An Interview with composer Peter Longworth
To start, why not tell us a little about yourself, your background, and how your composing life began?
My musical upbringing was as a trumpeter and, as a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland during my teens, I was fortunate to perform some fantastic new music - including premieres of works by Thea Musgrave and Anna Meredith. To me, the excitement of playing a piece for the very first time felt akin to discovering a new world, and I realised that composing might be a way for me to combine my love of music with my childhood proclivity for storytelling (no doubt the consequence of growing up as an only child in a rural Scottish village).
I therefore began writing my own pieces and at seventeen years old I moved to London to study for a BMus degree in composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, following which I did a MMus at the Royal College of Music. After graduating I was selected for the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Young Composers Programme and then for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s inaugural Composers’ Hub - both enormously inspiring schemes that provided me with the invaluable opportunity to write for world-class performers.
Since then my music has been performed throughout the world and has been commissioned by ensembles such as the Edinburgh Quartet, the Hebrides Ensemble, the London Mozart Players, the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland and, most recently, the Orion Orchestra.
Where there any requirements specific to the Orion Orchestra commission that you found particularly challenging or interesting?
Chamber orchestra is one of my favourite ensembles to write for and so I was delighted when Gary Matthewman approached me about composing a new work for the Orion Orchestra in its chamber-sized form. Gary and I met to discuss the commission before I started working and we agreed that my piece would be scored for exactly the same forces as the other two works on the programme (Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor and Beethoven’s Symphony No.4 in Bb major), and that I would not be permitted any auxiliary instruments or additional percussion. As a composer who often finds parameters creatively liberating I was pleased to have these “restrictions” and excited to discover how my approach might complement (or differ from) Mozart and Beethoven’s treatment of the same ensemble.
Furthermore, Gary was keen that my piece respond to these two aforementioned works in some way, and this, too, helped to get the creative juices flowing. Ultimately I responded musically to the Mozart - building my piece around a fragment of the third movement of the Piano Concerto No.24 - and extra-musically to the Beethoven, through a sunny and bucolic work that alludes to the fact that he wrote his Symphony No.4 in the countryside, during a summer stay at the palace of his patron Count Franz von Oppersdorff.
“As a composer who often finds parameters creatively liberating I was pleased to have these “restrictions” and discover how my approach might complement (or differ from) Mozart and Beethoven’s”
Tell us something about your discussions with our conductor, Gary Matthewman, as the compositional process unfolded? How did you feel during the orchestral rehearsals?
After I had written about a third of the piece, I met with Gary again to show him the score and to discuss where I was planning to go next with the music. I don’t always feel comfortable showing my work before it is finished and so I was relieved that Gary was enthusiastic about what I had written - although it later emerged that he was too polite to tell me that he didn’t like the title that I was using at that point! This meeting was certainly invigorating for me and I hope it was also useful from Gary’s perspective insofar as it gave him an insight into the sound-world of the music well in advance of the first rehearsal.
The next coffee that we shared was over the completed score a couple of months later. This was a good opportunity to discuss details of tempi and expression, and the depth and scope of Gary’s questions - indicative of his great sensitivity as an interpreter - made it immediately apparent that my music was in the best possible hands.
I am usually quite a nervous listener in rehearsals but Gary’s forensically-detailed knowledge of the score and the commitment of the Orion Orchestra’s musicians soon made me realise that my nerves were unwarranted. I remember leaving the dress rehearsal feeling abnormally relaxed about how the performance would go, and I am delighted to say that Gary and the orchestra gave a flawless rendition of the piece later that evening!
“Very often my music seeks to evoke what Virginia Woolf described as “moments of being” - moments which, I hope, return performers and listeners alike to experiences from their own lives, or else suggest sensations or places that might still be lived.”
What are your broader interests and outlook, compositionally? Which composers have you found especially exciting and inspiring?
I am married to an Italian and have been fortunate to discover, through her, another language and culture. This has been enormously influential upon my music and my pieces often draw upon the sounds that surround me when we are staying in Tuscany: the ringing of church bells, birdsong and the buzzing of insects - all of which are present in my piece for the Orion Orchestra! Very often my music seeks to evoke what Virginia Woolf described as “moments of being” - moments which, I hope, return performers and listeners alike to experiences from their own lives, or else suggest sensations or places that might still be lived.
The composers to whom I return most frequently for inspiration are Domenico Scarlatti and Maurice Ravel, although I love listening to everything from Wynton Marsalis to Helen Grime to Neapolitan folk singer Lina Sastri.
Have recent Covid-19 events affected your artistic world-view? If so, in what ways might composers need to be ready to adapt?
This has, without question, been a very difficult time - especially for performers - and I hope that it is not long before concert halls can safely reopen. I have however been moved by the way that exceptional music-making has continued via online concerts and podcasts, and the determination of colleagues and friends to make this happen in the face of a great many challenges has been immensely inspiring.
Like myself, I imagine that many composers have worked closely with individual musicians during this period of lockdown in the creation of new work, and this has hopefully resulted in the formation of many new and important artistic relationships that will continue to bear fruit long beyond the present time. In the immediate future I think that composers will have to be prepared to write for - or adapt music for - smaller ensembles, although I think we will also see a rise in the number of composers exploiting the possibilities that technology offers to allow larger numbers of performers to play together remotely.