Delighted BBC7′s serialisation of H P Lovecraft’s horror classic ‘At The Mountains of Madness‘, which I composed for a year or so ago, is being repeated all next week on Radio 4 Extra, beginning on Monday 12th December at 6.30pm.
Here’s a snippet of the title theme:
Andrew Motion’s powerful sequence of war poems tracked the experiences of serving soldier from the trenches of the First World War to those currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was lucky enough to be able to work with some wonderful musicians from the Bristol Ensemble – string trio and trumpet, plus accordion ace Eddy Jay – and the resulting mix of poetry, music and soundscape was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Armistice Day 2011.
They don’t come much more challenging than Lorca; extraordinary poetic verse, brutally violent yet starkly beautiful imagery and potent undercurrents of elemental passion and mystery. Yerma depicts the tragic trajectory of a woman whose longing for a child drives her to commit an unspeakable act of violence; Anthony Weigh’s new version stripped the story to the bone, removing the usual cast of village gossips and neighbours and focusing instead on the four characters’ intense inner dramas. Natalie Abrahami’s production for the Gate and Hull Truck was played out with a similarly uncompromising starkness on a bare sand floor against a ramshackle backdrop of abandoned scrap.
I wanted the music to sound similarly de-contextualised – as if it came from everywhere and nowhere – and rethought my whole approach from the ground up. I’ve always loved the DIY musical aesthetic of Harry Partch and John Cage, and spent a long time constructing all sorts of peculiar home-made instruments out of old planks, metal and wire. I also involved multi-instrumentalist and improviser James Hesford (one of my regular collaborators), whose cello and violin playing weaves in and out of the elemental percussion and the textures and soundscapes derived from electronic transformations of babies, lambs and insects.
I’ve been putting together some extended edits (each about 6 minutes) of selections from various screen, radio and theatre projects I’ve composed / sound-designed over the past three years or so.
‘The Picture‘ was an extraordinary production by Philip Wilson at Salisbury Playhouse of Philip Massinger’s 1629 epic drama, unperformed for over 200 years, and starring Olivia Grant. It’s a kind of Renaissance version of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’; knight sets off for war, but in a fit of paranoia about his wife’s faithfulness in his absence, asks his wizard pal to create a magic picture that will discolour when she strays…wife discovers device, all hell breaks loose, etc…
Although the play’s set in medieval ‘Bohemia’ (notionally Hungary) Philip updated the production to the nineteenth century, which let us play with all sorts of interesting ideas about early photographic techniques.
As well as clarinet (Kate Luxmoore) and vocals by Jeremy Avis, the score also featured some fabulous nyckelharpa playing by Clare Salaman.
‘Eden End’ is J B Priestley’s most Chekhovian play, suffused with the characters’ regrets over paths taken or not taken. It’s also hilarious, and features some splendid falling-over-while-drunk acting.
The music / sound score wanders between grand opera (featuring some marvellous singing by soprano Rebecca Rudge), expressionistic soundscapes, music-hall hits and haunting violin (courtesy of Fiona Barrow).
Eden End is currently running at Northampton Royal and Derngate, and is then touring with English Touring Theatre to Brighton, Oxford, Richmond and Cambridge.
Here’s a 3-minute edit of my music for The Holy Rosenbergs, a searing family drama by Ryan Craig which ran at the National Theatre in early 2011.
The starting point for the music was the traditional lament ‘Avinu Malkeinu’, which holds huge significance for the central character (played by Henry Goodman), whose father used to sing it in synagogue ; the score (for 2 cellos, clarinet, viola & violin) plays around with the theme in all sorts of different ways.
I’ve just finished composing the score for Speed Date, a lovely little film by Steven Mitchell, with whom I’ve worked several times before (one of my favourites being a horror short, Shore). It’s a very simple story about the search for personal (and musical!) harmony, as we follow an enthusiastic speed-dater through a succession of unsuitable would-be boyfriends…
It’s entirely dialogue-free; the story’s told completely through the images and music; a joy to work on. Featuring some great cello playing my one of my long-time collaborators, James Hesford.
In Memoriam‘, Tennyson’s masterpiece of grief and consolation about the untimely death of his friend Arthur Hallam, was broadcast in February 2011 on the 100th anniversary of Hallam’s death as an Afternoon Play. It’s read by David Bamber, and the music / sound score features some wonderful playing from the Bristol Ensemble.
H P Lovecraft – what can you say? The godfather of visceral horror, his stories are a riot of nameless instellar beings, primordial slimes, tentacled horrors, all usually holed up in remote villages in Massachusetts…what can you do musically really except throw everything including the kitchen sink at it:
At The Mountains of Madness by Jon Nicholls
‘At The Mountains of Madness’ by H P Lovecraft. Read by Richard Coyle; music by Jon Nicholls. Produced by Neil Gardner. A Ladbroke Radio production for BBC7.
