Why a Schubertiad?

Svend Brown, Artistic Director, talks about this year’s Schubertiad…

This year, on the 10th birthday of the East Neuk Festival, I have given myself a present (it is the Director’s perogative): a Schubertiad, a full afternoon and evening of Schubert’s music performed by some of his finest interpreters: song, sonata, quartet, trio, duo… He is one of the few composers I could listen to all day. I was prompted to reflect on why that is the other day when I heard someone describe Schubert as “the most human of composers”. Such glib phrases usually deserve to be dismissed out of hand, but a certain truth shines through this platitude.

Schubert does have a rare ability to communicate human emotion and invites us to share sorrows, fears, joys, hubris, elation, dejection, equability… he captures shades of feelings between them in the truest, subtlest colours music can offer. Schubert is also flawed – a very human attribute. Undoubtedly, being flawed is part of the Romantic aesthetic of his age, but usually in a heroic sense: in striving after the ultimate, man fails, but is no less magnificent for it. This lies at the heart of Goethe as much as it does Caspar David Friedrich. With Schubert you feel sometimes he simply misjudged. There are movements by him that are as interminable as they are gorgeous. There are points when his rhythmic or melodic obsessiveness suffocates the music’s power to elate or stir. Brahms – who loved Schubert passionately – expressed it beautifully when he wrote: “Where is genius like his, which soars aloft so boldly and surely…To me he is like a child of the gods, who plays with Jupiter’s thunder, albeit also occasionally handling it oddly”. This neatly encapsulates a great deal of what Schubert means to me: if he has flaws then they render him all the more absorbing and fascinating. One could argue that he was young – just 31 – when he died. Had he lived, surely he would have learned from his mistakes and attained ever-greater command and perfection. Perhaps: but we are talking about a teenager who wrote the wonderfully perfect Gretchen am Spinnrade at the age of 17. A teenager living in the shadow of Beethoven in the city of Mozart who brought to music aspects of the human condition never before expressed. The hesitant rhythm of the cello over the rapturous chorale of the String Quintet’s slow movement; or the G-flat Impromptu; the faltering melody of the F minor Fantasia. These are moments that, for me, define the sublime in music but all have something torn and heartrendingly fragile about them.

It is this complex nature of Schubert wedded to his awe-inspiring gift that make him the only composer that I can listen to at length, undiluted by other composers. There are very few of those. I hope you will join me, Christian Zacharias and all the artists for what promises to be a wonderful day.

People think that the East Neuk Festival is mostly a music festival – but the truth is that it is really a space festival

Music is the sea we swim in, but it is the venues, their history, acoustics, locations and atmosphere that really fire my imagination and make me want to think about it afresh. They have the same effect on our artists. Christian Zacharias loves Crail Church and would perform nowhere else in the East Neuk out of choice. Quatuor Ebene were utterly enamoured of Cellardyke Church when they came; the list of people who have fallen in love with St Monans is too long to write down… For me, these are old favourites, but the exciting discovery is the barn at Cambo. Three things make it special. First: the immense acoustic which could accommodate many different kinds of music. Second, that fact that it is basically an empty space, a blank canvas; this year we will have 3 utterly different concerts there over 3 days: Tudor polyphony on the Friday, American environmental music on Saturday and orchestral music on the Sunday. Lastly, there is its location – bang in the middle of a farm overlooking fields and the sea. So on Sunday you will listen to Beethoven’s countryside symphony being performed in the heart of the countryside – so much so you will probably hear cows and birds during the performance.

Performances of Beethoven’s Pastoral are plentiful – but I passionately wanted to have this one because really excellent, illuminating performances of it are not. I have every reason to believe that the team of Zacharias and SCO will deliver a very special interpretation – I have heard Zacharias direct Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth symphonies and felt elated on both occasions, relishing his capacity to make them fresh and new without resorting to any kind of gimmickry or ostentatious interpretation. Zacharias has opted to add two other gorgeous pieces with nature close to their hearts (Ravel and Honneger), but for the beginning of the concert he has kindly accommodated my own quirky thoughts.

The start of a concert is a critical moment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the standard approach (conductor comes on, everyone bows, go) but sometimes an opportunity arises to take a different approach. On Sunday, I hope to give the audience two moments of unexpected poetry to beguile them and draw them into the musical world Zacharias and the orchestra will create.

Our top five tips for the festival and all FREE!

Planning a trip to the East Neuk Festival? Don’t miss out on our top five things to do between the concerts and talks – FREE events, activities and fun that add up to a great day out:

1. Family activities at Cambo! There will be face-painting, drumming workshops, bird walks, colouring in and nature trails, and a chance to help build an enormous nest! There are ticketed events too including story telling and loads of music. It all happens on Saturday 6 July at Cambo Estate near St Andrews from 11am. For more info, visit our website.

2. Check out the sand sculpture: the annual miracle as the guys from Sand In Your Eye transform 20 tonnes of sand – just sand! – into a fabulous work of art. Previous years have seen trains, boats and even Beethoven rising up on Crail High Street: what will it be this year? Only one way to find out… And remember that it takes a full 3 days to go from a pile of sand to artwork so drop in anytime you are passing to check on progress (From Wed 3 July, The Honeypot Cafe, Crail).

3. While you are in Crail, don’t miss Lisa Hooper’s Festival Exhibition: one of Scotland’s top artists, she is famed for her gorgeous prints of birds and other wildlife. They are absolutely enchanting and you can buy one to take home with you. Thu 4 – Sat 6 July between 10.30am-4pm, then Sunday 1.30pm-4pm at Crail Church Hall.

4. Get a breath of fresh air: Take a walk along the coastal path: justly famous for its wonderful seascapes, natural beauty and historic monuments, Fife’s Coastal Path is an inexhaustible treasure. Our favourite bits are from Crail to Pittenweem or Elie to St Monans.

5. Visit the galleries: East Fife is home to an astounding number of artists and many galleries which sell art, crafts, pottery and more. Pittenweem, Anstruther and Crail have the highest numbers – and you can always combine a browse in the galleries with a cuppa in one of the many lovely cafes. Here’s a couple of our favourites to get you started: Crail Gallery, The Coach House, Pittenweem.

The sounds of a silent summer

So it really is time to “listen and look up” to quote  the resonant phrase of  Richard Mabey,  one of the shining lights of our inaugural Littoral programme last year. It really is time to pay attention, take note, take action, lest we lose the wildlife and birdlife with which we are inextricably interlinked. As the great John Muir, born and brought up on the other side of the Firth of the Forth from the East Neuk, long before such fancy terms as “biodiversity” were invented, wrote: “When we tug  at a single thing in Nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.”

Given this incontrovertible (though often ignored) reality, it looks as if we may be heading for trouble, fast. Sparrows? (More of them in a moment.) Starlings? Sandeels? Maybe not as sexy as more exotic species, but their continuing disappearance has profound repercussions for us all. This month’s State of Nature report, a seminal audit by a consortium of 25 different wildlife organisations, makes simultaneously worrying and galvanising reading, a pattern of loss and change gleaming  with mica- like shards  of hope. (Come on the corncrake!)

On a recent stroll in blustery Spring sunshine along the Fife coastal path, past some of the lovely venues we’ll be using in the East Neuk festival, all seemed ineffably right with the world. Gulls  – so many sorts – wheeled and soared above the waves. Ah, there was the kestrel in his favourite spot above the tangled undergrowth between fields and sea,  a miracle of aerodynamics, hovering motionless amidst the gusts, darting down on his scurrying prey. A heron flapped in meditative slow motion across the rocks. Comical gangs of wee dippers scurried  about the sands at the outgoing tide, pecking like little clockwork toys. Cormorants bagged the best positions on the skerries, grandly spreading their wings as if acknowledging applause.  So much life! Only a little later, an entire pod of sperm whales would be spotted near the Isle of May!  But only a little earlier, puffins were being washed ashore, dead and starved…

Right here, in the unique coastal region of our festival, the drama of  changing environmental forces  is being played out in full. When we programmed Littoral, our literary revealing of the natural world, we knew that including  a discussion on the last fifty years of our interference with ecology  and what the immediate future holds was going to be essential. Little did we know just how pertinent, urgent  and timely such an event would be.

So, on the last morning  of Littoral, (Sunday 7 July, 11.30am, Crail Church Hall, since you ask) our expert and insightful panel of environmental historians, naturalists and acute observers, T C Smout, John Lister-Kaye and Esther Woolfson will be considering the deep changes to habitat and species which have  accelerated alarmingly in recent years. We’ve all seen it. Just consider your own garden or back green, your local streets, the skies above our cities and seas – how they have altered. It was ever thus of course, we humans  happily persecuting “pests” out of existence  – or indeed introducing them – with an entire chain of unintended consequences. But David Attenborough introducing the ground-breaking State of Nature  report was unequivocal. During the last 50 years, since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, threats to habitat and climate change have contributed to a decline in 60% of the species studied, 31% having strongly declined and more than 1 in 10 in danger of disappearing from the UK forever. And Scotland, having most of our wild spaces and creatures, will be affected more than most.

Does it matter? It could hardly matter more. The report’s summary sagely and calmly states: “We should act to save nature for its intrinsic value and for the benefits it brings to us that are essential to our well-being and prosperity.” I would be considerably more vehement  than that. This is about our survival; and it is about our souls

Our speakers all know this, profoundly.  Professor Smout, most eminent of historians and himself resident of Anstruther, looks out over the Firth of Forth every day, Gone are the oyster beds, the vast shoals of herring, the coal and salt industries, the last remnants of boat-building at St Monan’s. In the Highlands, eagle-eyed naturalist Sir John Lister-Kaye does his daily walk to a high lochan  and sees the beauty and terror of nature itself and the effects of  “mankind’s peaceless domination.” Esther Woolfson recalls the miracle of the vast sweeping  displays of starlings above the busiest cross-roads in Union Street in Aberdeen  (I also remember them vividly, growing up there as a dreamy sky-watching child in the pre-oil 1960s), now gone, starlings endangered. Who would ever have thought it?

And sparrows? Sure they may still chase each other cheekily through bustling  hedgerows  – but they are disappearing. Why?  Let us celebrate them while we may, for as Woolfson says in Field Notes from A Hidden City : “If we lose sparrows, everything will change. Our lives will change, even if we don’t  at the time fully appreciate how. They’ll be lost before our eyes and as with every loss our lives will be thinner, lesser; the future not only of the physical world but our mental world will be diminished, the world of our history and legend, where the life of all our cultures resonates with all we’ve seen and all we’ve lived with, plant and animal and stone and cloud.”

Overly romantic? Just a few wee birds? I don’t think so. Come and share your thoughts and hopes.

Catherine Lockerbie

May 2013

My Taverner Habit

East Neuk Festival Director, Svend Brown, explains his fascination for John Taverner’s Missa Corona Spinea.

A composer attended the most important and magnificent diplomatic event of Henry VIII’s reign (The Field of the Cloth of Gold), the King’s chosen musician, the finest of his age – which was, by the way, an era in which British music stood among the most admired in the world, Who was he? John Taverner, one of the greatest composers these islands have ever produced – someone few music lovers know about. Fewer can name one of his pieces – not even the piece which inspired imitation and re-imaginings right up to our own time: the In Nomine. One shouldn’t get too downhearted about that kind of thing: after all Bach and Vivaldi spent their century and more in obscurity, and look at them now!

My own Taverner habit started before I heard a note of his music. Peter Maxwell Davies wrote an opera – Taverner – inspired by his life. It tells the colourful (and probably apocryphal) tale of a great musician destroyed by politics and faith in turbulent times. It captured my imagination and at the age of 17, I, and 2 friends took the bus south to London to see it at Covent Garden. Max founded his own music on Taverner’s, but transmuted it beyond recognition. Only at the tragic close do we hear clearly that In Nomine.

I heard a lot more when I was studying at Oxford: I arrived in 1983, just as an extraordinary new LP was released. Taverner’s Missa Corona Spinea, performed by Christ Church Cathedral Choir direct by Francis Grier: it knocked me for six. Here was music of a flamboyant splendour and magnificence I had never imagined. It was huge, built of vast lines driven by muscular rhythmic lines over irresistibly propulsive harmonies. At once it was monumental and statuesque yet also possessed of phenomenal forward thrust and intricate detail. It was love at first sight and it was constantly on in my room: people on my stair must have loved me…. I still listen to it with huge pleasure, accepting its imperfections as part of its magnetic appeal.

Grier and his choir spent best part of a year preparing for this. Commanding the phrasing and structure is achievement enough, but the special extra challenge they set themselves was to sing it at what we believe to be the original pitch of Taverner’s time – a minor third higher than today. The score is peppered with top ‘g’s for the trebles, so the boys had to build up the stamina to hit top b-flats (that’s almost 2 octaves above middle C) every few seconds for 40 minutes. And how they hit them! The only other recording I found at the time is careful and pallid by comparison. Christ Church gave it a danger, radiance and rhythm not a million miles from the best minimal music of today. They had me from the first notes, but the best was to come. The piece shows Taverner’s mastery of choral textures. Each part of the text has its own ensemble – duos, trios, quartets… and the tuttis! They blaze. Their absolute opposite is what is called a ‘hollow texture’ – when Taverner deploys only the highest and lowest voices – no safety net between them.

The highlights of the piece are the last two sections. In the Sanctus & Benedictus (the penultimate section of the mass) Taverner writes what is called a ‘gimmell’ (twin). The mass is set for 6 voice parts: in a gimmell he divides one of those parts in two – and here it happens to be the treble. These two lines intertwine and chase each other exuberantly in the stratosphere over a deep foundation of slow moving chant miles below. It’s fantastic. Then in the Agnus Dei, he goes yet further and creates a double gimmell – so now you have the top two voices both divided to create an amazing 4 voice texture soaring and diving to the words ‘Miserere Nobis’ (Have mercy upon us). This is music that leaves me utterly awed and silenced in a way the bray of hundreds of orchestral musicians never has.

The challenges of presenting this music are considerable – not least because it is so little known. I am deeply grateful to Peter and The Tallis Scholars for performing it at ENF. I heard them do it some years ago in a building that is as fine an architectural twin to this music as any I know: York Minster. In East Neuk we will have the glories of the Barn – not such a distinguished visual, I concede, but – I hope – an acoustic in which this music will glow and float. And after all, Taverner came from farming country – Lincolnshire, where he is buried.

© Svend Brown 2013

Lisa Hooper in the studio

It’s hard to believe after the weekend of snow, but recently the weather in Galloway has been cold and clear with glorious sunny days perfect for bird watching. Some friends who are serious birdwatchers came to stay last week and we spent some time on the shores of Loch Ryan looking at Long Tailed Ducks, Pale Bellied Brent Geese, Golden Plovers and a flotilla of 40 odd Red Throated Divers. This area is famous for its suite of wintering geese: Greenland White Fronts, Barnacle Geese and Pinkfeet, all three of which we clocked up. They look so marvellous when the sky is netted with skeins. Thoughts turned to summer and the prospect of a bit of coastal walking around Crail (if I’m allowed out) for inspiration!

In the studio I’ve been listening to Heidi Talbot and Julie Fowlis and working on a woodcut of Ailsa Craig, inspired by a couple of visits to the South Ayrshire coast, which is a short hop away for us. It is a woodcut made using two pieces of wood, the first is a relatively smooth ply, which I have used to print several colours in succession, gradually cutting away more of the wood. The second is a piece of floor ply which has good grain, so the final overprinting of the sea was done with this. I’ve been experimenting with water based inks which are quick drying and mean I can run workshops in multi-plate printing over two days. The inks handle rather differently from oil based inks but they are easy to clean up and the colours are great.

Having spent most of the winter preparing new work, the exhibitions season is about to kick off and I find myself constantly distracted by the need to frame, list and label my pictures. Another distraction has been a social media training course, run by our local arts centre (Gracefield, Dumfries). I am now the proud owner of a new Facebook page and a Twitter profile. Have just felt brave enough to tweet! (See the links on the right of the page to follow me on social media.)

With two more workshops to run in the next couple of weeks I’m still hoping to squeeze in time to work on a new print, which I have sketched out, of two hares. It will be a rather simple collagraph, inspired by my current interest in Inuit art.

Recent publicity about Sylvia Plath prompted me to pick up Ariel again. Lovely to re-read her work. Have also been scouring Gerard Manley Hopkins for inspirational quotes (I often incorporate poetry in my work), and came up with “Out of the swing of the sea” for a line of Razorbills on a rock. Someone pointed out to me that they look a bit like Nuns – GMH fans will smile at the connection, which hadn’t actually occurred to me!

This week I have been painting Puffins! Inspired by Puffins on Orkney, this hand coloured woodcut was done over the winter. I need to hand colour a few at a time for framing.  This one will definitely be winging its way to Crail in July…

Exploring a new wave of nature writing…

Jenny Brown, co-director (with Catherine Lockerbie) of Littoral – the ENF’s literary strand – shares her excitement and pleasure in exploring a new wave of nature writing…

Goshawks, kittiwakes, magpies, otters, butterflies and badgers hover, swoop, flutter and snuffle through this second year of Littoral.

Nature and wildlife, once the preserve of those celebrated North American writers (starting with Thoreau and continuing with Barry Lopez et al) inspires writers from these isles to respond as never before to landscape and ecology. Roger Deakin’s Wildwood is often held up as one of the first of this new wave, with the likes of Robert Macfarlane and Mark Cocker close behind. Littoral seizes an irresistible chance to showcase this fresh literary response to the natural world in a place of outstanding beauty. With its rolling landscapes and seascapes, it’s no accident that some of the best of these writers live right in the heart of the Neuk.

Last year was the first – and it was a wonderful vote of confidence in a fledgling festival that the leading writer on nature, Richard Mabey, came and participated in discussion with Richard Holloway at Crail Church then conducted a memorable walk along the coastal path telling tales of giant hogweed. Also in that programme, Kathleen Jamie and Sara Maitland debated the place of women writers in this world of new nature writing. Could a female sensibility find room beside what they saw as the tweed-jacketed brigade of male writers?

In just a year that argument is behind us, and our programme includes male and female writers who bring a special quality of perception to their writing. Annie Dillard, the revered American writer, commented “We are here to witness” – advice closely heeded by our writers, many of whom have gone to extraordinary lengths (often at considerable personal discomfort) to find and observe creatures now rarely seen. For instance, take Miriam Darlington, who brings a poet’s eye to a search, recounted in her beguiling book Otter Country. Her passion for otters started in childhood, kindled by reading Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water and Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter. But otters are elusive creatures and few in number – although hunting has stopped, many are still killed on the roads. She learns to watch, she learns stillness and patience, she borrows waders and wraps her feet in tinfoil to stave off the cold water and is rewarded by close sightings. Behind the tale lies a tension common in writing like this, between a sense of urgency to document before it’s too late, and the patience needed to track these creatures down.

Many writers in our programme, writers like Miriam Darlington and Patrick Barkham, can instill in us a better appreciation of the natural world and make us keener witnesses. Esther Woolfson, who enchanted readers with her account of a life with crows in Corvus, recently wrote a lovely essay in The Guardian about the achievement and reward of February, of having got through darkest period, and the joy to be found in watching the behaviour of birds as we progress towards spring. The progress towards spring – now there’s an uplifting thought!

Cambo Saturday – a family day out

STOP PRESS! Latest programme details for the weekend at East Neuk Festival – download it here:

Cambo Weekend brochure PDF

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I speak for the whole ENF team when I say that we love presenting our events all over the East Neuk, trying new places and locations each year. But we have, for quite a while, felt the challenge of creating a true ’Festival’ atmosphere. It’s not like having an event in one place: Pittenweem and Edinburgh both have it in their favour that everything happens within walking distance, and the very air smells of festival. Our events are spread out over a 100 square mile area. That’s quite a different challenge. So, we thought, could we have the best of both worlds. Keep our events spread far and wide, but also plan a special BIG DAY in just one place? A kind of festival centre that we can fill with all kinds of music, literature, ideas, walks, family events and activities, food. Somewhere you can just drop in to enjoy the free entertainment, food and festive atmosphere, or come specially for a specific event. Come for an hour and end up staying all afternoon. If you know ENF you’ll know that our basic response to most things is: try it and see!

Last year we hugely enjoyed working with the Cambo Estate on our potato barn concert. Everyone there was so enthusiastic and helpful, and – even in the face of driving rain, mud, challenging parking and plummeting temperatures – it was a huge success: the most talked about event of the festival. So when we took this new idea to Sir Peter and Lady Erskine we were delighted that they embraced it whole-heartedly.

The big day is the Saturday of the ENF (6 July). What can you expect? Well, Cambo, with its historic house, huge garden, park, woodland and beach, is a magical place to start with. That has been impressed on me more than ever this past year as we have visited the estate over and over again for planning.

Into this magic place we have poured an amazing European premiere of a very special piece of music for the Garden; major nature writers, artists and thinkers talk on aspects of nature and birdlife. Story telling in the magical stables; crafts and family activities, food, drink… from 11am til 6pm there will always be something going on – and you can take time out just to walk the grounds, the beach and the woodland. You can find all the ticketed events listed on our website and we’ll be announcing more details in the run up to July – follow us on facebook and check in here regularly for full details.

And after it’s all over we would love to know what you thought about it. Who doesn’t say that? But we really mean it: if it works this year, and everyone agrees… we could do it twice next year. Or three times…

It’s all about the birds…

I am not big on themes in festivals. I dislike having my cultural experiences over-mediated: a heavily-themed festival can be like being served by a waiter who insists on listing every technique and ingredient on your plate as the food goes cold in front of you. Better to decide for yourself which flavours and textures to relish. That’s a tough discipline or festival directors – to trust your audience enough to step back: don’t direct them so that they miss not a single one of your nuances or deft touches: let them make their own festival from what you offer.

Having said all that… we have a theme this year. Birds. Nature’s musicians – treasured songsters whose rich chorus is slowly falling silent all over the world, even as we watch and hear. People deep in the country are waking up to find no dawn chorus. In my childhood I woke most mornings to a lawn full of urban birds – finches, tits, blackbirds, thrushes mostly – hard at work farming the worms. Now all I see is the occasional sparrow, gull or starling. Even they are under threat.

So between us, Catherine Lockerbie, Jenny Brown and me, we have focused on this grand tragedy befalling our tiny creatures, and we reflect and celebrate them in music, art, writing and ideas. Every idea has a starting point, and for this one it was the opportunity to present music by American composer John Luther Adams to the UK.

The names can be confusing – there are many John Adams in the USA (check any phone book) but for two of them to be major composers is unfortunate. John Luther Adams is slightly younger than John Adams, and musically he is worlds apart. Both men matured musically at a time of magnificent experiment and adventure in American music – the 1960s and 70s. They share some inspirations – not least John Cage, Lamont Young and Lou Harrison. Both tap into a poetic, mystic vein that runs through American art, starting somewhere near Whitman, Dickinson and Emerson. But where JA is most to be found in the world’s great cities working with the great orchestras, JLA is a nature lover, a desert dweller. He lives in Alaska and fills his work with the imagery and inspiration of nature. He asks for strange instrumental combinations; takes music out of the concert hall and in to the open. He works in visual art as well as music. He is a master at giving his musicians freedom to shape the work within the parameters he sets. And the results are simply beautiful.

JLA’s Inuksuit and Songbirdsongs both feature bird song and Inuksuit actually takes place in the open air so there is a goodly chance that actual birds may join in (the gulls are always trying to get in on the act at ENF anyhow: anyone remember the hushed close of Lark Ascending being disrupted by a raucous cackle from the roof?). I will be writing about those pieces plenty in the coming months, for now though I want to make my thanks to Catherine and Jenny and to the artist Lisa Hooper whose gorgeous prints are on display in Crail Church Hall, for the shared passion that has brought together such a rich array of talk, music and art all about the birds this year. I look forward to seeing you there.