ECO world première, Saturday 1st April 2006: echoes by Jean-Paul Metzger
One of the highlights of ECO's Easter concert was the première of a work written specially for the orchestra by Jean-Paul Metzger. Here, Jean-Paul talks to Antonia Maks about his music and also explains the unique way that his piece echoes grew from suggestions made by members of ECO.
Interview with Jean-Paul Metzger by Antonia Maks
Jean-Paul is French and hails from Paris. He studied music (Composition and Conducting) at Morley College in London. Now he is in his last year of an MA course in Music Composition at Exeter University, studying under the Composer Jo Duddell. echoes, his composition for ECO, is part of his Master's Degree.
Jean-Paul says: "Initially I was self-taught as a musician. I started studying the modern scores of pieces I found interesting to listen to. My three main influences were Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio and Edgard Varèse. Also Webern, Schoenberg and Berg."
"I naturally tend to write abstract music because this is the way I conceive music; and I have brought this into the composition of echoes, the piece for ECO."
"At the moment, one of the modules I am studying is 'Music in Education' and I find that fascinating; really interesting from a composer's point of view as the focus is very much on creativity and imagination, and things which are not necessarily conventional. I wish I had studied this earlier, before working with ECO. I want to go deeper into this aspect of music, and may go on for a PhD at Bristol."
"Before I came to Exeter from London, I was very much involved with fringe theatre companies, and wrote music for them, especially Man in the Moon in the King's Road, Edinburgh Festival productions, the Young Vic in Bristol. I also composed orchestral music for the Aylesbury Youth Orchestra who performed with John Otway in the Royal Albert Hall."
One of Jean-Paul's pieces has been performed by Kokoro, the modern music group of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
As well as working with ECO on echoes, Jean-Paul is currently involved in another project with the Bornemouth Symphony Orchestra, called The Bottom Line. This is a series of workshops in Dorset for young people who play a bass instrument (cello, double bass, trombone, tuba, bassoon, bass guitar, and tenor sax). The piece he wrote for them will be premiered on Sunday 09 April at The Lighthouse in Poole.
Specially written for the Exeter Children's Orchestra, echoes uses the word EXETER as a starting point. Most of the textural and structural features of the piece were provided by the members of the ECO, who I invited to reflect on the possible musical associations that could be drawn up from the shapes, the sounds and the organisation of the letters E.X.E.T.E.R.
Many original and imaginative ideas were put forward, and some of them are quite readily recognisable in the music: listen for instance, for the cymbals (associated with the letter X) in the first section; the staccato passage (conjuring up the sound of the letter T) in the latter part of the piece; the "dramatic" tutti ending, punctuated by a bass drum roll (R sound); the alternance between quietness and loudness throughout the piece (vowel-consonant duality).
Modelled on the shape of the letter X, the overall drive of the composition is provided by the crossing of two independent and contrasting elements: a melodic line (representing movement and horizontality) and a series of chords (representing stillness and verticality).
Both elements are introduced in full at the beginning of the piece, one after the other, until the music is brought to a momentary standstill. Picked up by the woodwind and the strings, the melodic flow is fragmented into shorter and shorter segments by the rigid sound blocks provided by the brass - now punctuating, now interfering - until the chordal element, with its characteristic, halting rhythm, is stated again in its original form.
The second section starts at the point of crossing of the X shape, where the two contrasting strands appear to make room for one another, coexisting in a short-lived equilibrium. Soon they diverge again, having been altered by their coming together: the melodic line is reduced to a four-note cell, played staccato by the woodwind, whereas the chords have acquired a momentum and start to drive the music toward its conclusion. The strings, meanwhile, as if fixing the instant of equilibrium in time, remain motionless throughout. In the brief closing section, the chordal element takes centre stage over the melodic line, which is eventually stated backwards by the strings, just before the entire orchestra launches itself into an unresolved final chord.