In this post-modem age, when artists, architects or composers no longer risk losing reputation by being thought too accessible, too popular, too pleasing to the ear or eye, Geoffrey Burgon's success seems a natural reward for talent and imagination of high order. But twenty five years ago, when Burgon was first making his mark, that kind of open-minded attitude from a composer was a lot rarer, and hence more courageous, than it is today. When Burgon intuitively turned his back on on the avant-garde orthodoxies prevailing in the sixties, he was also turning his back on a contemporary music establishment that largely controlled commissions and performances in London. And his present high standing owes little to any championing of his music by critics. His pieces have spoken powerfully and directly to audiences and musicians alike.
Yet the more one learns about Burgon's life and output , (more than one hundred and twenty compositions in the last twenty five years alone), the more paradoxes appear. For one thing, the very accessibility of his style is itself an enigma, suggestive not of a simplistic mind but of a very complex personality that is certain of it's mode of communication and can therefore convey difficult concepts (metaphysical poetry for instance) with utmost clarity.
But perhaps the greatest paradox is that, despite the huge success that
Burgon has achieved with his forays into film and television work (which
take up, according to the composer, less than two months of each working
year), his music packs an intense emotional charge that has been quite undiluted
by his increasing fame.
Geoffrey Burgon was born in 1941 in Hampshire, England. He was a late musical developer and it was not until he was fifteen that he took up the trumpet so that he could play jazz. He entered the Guildhall School of Music still intent on becoming a jazz trumpeter, but composition gradually took over as his major interest and when he left he supported himself and his family as a freelance trumpeter for several years. Then, at the age of thirty, he sold his trumpets and plunged into composition full time. Several impecunious years inevitably followed but gradually he began to make his name as a composer. He wrote several very successful ballet scores during this period, notably for Ballet Rambert and London Contemporary Dance Theatre, and then, in 1976, his 'Requiem' was premiered at the Three Choirs Festival, and this work established him as a serious composer. Shortly afterwards he wrote the first of many successful scores for television. This was, 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier .. Spy'. Who would have thought that a boy treble singing a biblical song would make the pop charts? Yet such 'was the brilliance of Burgon's imagination that the 'Nunc Dimittis' which ended the show struck a chord in a million hearts. This was followed in 1981 by his score for 'Brideshead Revisited', which was described as 'the greatest score ever written for television'. It inevitably led to offers from Hollywood, but tempting as they were, Burgon knew that concert music was always to be his major preoccupation, although he has continued to produce a steady stream of distinguished film and tv scores.
Burgon's love of the voice has led him to write probably more song-cycles than any other living composer. Ranging from the small scale 'Lunar Beauty', for countertenor and guitar, to words by Auden and MacNiece, through 'Merciless Beauty' for countertenor and chamber orchestra, to 'Title Divine' (words by Emily Dickinson) for soprano and large orchestra.
His preoccupation with the voice inevitably led Burgon to opera. 'Hard Times', his first full-length opera, sets the composer's own libretto ( of which approximately seventy per cent is Dicken's own dialogue). It is a work of remarkable theatrical tautness, and this great story of suppression, but final triumph of the spirit, is conveyed in vocal lines of gripping tautness. A smaller operatic piece is the marvellously entertaining 'The Fall of Lucifer' a setting of the Chester mystery play that combines melodrama with humour.
In the early seventies Burgon developed a passion for the poetry of St. John of the Cross. 'Noche Oscura' for six solo voices, and 'Canciones del Aima' for two countertenors and strings, are two fruits of this passion, as is his biggest choral and orchestral work to date, the 'Requiem' which was premiered to much acclaim at the Three Choirs festival in 1976. This was also the first of a number of works that acknowledged the influence of dreams. Burgon says that, in a state that he subsequently discovered is called a hypnogogic trance (or waking-dream), he imagined a man walking into a cathedral and realising that he was attending his own requiem. Subsequent 'dream works' include 'The World Again' for soprano and orchestra, 'Worides Blisse' for countertenor and oboe, and most recently the 1999 'String Quartet'.
Other works that invoke the world of dreams include two of Burgon's numerous dance scores,'The Calm' and 'Goldberg's Dream'. The latter, written for Ballet Rambert, takes as it's starting point the legend that Bach was commissioned to write his Goldberg Variations to aid Herr Goldberg's slumber. The result is an extremely witty, surreal essay that deconstructs the elements of B ach's style and reassembles them in a fantastical way.
Burgon's output of purely orchestral work is relatively small compared
to works including the voice. An early piece, 'Gending' is a gamelan-influenced
work, and it's flamboyantly non-western timbres dispel any notions that
Burgon is a typically English composer. He has acknowledged the influence
of Messiaen in this piece, alongside the obvious Balinese origins. More
recent orchestral pieces are the percussion concerto 'City Adventures' premiered
by Evelyn Glennie in the 1996 Proms, and the 'Piano Concerto', first performed
by Joanna MaeGregor in Singapore in 1997.'
In 1999, he wrote ‘A Different Dawn’ which was commissioned for the 2000 St Cecilatide International Festival of Music as a companion piece to Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’. Each of the four movements is based on an Emily Dickinson poem and is scored for strings, percussion & celesta, with a prominent role for bass marimba, which gives the work a very distinctive sonority. In the same year he was asked by Charles Sturridge to provide the score for ‘Longitude’, a two-part TV drama based on the book of that name. Burgon’s powerful score won him his first BAFTA Award, the second coming four years later for The ‘Forsyte Saga’.
In 2000 he wrote ‘Heavenly Things’ a cycle of songs for voice & piano to seven of the Holy Sonnets of John Donne. It was commissioned by the BBC and premiered at the Wigmore Hall by Christopher Maltman & Malcolm Martineau. ‘..a vocal line that contemplates divinity with erotic mysticism shot through with sexual violence’ is how The Guardian described it.
Another very different work which exhibits Burgon’s natural gift for dramatic vocal writing is ‘Shirtless Stephen’, which was commissioned by The Young People’s Chorus of New York and premiered there in 2003. The text, by Peter Porter, charts the ill fated13th century Children’s Crusade and Burgon’s music vividly dramatises this poignant story. In the same year he wrote ‘Alleluia Psallat’, for chorus and orchestra, which was commissioned by the Newbury Spring Festival and premiered before Her Majesty the Queen in 2003, conducted by Alexander Lazarov.
Burgon has always placed a high value on crafting accessible music, and his recent choral music exemplifies this. In 2000 he wrote Christ’s Love, four a cappella settings of mediaeval English texts, including the well-known Corpus Christi Carol. A larger scale piece is ‘Three Mysteries’ (2003). For this Burgon returned to the Chester Mystery Plays for his text, which had previously been the starting point for ‘The Fall of Lucifer’. The new work sets three of the plays, The Betrayal, The Resurrection and The Ascension. The work is intended for a staged or semi-staged performance, ideally in a cathedral, and again illustrates Burgon’s ability to achieve highly dramatic effects by simple means. Two shorter pieces were written in 2005, both for SATB, organ & optional trumpet. These are ‘Death be not Proud’ and ‘Come let us pity Death’ and were written at the request of John Scott, formerly choir master at St Paul’s Cathedral, as pieces for use in Remembrance Day services. In all these pieces the composer ‘raises simplicity of texture to a virtue that allows the compelling narrative of his chosen text to flow unimpeded’.
His most recent large-scale work is the Cello Concerto (2007). It is the fourth of Burgon's concertos and in this one he explores the relationship between soloist and orchestra in a novel way. He said that as he was writing it he began to see the soloist as a figure in a 'Film Noir', pursued and assailed throughout it's three movements by dark forces, but eventually prevailing and escaping to a dream like world, a kind of 'Hollywood Heaven'.
