Charr Bothy

‘Oh Bachlein, meiner Liebe

Was bist du wunderlich

Will’s Ja nicht weiter sagen

Sag Bachlein, liebst du mich?

Sag Bachlein Liebst du mich?’

(Schubert: Die Schone Mullerin)

Charr Bothy, a place to take a rest when walking in Glen Dye. The bothy overlooks the merger of the Water of Charr and the Water of Dye on the flat lands where sheep graze in spring. Though the bothy invites the walker to pause, the repetitive rhythm of footsteps, uphill and downhill, keep resounding. 

This bothy often reminds me of the passage in Schubert’s Die Schone Mullerin in which the singer projects his feelings on to the river. Desperate to know whether the miller’s daughter loves him, the singer wants the river to confirm that this is the case. In a truly romantic fashion, the river provides solace for the singer. When thinking about how I, and other walkers, feel towards the bothy, I feel a strange tension. Following the Water of Dye, we seek out the bothy for shelter from the weather or for the night. It is not the river that provides solace, but a sturdy building that invites us to rest our feet for a moment. 

In my composition for solo piano I’ve taken inspiration from Schubert’s song. For the walking theme I've used the first phrase of Schubert’s song as a series. This theme is repeated in an almost minimalist fashion to suggest the mesmerising effect of walking. Gradually, this become freer and more lyrical to express the fragments of thought that the activity releases. 

 Copyright text and music Petra Vergunst

Taking inspiration from Sally Beamish

When I heard the composer Sally Beamish talk about her composition for the Cultural Olympiad several weeks ago I took inspiration from the way she had responded to the theme of sports. The composition Spinal Chords, commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, expresses the slow recovery process of journalist Melanie Reid who broke her neck in a horse-riding accident. To express this, the music is static a lot of the time. To reinforce this, the orchestra was deconstructed into small groups of soloist who were gradually put back together again.

Sally Beamish often takes inspiration from the world around her. In her composition Bridging the Day for cello and piano, for example, she reflects the different experiences of light from sunrise to sunset around her Scottish home. The Seafarer Trio is a composition for narrator and piano trio which in life performances is accompanied by prints by Jila Peacock. The Seafarer is an Anglo-Saxon poem that speaks of the pull of the sea and the loneliness of a sea voyage. In her music, Sally Beamish communicates the atmosphere of a sea journey, and reinforces this occasionally with the cries of gulls. 

What I find inspiring in the work of Sally Beamish is that she shows a range of ways in which a composer can respond to his or her source of inspiration. Until several decades ago most classical composers did so by either expressing the atmosphere found in, for example, a poem or painting, or by imitating the sounds suggested. Cuckoo calls in pastoral music are known examples. Other composers have taken classical forms like the sonata form to express storylines in tone poems. When Debussy impersonated the faun in Stéphane Mallarmè’s poem L’Après-Midi d’un Faune that inspired his prelude with the same name, he broke new ground. 

But in Spinal Chords Sally Beamish has gone a step further. Rather than focusing on the sound world created in a composition by imitating sounds or suggesting atmospheres, she has reflected her source of inspiration by deconstructing and reconstructing the chord as the backbone of music. Though serialist and minimalist composers have experimented with organising and reorganising the raw materials of music in different ways before her, this has to my knowledge mostly been done in an abstract manner. To me, Sally Beamish has gone beyond this in both the way she organises the raw materials of her music and the way in which she uses this to reflect her source of inspiration.

Copyright text and image Petra Vergunst

Learning to sing together

Setting up an intergenerational choir is a balancing act. Learning to sing together not only involves negotiating a balance between the interests of children and adults in the choir, but also the repertoire to sing.

Before starting the choir the idea of intergenerational work seemed unambiguous to me as I assumed that there would be a balance between the interests of children and adults. After the first two sessions, however, I felt the choir was more like a children’s choir with adults helpers. In part, this was a result of there being more children than adults. But this feeling was further reinforced by adults giving away ownership of the choir by suggesting what they think the children would like to sing. If anything, I learnt that an intergenerational choir is not only about balancing the numbers of children and adults, but also the extent to which their respective interests are heard.

Finding songs to sing means balancing the interests of children and adults. The children are keen to sing Glee songs and Whitney Houston, the adults have suggested songs from the shows, seventies pop and Scottish folk songs. This is the music that the children and adults are familiar with, and defines who they are. I'm trying to make sure that the repertoire contains a bit of everything. Yet, I also want to introduce some new songs as this allows them to try out something new. These new songs are not yet associated with a certain social identity and the children and adults may eventually associate them with their intergenerational encounters in the choir. 

Though the negotiation of what it means to be an intergenerational choir and what is to be sung feels like a challenge at times, this struggle is part of the process that any new group goes through. Bruce Tuckman argues that any new group goes through four stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. During the first two sessions the intergenerational choir negotiated the balance between the interests of children and adults and the repertoire to sing (forming and storming). In the third session we started to focus on the performance ahead of us (norming) and what we need to do to prepare ourselves for that. To help the choir establish itself I need to listen carefully to the wide range of views on what to sing and how to sing it. To move forward, however, I have to make decisions that may not be popular with all.

Copyright text and image Petra Vergunst

Repetition

Sometimes the work of another artist helps me to reflect on my own work. Earlier this week, I came across the work of experimental artist Sam Firth who, in her project Stay The Same, films herself every day at the same time in the same place. Her work has not only made me realise how repetition can facilitate intimacy and reflection, but also how artists often use images of nature to reflect their inner feelings.

In my project Songs of the Earth I set out using composition as a means to exploring my relationship with the woodlands and fields around my home. Repetition, making the same walk several times a week, has helped me develop an intimate bond with my local natural environment, a bond that I do not feel when I visit places that are unknown to me. Likewise, repetition helps Sam Firth to track seasonal change. The changes in light and weather make her think about the passing of time and the process of ageing. Though I tend to focus on changes in foliage, seasonal changes are important for me as well. When I walk in an area unknown to me, I tend to focus on the larger forms in the landscape. Only when I am familiar with an area I notice changes in this landscape.

Composing music inspired by my local walks has, however, changed my experience of my local environment. Not only do the compositions and accompanying writing make some everyday experiences extra-ordinary, they now also make me remember these experiences when I revisit the places to which they are related.

The creative writing that accompanies most compositions has helped me deepen my experiences. In a similar manner as that Sam Firth relates her nature experiences to the passing of time and ageing, I impose my feelings on my environmental experiences. In Silver the incoming weather somehow gives me a sense of calm, in A Different World I leave daily worries behind when I enter the woodlands, and in Unfolding I describe a sense of wonder and relief that winter is past. Such imposition of human feelings on nature is a common trait in music as well as poetry and painting. In Das Lied Von Der Erde, Mahler made the seasons stand symbol for the cycle of human life.

Last week I listened to some of the compositions I wrote last autumn and was struck by how, in a trio for French horn, violin and piano, I had transformed the theme of autumnal leaves dancing on the wind (the middle section) into a melancholy theme (towards the end) reflecting the summer that is past. Here a Sibelius recording of this composition (in Sibelius the instruments seem to blend less well as they're likely to do in reality):

Copyright text and music Petra Vergunst

One subject, two takes

Just after I completed the Culter Mills project last year I met Amy Marletta who was working on the Arts Development project Artist In The Green. A visual artist from Glasgow, Amy had involved residents and business people of The Green, an inner-city area of Aberdeen, in a series of photographic portraits and written a song on basis of their memories of the area. Though the idea of writing a song on basis of people’s memories is similar to the one I took in the Culter Mills project, I felt that our approaches were subtly different.

Whether a community music or arts activity is approached from an artistic or community development perspective influences how the relationship between artist and participants is negotiated and developed. Lyn Gardner even goes as far as warning against projects in which artists dash in with their own agendas and needs without real reference to the community. In my experience, even if a community artist or musician has own ideas at the outset of a project, he or she is often also genuinely concerned with incorporating the ideas of participants. Rather, I’d like to think that the kind of impacts of the two approaches are different.  

In the Culter Mills and Parallel Lives projects my intention was to contribute to community relations, while my Whaling and Songs Of The Earth projects have been driven by my enthusiasm for music composition. When I engage people in the latter kind of projects, I hope to contribute to the participants’ personal development by contributing to their (artistic) skills and inviting them to reflect on interesting subjects. This is different from the community development objectives in for example the Culter Mills and Parallel Lives projects. Such community development involves bringing communities together through, as Alison Rooke and David Kendall suggest, dialogue, sharing, friendships and action. Though I felt that Amy’s approach differed only subtly from my own, I now realise her work mainly engaged people on an individual basis, thus contributing to their personal development whereas my approach aimed more at enhancing community relations. The community development objective often involves a degree of personal development among the participants, but the personal development objective not necessarily includes the improvement of community relations. 

There is merit in both approaches to community music. Though I prefer to use both takes on the subject, I think it is important to be clear about my objectives for specific projects. As I’m interested in developing my ideas about the impacts of community music and arts on participants and their communities, I’d love to hear from other community musicians and artists about the work they’re doing.

For other blogs on community music:
Authorship
Learning to sing together
More than music
On whose terms?
Why folk songs?
Community music - music for communities

Copyright text and image Petra Vergunst

More than music

Arts Development have asked me to set up a choir to follow up to the Parallel Lives project. I’m excited about this opportunity as it allows me to build upon previous work rather than starting all over again in a new setting. And the choir will not just be any choir. It will be an intergenerational choir, bringing children and adults in the community together. As the choir will be a community development project, the role of the actual singing and music making may, however, be less obvious.

 

Intergenerational work brings different generations together to build more cohesive communities. Young and old benefit from such meetings. In an intergenerational choir younger participants will have an opportunity to meet trustworthy adults who are willing to take time and show interest in them, nurturing their talents. Older singers may have an opportunity to feel valued and share their stories and memories. Like in the other community music projects I've been involved in, the choir will be an opportunity for different groups of people to meet each other and create a dialogue.

A few days ago I read Lyn Gardner’s blog in the Guardian about community theatre in London. She argues that community theatre is about process rather than product. This is no less true for a community choir. Singing together in an intergenerational choir can help children and adults to bond. In Torry, community members want the choir to provide an opportunity for children to meet people who can take on the role of grandparents. Everybody who has ever sung in a choir will have experienced the sheer joy of singing together. The choir can also help the singers to understand community relations. To produce a good sound, and thereby a better experience, all singers will have to carefully listen to the people around them, and – quite literally – sing from the same (hymn)sheet. Everyone’s contribution is important.

In the community choir I’m intending to sing a lot of Scottish folk songs. Folk songs tell about the events, experiences and feelings of the people who wrote them. They may be a starting point for the adult members the choir to talk about their lives and the community. The very fact that there is scope to add new songs to the repertoire means that younger members of the choir can return this favour by writing a song about their own lives.

So what role is there for music in an intergenerational community choir? I’d say that even though singing may not be an objective in itself, it will be important as a means to achieve the wider community development objectives of the choir. 

Copyright text Petra Vergunst

Unfolding

Midwinter. The bleak midwinter, as Rosetti wrote. Trees are in a meditative state after they celebrated another fruitful summer by orchestrating a mosaic of reds, oranges, greens, yellows and browns. No longer leaves dancing on the wind, but soon their buds will start to swell, preparing for yet another spring. The embodiment of spring for me is the unfolding of leaves of the sycamore. Each year, in the beginning of April, I witness the unfolding of their lobed leaves from an old stone bridge over a nearby burn. The burn, in full flow, is dipper territory. Upstream it is free to spill over into the low-lying wooded embankments. Old lichen-covered alder, elder, hazel, rowan and sycamore live entwined, welcoming a range of small birds. Only walkers can reach the bridge. From the bridge you look down on the lowest branches of the sycamore. The old tree takes several days to unfold its leaves, slowly stretching finger after finger until it welcomes you with an open hand. The translucent yellow green leaves emerge from pale red buds from which blossom develops as well. Soon the leaves will turn saturated green, keeping this colour until late summer. But for me contentment lies in the birth of spring, and this is but a fleeting moment.     

Copyright text and music Petra Vergunst