David Owen, who was profiled in the last issue
of Counterpoints, presents a personal view of fellow composer Ross
Lorraine’s independent path.
The first piece of Ross Lorraine’s that I heard (and played)
was called "No Way". Written for The Lost Jockey, it stood
at an oblique angle to the band’s general aesthetic in its
alert, crafted self-containment. It was both repetitive and concise
– an unusual combination for 1983.
Although the music sounds very different now, Lorraine is still
his own composer, producing work which, while receptive to external
influence, expresses a notable consistency and independence of thought.
The (as yet unstaged) opera "The Birthmark" offers some
clues as to his preoccupations. Based on Hawthorne’s story
about a scientist who kills his wife whilst trying to ‘perfect’
her, it disclose a trenchantly disturbing metaphor of contemporary
problematics surrounding The Beautiful.
Many of Lorraine’s works deal with the tension between lyricism
(‘beauty’) and fragmentation (that which, like the opera’s
rationalist anti-hero, threatens to undermine – or perhaps
transform – it). In "Lebenslauf" (1995) the piano
appears to restrain the soprano’s tendency towards melodic
flight as much as encourage it. Their tenuous alliance always seems
on the point of not ‘going on’, at the same time that
it spins out a fragile narrative of subdued expressivity.
Lorraine’s purely instrumental music explores a similar dichotomy.
"Melos" (1996) (a revised version of which was recently
broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Hear and Now’) presents
its most explicit dramatisation, and there is a near-Romantic pathos
in the dialectic between ‘melody’, and the heterophonic,
pointillistic strategies by/through which it is both punctured and
brought into being.
Most recently, Lorraine has produced a series of solo instrumental
works inspired by specific performers. "Apocrypha" (1996)
threads together moments of exquisite pianistic sonority which,
while suggesting (and to some extent exploring) relationship, preserve
an almost Cage-ian sense of autonomy. Here virtuosity is muted –
concentrated in the touch. In the central section of "Tacet"
(1999) this tendency is taken to its extreme, as Ian Pace’s
formidable technique is put to the task of playing music of extreme
difficulty without actually producing a sound. (Paradoxically, the
‘ideally’ silent performance is not what the composer
intends – rather the splintering of that silence as notes
escape unintentionally from beneath the pianist’s fingers).
"new work" (1999), on the other hand, very audibly mut(illat)es
the ‘natural’ sound of Andrew Sparling’s bass
clarinet, producing a series of fragmentary sonorities which are
then assembled into a completely unconventional, but utterly persuasive
lyricism. In this and other recent works, Lorraine seems to be distancing
himself from the sound-worlds and practices of traditional Modernism,
and connecting himself with earlier and ongoing experience of improvisation,
theatre and collaboration.
The surface and context changes: deeper themes – and oblique
angles – remain. New works are in the pipeline (including
a bass flute solo for Nancy Ruffer), and a Cheltenham commission
for 2001 will bring his work to a wider audience. Lorraine is a
composer with something to say, and I (for one) am curious to hear
how he will choose to say it next.
© David Owen 2000
Ross Lorraine : Movements and Acts
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Ross Lorraine
other contemporaries
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