Mention Andrew Poppy, and people will most likely
recall a couple of relatively high profile albums released on ZTT
in the mid 1980’s, charting the British face of what was once
called ‘Systems music’. In fact, Poppy’s work
has continued to develop in many and varied directions since then.
Laurence Crane fills in the blanks.
Over the last two decades Andrew Poppy has steadily assembled
a fascinating and unusual body of work which encompasses concert
music, opera and scores for contemporary dance, theatre, film and
television. Despite a certain amount of commercial success in the
1980’s Poppy’s work remains largely neglected by musical
organisations in this country. At a time when many younger composers
seem to achieve recognition by producing music which is safe and
superficial this neglect of a genuine original is, to say the least,
slightly scandalous.
Andrew Poppy is undoubtedly an original composer but paradoxically
it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint that originality in terms
of a definition of his musical style. This is principally because
defining musical characteristics differ from work to work; each
piece deliberately inhabits its own self-contained world, setting
out with determination to explore strictly defined musical parameters
and also non-musical and conceptual preoccupations. Poppy expertly
fuses tonal and non-tonal harmonic worlds in such a way that the
listener actually forgets about the polarity between them. Despite
this diversity it’s clear that one composer is at work; one
with a keen sense of structure and proportion.
This diversity is well illustrated by pieces on two of the five
CD’s that Poppy has recorded. ‘The Beating of Wings’
was one of two CD’s released on the pop label ZTT during the
mid 1980’s when pop musicians had become interested in what
classical composers of a minimalist persuasion were doing; Poppy
had excellent credentials in this respect as a founder member of
the systems music big band The Lost Jockey. The four pieces on ‘The
Beating of Wings’ show an assured handling of facets of a
post-minimal world, from ‘32 Frames for Orchestra’,
a majestic chaconne based on a simple progression of four chords,
to ‘Listening In’, an hypnotic and muscular piece created
in the recording studio. By further contrast ‘Poems and Toccatas’
on his CD ‘Recordings’ (released on the composers’
own Bitter and Twisted label in 1992) is a sequence of short pieces
for violin and piano. The harmonic language is more angular and
taut and the pieces are beautifully crafted.
More recent work, so far unrecorded (although live recordings are
available at Bmic - ed), includes ‘Horn Horn’, a double
saxophone concerto in six movements, written in 1996 for John Harle
and Simon Haram and the extraordinary ‘Revolution no. 8: Airport
for Joseph Beuys’ for orchestra, a desolate soundscape utilising
tape delay which, for this writer at least, is possibly Andrew Poppy’s
finest achievement to date.
© Laurence Crane 1999
Photo: Serge Leroy
Extract from "Ghost" © Andrew Poppy 1999
All five of Andrew Poppy’sCD releases,The Beating of Wings,
Alphabed, Ophelia/Ophelia, Rude Bloom and Recordings are available
for listening at Bmic, along with scores including 32 Frames, Ember
and Ghost, plus non-commercial recordings including Horn Horn, Last
Light and Revolution No.8: Airport for Joseph Beuys.
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Andrew Poppy
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