Handel 2009

The Writing of 25 Brook Street

Mark Bowden... on the composition process

We decided to use Jephtha as a theme for a number of reasons: Sarah Bardwell, the director of Handel House, was keen to use Jephtha in some way, because it was the last oratorio that Handel wrote; Handel used an amanuensis which we found an interesting idea and wanted to explore the process of composing with someone else writing the notes down for you; and it allowed Helen (the librettist) a mechanism for Handel to converse with another person about events in his own life.

Helen used specific parts of the Jephtha as starting points for the original libretto - some of us (the composers) are drawing on these musical fragments as starting points for our own music whereas others are not.

We divided up the libretto into four parts; we are writing separately but collaborating on the ways in which the parts join up. We have decided upon some very broad compositional ideas to share (such as the tuning of the theorbo, which will provide some sense of modal/harmonic unity).

The four parts will be different stylistically but share a common basis in the text. As composers we have all worked together before and presented our music in the same concerts so we are trusting that our different interpretations will work together as a whole.

Helen Cooper... on the libretto

Since this Portrait of Handel was commissioned by Handel House, we decided to set it in 25 Brook Street,  towards the end of Handel's life. The idea emerged to have Handel dictate his composition for his last oratorio Jephtha to his then amanuensis John Smith, the younger.

To complete the portrait and to bring out the conflicts of Handel's life I chose to confront old Handel with his younger selves. Firstly with Georg, the boy and secondly with young Handel, the young man at the top of his game. Themes from Jephtha and Handel's life are intertwined:

• Old Handel's blindness as opposed to Jephtha's 'seeing' (his daughter).
• The philosophy 'Goodness shall make you great', both relevant to Jephtha and Handel
• The swearing of the vows by Jephtha and Handel the boy.
• Jephtha and Handel as conquerors
• Jephtha and Handel defeated.

My sources were:

Jephtha, the Oratorio
A Handelian Notebook by William C. Smith
Georg Frideric Handel by Paul Henry Lang
Concerning Handel by William C. Smith
Handel by Christopher Hogwood
and the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix.

Biographies

The Composers

Mark Bowden

Mark Bowden is a composer living and working in London. His commissions comprise instrumental, chamber and orchestral music as well as music for voice, dance and film. Mark's music has been performed by many leading performers and ensembles at festivals and events throughout the UK, Europe and America and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance fm. In 2006 he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize. Mark was appointed the first composer-in-residence at Handel House Museum from 2006-2007. He is a founder member of the critically acclaimed Camberwell Composers’ Collective who are currently New Music Associates at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge.

Larry Goves

Larry Goves is a composer based in the UK. His music has been performed by the London Sinfonietta, the Nash Ensemble, Sarah Nicolls, the BBC Philharmonic, Psappha, Ixion, The Hallé, 175 East, The Continuum Ensemble, Oliver Coates and many others all over the UK and abroad. He has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and New Zealand’s Concert FM and had pieces released on NMC and Dutton Epoch. He founded, writes for and performs electronics with the experimental music group the house of bedlam with performances at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Faster than Sound 2008, the Purcell Room and for non-classical at Hoxton’s Macbeth amongst others. He currently teaches composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and at Royal Holloway University.

Christopher Mayo

Christopher Mayo is a Canadian composer living and working in London.  He was the recipient of the 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize and a Serge Garant Award in the 2005 SOCAN Awards for Young Composers.  Christopher was appointed as the first composer-in-residence at Tatton Park in 2006-2007.  He is a member of the Camberwell Composers’ Collective who are New Music Associates at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge for the 2008-2009 season.  Upcoming projects include a music theatre work for children to be performed at King’s Place commissioned by Open Academy, a multimedia work for the Ossian Ensemble and a project with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Charlie Piper

Charlie Piper is a London based composer. He is currently doing doctoral research at the Royal Academy of Music under the supervision of Philip Cashian, with funding from the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council). He has been performed at venues such as the Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Gaudeamus and Bang-on-a-Can Festivals, the Barbican Hall, the South Bank Centre and King's Place. Performers have included the London Symphony Orchestra, The Composers Ensemble, the Orkest 'de ereprijs' and the English National Ballet. Charlie was the recipient of the 2006 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize. He is a member of the Camberwell Composers’ Collective.

The Librettist

HELEN COOPER'S work as a librettist includes The Song of Rhiannon, composed by Mark Bowden for Opera W11 and the translation of the libretto of Don Giovanni for Tom Cairns’s production for Scottish Opera. As dramaturge she‘s worked on Tom Cairns’s production of La Boheme at Stuttgart Opera House and  currently on Prima Donna,  an opera by Rufus Wainwright, directed by Daniel Kramer and on the forthcoming Ring Cycle directed by Antony MacDonald for Reis Opera in the Netherlands.

Helen’s plays include: Mrs Gauguin (Almeida Theatre), Mrs Vershinin
(Riverside Studios), The House of Ruby Moon (Riverside Studios), Three Women and a Piano Tuner (Chichester Festival Theatre and Hampstead Theatre,  Nominated for Susan Smith Blackburn Award).

Her screenplays include Miss Julie for Mike Figgis’s film and Station (two Scottish Bafta Nominations), directed by Jackie Oudney.

She is currently working on a commission from The Royal Shakespeare Company.

Handel House Museum at 25 Brook Street will be at the heart of the Handel celebrations next year. This landmark address is where Handel lived for thirty-six years of his life and where he died on 14 April 1759.