2 mins
Tradition demolition
MOOSIC TO THEIR EARS: Members of the Scandinavian Cello School (SCS) perform for a herd of cattle in Stevns, Denmark, in an effort to provide a relaxing environment and improve the quality of the beef. ‘Classical music is very good for humans,’ owner Mogens Haugaard told the New York Times. ‘It helps us relax, and cows can tell whether we’re relaxed or not. It makes sense that it would make them feel good too.’ Founded by cellist Jacob Shaw, the SCS is now celebrating its fifth anniversary. Photo: Julia Severinsen
PREMIERE of the MONTH
COMPOSER Alexander Ho
WORK Our Common Wealth
ARTIST Villiers Quartet
DATE 15 June
PLACE Online bit.ly/3b2w69y
In his programme note for Our Common Wealth, British– Chinese composer Alexander Ho describes his six-minute work for the Villiers Quartet as ‘a small piece of reckoning’. As he explains, the work is as much about taking things apart as it is about putting them together: ‘It’s an interrogation of broad structures in music and society. I wanted to show that what we see as monolithic is often made up of lots of smaller elements.
This was a way in to thinking about the string quartet, a genre with a lot of historical baggage that itself is often celebrated for having a homogenous sound.’
Our Common Wealth is one of six pieces commissioned by the Villiers Quartet as part of a project inviting composers to reflect on the experience of life ‘from home’, and will be performed by them at an Oxford University symposium exploring diversity in the context of the British string quartet. ‘The players themselves come from Canada, Japan, the US and the UK, and I wanted to find a way to highlight this heterogeneity,’ says Ho. His solution is to have the players whisper, shout and sing as they play, simultaneously laying bare their personalities and breaking apart the anticipated sound of two violins, viola and cello.
Alexander Ho
Villiers Quartet
‘The sound of each human voice is so closely connected to the person it belongs to,’ he continues. ‘It’s something I’ve always been interested in, and as I wanted the audience to hear from the quartet as people as well as instrumentalists, it seemed the perfect way to expose their different identities. The tension between voice and instrument provides the main dramatic arc of the piece.’ The music becomes more liberated as it progresses, Ho explains, and the disruptive power of the voices grows, too.
‘It’s an acknowledgement that our present political structures are fragile,’ he says. ‘Instead of creating a representation of the past I’ve tried to look beyond them and imagine what happens next.’