Please tell us a
little about who you are and your background
I am currently completing my
PhD in composition at the Royal Northern College of Music whilst studying
privately with Alexander Goehr and I completed my undergraduate degree and
Masters in composition at Cardiff School of Music under the supervision of
Arlene Sierra and Judith Weir. During my time in both Cardiff and
Manchester I have studied in seminars and workshops with
Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Simon Bainbridge, Julian Anderson, James
MacMillan, Frederic Rzewski, Howard Skempton and in the Cardiff BBC
Studios with Michael Berkley and Jac Van Steen.
I have been commissioned and
performed by Opera North, London Philharmonia, BBC NOW Chamber Players,
Håkan Hardenberger, Colin Currie, Nicholas Daniel, Paul Silverthorne, The
Rhodes Piano Trio, Ebor Singers, Navarra Quartet, Dudok Quartet, Ligeti
Quartet, Aurora Percussion Duo, HM Royal Marines Windband, Camerata Pacifica,
Manchester Camerata, and The Absolution Saxophone Quartet amongst
others.
I am a Royal Northern Gold
Medal composer and have been featured in festivals including Music of
Today 2009, James MacMillan 2009, RNCM Chamberfest 2011, Sounds New
Canterbury 2010, HCMF 2011, Queen’s Belfast 2012, North West 2012, St.
Magnus 2012, IC Hong Kong 2012, Internationaal Kamermuziekfestival Den
Haag 2012 and Banff 2012.
I am a member of the LSO's
composer soundhub; the composer in residence with Milton Keynes
City Orchestra and London Arte Chamber Orchestra; a co-director of
Collectives and Curiosities; and a member of the Chetham’s International
Summer School Faculty.
My string quartet has recently
been published by Donemus in Amsterdam.
What/who inspires
or motivates you?
For me, music is clarification and I always try to refine and almost
purify an idea so that it has as much authority and impact as possible. I love to write music that
musicians want to play and communicate with and therefore each project has a
different motivation / inspiration depending on who I am working with. For
example, over the last 2 years I have been working on an opera with librettist
Nic Chalmers and therefore there has been a strong collaborative drive as well
a wonderful opportunity to share ideas in the form of texts, images, dance and
theatre.
It is also true, however, that
I am deeply disturbed by the dissolution of the human condition and across
most of my work my inspiration is drawn from painful reflections on the state
of humanity all over the world in every type of society and race. I think
of sonority metaphorically carving out shapes within a space / cutting through
a space / defining a particular type of space within a piece of music and it is
from this starting point that I try to, metaphorically, create a space
that I feel that best resonates with the magnitude of the
subject matter.
Proprioception – [kinesthesia (sense of body motion) is sometimes used
interchangeably with proprioception (sense of body within an
environment / a particular space)] – links to my choice of instruments
and my approach to writing for them, for example, for me the trumpet timbre is
a powerful sonority and I am drawn to it because it is textured, “rough” around
the edges, direct, physical, unpredictable, visceral, potent, and immediate.
How would you
describe your style?
I have long since been obsessed
with the concept of space in the temporal art form, music. In my practice
I approach this by taking something concrete in an architectural structure, and
translating it – or filtering it – through the specific notion of timbre. The
way that I conceive of line, space, light and direction is through the medium
of a particular instrument creating a space within a composition; a kind of
aesthetic synaesthesia perhaps not too dissimilar to Messiaen’s medical
synaesthesia. Music that draws on register and timbre of instruments in order
to ‘represent’ or draw a concept of space into music has been considered by
several contemporary composers. Brian Ferneyhough’s Carceri d’Invenzione
I provides an example of fluent, translucent and extreme registral
lines and was conceptually based on Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etchings of
Rome and imagined surrealist prisons (Carceri d’Invenzione) from
the mid Eighteenth century where the lines of the paintings appear to travel
beyond the page itself. However, in the music that I write I have set out to
explore the particular timbre of the trumpet. I aim to capture and create an
audible darkness and light that represents a particular visual and / or spatial
awareness of striking shapes or acoustics of particular buildings and
structures that make an impact on me.
What is your
composing routine. When do you like to write?
I write whenever I can -
sometimes, especially early on in the creation of the piece, I have
to block out complete days to work from early morning right through into the
night - sometimes, if I have already worked out a plan and know my material
well then I know where I am going with a piece and it is much easier to fit in
a few hours here and there in between other engagements and private teaching
etc.
What were the
challenges in writing the piece for the New Dots concert?
It was my first wind quartet! I
also wanted to work, a little, with multiphonics - this is also an area that I
haven't had any experience with previously so I needed lots of time to work
with the players on the first movement of the quartet in particular.
What does the
future hold?
I am currently working on a few
chamber music / solo commissions as well as my first chamber opera. I also
co-direct Collectives and Curiosities and this year we have a residency with
LSO on their soundhub scheme so we are working hard on
curating our main event for the 21st June.
What makes you smile?
Children; young
animals; deliberate kindness; any expression of innocencehttp://emmaruthrichards.wordpress.com
https://soundcloud.com/errichards
@err_composer
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