Matthew Shlomowitz on Theme Street Parade
"Quatuor Diotima have this going-for-it quality, a super energy that suits me really well."
Born in Adelaide, composer Matthew Shlomowitz currently lectures at the Royal College of Music and Syracuse University London Programme, is co-director of Plus-Minus ensemble and was a co-founder of arts organisation Rational Rec. His newest work, Theme Street Parade, was commissioned by the BBC for French string quartet Quatuor Diotima and receives its world premiere at hcmf on Saturday 28 November.
Shlomowitz prefers not to write programme notes for his works; instead he spoke to hcmf, revealing his thoughts about the creation of Theme Street Parade:
“I have to say that I don’t give programme notes, because I’m not very good at writing them, and I generally don’t enjoy reading other people’s either. It’s a very modernist, 20th-century thing to write programme notes. People didn’t do it before, and they don’t do it in other forms of music. I definitely want the piece to live by the music, that’s for sure.
“Theme Street Parade is a continuation of the pieces I’ve been writing for the last couple of years. The basic premise is a formalistic treatment of vernacular materials. In other words, taking very familiar musical themes and doing unexpected things with them. The piece doesn’t have this in it, but imagine hearing calypso music, and you think you understood what this music was and the stylistic place that you were in, the kind of things that were going to happen, but then very different things happened to it. It’s that pulling-the-rug-out thing that I’m interested in.
“There’s also the idea of putting things in patterns and sequences: taking something very humanistic, that has very clear cultural or personal associations, that might even be emotive, but putting it in an alien context, where it’s about a bunch of things in a pattern.
“If you take a lot of repetitive music, like Philip Glass, it’s quite neutral, with arpeggios and stuff. I’m much more interested in taking a gesture from Brian Ferneyhough [who supervised Shlomowitz’s PhD at Stanford University], whose music is never ever repetitive, and making it repeat in the way Philip Glass would treat it. It’s almost the way that Brian would analyse musical material, but I apply it to the wrong things.
“Quatuor Diotima have this going-for-it quality, a super energy that suits me really well. They were superb to work with. Some musicians, if the composer doesn’t know exactly what they want, they think the composer’s unprofessional. But I think performers should have a bit more respect for their own creativity. They were really open to discussing things that I hadn’t finished, and had many ideas. After we had worked through the quartet one day, the next was a really fun, creative day where we experimented and made changes. For me, that was the nicest thing about the whole experience, that they were open to that kind of relationship.”
Matthew Shlomowitz’s website
Buy tickets for Theme Street Parade performed by Quatuor Diotima
Shlomowitz prefers not to write programme notes for his works; instead he spoke to hcmf, revealing his thoughts about the creation of Theme Street Parade:
“I have to say that I don’t give programme notes, because I’m not very good at writing them, and I generally don’t enjoy reading other people’s either. It’s a very modernist, 20th-century thing to write programme notes. People didn’t do it before, and they don’t do it in other forms of music. I definitely want the piece to live by the music, that’s for sure.
“Theme Street Parade is a continuation of the pieces I’ve been writing for the last couple of years. The basic premise is a formalistic treatment of vernacular materials. In other words, taking very familiar musical themes and doing unexpected things with them. The piece doesn’t have this in it, but imagine hearing calypso music, and you think you understood what this music was and the stylistic place that you were in, the kind of things that were going to happen, but then very different things happened to it. It’s that pulling-the-rug-out thing that I’m interested in.
“There’s also the idea of putting things in patterns and sequences: taking something very humanistic, that has very clear cultural or personal associations, that might even be emotive, but putting it in an alien context, where it’s about a bunch of things in a pattern.
“If you take a lot of repetitive music, like Philip Glass, it’s quite neutral, with arpeggios and stuff. I’m much more interested in taking a gesture from Brian Ferneyhough [who supervised Shlomowitz’s PhD at Stanford University], whose music is never ever repetitive, and making it repeat in the way Philip Glass would treat it. It’s almost the way that Brian would analyse musical material, but I apply it to the wrong things.
“Quatuor Diotima have this going-for-it quality, a super energy that suits me really well. They were superb to work with. Some musicians, if the composer doesn’t know exactly what they want, they think the composer’s unprofessional. But I think performers should have a bit more respect for their own creativity. They were really open to discussing things that I hadn’t finished, and had many ideas. After we had worked through the quartet one day, the next was a really fun, creative day where we experimented and made changes. For me, that was the nicest thing about the whole experience, that they were open to that kind of relationship.”
Matthew Shlomowitz’s website
Buy tickets for Theme Street Parade performed by Quatuor Diotima
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