HAVE YOU HEARD of Snerm? Probably not. It's an acronym for the Society for Newer Music, founded in Cologne in the 1980s by Gerald Barry, Chris Newman and Kevin Volans. "It was a jokey but deadly serious reaction to the society which was founded in Cologne called the Society for New Music," Barry explained in a 2004 interview with Michael Dungan ( iti.ms/NeUOCn).
“We never did anything! But we had this fantastically grand manifesto, which said things like – and, you see, I can still remember, and it completely holds true today – the world was ours, literally. We felt that everything belonged to us, that the whole history of music was ours and that we would use it as we wanted.”
Thomas Larcher, I suspect, might well have joined at some stage, had Snerm become an active movement. Larcher likes to get his listeners’ attention quickly, and he likes to hold on to it, too. His 2001 Mumien (Mummies) for cello and piano, heard at West Cork Chamber Music Festival from the cellist Natalie Clein with the composer on piano, opens with a piano note, repeated like a nervous tick, the tone muted with a rubber wedge and shimmering as if it might be a kind of Jew’s harp. The tick develops a pulsing insistence and gradually infects the cello, sending the two on a nervous chase.
It’s a set-up based on the techniques of John Cage’s prepared piano and the age-old interest in the effects of perpetual motion in music. And the strangeness of the opening sound world later allows Larcher use the natural tone of the piano, with leisurely pizzicato from the cello, so they come across almost as surprise intrusions.
Ticking mechanisms feature, too, in Still for viola and chamber orchestra (Lawrence Power, with the Irish Chamber Orchestra under Paul Watkins), where the viola can be found creating intricate, decorative tracery, as if recalling some exotic folk music. Before you know it a waft of parallel chords has transported you into a realm of romantic nostalgia.
Larcher lives with Schumann (the Album for the Young) and György Kurtág (his books of Games) in his Poems, a set of 12 pieces “for Pianists and other children”, written between 1975 and 2010. They carry titles such as Sad Yellow Whale; One, Two, Three, Four, Nine; and Don’t Step on the Regenwurm, and their playability by young hands was attested to in Bantry by nine-year-old Winifred Massey, 14-year-old Tanya Massey, 11-year-old Kevin Jansson, and 12-year-old Emily Crowley. All four had the benefit of tutoring by Larcher himself, who acted as master of ceremonies at their concert, where he was careful to make sure they all returned for second bows after performances that showed impressive savoir faire. When I was in Vienna last month to interview Larcher I had the opportunity to hear Lars Vogt – as muscularly big-toned a pianist as you could wish for – play the whole set. The pieces are conceived so the milder approach of the four pianists in Bantry can work equally well.
Larcher is the kind of composer who would once have been called eclectic. He’s as happy to relax into hymn-like balm as engage in a manic, high-speed race.
Conventional harmonies jostle with sounds lifted from the 20th-century avant-garde. He likes ideas and gestures that are strange but not too strange, and also ones that are familiar but not too familiar. He doesn’t like to stay in the one place too long, so he won’t stretch out any process in a minimalist way. He wants a more immediate kind of engagement with listeners’ expectations. He wants, if you like, to be both old-fashioned and new.
The Bantry festival has long been a mecca for young chamber ensembles, with a plethora of masterclasses from festival artists (including, in some years, guidance from the recording producer Andrew Keener), as well as substantial performance opportunities, including link-ups between young composers (who go through a competitive selection process) and their performing peers.
The festival’s greatest success in effectively launching a professional career was the 1999 debut of the Callino Quartet (which was first heard as an ensemble without a name). This year’s performance of Haydn’s Sunrise quartet showed the Benz Quartet – Patrick Rafter, Carla White, David Kenny and Aoife Burke – to have more than a few of the attributes that made the Callinos so appealing all those years ago.
Hundreds of kilometres from west Cork, Strings Attached is a new string-quartet mentoring programme that has been launched by the Music in Drumcliffe festival, in Sligo (formerly the Vogler Spring Festival), with the Royal Irish Academy of Music. The mentors will be the members of the Vogler Quartet, who from 1999 to 2004 were involved in a pioneering music residency in Sligo.
The new venture is aimed at young musicians “who can demonstrate a proven track record of achievement and who aspire to a career as a member of a professional string quartet”. To cast the net as widely as possible, applications will be accepted not just from existing ensembles but also from individuals, whether studying at a college or not, “who are open to being put together in a string quartet formation by the Vogler Quartet”.
Applicants must be "Irish or Irish based" and make themselves available for "auditions, masterclasses and performances at the RIAM and Music in Drumcliffe during 2012-2014", with the additional possibility of being recommended by the Voglers for the Jeunesses Musicales International Chamber Music Campus, at Schloss Weikersheim, in Germany, in September next year. Tuition for the successful quartet will be free of charge, and a contribution will be made towards their travel costs. The closing date for applications is Friday, October 5th, and the auditions will be held at the RIAM on Thursday, November 1st. Full details are at riam.ie.
Galway's resident ensemble, the ConTempo String Quartet, is this year celebrating its 10th anniversary in the city. And the group, which already has a guest residency programme and has worked with apprentice ensembles, is now seeking a composer "to write a piece of music in celebration of a decade of music in Galway". The chosen individual will also become a composer-in-residence, making "regular visits to the city, leading workshops and working closely with ConTempo towards the final work which will be premiered as part of the residency's first ever music festival in February 2013". The closing date is Friday, August 24th, and full details are at iti.ms/NeV3xf.
