Welsh composer Karl Jenkinstalks about musical snobbery, imitating Marvin Gaye, and why the 1960s weren't as rock'n'roll as people think
What's your earliest musical memory?I grew up in Penclawdd on the Gower peninsula in Wales, where my father was the church organist and choirmaster, so one of my earliest memories would be of him teaching me to play the piano. I started playing at a very early age and my father was hugely influential in shaping my musical development.
You were trained at the Royal Academy in London and you're now a classical composer. But in between, you were a member of the cult rock band Soft Machine.Yes, classical composition just didn't appeal to me then. Everything was very dissonant, atonal and ugly. I used to refer to it jokingly as "squeaky gate music". During my time in the Welsh Youth Orchestra, I'd learned to play the saxophone and oboe and became interested in jazz. Later, I worked for a while as a musician at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London. When I joined Soft Machine, it was very much a progressive rock/jazz fusion band.
This was a band who'd toured America with Jimi Hendrix. It must have been quite a different milieu than what you were used to?I was part of the 1960s generation, undoubtedly. It was hugely exciting to be around at a time when pop musicians like the Beatles and jazz legends like Miles Davis were recording iconic albums. But the whole rock'n' roll thing tends to be overstated. We were a very tame band. I never did drugs or any of that. I drank too much occasionally, but that was the extent of it.
After Soft Machine, you began composing music for television commercials. Why the career change?Soft Machine never split up. There was no farewell tour or grand finale. We just faded away. In the early 1980s, my former bandmate Mike Ratledge and I had both got married and, after all those years touring, soundtracks and music production seemed to offer stability. The advertising work came along by chance and it took off immediately.
You provided the music in some very famous ads for British Airways, BMW, De Beers and Renault's Papa/Nicole ads. Any personal favourites?One thing we specialised in was recording sound-a-likes. In those days, ad agencies would buy the publishing rights to use a particular song. But the licensing fee for the original recording often proved prohibitively expensive. You remember the famous Levis ad where the man takes his jeans off in the launderette? Most people think that was Marvin Gaye singing Heard It Through The Grapevine. It wasn't. We re-recorded the song with a singer who sounded just like him.
You used an African choir in a Delta Airlines ad because the ad executives requested "something ethnic". Was it a challenge composing to order like that?That's not exactly what happened. I'd already had the idea of writing a choral piece in the world music vein. So when the request came for something "ethnic" I adapted one of those pieces. That piece later became the title track of the Adiemus album, which is still performed all across the world.
Your most celebrated work, 'The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace' was commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum. Isn't that like a fast-food company promoting healthy eating?The Royal Armoury is dedicated to recording military history and the history of conflict generally, which doesn't mean that it endorses war, necessarily. Guy Wilson, who was the master of the armouries, selected the texts, which included readings from the Bible, the Mahabharata, the Islamic call to prayer and the writings of Sankichi Toge, a Hiroshima survivor who later died of leukaemia. But I suppose there is a certain contradiction in preserving military history, and seeing the value in that, while at the same time commissioning a piece of music intended to convey the horror of war and the futility of conflict generally.
It was written in 1999 to commemorate the wars of the 20th century and express hope for a more peaceful future. Does it depress you that we've seen nothing but more war in the decade since?Absolutely. Nothing ever changes, it seems. War is still as sad and brutal as ever.
Finally, your work has proven enormously popular with audiences but less so with critics. Does that bother you?A lot of contemporary classical work is commissioned, performed once to an audience of 10 people and then never heard of again. But then why should something be performed more than once if no one wants to hear it? I'm viewed as being old fashioned or superficial or something because I compose accessible music. But it's an art to write music that people like and want to listen to again and again.
Karl Jenkins conducts the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in The Armed Manin Cork (April 27th), Galway (April 28th), Dublin (April 30th) and Limerick (May 8th). See rte.ie/concertorchestra
