If Michael Nyman had never written a note, he’d still be guaranteed a place in music history. In 1968, not long out of music college, Nyman worked as a journalist; reviewing a concert of works by radical experimentalist Cornelius Cardew, Nyman applied the word ‘minimalist’ to the music.
Nyman may or may not have been the first to use it in a musical context but, writing in the Spectator, he was the first to give it common currency. ‘That was nearly 40 years ago, and it was kind of a throwaway description, but it’s still around,’ he says. Indeed, minimalism has become, if not quite a movement, then at least a convenient label, uniting music that eschews harmonic complexity and development in favour of rhythm and repetition.
Even for its practitioners, the word ‘minimalism’ has become a mixed blessing: Nyman refers to it as ‘an albatross’ and most of those whose work fits the description have at one time or another disowned any allegiance to it. But composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams and Nyman himself, while writing music quite different from each other, have created a language and style that attract audiences who might otherwise have no interest in classical music.
It helps that Nyman has written music for around 50 films, some of which have been immensely successful. The recording of his score for The Piano, for example, has sold over a million copies. Such sales figures put Nyman alongside pop musicians, as does the fact that much of his music is written for the Michael Nyman Band, an amplified ensemble that features Nyman’s pumping piano alongside bass guitar, saxophones and string quartet.
Writing extensively for film, touring with his own band and attracting large audiences place Nyman some way outside the mainstream of contemporary classical music, yet he insists he remains a classical composer.
‘I’m not writing pop songs; I’m not dictating to people who transcribe my thoughts; nor am I creating something in an unwritten musical tradition: notation is at the centre of everything I do. On the other hand, my world isn’t the same as that of a composer like Harrison Birtwistle; there is very little contact or overlap, in terms of audiences and the attitudes of official culture. The major classical music festivals have a perception of me that wouldn’t allow me through the door. I feel there is a kind of cultural micro-climate that I have created unwittingly and almost unwillingly for myself.’
'the major classical music festivals wouldn’t allow me through the door'
That sense of being an outsider is underlined by the fact that, although he has written several successful operas, no British opera company has commissioned him to write a new opera; nor has he received a BBC Proms commission. At times this lack of establishment recognition has angered Nyman. Now he seems quietly resigned to it. In any case, this year’s fuseleeds festival included the premiere of a work commissioned by London Sinfonietta, an ensemble which could be taken as the official face of contemporary classical performance. ‘At 62, I have a sense of a kind of arrival,’ Nyman says with some amusement.The London Sinfonietta piece is I was a Total Virgin, a collaboration with the writer Hanif Kureishi, an old friend. Kureishi interviewed five people about their lives and wanted them to generate a musical work, with the interviewees’ recorded voices as ‘soloists’. ‘I think we’ve made something quite substantial,’ Nyman suggests. ‘It was very different from writing songs, such as my settings of the German poet Paul Celan, where there was always the worry that, in excavating the poems’ meaning, you are overloading the text, in effect corrupting it with your music. What Hanif offered was an opportunity just to listen to the text as spoken, in natural voices, then to add music in a kind of radio edit, creating a musical structure which was dependent on the ways the stories unfold.’
Total Virgin is one of several premieres lined up for 2006, a date which sees Nyman reach the 30-year landmark since he became a full-time composer. Besides the collaboration with Kureishi, there is a percussion concerto, written for young British percussionist Colin Currie and due to be premiered this August in Copenhagen. The concerto is entitled gdm: ghastly dehumanised moron, no doubt in reference to Mayor Ken Livingstone’s description of the kind of person who would remove the much-loved Routemaster bus from the streets of London (which Livingstone subsequently did, of course).
For the moment, Nyman is focussed on the UK premiere of his opera Love Counts, at London’s Almeida Theatre in July. It is his second collaboration with playwright and librettist Michael Hastings; the first being Man and Boy: Dada. Opera remains one of Nyman’s central concerns. ‘I suppose that, subconsciously, I’m writing operas which are as cinematic as I can make them, but which allow me to get away from the conventions of film music. In effect, opera, the largest-scale narrative form that I can work in, is my feature film.’
Which brings us back to movies, an important part of his creative life since he began working with director Peter Greenaway in the 1960s. Some of his film-work – the Greenaway scores, The Piano – show Nyman at his best, yet, he contends, ‘Film is less and less important to me. On all levels you are not master of your own fate when you write a film score. You may manage to write the music you want to, and to persuade the director that his vision is represented by music which I am happy with, but you have no power to control the reception and perception of the film. There’s a lot of effort and emotional travail to go through, and the film may disappear without trace. That has nothing to do with the quality of the soundtrack, but if the film sinks, my soundtrack sinks with it.’
That doesn’t mean Nyman is unenthusiastic about his film music. Indeed, when he launched his own record label (MN Records) last year, four of the initial releases were film-related, including his score for The Libertine and re-recordings (‘the composer’s cut’) of The Piano and The Draughtsman’s Contract scores. MN’s catalogue now lists six CDs, yet Nyman is one of the few contemporary composers who has had a long-standing relationship with the recording industry. It dates back to the very beginning of his compositional career, when Brian Eno’s Obscure label released Decay Music in 1976.
Since then his music has appeared on Virgin, Decca/Argo, EMI and Warner Classics, while other companies have recorded his work on an occasional basis. None of those relationships were untouched by the record industry’s problems of the last decade, yet most of his several dozen recordings remain available. So why start his own label? ‘It offers me the possibility of spending my own money instead of spending theirs,’ he says with feigned bitterness. ‘The plan is to release as much as possible in as short a time as possible. That’s foolish business practice, but I have a lot of music that I want to be heard. I am master of my own music at the moment I write it, but it has been frustrating that recordings have been with different labels, each with their own attitudes to back-catalogue. I thought I would take control into my own hands, even though it consumes my time and my money. There’s great satisfaction in deciding what I do, how it’s recorded, who performs it, how it’s mixed and edited, and then how it’s presented.’
'I’m selling CDs… I’ve always wanted to run a shop… I’d be just as happy selling cheese'
MN Records has opened up a different relationship with his audience: ‘I’ve always wanted to run a shop and one of the nicest things about doing concerts is signing and selling CDs. The first time I did it with my own label, there was a table designated for signing after the performance. I found myself hanging around before the gig and I thought “Why not save time? I’ll start selling them now.” In the end I had to be prised away. There’s a sense in which the label brings things full circle; it begins with me sitting at the piano writing the stuff, manufacturing the art-product, if you like. Then I perform it, and now I’m actually selling it. It’s great. If I could do the same with cheese,’ he adds with a hint of self-mockery, ‘I’d probably be just as happy.’
Nyman is all too aware that, in the age of internet downloads, CDs are under threat. Yet he retains a fondness for them: ‘I like going into bookshops and record shops, seeing the stock, feeling it, coming across hundreds of things that I didn’t know existed. Old technology is very important to me in that way.’
Yet new technology also excites Nyman; he’s recently discovered sampling using keyboards and he’s both confused and excited by the prospect of offering his material for download.
‘We sell CDs over the internet from my website, but I don’t think the download thing works well for composers. What do you download? If you have a three-movement string quartet, you can download a movement at a time, but my Third String Quartet, for example, is continuous, so what do you offer people? There is a balance between making the stuff available, and making it too cheap: this is my work and I don’t want it to be stolen.’ at 62 I have a sense of arrival
Royalties are important to Nyman: ‘I always love reading the PRS statements and finding out where your works have been performed around the world.’
Then he thinks again about the download issue. ‘Maybe you offer edits of your work – one minute of a ten minute piece - it would be possible for me because of the way that I write.’ He becomes suddenly enthused by the prospect: ‘These kinds of problems are exciting. You know, my career as a composer has been going for 30 years, but these challenges mean that I feel that I’m constantly starting from scratch.’
For further information about all MN Records releases see www.mnrecords.com
This article originally appeared in M21, published June 2006.