRAYED - CD Reviews received July to November 2017 (Navona NV6113)
(external link)
JONATHAN DAVID LITTLE
WORLDWIDE CRITICAL REACTION TO THE ALBUM
WOEFULLY ARRAYED (NAVONA NV6113, 2017)
Fanfare (USA)
• ‘The disc of sacred and secular choral and polychoral music by Jonathan David Little, Woefully Arrayed … is nothing short of remarkable. Stunningly recorded, the pure sonic joy is visceral. On a personal level, I haven’t experienced such revelation in choral terms since the Tallis Scholars’ first recording of the Allegri Miserere. … Woefully Arrayed is a masterpiece … radiant … full and reverberant … magnificently handled … A superb disc … shot through with spiritual light and which speaks on a very deep level to the listener.’ – Colin Clarke, “The Profundity of Polychoralism: Exploring the work of Jonathan David Little” (extended interview), and “Little, Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Fanfare, Vol.41, No.2 (Nov./Dec. 2017) (USA)
• ‘Jonathan David Little’s music walks the same path as that of Arvo Pärt and Morten Lauridsen … and Little’s style is natural and organic. He does not offer a contrived veneer of ethereality, but rather employs polychoral-inspired and spatial techniques to create a warm wash of sound with some substance behind it. … Little uses familiar musical materials and processes to craft music that is at once simple and complex. … The music’s underlying structures provide a solid framework compositionally, and Little is surely adept at writing for voices; this music is lush, relaxing and meditative. As enjoyable as the music is for listeners, I suspect that it is even more rewarding for the choirs. It is easy to imagine any one of the selections on this disc becoming a perennial favorite for choirs of all kinds, from amateur community choirs to professional ecclesiastical ensembles.’ – James V. Maiello, “Little, Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Fanfare, Vol.41, No.2 (Nov./Dec. 2017) (USA)
Audiophile Audition (USA)
• ‘This album is a delight on all fronts. … Little achieves unique and beautiful effects through spacing and arrangement of vocal groups. It seems that Little’s techniques are well grounded in both very careful construction of harmonies and voicing as well as in acoustics and the physics of sound. … In fact, two of the most fantastically beautiful works in this collection—Gloria, op.18 and Wasted and Worn, op. 6, also have atypical and unique placement of the singers. … Of the six selections herein, I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite … When I hear music of this sort it reminds in the best possible ways of when I have actually had the pleasure of hearing music by Tallis or Dunstable in a large old marble clad cathedral … The three groups performing here—Vox Futura, the Thomas Tallis Society, and The Stanbery Singers—are all amazing; some of the best groups you will ever hear. Very enjoyable, highly recommend!’ – Daniel Coombs, “Jonathan David LITTLE: Sacred and Secular Choral & Polychoral Works”, in Audiophile Audition, August 1st, 2017 (USA)
Cinemusical (USA)
Reviewing great classical and film music
Recording: ****/****
Performance: ****/****
• ‘One need look no further than the excellent essay by Hugh Keyte which appears in this new Navona release to further discover some historical perspective on this unique sound. … Each of these moments sort of bursts forth from the slowly-built verses in rather beautiful colors. … the stunning quality of the work … has this sense of coming into one central space only to go the far reaches of the space. Carefully-managed dissonance also adds to the emotional depth of the piece. … The album is filled with this rather engaging music … The polychoral approaches are managed well in the recording and in fact, the well-thought-out booklet even describes placement of singers for each piece. The overall production is rather stellar with excellent art work and overview of the style of music. It is a most fascinating release.’ – Steven A. Kennedy, “Polychoral Music by Jonathan David Little”, in Cinemusical, August 28th, 2017 (USA)
Choir & Organ (UK)
****
• “Little writes very much in the manner of the renaissance masters, creating what a modern sensibility would identify as ‘immersive’ music of strongly mystical aspect. That mysticism and muscularity can go hand-in-hand is confirmed by the title piece, which is reprised in condensed form at the end of the disc. … The pieces are performed in very different acoustics … [which] makes sense of the sacred/secular split and of the virtuosic disposition of voices.” – Brian Morton, “Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Choir & Organ (Nov./Dec. 2017) (UK)
Des Chips et du Rosé / Nova Express (FRANCE)
• ‘… c'est tellement beau’ [“so beautiful”] – Des Chips et du Rosé / Nova Express (20th August, 2017) (FRANCE)
Kathodik (ITALY)
****
“Tra le varie etichette che sono state affibbiate al compositore di origine australiana, ma ormai da tempo stabilizzatosi in Gran Bretagna, Jonathan David Little (classe 1965), quella di “minimalismo estatico” mi sembra la più appropriata, quanto meno in riferimento ai lavori corali presentati in questo notevole ? anche per ciò che concerne la veste grafica e il corposo booklet ? Cd della Navona. A partire dal brano che dà il titolo alla selezione, Woefully Arrayed, per proseguire con le altre composizioni sacre e profane, a colpire è innanzitutto la luminosità delle linee vocali ? anche laddove il tema è dolente ?, la cui ripetizione si arricchisce, gradualmente, di decorazioni strumentali e delicate increspature ritmiche. Il linguaggio armonico è principalmente modale, ma la scrittura di Little si avvale delle più disparate e raffinate tecniche, dalla “poli-coralità” di ascendenza rinascimentale ai contemporanei “cori spezzati”, che aggiungono effetti di avvolgente spazialità a una musica già di per sé emozionante e personale.”
EXCERPT IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
‘… remarkable … the first thing to strike one is the luminosity of the vocal lines … Little's writing takes advantage of the most disparate and refined techniques – from its "polychoral" Renaissance ancestry stem contemporary "split choir" procedures, which create effects of spatial envelopment within a music, which is, in itself, already intimate and exhilarating.’ – Filippo Focosi, “Jonathan David Little ‘Woefully Arrayed’” (CD review), in Kathodik (2nd November, 2017) (ITALY)
• Review Graveyard (USA)
‘Fans of choral music are in for a huge treat … Several of these beautiful and moving settings of profound and poignant texts feature intricate “polychoral” techniques … This is a truly sensory rich album. You won't regret adding this to your collection.’ – Darren Rea, “Woefully Arrayed: Sacred & Secular Choral & Polychoral Works”, in Review Graveyard, September 1st, 2017 (USA)
Infodad (USA)
• ‘Kyrie and Gloria on this CD are both sonically impressive and show understanding of older vocal forms … On the secular side of things, Wasted and Worn, intended as a memorial to painter John William Godward (1861-1922), features some beautiful vocal writing …’ – Infodad (6th July, 2017) (USA)
iTunes (USA)
• ‘Another time, another place! When it comes to transporting you to a different place, WOEFULLY ARRAYED is in a class of its own! I’m taken to a faraway place and age with so much tranquility and peaceful feelings there, assisted by the smooth transitions in the music. It’s a lovely composition, beautifully performed with detailed dynamics keeping one gently engaged - lovely!’ – Grammy-Award winning composer and flautist, Wouter Kellerman (18th October, 2017) (USA)
FANFARE 2017 INTERVIEW: The Profundity of Polychoralism: Exploring the Work of Jonathan David Little
(external link)
Second Interview in Fanfare (US): Feature Article in Issue 41:2 (Nov/Dec 2017)
"The Profundity of Polychoralism: Exploring the work of Jonathan David Little" BY COLIN CLARKE
The disc of sacred and secular choral and polychoral music by Jonathan David Little, Woefully Arrayed (review below), is nothing short of remarkable. Stunningly recorded, the pure sonic joy is visceral. On a personal level, I haven’t experienced such revelation in choral terms since the Tallis Scholars’ first recording of the Allegri Miserere. As an interviewee, it turns out, Little is every inch as fascinating as his music. The following in-depth interview may be seen as an indispensable complement to the listening experience itself.
Your history was traced in Martin Anderson’s interview in Fanfare 36:1 (2012), so this time we’ll be concentrating on your most recent disc on Navona, “Woefully Arrayed”. You talk in that previous interview about the importance of accessibility, and the music on the new disc has an instant appeal. Yet you balance that with a depth that has variously been called “ecstatic minimalism”, “antique futurism” and “picturesque archaism”. How do you react to those labels (and labels in general, for that matter!)?
When you embark upon your first compositions, and are building a compositional career, nothing could be further from your mind than how, one day, audience and/or critics might begin to “define” your music stylistically. I don’t think you even consider terribly closely the “tradition” or “school” to which you belong. Indeed, in our unique age in the history of music?that is, having arrived at a time when we can begin to hear and appreciate the music and techniques of many past eras and indeed various geographical locations as well, it is not surprising that some composers are becoming exceptionally eclectic. As a composer, you do tend to draw from all the best and most striking models as you build your own technique, and then, one day, when quite a few of your works can be heard, the “receptors” of your music inevitably begin to insist on knowing how your music might be defined; and we do live in an age when everything, it seems, must be classified according to its genus––artistic or otherwise (and this certainly also aids some aspects of the commercialization of music). Did the Impressionist painters want to be known as “Impressionists”? Most likely not. They might?if forced?have perhaps chosen a name that allied innovative concepts of color and texture with those relating to the fleeting and changing nature of light across time. But then, they may consequently have chosen a name far too complex to be instantly appreciated by the pubic! I don’t think it is often therefore the composer who chooses the label, or “ism”, with which, ever after, they tend to become associated.
As to the labels thus far applied to my own “brand” of music, they may not even have settled down yet; equally, I am not unhappy with those that have been applied, in the sense that they may convey some initial ideas of what the music might be like. Wonderful labels such as “antique futurism” (compliments of an Italian music critic, who favors marvelously florid language) are at once accurate, but at the same time could be confusingly contradictory for a novice listener. “Picturesque”, “archaic”, “minimalist”, “ecstatic”?these are all accurate to some extent, but can they cover the entirety of techniques and soundworlds of a composer’s body of work?
I do, however, think that no matter how chameleon-like and eclectic a composer is, there should still be a unity or unifying principle of general style and sound within each individual work, and certainly a reasonably distinctive language overall in which the composer speaks (and this is the great challenge of our time, to forge from so many elements a flexible and coherent language that is also capable of true profundity). “Finding your voice” as a composer will generally only emerge over a relatively long period of time. I think I was about 40 years old before I knew I had matured enough artistically to feel confident in my own technical language and its resulting sound but I hope it keeps evolving, as I keep writing and learning, in an endless cycle.
Artistic labels are perhaps for the world to decide. I can’t even now think how best to describe my own music. You might equally ask what it is that is most important to me as a composer, and work outwards from there. For me, this embraces concepts such as beauty of line, of constantly-building intensity in a certain direction, and of gorgeousness of sound––all adding up to the overall goal of transporting the listener that other, “higher plane” of our existence?redeeming the time, you might say, so that we can be reminded of the deepest and truest of things, and aspire to reach towards the finest of all our qualities; for we might otherwise today drown in the ever-present mundane (which, I think, Flaubert was already railing against, well over a century ago) or sink under the weight of the depressingly constant barrage of news of the world’s many tragedies. Perhaps this is indeed escapism towards the ecstatic? But surely that is what is needed now, more than ever, in what could become a very “cold” and bland world, without the necessary balance of exposure to the most humanizing and civilizing qualities of the arts. Therefore, besides technical accuracy, I also want the emotional heart of the music to come across in performance, and in recordings however “classical” in construction (conservatively constrained), and irrespective of the level of symmetry and refinement, in any particular work. We still need the sort of passion that we seem to be in danger now of losing, largely as Aldous Huxley foresaw in Brave New World. I hope we have achieved a reasonable balance in this regard throughout the current album, for I am always a fan of rubato and other unwritten freedoms, wherever the music requires (and it very often does), for best and most visceral effect. It is impossible to indicate every nuance when producing a manuscript; indeed, a manuscript documenting every single nuance would be ridiculously cluttered, and consequently unreadable!
An integral part of your expressive vocabulary is polychoralism: the spatial arrangement of choirs and the use of that as a vital part of the compositional process. The idea, therefore, becomes far more than an effect; it is an integral part of the musical statement. Can you trace your fascination with this method of writing? And how it came to mean so much to you?
When allied to other technical devices, the deployment of choral and/or instrumental forces within a particular space is an important and sometimes overlooked component of a work’s effect upon the ear: sounds can emerge from left/right, forward/behind?and, to use an analogy with painting?foreground, midground and background. In opera, such spatial effects have routinely been used for years (besides performing on the move, of course), and these effects have spilled over into symphonic works, too. One need only think of straightforward examples such as offstage bells and cowbells in Mahler’s work, or Holst’s brilliantly atmospheric use of offstage women’s chorus in “Neptune” from The Planets. And then, into this mix, you can also add devices such as larger forces versus smaller forces, and have single instruments or voices pop up as well, like individual specks of light or color.
In adolescence, hearing Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for double string orchestra first awoke me to such possibilities. (And this piece also incorporates string quartet, so that it, in fact, comprises three different “sizes” of performing groups.) In such works, the forces, and their deployment, are an essential part of the overall effect, especially within a large, cathedral-like space (the first performance in this case being in Gloucester Cathedral). The evocative and luxuriant harmonies resound and interact throughout the space in a cleverly-calculated way. Yet it is interesting to note that Vaughan Williams still subsequently felt the need to revise this work twice, for purposes of both tightening the structure, and further refining the sound. One can almost think of the venue itself as a special type of overarching “instrument” or “sound body”––and one that needs to be mastered, tuned and played well, like any other: and naturally this will involve determining where the various forces should most appropriately be placed.
The Kyrie on this present album was my first experiment with the sounds of double choir and soloists floating around a large, resonant space. (Its first performance was in Waltham Abbey––where Tallis worked––as part of the 500th anniversary celebrations of his birth.) The use of double choir imparts a left/right “stereo” effect, while the two extra groups of soloists (SA + SSA) add further twin sound sources as they echo across high balconies. I envisioned these soloists as constituting a physically higher-level stereo addition, though the conductor, Philip Simms, had a slightly different idea. While he did choose to place the soloists side-to-side and above the double choir, he positioned them well behind the audience. The effect was completely unexpected, disembodied and striking. This proved to me that while a composer should aim to suggest an ideal layout, there may be other equally valid possibilities for the deployment of various forces in “polychoral” works?as best suited to a particular venue (that oft-forgotten, but ever-present “instrument”). The practicalities of musical acoustics must be the determining factor here. Real problems can emerge when forces are placed too far apart, and/or where the performers have difficulty in hearing, blending, keeping in tune, or following the rhythm in conjunction with other sub-groups of performers. Hugh Keyte believes that the performance of one very ambitious late Renaissance polychoral work failed spectacularly precisely because of such reasons?and there is also evidence to show that sub-conductors were required in some quite complex late Renaissance and early Baroque works, this being the period when “polychoralism” rose to its ultimate heights in terms of sophistication, before subsequently falling out of fashion.
As the Kyrie was such a success in terms of my early choral works, I determined upon two things. Firstly, that the deployment of choral and/or instrumental forces in designated spatial configurations ought in many works to be considered more closely by a composer (as one of several elements in fashioning a new composition). And, secondly, that I would like to find out more and pursue writing a set of choral works exploiting the range of techniques permitted by such subdivision of forces and spatial configurations. Happily, the Australia Council invested in the writing of these works, and the peer reviewers of my initial proposal to the Council also seemed intrigued as to the possibilities. And so it was that the Australia Council approved the writing and recording of a series of works that would feature intricate “polychoral”-inspired techniques: multi-part, multi-divisi, solo, and unusual spatial effects (a mode of working labelled cori spezzati?literally “split” or “separated choirs” ?as the technique was referred to in the Renaissance and early Baroque periods).
Having written Wasted and Worn as the first of three major new works, I found I had then to pause and undertake a further and much deeper “research” phase, since I realised there was much I still did not know about the whole armoury of techniques upon which so many brilliant Renaissance polychoral composers had once drawn. I put to Robert Hollingworth this question:
“Being in the midst of an international project related to writing and recording contemporary choral and "polychoral" works (for which I am also now trying to construct diagrams to illustrate how, for best effect, these works could be performed), I am wondering what, and how much definitive evidence, actually exists as to where exactly the performers may have been spatially positioned when originally performing Renaissance works …”
“Actual evidence?” he queried. “Practically nothing. However Hugh Keyte has thought about this long and hard …”. I can remember being more than a little shocked that we seem still to know so very little about all this, and it was to Hugh Keyte that I turned for advice, and for clues. (He also kindly agreed to write a contextual essay on “polychorality” for the CD booklet?which is a useful starting point for beginning to understand some of the issues involved.) It dawned on me that the Renaissance must have been an age of the rediscovery of multi-dimensional artistic perspective not only in visual form (as with “linear perspective”), but in aural form as well (since the more ambitious composers seemingly experimented with different types of sonic placement, aural “depth of field”, and other such effects, all related to the perception of sound in space). Continued research is unearthing facts about the hiring and placement of performers in Renaissance music, but, of course, even beyond that, I want to know how the composers themselves thought, and ultimately almost to try to isolate and understand each and every one of the various forgotten techniques and myriad possibilities involved in writing for multiple groups of forces at once.
It is like being the musical equivalent of an archaeologist: we dig up a bare few clues from archival records, or from scores, and from these, then try to reconstruct a whole vanished compositional and performing tradition. All I can say is that some of the works on this CD begin to go some little way to reclaiming the lost potential of performing spaces?and rediscovering an esoteric form of compositional knowledge that has, in large part, now been lost. I would still like to learn so much more! But such knowledge is never so that I can write “old”-sounding music; rather, it is so that I can add a valuable extra resource to my compositional palette. In all of the works that I explored in order to find technical precursors, only the Dedication Service for St. Gertrude’s Chapel, Hamburg, in 1607 (see the edition edited by Frederick K. Gable, published by A-R Editions) retains comprehensive documentation as to where instrumental and vocal forces were placed during the actual performance?in that particular case, literally producing a sort of “surround-sound” effect around the auditors. You will, therefore, see that I have made a point to include very thorough diagrams in both my musical scores, and in the CD booklet, as to where my performers should best be positioned (complete with any possible alternatives). In 400 years’ time, I don’t want there to be any wildly speculative debate about where my performers ought to be placed!
How do you decide on the layouts? Is it to do with the acoustics you are writing for, indeed specifically for the place of the work’s premiere? The booklet to the Navona release helpfully gives diagrams for Gloria, Wasted and Worn and That Time of Year, and they are all individual.
To begin with, the type of work it is, and the text, together first suggest what spatial arrangement may prove most appropriate for a new work?at least on a general level?and so it evolves from there. Of course, this necessarily involves envisaging the ideal performance venue and acoustic for each work. I believe that Benjamin Britten always kept in mind his performance venue when he was writing, and it is clearly important to do so, wherever that is possible. But, if you are writing more “speculatively” shall we say, and there is no guaranteed performance venue, and/or the work might, or could, be performed in a variety of different types of venue, then one’s imagination and experience must come even more into play in trying to ensure that the effect, in performance, will be largely as intended. (This also assumes that some venues will not be terribly appropriate for particular works?and a good conductor or programmer should be able to factor this aspect into their thinking, besides other obvious considerations: of forces involved, complexity, style, contextual interest, and the order amongst other works, and so on.)
Venues also affect how a work is performed. To take one simple example, Woefully Arrayed will need to move more quickly in a smaller performing space, or it will seem to drag and lose onward momentum (always bearing in mind that it will probably not be very effective in a less than medium-sized venue). But in a very large, resonant space?and especially with bigger forces, too?Woefully Arrayed can be taken at a more leisurely pace (really quite lento), and yet it will not seem at all slow in this circumstance. A larger venue will, moreover, allow for the full range of subtleties of overlapping/mingling lines and echoes to be appreciated, so increasing audience appeal, as the several groups of sounds initially emanate from particular directions, then travel around the entire space in interesting patterns on beguiling journeys that circumscribe the listener.
The final layout of the forces involved in these vocal works will have involved many rounds of fine-tuning as the work progresses (not least to make sure that any individual performers required are to be found in the right place at the right time, especially where there has been some movement of the singers away from their original positions?as there is, indeed, in both Wasted and Worn and That Time of Year). The final layout for Wasted and Worn indicates all of the physical movements, both large and small: whether simple displacement from the original position (and return), or merely a very subtle quarter-turn round and away from the audience (so that the singer sounds a touch more distant?but not nearly so distant as being initially placed, or subsequently moving, much further away).
I’d like to ask about your relationship with the past. In the op. 18 Gloria (“Et in Arcadia ego”) you quote an anonymous 14th-century three part setting of “Ave maris stella,” a setting itself based on an even earlier chant (at least to the ninth century!). Is the past an inspiration? Or a building block? Or something to meditate on? There’s almost a Russian doll element to that piece, you take off one layer of reference and reveal another one!
The past is treasure. The past may be “a foreign country”, but it is also treasure?often just waiting to be discovered. It is an inspiration, a source of all manner of wonderful technical devices (concerning which I have always been eager to learn); and it is a vital starting-point for the new, always informed by the very best of past workmanship. Instrumental and vocal technologies and capabilities may change through the ages, but many techniques of musical composition are merely recycled and reinvented, in different ways. And, of course, the balance and type of the total musical parameters, or components, employed in a musical composition (consisting of elements such as melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, structure, dynamics, orchestration, special devices, etc.) re-evolve and are refashioned in differing proportions, and are given new emphases of importance, so to produce seemingly brand-new “flavours” from the age-old ingredients within. Emerson’s marvellous essay Quotation and Originality pretty much summarises my beliefs philosophically in this regard. Emerson maintained: “We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the Present.”
I have recently started using the phrase “historically-informed composition” ?as a complement or counterpart to that well-known phrase, “historically-informed performance” ?and as a way of emphasizing the fact that few compositions of any style are truly radically “new” underneath. This “historically-informed” label also stresses the importance of making a lifetime study of musical techniques, and indeed the musical techniques of all ages, if one truly wishes to master one’s craft?especially in an era when it begins to seem as if anyone can easily become a composer, or indeed artist of any type, without the long years of study and contemplation of past models necessary ultimately both to develop one’s own expressive language, and to find ways to evoke the deepest of messages that have at least some chance of resonating across the ages. It is for me almost a moral imperative that any serious composer today should aim to absorb all past traditions, whether stemming from the Middle Ages (including any techniques well enough understood even from before that?together with the remnants of long-established folk traditions), or whether derived from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic or “Modern” periods. It may also prove helpful to seek inspiration in the music of cultures reasonably alien to one’s own, provided that such “spice” still sits comfortably within a (novel) stylistic whole.
And your Russian doll analogy is quite apt: inside the music may be many archaeological layers, wherein are to be found much older techniques and references. The “outer” layers may point to something quite new in sound?while the creator’s skill is, in some way, often thoroughly to blend and to conceal what lies within!
The more outward-going side of you is evident in the Polyhymnia disc Martin Anderson talked to you about last time (“Terpsichore the Whirler” is wonderfully extrovert, as is the brief “Fanfare”); yet even here, the intensity of “Polyhymnia” is like an orchestral version of the choral glories of your disc, the Olomouc orchestra strings absolutely radiant. Would you see ecstasy as at the core of your music?
I would agree that much of Terpsichore is certainly less “cerebral” than several of my other works! Terpsichore aims to create a “whirling kaleidoscope” of orchestral colors and textures. Yet even that work should ideally raise our spirits to exuberant heights. Perhaps it might indeed be construed as a more extrovert manifestation of the “ecstatic”.
For many years, I did not use or apply the word “ecstasy” to my works in any way, but the concept admittedly does embody an important principle in terms of the purpose of much of my music, which is to uplift the listener, and so has much in common with religious or spiritual paradigms of reaching towards the ecstatic and transcendent. If I may make a couple of rough parallels with fine art and sculpture, there is an aspect of what I do that might be likened to a kind of intense, modern Pre-Raphaelitism in music, or even be considered “Bernini-like” ?in that it aims to encapsulate certain qualities of refined power and poignant ecstasy?a feeling that is at one and the same time both religious and sensuous: hence I find it necessary to insist that there must also be deep passion at the heart of creating such “radiance” (another descriptive word which seems perfectly appropriate––as do terms such as “ethereal”, “otherworldly”, and “visceral” ?all applied by various critics over recent years).
The earlier disc also included the Kyrie from Missa Temporis Perditi, a Mass which I believe is still in progress? I wonder if this idea of not having to rush a work, of the music being in process and coming when it’s ready, is a reflection on the sense of timelessness your music itself exudes? In fact, the Kyrie op. 5 was first sketched in 1985 but only completed 20 years later, is that right? Is there any projected finish year for the Missa?
At the heart of what you say lies an interesting question, and one that I’m not sure I can answer exactly. All artists tend to work in different ways. I have certain overall aims in terms of projects I would like ultimately to complete, but several of them seem so potentially vast in conception that the only way sensibly for me to deal with them?and maintain quality?is indeed not to rush them. The only real downside of this approach, working sometimes over several years, is that there may be a danger that the many components of a large-scale work completed over long time periods may not always fully cohere stylistically. I try to avoid this, where possible, by sketching initial ideas for the whole. You will have noted in the CD booklet that it also mentions how opus numbers are accorded to my works chronologically by date of conception, rather than completion. This can result in what seem like strange anomalies in terms of a creative timeline, but I believe it forms the truest record of one’s work. (This also provides the reason why pieces belonging to the same series may have quite different opus numbers.) The Kyrie was first sketched out (in this case, in quite some detail) almost twenty years before the opportunity presented itself to refine and complete it for a specific purpose. Happily, with The Nine Muses series of large-scale instrumental works (and perhaps voices might yet also be involved in some capacity), the issue of stylistic unity is not so much an issue, as each one of the Muses will have a completely different character?illustrative of their unique attributes, or “personalities”!
I have tried to move more quickly on bigger projects, but they involve such detailed concentration over such extended periods of time that it is just too exhausting to work in that way for long. What you hint at is true: some works come when they come, and when the time is right?and most are best produced after long cogitation, technical trials, revisions and refinements. For the current project, even creating and recording three new, fairly large-scale choral works of differing types over two years (in addition to recording two others pre-existing) was quite an intense experience, but would never have come about so quickly had it not been for funding from the Australian Council. This funding made it possible, but also entailed some fierce deadlines––and deadlines do not always sit comfortably with creative necessity. Having said that, the other extreme then rears its head: the fact that the five-or-so-section Missa Temporis Perditi might be forty years in the making from the date of its first conception, while the nine movements of the Nine Muses may ultimately take twenty or thirty years?which, I admit, sounds an outrageously long time! Perhaps I can comfort myself with the fact that Leonardo da Vinci took the entire latter part of his life to produce his Mona Lisa, or that the artist-technician A.-L. Breguet’s “Marie-Antionette” watch was only completed 44 years after he first accepted the order (though unfortunately he didn’t quite live to see it finished). (Both of these examples constituted true labors of love?involving great self-challenge, and astonishing technical brilliance.) So, no, there is not yet an end date in sight for some of my “series” works. But when the time is right for each, and as the opportunity presents, I hope to turn my attention to every one of my works-in-progress, and will, one day, declare them complete!
There are other practicalities and exigencies, in addition, of course, two of which?my university teaching, and my interest in writing and documenting various aspects of music concerned with inspiration and technical innovation?also occupy my time. But all these tasks essentially complement, and, I trust, enhance one another. I have had two substantial books published in recent years (again, I’m afraid, two decades from first conception!): The Influence of European Literary and Artistic Representations of the 'Orient' on Western Orchestral Compositions, ca. 1840-1920: From Oriental Inspiration to 'Exotic' Orchestration (2010), and Literary Sources of Nineteenth Century Musical Orientalism: The Hypnotic Spell of the Exotic on Music of the Romantic Period (2011) ?for which I agreed to work with a publisher who did not wish, or economically need, to cut, abridge or otherwise edit the text, to delete any of the illustrations, or to disturb the layout. This consideration was very important to me. And with regard to my writing, I intend next to compile a “menu” of compositional devices (another long-term project!), which can be used as a sort of aide memoire of technical devices for working composers, just as much as for students of composition?and which may have the additional function of encouraging a broadening of the pool of techniques upon which a composer may draw. All these studies help me to understand past musical traditions and practices.
But none of this quite answers your question about the perceived “sense of timelessness” in some of my works?though perhaps having free rein over the length of time needed for any production may assist in generating “long-lived” works. Speed is often the enemy of intricate creation and perfection of form.
There are most certainly aspects of works such as Polyhymnia, Woefully Arrayed, and Gloria that do seek almost to disrupt and defeat time: to find the stillness at the center of the music, and, just occasionally, to lose all sense of “pulse”. (This is a dangerous artistic conceit, since almost all musical compositions depend upon some internal onward impetus in order to maintain their fluidity and direction, as well as the development and transformation of their materials, and indeed often merely a sufficient sense of evolution so as to sustain even the slightest interest.) Undoubtedly, such moments of seeming stillness are a reaching for ekstasis?a sense of mystical self-transcendence, a “standing outside oneself”, here mediated by the creator/artist. Can we indeed fashion such a thing as a “dynamic stillness” ?and, in doing so, use art to defeat time?that single (undefinable and incomprehensible) concept that would appear to be the barrier to immortality? (Or, at least, can we seem to do so, and create a representation, or simulation, of timelessness?) This is an element of the unique bond between the spiritual and the artistic, and, I think, at the center of what true religion and art ultimately seek: by some means to negate time and to latch on to the Eternal. The greatest of all our art-works seem to function as momentary gateways to the pseudo-Eternal in some way?though such moments may also be evoked through contemplation of nature, or upon sudden recognition of the generosity of the human spirit. Musical notation and other artistic symbols (all functioning like some mystical, arcane language), when decoded and revivified by us, can undeniably lead us to rapture, and open up those rare and precious moments of “epiphany,” in which we perceive important connections and meanings that may unite with other such transcendent experiences glimpsed at various stages along, what might be termed, our “circumambulatory journey” through life. (While we always tend to think of both life and music proceeding and steadily progressing in a straight line, as time passes, I doubt this is a truly useful way to regard such experiences, and so favor the notion of seeing life and art more as a meditation, from different perspectives, upon the whole.)
Your new disc is neatly divided into “sacred works” (opp. 13, 5 and 18) and secular works (opp. 6 and 2), so I’d like to move on to the latter if that’s OK: The secular “Wasted and Worn” (op. 6) is at once a tribute to the artist John William Godward (1861-1922) and to all artists who follow their muse irrespective of contemporary tastes and fashions, often leading to obscurity and indeed in Godward’s case, suicide. Godward’s paintings are now labelled as “(Victorian) neo-classicist,” but they certainly weren’t recognised to the extent they could have been in his lifetime. And there does seem to be an especially mournful quality to your piece, with its tightly-knit harmonies. It is also a more general tribute to those artists who toil away, unrecognised: would you like to elaborate on all of this, perhaps? How did the underlying premise affect the way you wrote the piece, either in harmonic terms or in terms of construction?
I found the text very apt, and quite affecting, on several levels. “Wasted and worn that passion must expire, / Which swept at sunrise like a sudden fire …”. The verse is an excerpt from A Parting by John Leicester Warren. It can be read in terms of romantic meaning, of course, but also in creative terms, as referring to the fire of inspiration and enthusiasm when all ideas begin to come together, and a new work starts to be forged (in the same way that Elgar quotes Shelley in the published score of his Second Symphony: “Rarely, rarely, comest thou, / Spirit of Delight!”). Warren’s verse succinctly charts the inevitable end of that process, and indeed seems to sum up the result of a lifetime of artistic work?when work has been generally unappreciated during the actual years of its creation: “His footsteps foiled, his spirit bound and numb, / Grey Love sits dumb.” It is not hard to find examples of creators of all types who would have felt themselves, in worldly terms at least, to be largely failures (though they will probably not have thought so in terms of the richness of the nourishing, necessity-driven life of the mind and spirit they will have lived, and all that they will have learned and experienced): think of Van Gogh, and even the sombre and solitary Warren himself (indeed, are many aware of his work at all?); but it struck me that John William Godward seems to epitomize such appalling vagaries of fortune. The contrast between how much Godward’s work is valued (quite literally) and admired today, and generally how very little it was during his lifetime, is fearsome. Added to that, his own family and relations so despised his art, his career, and his conduct, that they subsequently sought actively to obliterate his memory?including destroying all known papers, and every single photograph. And, as if that were not enough, following a lifetime of largely solitary work for this shy and hardworking, but prodigiously talented individual, and having at last achieved great heights of technical perfection (that incorporated many thousands of hours of the most painstaking detail of a type that few have matched before or since), a sudden stylistic revolution in the early twentieth century caused his entire opus to be regarded, almost overnight, as old-fashioned, “insipid”, and thoroughly undesirable.
At least a little public recognition is needed to nourish an artist’s often fragile spirit, and to help him or her find the courage to trudge on, and create again, no matter what the knock-backs; but to keep on going and live your ideal in so hostile an environment is utterly extraordinary?and, moreover, to pursue those ideals so steadfastly, not even knowing if any of those people that come after you will feel even the slightest benefit from your creative legacy. Yet it is precisely upon such individuals that the progress of art, and life, depends; it is through them that a record of beauty is made and bequeathed (whereby also the finest aspects of the human soul are preserved) ?to be passed on to, and so nurture, subsequent generations. This also reminds us that it is rarely or solely the famous names of the day that posterity selects as most treasured inspiration for those that come after us, but often just a few very hardworking, lesser-known individuals, who toil away incessantly, driven by inner necessity, and the fire of a great, almost holy light. They manage to embody the finest experience and ideals of their era, which, at rare intervals in their own lives, they have been fortunate and gifted enough to perceive, to comprehend, and to codify in terms of their art. Time transforms their work into future inspiration, and so nourishes those who are yet to be born. Such precious souls become our artistic Cassandras: we pay homage to their work and memory when they are gone, but so often misunderstand, ignore, and even deride all they create within the very era of the formation of their art.
As to Wasted and Worn itself, I sought to try to capture several passing episodes of different hues within the overall melancholic and poignant mood, united by the recurrence of a strange and haunting refrain that periodically surges up and fights against “the dying of the light”. Soon after the opening, the music reflects upon some uncomfortable inner thoughts, but never fails to revive?albeit briefly?and to reminisce upon recollected moments of great beauty and brilliance.
I had some trouble fashioning the whole of this work, and on completion remained for some time quite uncertain about it. It is only now, after several months, that I begin to think that there may be some enduringly powerful and worthy elements within. An uncomfortable text will put you through the emotional mill at the time you come to deal with it, and may leave you more than a little unsettled and unsure about it for a good while afterwards.
The Shakespeare setting (“That Time of Year”) sets Sonnet No. 73, a sonnet infused with the melancholy of the passing seasons. You score this for three male voices against two female ones, and Gesualdo has been linked to this piece in mood. It also includes some performer choice (the phrases of the middle section) and a “mobile” element (in this middle part, low male voices move to the centre while all others move backwards to produce a framing arc). Is this element of choice something you have used much? Or will in the future? The “drama” of the choral participants’ moving around the stage seems entirely apposite to bringing these texts to life …
Also, it’s a nice link that Shakespeare and Gesualdo are near-exact contemporaries. Was that a deliberate linking in your piece?
The piece That Time of Year was given a workshop performance by the BBC Singers in October 2016, and I pay tribute to Judith Weir for her advocacy on my behalf in asking the singers to practise exactly the movements you describe. But she was unsuccessful! Perhaps they felt there was not enough time to incorporate the movements, and/or it was too easy to trip over the staging, and/or the choir were not used to such demands, and preferred solely to concentrate on getting the notes right! This proved a lesson in itself about resistance to innovation and unwillingness to “perambulate” if you are a usually static choir. Yet some groups have in recent years been starting to experiment with this, and, of course, opera singers do it all the time. It does make me think more of reserving the use of movement for dramatic works, perhaps?though, I should say that having witnessed an American choir (the Chamber Choir of Christopher Newport University) undertake well-rehearsed choreographic movements in both That Time of Year and Kyrie (during a performance at the Ferguson Center for the Arts in Virginia, earlier in March 2016), it undoubtedly does add significant interest and impact both aurally and visually. Even watching the singers neatly changing positions between the works creates a splendid sense of curious anticipation as to what might be coming next! Likewise, the “aleatoric” middle section of That Time of Year tends to prove a challenge for most performers, and needs decent rehearsal time to make it a success. Here, some “live creativity” is handed over to the performers, and this is a mode in which they are not often used to working (so should, perhaps, be used sparingly, and with caution).
The linking of Shakespeare and Gesualdo was a happy coincidence, but it was very apt that some inspiration from both filtered through into That Time of Year, in order to help evoke both the mood of the text, and the spirit of the period.
How’s the muses project going? You said in your previous interview you were working your way through them in the “established” order. And related to that, can I ask you about plans for compositions going forward? And upcoming premieres and subsequent recordings?
I have sketched out plans for a couple more of The Nine Muses. I also aim in the immediate future to complete one or more further works for string orchestra, also the odd choral work whenever possible, as well as working on the book of compositional techniques that I mentioned earlier. (A disc of string works, before long, would be good, too!) Perhaps I will turn my attention more now to dramatic works, as well. Initially, I have in mind a sort of opera-ballet project, but will not elaborate too much about it now, since laying ideas bare at an early stage before they are fully conceived seems to me somehow to detract from their ultimate richness, by robbing them of their mystery and true potential.
Perhaps the way I proceed with my works is a little odd?which is to say that I do try, where possible, to have them “preserved” in published and recorded format as soon as they are completed, sometimes even before they have been premiered in performance. Historically, of course, the reverse has tended to be the case: works are only recorded after several performances. I think I pursue publication, and especially recording, in order both that nothing should be lost that might be worth preserving, but also so that there might be an initial “reference recording” of each work for audiences, performing groups, and conductors to hear (at which point I then tend to lobby for performances). One can also learn much from close listening to recordings of one’s music. I should also state that any first recording made does not necessarily represent what might be a best or “definitive” version, although, in the case of the works on this disc, they should, I hope, act as an excellent and stimulating starting point. In truth, perhaps the “ideal” performance is only ever heard in a composer’s head …
LITTLE Woefully Arrayed, op. 131 (two versions). Kyrie, op. 52. Gloria, op. 183. Wasted and worn, op. 64. That Time of Year, op. 24 ? 1,3Andrew Shenton, 2Philip Simms, 4Paul John Stanbery, conds; 1Heinrich Christensen (org); 1,3Vox Futura; 2Thomas Tallis Society Ch; 4The Stanbery Singers ? NAVONA 6113 (69:54)
Described by my colleague Lynn René Bayley as “a major new, original, and quite brilliant classical voice” (Want Lists 2008, Fanfare 32:2), Jonathan David Little is a composer whose music is vital, urgent and yet somehow timeless at the same time. Reviewer Martin Anderson, in interview with Little (Fanfare 36:1), described the music as “ecstatic Minimalism,” and I can see no reason to argue. According to the composer’s own website, alternative descriptions of his works from European critics have included “antique futurism” and “picturesque archaism.” Despite the multiplicity of recording venues (mainly US, the op. 5 Kyrie being the exception, taken down at the Church of St Alfege in Greenwich, UK), there is a blissful homogeneity here in terms of recording standard.
At some 25-minutes duration, Woefully Arrayed (with an alternative title of “Crucifixus pro vobis”) has a mesmeric element to it, the refrain earning more and more elaboration as the composition progresses. Choral layouts are helpfully given in the excellent booklet, which also includes a superb essay on polychoralism by Hugh Keyte. That essay refers to Tallis’ Spem in alium and how the different subdivisions of the choir might have been laid out spatially, an aspect viscerally brought to light this concert season in London where Vladimir Jurowski conducted a performance of the Tallis in half-light with choirs spread around the Royal Festival Hall; a blaze of light (literally) following the end introduced the opening of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Little plugs directly into the ethos of polychorality. His Woefully Arrayed is a masterpiece of time-stretching. As lines float and interact throughout the soundspace, there is a distinct impression of atemporality, of altering the way the listener experiences time. There is an abridged version (starting at the Third Refrain) that concludes the disc, lasting twelve minutes instead of 25; the effect in a complete play through of the recital is of a sort of homecoming. It has a real point in giving the impression of a cycle gaining completion after the wonderings into other territory, and twelve minutes is just enough to once more submit to the work’s hypnosis.
The Kyrie on this disc has an opus number of its own but is actually from the Missa Temporis Perditi (a work which is yet to be completed). For double choir with SSA and SA soloists, the piece requires a minimum of 22 singers and includes a short passage utilizing off-stage voices. This is the recording in Greenwich, just prior in fact to the work’s second public performance, in November 2005. The actual sound is superb, full and reverberant without smudging. The Thomas Tallis Society Choir is in fine fettle. The Gloria is from the same source, even though it holds a separate opus number and is currently described as a “companion piece.” Little inserts a very short quote from an anonymous 14th-century setting of Ave maris stella, itself based on a chant dating back to at least the ninth century. Recorded some twelve years later than the Kyrie in Boston, MA, this is slow-moving and poses huge challenges to the upper echelons of the choir, all magnificently handled here. The highest voices cope superbly with the Gloria’s radiant close.
The next two pieces are secular works and are performed by The Stanbery Singers. The first, Little’s op. 6, uses texts by Thomas Gray (the 1751 Elegy in a Church-Yard, as head-quotation) and John Byrne Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley (the poem Wasted and worn that passion must expire). Little’s imagination is more focused on the gesture here, enabling more of a feeling of unfolding narrative. It is to a Shakespeare Sonnet that Little’s op. 2 moved to: That time of year thou mayst in me behold. Scored for three male lines against a female two to reflect the weighted melancholy of Shakespeare’s text, Little writes more emphatically modally in a deliberate tribute to the Italian madrigal tradition as exemplified specifically by Carlo Gesualdo. There is a semi-aleatory aspect to the central panel, in which singers are given a range of notes to choose from; at this point, too, in live performance one can see the baritones and basses move to the center of the stage while the rest of the choir moves backwards and further out to form an arc. The actual choice of pitches is the composer’s, and ensures a continuity of harmonic language, but the change in choral color is undeniably clear. The performance itself is unbearably gentle, even wistful, with the emphasis on lower registers underlining the sense of regret.
A superb disc, one that simply gets better on each and every listening. There is a radiance to Little’s writing that seems shot through with spiritual light and which speaks on a very deep level to the listener.
Colin Clarke
CONCISE REVIEW SUMMARY
Fanfare (USA)
• ‘The disc of sacred and secular choral and polychoral music by Jonathan David Little, Woefully Arrayed … is nothing short of remarkable. Stunningly recorded, the pure sonic joy is visceral. On a personal level, I haven’t experienced such revelation in choral terms since the Tallis Scholars’ first recording of the Allegri Miserere. … Woefully Arrayed is a masterpiece … radiant … A superb disc … shot through with spiritual light and which speaks on a very deep level to the listener.’ – Colin Clarke, “The Profundity of Polychoralism: Exploring the work of Jonathan David Little” (extended interview), and “Little, Woefully Arrayed …” (CD review), in Fanfare, Vol.41, No.2 (Nov./Dec. 2017) (USA)
Fanfare Contributor Bio
Colin Clarke
Colin Clarke was a manager in the classical department of the record shop at No. 1, Piccadilly, London (Zavvi; ex-Virgin Records). He read music at the University of Surrey (submitting a dissertation on the early world of Alban Berg) before studying Musical Theory and Analysis at King’s College, London with V. Kofi Agawu and Professor Arnold Whittall (completing with a dissertation on “Wagner’s Art of Transition: An Analysis of selected passages from Act II of Wagner’s Parsifal”). He writes and has written for a variety of publications, including Tempo (Cambridge University Press), Fanfare (USA), Classical Recordings Quarterly (CRQ, formerly Classic Record Collector) and International Piano. He has also worked in Classical Music Copyright (Faber Music Limited, MCPS), and on the editorial teams of Gramophone and International Record Review.
"WOEFULLY ARRAYED": Sacred & Secular Choral & Polychoral Works [NEW CD on NAVONA, USA] (2017)
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!["WOEFULLY ARRAYED": Sacred & Secular Choral & Polychoral Works [NEW CD on NAVONA, USA] (2017)](/ppks/download.aspx?id=sjnu2ymbjXA-.jpg&pr=1)
As a follow-up to his successful 2012 CD "POLYHYMNIA" – featuring three European orchestras – JONATHAN DAVID LITTLE, a former Collard Fellow in Music, has released a new album of choral and "polychoral" works on the US Navona label. Entitled "WOEFULLY ARRAYED", this CD features three choirs from the US and UK, contains diagrams of all the choral forces involved, and an essay on ‘Polychorality’ by Hugh Keyte. It is sponsored by an inaugural Australia Council ‘International Arts Project Award’.
FIRST ADVANCE REVIEW (and IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW), in FANFARE (USA):
"Woefully Arrayed is a masterpiece … A superb disc, one that simply gets better on each and every listening. There is a radiance to Little’s writing that seems shot through with spiritual light and which speaks on a very deep level to the listener. ... On a personal level, I haven’t experienced such revelation in choral terms since the Tallis Scholars’ first recording of the Allegri Miserere."
– Colin Clarke, “Little, Woefully Arrayed …”, in Fanfare (Nov/Dec 2017) (USA)
REVIEW in AUDIOPHILE AUDITION (USA):
"This album is a delight on all fronts. … Little achieves unique and beautiful effects through spacing and arrangement of vocal groups. It seems that Little’s techniques are well grounded in both very careful construction of harmonies and voicing as well as in acoustics and the physics of sound. … In fact, two of the most fantastically beautiful works in this collection—Gloria, op.18 and Wasted and Worn, op. 6, also have atypical and unique placement of the singers. … Of the six selections herein, I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite … When I hear music of this sort it reminds in the best possible ways of when I have actually had the pleasure of hearing music by Tallis or Dunstable in a large old marble clad cathedral … Very enjoyable, highly recommend!"
- Daniel Coombs, “Jonathan David LITTLE: Sacred and Secular Choral & Polychoral Works”, in Audiophile Audition, August 1st, 2017 (USA)
OTHER RECENT ORCHESTRAL AND CHORAL SUCCESSES:
(January, 2017) Composer Jonathan David Little recently received Special Distinction for his orchestral showpiece, "Terpsichore", in America’s 2017 Nissim Prize – one of the concert music world’s most esteemed awards. He was personally congratulated from New York by ASCAP’s Head of Concert Music, Cia Toscanini.
(October, 2016) In 2016, Jonathan was winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society / BBC Radio 3 ‘ENCORE Choral’ Award, and was also invited to participate in a BBC Singers’ Choral Music Workshop, led by Judith Weir.
"Woefully Arrayed": Fanfare magazine - first advance review (2017)
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Fanfare (USA), CD Review: "Woefully Arrayed: Sacred and Secular Choral and Polychoral Works of Jonathan David Little". Vox Futura / Andrew Shenton; Stanbery Singers / Paul John Stanbery; Thomas Tallis Society Choir / Philip Simms. Navona (14 July 2017). Cat. No. NV6113.
‘Woefully Arrayed is a masterpiece … A superb disc, one that simply gets better on each and every listening. There is a radiance to Little’s writing that seems shot through with spiritual light and which speaks on a very deep level to the listener.’
– Colin Clarke, “Little, Woefully Arrayed …”, in Fanfare (2017) (USA)
"Fontes Artis Musicae", Vol.61, Issue 2 (Apr-Jun 2014), pp.203-7
REVIEWS OF BOOKS ON MUSIC BY JONATHAN DAVID LITTLE - including those reviewed in "Fontes Artis Musicae" (the quarterly journal of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres [IAML]):
1. Re: "The Influence of European Literary and Artistic Representations of the 'Orient' on Western Orchestral Compositions"
"... [one] of the modern musical world’s distinctly charismatic composers … [has] recently set all this down in the 480 pages or so of his stimulating new book. … [It greatly benefits from his] imaginative, creative and erudite approach."
- John Wheatley, in "Tempo" (Cambridge University Press), July 2011, UK.
"With this volume and its 2011 companion, Literary Sources of Nineteenth-Century Musical Orientalism: The Hypnotic Spell of the Exotic on Music of the Romantic Period, composer-scholar-writer Jonathan David Little provides a wide-ranging prospect on fundamental sources for what he associates for his project principally with a nineteenth-century European phenomenon, that of “musical Orientalism”. ... This volume, then, is a detailed yet accessible descriptive account of its subject, equally able to stand alone or as a partner to the author's second volume. Either way, it should serve very well indeed the undergraduate or the historically poled graduate, whether in music or literature, as well as the general reader and music lover."
- Professor Elizabeth Markham, Ph.D.(University of Cambridge) [Historical Ethnomusicologist, University of Arkansas], in "Fontes Artis Musicae", Vol.61, Issue 2 (Apr-Jun 2014), pp.203-5.
"In short, this study ... is a valuable contribution in both understanding the development of the modern symphony orchestra, as well as the compositional approaches made by the many composers who have rewarded us today with some of the finest works in the orchestral repertoire."
- Prof. Craig De Wilde, National University of Singapore: from the "Foreword".
2. Re: "Literary Sources of Nineteenth-Century Musical Orientalism"
"Besides being a fine work of scholarship, this book is a pleasure to read."
- Prof. Emer. Dolores M. Hsu, University of California, Santa Barbara: from the "Foreword".
"Like its partner, this volume is a huge resource ... invaluable for both the student of literature and music (undergraduate and graduate) as well as for the general music lover, alone for the vastness of the material it gathers together."
- Professor Elizabeth Markham, Ph.D.(University of Cambridge) [Historical Ethnomusicologist, University of Arkansas], in "Fontes Artis Musicae", Vol.61, Issue 2 (Apr-Jun 2014), pp.205-7.
CGS Gallery of Achievement citation (2014)
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BIO RELEASED WHEN INDUCTED INTO THE CGS "GALLERY OF ACHIEVEMENT" (August 2014):
"Jonathan Little was the first Australian composer to be awarded the Collard Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards of The City of London’s ancient Worshipful Company of Musicians (est.1500), and the first composer to receive a Professional Development Award from the UK music business’s own charity, the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund.
Jonathan studied music at the University of Melbourne, winning the Lady Turner Exhibition, then undertook a PhD studying the development of ‘exotic’ orchestration. A former Prefect of the National Boys’ Choir and member of the Australian Youth Orchestra (participating in the 1988 Grand Bicentennial European Tour), Jonathan performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and for new music workshops of the Australian Opera.
As a composer, Jonathan’s works have won multiple ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and critics’ choice awards in the USA, as well as PRS, Bliss and Leighton Trust Awards in the UK. His first major album was one of US Fanfare magazine’s top recommended recordings for 2008, while his 2012 album, Polyhymnia, featuring several European orchestras, was nominated in Spain for Best Album of the Year.
Amongst his writings, Jonathan was Consultant and Contributing Editor to A & C Black’s Musicians’ and Songwriters’ Yearbook, and his two-volume survey of musical and literary Orientalism won an Authors’ Foundation/Royal Literary Fund Award in 2011.
From 2001 to 2005, Jonathan was Principal of the UK’s Academy of Contemporary Music, and he was subsequently appointed Reader in Music Composition and Music History at the University of Chichester."
National Boys Choir of Australia - News - Jonathan Little (2013)
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Jonathan Little
Highlights, Other News 22 Mar 2013
A chorister during the 1970’s, Dr Jonathan Little, BMus, ThA, PhD, FRSA is a composer, academic and writer based in the UK, working mainly in the “contemporary classical” genre.
He studied Composition and Performance at the University of Melbourne, where he won the Lady Turner Exhibition for overall excellence. He holds the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in music for his research into “exotic” 19th and 20th-century orchestration. In 2011, the City of London’s ancient Musicians’ Company (est.1500) bestowed upon him one of their highest honours – the prestigious Collard Fellowship – awarded to “a professional musician of outstanding ability” for “undoubted excellence in composition, research or performance”.
With a proposed tour to UK in 2014, Jonathan has offered to write a little something to celebrate the Choir’s 50th Anniversary year.
POLYHYMNIA - CD Reviews received to September 2012 (Navona NV5867)
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JONATHAN DAVID LITTLE
SUMMARY of WORLDWIDE REVIEWS of POLYHYMNIA (Navona NV5867, 2012)
RECEIVED TO DATE (EXCERPTS) – to September 2012 (some in advance)
(including: UK, USA, Spain, Italy)
PRE-RELEASE (prior to 28th February 2012)
• “Polyhymnia conjures up a heart-rending panorama: it is immensely poetic, almost otherworldly, and employs an exceptionally hypnotic array of musical colour.” – John Wheatley, in Tempo (CUP) (January, 2012) (UK)
• “Slick and beautifully executed material” – Dr. Don W. Seven, in Babysue (February, 2012) (USA)
• “most impressed” – The Hon. Richard Lyttelton, former President, EMI Classics and Jazz (February, 2012) (UK)
• “Gorgeous, exciting, chilling and surprising … an elegant gift to the ears. There are no words to describe this work … superlative … spine-tingling … There is just no classification for this work … Polyhymnia might be said to be the best to date in the extensive catalogue of Parma Recordings. Jonathan Little has rightly earned the recognition he is now receiving, and this album is a clear example of his talent. The versatility of the harmony, the complexity, the beauty, the elegance, the intensity … A host of adjectives are insufficient to categorise this otherworldly recording, which astonishes the listener from start to finish. There are no words … ” – Alejandro Clavijo, in Reviews New Age (February, 2012) (Spain)
[5/5 STARS: ALBUM OF THE MONTH for FEB. 2012; NOMINATED FOR BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR]
• “a richness of coloration, dynamic shading and melodic inventiveness all his own. Small wonder that this Australian composer has gained several awards on both sides of the Atlantic.” – Phillip Somerich, in Classical Music (25th Feb. 2012) (UK)
POST-RELEASE (28th February 2012 onwards)
• “Modern classical music, which means roughly the compositions of the last 100 years, has developed a reputation with audiences – sometimes justifiably – as “difficult,” offering perhaps some intellectual enjoyment but not a great deal of emotional involvement or the sorts of attractions that would bring listeners back again and again. … Now that we have reached the 21st century, it has become even more unusual to find contemporary music that will repay repeated attention and that people would actually want to hear more than once. That makes the works of Jonathan Little (born 1965) very rare indeed … incorporating its modern elements into pieces that are as often lush and poetic as they are pointed and intense. … Polyhymnia, for string orchestra in multiple parts, is as warm and fervent as religious poetry, its overall aural impression being of slow motion within near-stasis; while Terpsichore, for large orchestra, is a nine-section work that is percussion-filled and is dancelike mostly in an abstract sense – and is a sonic tour de force. Little is an expert orchestrator: his Fanfare for brass and percussion, which lasts less than a minute, displays as much forthright splendor as anyone could wish, while Kyrie … is a moving work that looks back to older Mass settings and shows how well Little can write for voices a cappella. Also here is Sacred Prelude … which lies very well on the instruments and very comfortably in the listener’s ear, evoking just the right philosophical-religious mood. Little is clearly comfortable writing in multiple forms for many different instrumental and vocal combinations. And although no one hearing these works will confuse them with music of the 19th century or earlier, they are pieces in which the lessons of earlier times have been thoroughly absorbed, then reworked in a way that has visceral appeal to today’s listeners …” – Dr. Mark J. Estren, “Modern but Accessible”, in Infodad (1st March, 2012) (USA)
• “In composer Jonathan Little we have a voice. His music is tonal and filled with color … there is a forward momentum that at times combines with mystical suspensions that remind a little of Arvo Part and John Tavener … other times there's a folk element latent in the music that I suppose you could put in the lineage of Vaughan Williams ... the music [is] dynamic and dramatic … This collection of works shows that he has much promise and potential. As it is the music puts one in a place worth being.” – Grego Applegate Edwards, “Jonathan Little, Polyhymnia: String, Orchestral and Choral Works”, in Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review (12th April, 2012) (USA)
• “Jonathan Little’s Polyhymnia is a ‘lamentation’ for strings, full of rich string orchestra harmonies and based on some beautiful melodic ideas. The texture is rich, and the effect is quite moving … Sacred Prelude is a beautiful serenade for string quintet, melodic and rather modal. It stands out with its sincerity. The Kyrie from the composer’s Temporis Perditi Mass … shows a real skill for choral writing.” – Ira Byelick, “LITTLE: Polyhymnia; Terpsichore; Fanfare; Sacred Prelude; Kyrie”, in American Record Guide (May/June 2012), pp.244-5 (USA)
• “We might classify this compilation of works ‘Futuro Antico’ (‘Ancient Future’). In fact, on every piece on this disc, you can hear the influence of ancient music – of its instrumentation, the use of modal harmonies, and sometimes the reprise of arias and dances with an unmistakable Renaissance flavour. Yet, the final product sounds modern too, as Little adds his own personal elements to these sonic foundations: bursting through the panorama he paints with sudden flashes of light or menacing thunderbolts, and so projects the past into the future” – Filippo Focosi, “Jonathan Little ‘Polyhymnia’ ”, in Kathodik (16th April, 2012) (Italy)
• “obviously [a name] that will make its mark: Little plainly knows what he is doing and does it well.” – Martin Anderson, “Jonathan Little and the Importance of Ecstasy”, in Fanfare, Vol.36, No.1 (Sept/Oct 2012) (USA)*
N.B.: The music producer, publisher and founder/director of Toccata Classics and Toccata Press, Martin Anderson, conducted an in-depth interview with the composer entitled, “Jonathan Little and the Importance of Ecstasy” (3,300 words) for FANFARE (USA), Issue 36:1 (Sept/Oct 2012), pp.58-72 ISSN: 0148-9364.
• ‘It’s obvious … that Jonathan Little issues from a similar school of sensibility to that of the “holy mystics” of Eastern Europe, composers like Arvo Pärt and Peteris Vasks. … [Terpsichore is] an exuberant orchestral essay somewhere between Respighi’s evocations of ancient Rome and Villa-Lobos’s representation of the Brazilian jungle. … The Sacred Prelude is dignified and sober, moving without being emotional … it is clear from this CD that his fine command of atmosphere and orchestral color ought to command a decent fee in Hollywood.’ – Martin Anderson, “Polyhymnia …”, in Fanfare, Vol.36, No.1 (Sept/Oct 2012) (USA)
• ‘The notes quote one unnamed commentator as stating that the music is “completely novel, yet hauntingly familiar.” This seems a fair assessment, in that no other composer among the thousands whose music I’ve heard immediately comes to mind … Perhaps Górecki in certain of his more tonal works comes closest, although Little’s music is about seven notches above the quality of that of the Polish composer … The disc’s closing work, the Kyrie from Little’s Missa Temporis perditi, is my favorite on the CD. Soaring lines in the sopranos, taking them up to high C, suggest the majesty of the words of the Kyrie. … Harmonies shift around a good bit, but the direction of the work is never in doubt as it moves to its dramatic conclusion. The spacious acoustic of the recording venue adds to the otherworldly effect.’ – David DeBoor Canfield, “Polyhymnia …”, in Fanfare, Vol.36, No.1 (Sept/Oct 2012) (USA)
• “[In Polyhymnia] melodic figures coalesce into an enormous tapestry of musical color. It’s excellent music for dreaming! This music can waft the listener back to a pastoral scene in ancient Greece, where the gods spend lazy days basking in the sun on Mount Olympus. … Sacred Prelude can put the listener in the mood for meditating on deep ritualistic mysteries. Little leaves the best for last. The highlight of this disc is the Kyrie from his Missa Temporis Perditi … It is an eloquent and expansive work sung here by the Thomas Tallis Chamber Choir, a large a cappella group from which conductor Philip Simms draws opulent sonorities. Little composes with a great array of technical skills and his works are both harmonically and contrapuntally pleasing. He knows how to bring out all the colors of the choral palette, and that is what makes the Kyrie such a fascinating piece.” – Maria Nockin, “Polyhymnia …”, in Fanfare, Vol.36, No.1 (Sept/Oct 2012) (USA)
• “When I first encountered Jonathan Little’s music in 2008, I gave it an enthusiastic review. He is quite obviously an excellent composer, in fact a composer difficult to pigeonhole because his works span a wide and interesting array of styles. … I found it [Polyhymnia] to be the spiritual cousin of Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 strings … I liked Polyhymnia better, overall, than Strauss’s Metamorphosen, and I was interested to learn that it is No. 6 in a series of pieces by Little titled The Nine Muses, of which Terpsichore is No. 7. As an introduction (so to speak) to Terpsichore, it works very effectively … for Terpsichore is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating pieces I’ve ever heard … as the music weaves its way through 14 utterly fascinating minutes. In my original review (May-June 2008 issue), I indicated that Little’s music sounds like no one else’s, and that is still true of this piece and the ones that follow. Perhaps someday, Little will be fortunate enough to present us with his complete Nine Muses, so we can judge the broader scope of his obviously fine talent. – Lynn René Bayley, “Little, The Nine Muses …”, in Fanfare, Vol.36, No.2 (Nov/Dec 2012) (USA)
• “His music has a dense tonal clarity, apparent in the layers of string sound that slowly climb from the powerful low A that introduces the twenty-one-minute Polyhymnia and fades away into the distance. The climbing and diminishing gesture repeats several times, each with a variant route until halfway through the upper strings play repeatedly with fragmentary strands that continue to its close, winding themselves like ivy around a central C major treillage. It is a piece that maintains its single-minded purpose throughout, an impressively robust structure. … The final piece on the disc is a beautifully performed Kyrie ... requiring massed divided voices (there are sixty in this performance) creating effective choral textures not unlike those of the Polyhymnia. Little certainly fixes his trademark textural style, sticks to his focal points, and has the technical skill to create vivid contrasts when needed.” – Patric Standford, “Tonal Clarity: Music by Jonathan Little”, in Music and Vision (25th September, 2012) (UK)
Another article by Jeff Kelly about the composer, his writings, and Polyhymnia, entitled “The John Clementi Collard Fellowship – Jonathan Little 2011”, may be found in Preserve Harmony, ed. Adrian Mumford [London: Journal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians], Issue 44 (Spring, 2012), pp.10 & 16.
Little’s previous disc was a Record of the Year in America in 2008; his present release has so far been nominated for “Best Album of the Year” 2012 in Spain.
FANFARE 2012 INTERVIEW: Jonathan Little and the Importance of Ecstasy
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First Interview in Fanfare (US): Feature article of Monday, 23 July 2012.
by Martin Anderson
"Jonathan Little and the Importance of Ecstasy"
Polyhymnia: String, Orchestral and Choral Works of Jonathan Little
Audio CD
Navona
Polyhymnia
MP3 Download
Navona
A new CD from the New Hampshire label Navona brings orchestral, chamber, and choral music from the British-based Australian composer Jonathan Little. His name was new to me, but it’s obviously one that will make its mark: Little plainly knows what he is doing and does it well. I asked the composer in a conversation via Skype for some background. “I grew up in Melbourne, Australia,” he said, “and I studied the piano, as most musicians do, but I also played timpani and percussion—and I found that by playing all the different percussion instruments, I was exposed to, and immersed in, the music of many kinds of ensemble: orchestras, of course, as well as symphonic, concert, wind and brass bands, folk and rock bands, percussion ensembles, and much more. I played with the Australian Youth Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and before that I sang with the National Boys’ Choir of Australia. We regularly performed arrangements of folk and pop songs from around the world, but a good deal of a cappella church music, too, from the very early Renaissance onwards. Choral training is a tremendously important part of music education early on. And percussion gives you an opportunity to get to know all sorts of music from the inside, and I’m very grateful for that. I applied to Melbourne University as a percussionist. These days percussionists are quite well known and accepted, but in those days—and we’re only talking about 25 years ago—to come with your main instrument as percussion to what was a relatively conservative conservatory was an unusual thing. I also passed an audition to play casually with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, so I was studying at university and had the tremendous good fortune to be able to play professionally at the same time. At that stage I thought I would really love to be an orchestral player, since I had been in the Australian Youth Orchestra and played overseas for the Bicentenary [1988]. Playing in an orchestra is a thrill, a high that rock musicians might get when they play to huge audiences. It’s something you never forget; it’s almost addictive, like a drug. And there’s something about youth orchestras that are playing music for the first time—even if there are a few wrong notes, the excitement comes through. That gives you a lifelong wish to be involved with that music, I think.
“After university, although I wanted to become an orchestral player, I had so many interests I had to do more research. I was fascinated by orchestration—by the mechanics of how composers do things. And so in the end I went to Monash University, which is well known for ethnomusicology; it’s the second university in Victoria. What I came up with as a doctoral dissertation subject area was exploring how composers in the 19th and early 20th centuries became really interested in what they perceived as oriental lands. I realized it was those composers who tended to experiment with the orchestra to the greatest extent, who came up with innovative textures and timbres—people like Rimsky-Korsakov, [and] the whole of the French school. Spain was thought of as oriental in the 19th century, oddly enough, because it had that Arabic influence that was so strong. So Frenchmen just had to cross the Pyrenees and they felt they were in an exotic land. Chabrier was famously inspired by the heel-beats of Spanish dancers and incorporated all those rhythms and colors into his music. Exploring all those musics—of French, Russian, and some British, German, and other composers; even American composers to some extent—put me at the cutting edge of orchestration at that time. To understand how they dealt with those textures using very big orchestras gave me a reasonable grounding for developing my own interests and style. But you almost have to forget everything you’ve learned when you are in the process of composing yourself, because it becomes too obvious, or you over-analyze what you are doing.
“Composers like Honegger, Janácek, Respighi, too, may not be at the very forefront of being well known today, in terms of all the works they wrote, but their orchestration is second to none, and they are the composers I wanted to concentrate on. So my research has been into composers who were innovative in their approach to the orchestra, ending in about 1930 with some of the things Respighi was doing. Really, it’s been a matter since then, as I haven’t studied it in so much depth, to pick up the more innovative composers of the next 70 years or so. I want to do something that is complex in terms of texture, but I don’t want to lose the quality of accessibility, which is becoming increasingly important.”
Little started composing just before university: “Op. 1 is the Sacred Prelude [for string quintet; it’s on the new disc], which was written at the age of 17. Composing has been a constant thread through my life, although it’s not something I’ve been encouraged to do. I was intending to be a performer, and I saw that as my strength, but ultimately I am creative. It was only some years later that my music began to be published, initially by Wirripang in Australia, which has now emerged as a small but very important national Australian publisher. I moved to Britain in 1995 and brought all my scores with me. It was at that stage that I began to be published and when I opened the scores, I rediscovered them after about 10 or 15 years. So I needed to make a decision—was this something that people might want to hear? Should it be published and recorded? Is it of a quality that people might appreciate? So there was almost a hiatus in my career. I would have liked to have been composing more constantly, and to have got a little bit ahead of where I am now in terms of development, and to have had more things published and recorded.” In the meantime, he has been feeding himself “mainly as composers have always done, by teaching and lecturing, those sorts of activities; I also did a little bit of radio broadcasting at one stage. I have a university position right now at the University of Chichester in the U.K.”
Fanfare readers may have encountered Little’s music before the new CD. “I’ve had some pieces recorded before on compilations, mainly by American labels—American companies have been very good to me in terms of recording my material thus far,” he said. “The only other CD entirely with my music on it came out from a U.K. independent, Dilute, and that was reviewed in Fanfare in 2008.” In fact, in her 2008 Want List (32:2) Lynn René Bayley described Little as “a major new, original, and quite brilliant classical voice”; in her review (Fanfare 31:5) she wrote that “once you’re about halfway through the title work [Terpsichore], you won’t be able to take it off.” Added Little, “So 2008 was the first time my music really became available, and listeners could get a sense of the types of genres that I can write for.” Some of the recordings on that Dilute release have been recycled on the new one. “Terpsichore was the big orchestra showpiece,” he said. “It was written in the same spirit as Chabrier wrote España, and to show off what I could do with the orchestra, to some extent, and so it goes through all sorts of moods and colors and shapes. Perhaps because of that it can be difficult to grasp what the overall form is.” It does seem to contain a number of different perspectives. “A variety of influences—too many crowding in! But I think it does have its integrity and it does have a form one could describe as simple, overall—there are parts that recur—and it does have sufficient development to keep it interesting, I hope.” And despite the eclecticism, it’s also what the French call bien dans sa peau—it’s not apologetic, and it’s good fun.
If I were to characterize Little’s music for someone who didn’t know it, I might describe it as ecstatic Minimalism. Little paused while he took the idea in. “Yes, I think that is fair,” he said. “I’m increasingly finding the word ‘mystical’ coming into what I am doing, but yes, there needs to be a brightness and an interest there, so perhaps ‘ecstatic’ is a more appropriate word ultimately.” I might almost go as far as to say it’s Vaughan Williams-meets-Steve Reich. Little laughed. “My first influences were very much that English pastoral school. I do remember, when I was very young, waking up on a Sunday morning and hearing the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, and I found that an extraordinarily atmospheric piece. Since then I’ve tried to capture that side of things, but I’ve also loved exploring Russian and French coloristic orchestral music. And the more I did that, the more I wanted to overlay this British pastoral and antique choral tradition with the brightness and color of the music I’ve been so fascinated with, which does end up being that French and Russian school from the end of the 19th and early 20th century. But then I’ve got to develop, and I probably don’t realize how much I owe to American music and the Minimalist school in terms of decoration. Perhaps it’s only at this stage that I am beginning to find my own, true style—and, yes, it is an eclectic mix of all sorts of things. But that was always going to happen these days, because, perhaps for the first time in history, we are exposed to all sorts of sounds, to all sorts of periods, and to the music of all sorts of geographic locations as well. To make sense of all that, to produce a style and to make it something an audience will react well to, is something a composer has to grapple with today.”
I pointed out that the comfortable eclecticism and up-front honesty of Little’s music bring to mind another Australian, Percy Grainger—not stylistically but because so many disparate elements co-exist in it without any feeling of compromise. “I’m glad you used the word ‘honesty’ because it’s sometimes difficult for a composer, or a writer or a painter, to see their own style as it emerges,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of things like that in the way that someone from the outside looking in will. People have heard bits of Aaron Copland in my music when I didn’t think I owed much to him, but yes, I probably do. You’re probably right: There is a, well, I wouldn’t say superficial quality, because that implies the music can’t be deep, but there should be a brightness, an eclecticism that’s appropriate to the era we’re living in now.” It has a freshness that, to my European ears, sounds typically Australian. Little approved of that observation. “You always wonder if there are influences from where you grow up, and I’m not conscious of it, but, yes, there’s a directness, an up-frontness, a feeling of the wide-open spaces that perhaps you don’t get in European music. You get it in Australian and American music—it’s less constrained, less inhibited.” Some of the string writing in Polyhymnia reminds me of Peter Sculthorpe, in fact. “I will have absorbed these influences,” Little admitted, “but after a while I consciously tried to forget all the training, all the influences, and just write what I need to write at any particular time. Polyhymnia is a bit different from what I’ve done before—it has a certain depth; it does, almost in a Wagnerian sense, develop relatively few ideas over quite a long period of time.”
The Sacred Prelude is unusual in two senses. First, it’s not every composer who is prepared to give an opus number to his first composition. And composers are notorious for talking down their early efforts—and yet here is the Sacred Prelude sharing the new CD with more recent works. “When you look back, you think that some of your early pieces are very simple—but, again, it has a directness,” he said. “It’s not terribly adventurous harmonically but, yes, it was worth preserving and people reacted well to it. There have been only one or two pieces that I’ve not been happy with. I’ve not been prolific so far; I take a long time to write something and am very careful to craft it. So even if it is simple, it is a document of that time. People have said it’s quite moving, and so it deserves to be preserved and heard on those terms—that it is an early work but has something to say, I hope.”
One constant thread through Little’s music seems to be a fondness for modality. He already mentioned Respighi, whose best works—the Concerto gregoriano for violin and orchestra and the set of orchestral variations called Metamorphoseon—are profoundly modal. “Underneath everything there is in my music this profound interest in ancient music,” he said. “There is certainly a sense of trying to recapture some sort of continuity with the past—not least since we’ve had a century or more of quite violent revolutions and the fracturing of past musical traditions. In fact, the Italian review magazine Kathodik recently picked up on this fact and characterized my music as representing the ‘antique future’! They said that the influence of the ‘ancient’ in my music was its basic sonic foundation, upon which are then built very contemporary and personal touches, so projecting the past into the future. Several American reviewers have also picked up on something of the same quality; they seem to understand that, for me, although music must definitely innovate if it is going to appeal to today’s listeners (and so give music life into the future), a sense of heritage, or at least ‘deep-rootedness,’ is immensely important, too. I go back before the Renaissance, even—to some of the composers of the Eton Choirbook and the 14th and 15th centuries. Those early sounds and textures influenced me profoundly, and I think they stay with you. Those basic structures remain with you from your early years and, as you develop, you overlay them with more complex ideas. But they’re always there. Because they’re profoundly moving, they also give you a deep sense of continuity with the past, which I’m really concerned to find: My music should be part of a tradition that’s gone on and grown. The 20th century has been very much an era of experimentation, which is great on one side of things, but on the other side it creates problems: We lose audiences who don’t know quite what to expect. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the early 21st century, people started to compose in a way that rediscovers tradition to some extent. The music of Eric Whitacre, for example—the kind of harmonies he’s using are a way of reconnecting with the past but still being innovative. He’s using harmonies that have always existed, but in different combinations and clusters, and in different juxtapositions. I think we’ll be rediscovering past continuities and traditions while still innovating in the early 21st century.”
I mentioned “ecstatic Minimalism” and then Little mentioned the Eton Choirbook composers, and if there’s one predominant characteristic of that music, it is its constant ecstasy—if you set it against the music of the 17th and 18th centuries, you can see it has an intensity that wasn’t recaptured until late Beethoven. “That’s something I want to concentrate on more and more,” Little said. “I hope that doesn’t make the music too static, because that’s something one reviewer commented on—that Polyhymnia had a quality that was near stasis and yet that it kept on advancing and developing. You never want music just to sit there and do nothing—it needs to move and develop—but you can slow it down, you can develop and maintain that sense of ecstasy. That’s something that people perhaps haven’t articulated so much before, but it’s tremendously important to me, this sense of ecstasy, because that’s what music is all about, ultimately—whether it’s choral, instrumental, orchestral, or whatever it is.”
The new CD, which includes recordings from some existing releases and for a variety of forces, is obviously intended as a visiting card. “That might make it difficult for certain review magazines—they won’t know whether to stick it in the orchestral, choral or chamber category,” Little admitted. “But I needed a CD that says, look, I can write for different forces, and here’s the sort of thing that I do.”
What now? “Probably more so than other composers, I am trying to direct my own career by the inspiration that I have. One of the things I’ve latched onto is to try to find a series of descriptive pieces that would serve as inspiration. So I’ve chosen the Nine Muses. This will take a number of years to complete but I want to give every piece a character of its own; each will probably be scored for different forces. But in the same way as Holst found The Planets suite to be so inspiring because it gave him an opportunity to show off in seven pieces of different types, I want to do the equivalent with the Nine Muses. But at most, I only produce one of these large scores a year.” Polyhymnia is No. 6 of nine, and Terpsichore is No. 7. “I’ve not been doing them in order,” he said. “There is a recognized order of the Nine Muses, and so I’m trying to pick one at a time that I find inspiring. So I’m next going to write about Erato. I think I’ll write that for relatively small instrumental forces—very delicate sounds, including bell-like sounds. There may be a lot of percussion. Every time one of these pieces comes out, the orchestration will be completely different—and dazzling and ecstatic in that way, I hope.” Given the difference in scoring, and given also the fact that Polyhymnia and Terpsichore take up half an hour between them, Little’s Nine Muses is not intended for consumption at a single sitting. “This next one may be much shorter,” he said. “The whole thing may end up being about two hours long. It may be sufficiently short to be played in one concert, in one evening—that’s my hope. I will try to use all the resources of the large orchestra, plus a little bit, so that you wouldn’t have to augment the orchestra significantly; it could all come from one large ensemble. But for a particular piece it might be just a few players playing at any one time.” The one thing he’ll need for that kind of presentation (as, indeed, The Planets makes plain) is contrast: “Maximum contrast, in mood, particularly; each one of the Muses should be as they are, so Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance, is very vibrant and rhythmic, for example.” Terpsichore is gloriously violent; it has a real knock-about energy in the percussion writing especially: “I have a theory that in the 20th century the orchestra democratized itself. So the percussion, which was a relatively small section in the 19th century, is now equal to all the forces of the orchestra in the early 21st century. And the strings, which tended to play all of the time in 19th-century music, or a lot of the time, their role might shrink a little. The orchestra needs to continue to change and develop, so that you don’t have a static layout based on past centuries.”
LITTLE Polyhymnia.1 Terpsichore.2 Fanfare. Sacred Prelude. Missa Temporis Perditi: Kyrie5 • 1Petr Vronský, 2, 3, 4Robert Ian Winstin, 5Philip Simms, cond; 1Moravian PO; 2, 3Kiev PO; 4Czech PO; Thomas Tallis CC • NAVONA NV5867 (52:04)
It’s obvious from the emphatic, resonant bass chord that opens Polyhymnia and the deeply felt modal harmonies of the intense string writing that follows—where the solid foundations in cellos and basses are decorated by twirling figuration in the upper registers—that Jonathan Little issues from a similar school of sensibility to that of the “holy mystics” of Eastern Europe, composers like Arvo Pärt and Peteris Vasks. (One important difference, underlined by his choice of Greek mythology as a point of departure, is that there seems to be no religious impulse behind his composition.) After around 10 minutes the music seems to have run its natural course, courting the danger of stasis about which one reviewer warned the composer, as he told me, and it drifts on in the decorated bass lines after its emotional charge has lessened. Eventually the textures thin, and solo lines and a brief pause allow the material to regather purpose and it eddies to its eventual close, 21 minutes in. That loss of impetus weakens the effect of the piece as a whole, and I wonder whether it might not improve from the exercise of autotomy, the process whereby a lizard loses its tail in self-defense: Polyhymnia would be a sleeker beast without that extended coda.
Little does provide a programmatic explanation for the sectional construction of Terpsichore (it’s in nine dance scenes, lasting just over 14 minutes), but I preferred to listen to it as music and see if it hung together on its own terms—which, aside from some double declutching, it generally does. The piece launches into immediate action, with harp, brass, percussion, and woodwind all throwing in their lot over the opening string ostinati, gradually building up an exuberant orchestral essay somewhere between Respighi’s evocations of ancient Rome and Villa-Lobos’s representation of the Brazilian jungle; Little is especially generous in his writing for the percussion, imbuing the piece with an at times near-primal energy. Suddenly, it all evaporates and something rather like the evocation of a lute song emerges, so hesitantly that it can’t stay the course, and soon the string ostinato reintroduces the raucous enthusiasms of the opening passage, the percussion now even more insistent before they give way to a short-breathed rhythmic shape that owes a good deal to American Minimalism and thus doesn’t do much else. Eventually, it in turn stutters to a stop in harp and strings and an oboe (or is it a cor anglais?) introduces a beguiling melody over Respighian string harmonics; birdcalls reinforce the reminiscences of Respighi. A bridge passage in the strings introduces a section where the string principals exchange solos which then lose themselves in what at first seems to be the start of a hymn from the body of the strings—but the roistering of the opening again returns and the percussionists power their way to an emphatic close.
Little’s Fanfare is scored for four trumpets, four horns, three trombones, tuba, two sets of timpani, and further percussion, spatially deployed, and bids fair to make a tremendous impact. But it’s over in 47 seconds, before you’ve really managed to get your ear around what kind of statement it’s going to make. He might usefully give the material a chance by extending it and working it out more thoroughly—shame to waste all that manpower.
The 11-minute Sacred Prelude is scored for violin, two violas, and two cellos, giving it an unusually dark quality. Although it’s the earliest work here, it is to my mind the most successful because it’s the most thoroughly integrated, with an opening “Plainsong” leading to a central “Anthem” and, after a reprise of the “Plainsong,” a closing “Fantasia.” The modal writing and the tendency for the thematic material to unravel in narrative without the dramatic contrasts of sonata form remind me strongly of the music of Arnold Rosner (in fact, I see from Rosner’s worklist that in 2007 he wrote a work called Unraveling Dances, which puts his cards on the table). The Sacred Prelude is dignified and sober, moving without being emotional, and Little could do much worse than prepare a version for string orchestra; it would work very well indeed.
The closing Kyrie, from his Missa Temporis Perdutis, is in eight principal parts, further divided into a double SSAATTBB choral grouping, topped off with solo voices, not least two high sopranos, the music laying down the text in overlapping waves of sound. A note in the booklet reveals that 60 voices were used in the making of this recording, in the resonant acoustic of the Church of St. Alfege, Greenwich, in southeast London—and it’s appropriate that the Kyrie should be sung by the Thomas Tallis Chamber Choir, since Tallis was buried under the chancel. If the rest of the Missa Temporis Perdutis is as good as these four and a half minutes, it would be good to be able to welcome it onto CD soon.
None of the works on the CD are dated in the accompanying material, nor even in the PR material I was sent for our interview. The years of composition would have been useful in pacing Little’s stylistic evolution. Navona might consider remedying the shortcoming if they make another CD of his music.
The performances are enthusiastic rather than refined, which is the right way around: One imagines that there wasn’t as much rehearsal time for the orchestral sessions as might have been desirable, and some of the percussion playing in Terpsichore is more lusty than accurate—but it doesn’t matter, since the imprecision contributes to the sense of lusty excess. Likewise, the occasional hint of asperity in the strings suggests musicians putting their heart in it rather than hanging back in the face of the unfamiliar. Little tells me in his interview that his compositional path is mapped for some years ahead, but he might also think of getting himself some film work, since it is clear from this CD that his fine command of atmosphere and orchestral color ought to command a decent fee in Hollywood. Some rather obvious changes of gear notwithstanding, it certainly hits the mark here.
Martin Anderson
This article originally appeared in Issue 36:1 (Sept/Oct 2012) of Fanfare Magazine.
Jonathan Little – Polyhymnia (Reviews New Age - SPAIN)
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Reviews New Age (SPAIN) review of "Polyhymnia" [CD].
“Album des Mes en RNA (Febrero 2012)” (Album of the Month in Reviews New Age, Feb. 2012); Nomination for “Mejor Álbum RNA de Año” (Best Album of the Year).
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'Intense might be the best description for the latest work by award-winning Australian contemporary composer, Jonathan Little. Polyhymnia comprises five compositions in the classical mould, played by some of the best ensembles in Europe – encompassing the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and the United Kingdom – each of which give vibrant performances of the majestic pieces on Polyhymnia, where a complex mix of emotions is evoked by strings and voices to enrapture listeners, leaving them captivated by the power of this music.
In the first of the pieces, Little bursts forth with vigour, spirit, and passion. “Polyhymnia: ‘She of Many Hymns’ or Muse of Sacred Poetry” is a work of more than 21 minutes’ duration, extracted from the suite, The Nine Muses (No. 6), and recorded with strings of the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra. The music is penetrating and strident, the repetition of harmonies and their bold character maintain an unyielding tension throughout.
From the same suite that opened the album, The Nine Muses, next comes “Terpsichore: ‘The Whirler’ or Muse of Dance, Op. 7” – one of the masterpieces of Polyhymnia, recorded with the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra. The strings play incredible counterpoints against a tremendous battery of percussion. The beauty of this piece resides in the ease with which it slides in and out of different moods, in short fragments, sometimes fast, sometimes tense, sometimes sweet and tender – to convey an overall dynamic splendour!
“Fanfare, Op. 3a” is 50 seconds of nervous tension and raw energy, pounded out by the percussion and the brass sections of the Kiev Philharmonic: and quite a heroic interpretation of this dramatic piece!
From the Czech Republic, next appear the formidable string soloists of their Philharmonic Orchestra. Sublime violins conducted by music director Winstin leave one breathless. “Sacred Prelude, Op. 1” is another masterpiece of the album. Beautiful, exciting, thrilling and remarkable in every sense, this piece is an elegant gift to the ears. There are no words to describe this work … Yet even this beauty is surpassed by the piece that concludes the album – “Kyrie, Op. 5 (from Missa Temporis Perditi)”. Sixty ethereal voices of the Royal Peculiar Church of St. Alfege in Greenwich, in the United Kingdom, blend to create one of the finest vocal groups that I have ever heard. Without a doubt, from when the music starts, until it ends, there are extraordinary and magnificent passages; the voices produce the most amazing, spine-tingling effect. There is just no adequate way to describe this work.
Polyhymnia might be said to be the best to date in the fine and extensive catalogue of Parma Recordings. Jonathan Little has rightly earned the recognition he is now receiving, and this album is a clear example of his talent. The versatility of the harmony, the complexity, the beauty, the elegance, the intensity … A host of adjectives are insufficient to categorise this otherworldly recording, which astonishes the listener from start to finish. There are no words …'
CD Reviews - Press Summary (2006-12)
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WORLDWIDE CRITICAL OPINION:
- [of "Polyhymnia":] “Gorgeous, exciting, chilling and surprising … an elegant gift to the ears. There are no words to describe this work … superlative … spine-tingling … There is just no classification for this work … the complexity, the beauty, the elegance, the intensity … so otherworldly … indescribable” – Reviews New Age [5/5 stars] (February, 2012) (Spain)
- “a heart-rending panorama: it is immensely poetic, almost otherwordly, and employs an exceptionally hypnotic array of musical colour” – John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, January 2012) (UK)
- “very well crafted ... very effective” – Stephen Layton, Choral Conductor and Director of Music, Trinity College, Cambridge (October 2009) (UK)
- “Here, Little demonstrates his command of orchestration ... lush and at ease with the tropes of modernist tonal music … the crafting of orchestration is finely honed” – Helen O’Brien, Music Forum (May-July 2009) (Australia)
- “An inspired creation ... beautifully expansive ... voluptuous sonorities” – Patric Standford, Music & Vision (May 2009) (UK)
- “mightily impressed” – Martin Anderson, Founder and Managing Director, Toccata Classics (January, 2009) (UK)
- “a major new, original and quite brilliant classical voice” – Lynn René Bayley, citation in “The Want List 2008”, Fanfare Magazine (Nov-Dec 2008, USA)
*** A FANFARE MAGAZINE RECOMMENDED RECORDING FOR 2008 ***
- “This is music that brings to mind so much else but at the same time isn't quite like anything you've heard before. … [a] whirling kaleidoscope of sounds. … An extraordinary range of sensations. ... This is certainly novel stuff and I suspect time will prove it to be a good deal more than that.” – Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008) (UK)
- “Little’s music sounds like no one else’s. Not anyone’s. ... to put it into words degrades the astonishing range of colors and moods he creates. … Trust me, once you’re about halfway through the title work, you won’t be able to take it off. … Mr. Little is quite a talent indeed.” – Lynn René Bayley, in Fanfare (May-June 2008) (USA)
- “innovative music … incandescent … a positively dynamic musical palette … moving the listener irrevocably onward to a brightly illuminated plain of poetic splendour, rhythm and ecstasy” – John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, January 2008) (UK)
- “immense creativity and innovation while remaining accessible to new listeners” – ASCAP Playback Magazine (Summer, 2006) (New York, USA)
- “innovative and accessible to both musicians and audiences” – Keith Lowde, former Deputy Managing Director and Company Secretary, Music-Copyright Protection Society [MCPS] (2006) (London, UK)
- “touching music … a unique voice” – Maestro Robert Ian Winstin, Executive Director of the Foundation for New Music (2006) (Virginia, USA)
Artists who have performed or recorded the works of Jonathan Little include: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Soloists of the Sofia Opera; mezzo-soprano Veronica McHale (Chicago); Vox Moderne; Bath Camerata; Tallis Chamber Choir.
Jonathan Little's Performing Rights are assigned to ASCAP (for clearance see: www.ascap.com – “ACE Title Search” – “Search the Database” – Writers / Find “Jonathan Little”)
ARCHIVE PRESS POST
WORLDWIDE CRITICAL OPINION:
- “a major new, original and quite brilliant classical voice” – Lynn René Bayley, citation in “The Want List 2008”, Fanfare (Nov-Dec 2008, USA)
*** A FANFARE MAGAZINE RECOMMENDED RECORDING FOR 2008 ***
- “this heart-rending panorama with an exceptionally hypnotic array of musical colour … immensely poetic – almost otherwordly” – John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, October 2011, UK)
- “An inspired creation ... beautifully expansive ... voluptuous sonorities” – Patric Standford, Music & Vision (May 2009, UK)
- “This is music that brings to mind so much else but at the same time isn't quite like anything you've heard before. … [a] whirling kaleidoscope of sounds. … An extraordinary range of sensations. ... This is certainly novel stuff and I suspect time will prove it to be a good deal more than that.” – Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008, UK)
- “Little’s music sounds like no one else’s. Not anyone’s. ... to put it into words degrades the astonishing range of colors and moods he creates. … Trust me, once you’re about halfway through the title work, you won’t be able to take it off. … Mr. Little is quite a talent indeed.” – Lynn René Bayley, Fanfare (May-June 2008, USA)
- “innovative music … incandescent … a positively dynamic musical palette … moving the listener irrevocably onward to a brightly illuminated plain of poetic splendour, rhythm and ecstasy” – John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, January 2008, UK)
- “immense creativity and innovation while remaining accessible to new listeners” – ASCAP Playback Magazine (Summer, 2006) (New York, USA)
- “innovative and accessible to both musicians and audiences” – Keith Lowde, former Deputy Managing Director and Company Secretary, Music-Copyright Protection Society [MCPS] (London, UK)
- “Here, Little demonstrates his command of orchestration ... lush and at ease with the tropes of modernist tonal music … the crafting of orchestration is finely honed” – Helen O’Brien, Music Forum (May-July 2009, Australia)
- “touching music … a unique voice” – Maestro Robert Ian Winstin, Executive Director of the Foundation for New Music (Virginia, USA)
Artists who have performed or recorded the works of Jonathan Little include: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra; Moravian Phiharmonic Orchestra; Soloists of the Sofia Opera; mezzo-soprano Veronica McHale (Chicago); Vox Moderne; Bath Camerata; Tallis Chamber Choir.
Jonathan Little's Performing Rights are assigned to ASCAP (for clearance see: www.ascap.com – “ACE Title Search” – “Search the Database” – Writers / Find “Jonathan Little”)
TERPSICHORE - CD Reviews received to December 2008 (Dilute, DIL 07 002)
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JONATHAN DAVID LITTLE
TERPSICHORE - CD Reviews received December 2008
“a major new, original and quite brilliant classical voice” - Lynn René Bayley, in Fanfare magazine, Vol.32, No.2 (Nov-Dec 2008, USA), p.77
*** A FANFARE MAGAZINE RECOMMENDED RECORDING FOR 2008 *** CRITICS’ CHOICE: “THE WANT LIST 2008”
Of TERPSICHORE [for large orchestra]:
• “[a] ground-breaking tour de force … incandescent … [unleashes] a positively dynamic musical palette,portraying the wild behaviour and dancing of Terpsichore in an astonishingly hypnotic range of musical sketches … moving the listener irrevocably onward to a brightly illuminated plain of poetic splendour, rhythm and ecstasy. Could this perhaps be a 21st-century version of Maurice Ravel’s choreographic symphony, Daphnis et Chloe?” - John Wheatley, in Tempo (January 2008), Vol. 62, Issue 243, Cambridge University Press (UK)
[“Tempo is the premier English-language journal devoted to 20th-century and contemporary concert music.”]
• “Particularly here and in the next piece, Little’s music sounds like no one else’s. Not anyone’s. ... Too much to say and too little space to say it; but why bother anyway? This is an aural experience, and to put it into words degrades the astonishing range of colors and moods he creates. … Trust me, once you’re about halfway through the title work, you won’t be able to take it off. … Mr. Little is quite a talent indeed.” - Lynn Rene Bayley, in Fanfare (May-June 2008), 31:5 (USA)
• “This is music that brings to mind so much else but at the same time isn't quite like anything you've heard before. … [a] whirling kaleidoscope of sounds … ending on something of the succulent grandeur of a Respighi tone poem. An extraordinary range of sensations. ... This is certainly novel stuff and I suspect time will prove it to be a good deal more than that.” 4 STARS**** - Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008) (UK)
• “Forceful, elegant & dramatic. Full of touches of wry wit … Orchestral tour-de-force.” - Maestro Robert Ian Winstin, Executive Director of the Foundation for New Music (USA)
• “Here, Little demonstrates his command of orchestration ... lush and at ease with the tropes of modernist tonal music … the crafting of orchestration is finely honed” – Helen O’Brien, Music Forum (May-July 2009) (AUSTRALIA)
Of DUO SONATA ON ELIZABETHAN THEMES [for percussion duo]:
• “astonishing delicacy and melodic continuity” - Lynn René Bayley, in Fanfare (May-June 2008), 31:5 (USA)
Of FANFARE [for brass & percussion]:
• “music of tremendous power” - Lynn René Bayley, in Fanfare (May-June 2008), 31:5 (USA)
• “aggressive and impressive” - Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008) (UK)
Of SACRED PRELUDE [for string quintet]:
• “yearningly lovely” - Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008) (UK)
• “developing a distinctly English pastoral flavour, with strong reflections of the harmony and soothing dignity of E. J. Moeran and Vaughan Williams … intensely ethereal” - John Wheatley, in Tempo (January 2008), Vol. 62, Issue 243, Cambridge University Press (UK)
Of KYRIE:
• “a haunting Tallis-like quality” - Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008) (UK)
• “magnificent” - Richard Cameron-Wolfe, Broadcaster and Director, Friends of American Music (USA)
"Ecstatic Minimalism" - "Archaic Futurism" - "Picturesque Archaism" [Worldwide critical definitions of musical style]