Michael Nyman - Avoiding Bach

Last night I learned that Michael Nyman had never actually heard Bach's Goldberg Variations.  For one of the world's most famous living composers, indeed, the man who first used the term 'minimal' to describe a certain type of music, that alone is staggering.  But when I also learned that Nyman had composed the Goldberg Shuffle, a piece based on Bach's 'Aria' from which the Variations spring, I was left baffled and, dare I say it, incredulous.

The Michael Nyman Band

As someone who has very little grasp of the technicalities of music - short of strumming ten to twelve clumsy chords on my guitar - but who, nevertheless, can't envisage a day passing without listening to music, I'm not at all sure how that works. Surely Nyman must have encountered the Variations at some point in his musical life?  In his days at The Royal Academy of Music, would he have quickened his step when passing a room where some young student was getting to grips with the piece?  Would he have had to resort to sticking fingers in his ears when entering an elevator – an admittedly sophisticated one – and encountering Bach's masterpiece piping out of tinny speakers?  Has he never seen The Silence of the Lambs? 

Nyman's lecture, 'Music which has influenced me, but which I have never heard', which I attended at City, University of London (part of the Department of Music's Distinguished Lecture Series) was both provocative and engaging.  And despite my limited musical knowledge, I came close to voicing my thoughts in the question and answer session at the close of the talk, but was put off by the fear that my question might be somewhat trivial.  Nyman, who talked freely, letting his thoughts flow without any significant structure, cut a louche and relaxed figure as he covered a variety of moments in his career.  Leaning back in his chair - stylish spectacles perched atop a bald, avuncular head, and cool shoes worn without socks, - he mused on the creative process, occasionally dropping in a slither of gossip.  

Michael Nyman - 'louche' is a compliment in my book

I was particularly struck by the story of how he came up with the music for Jane Campion's film The Piano.  Realising that he needed to imagine himself into the world of an 1850s mute Scotswoman, he trawled the stacks of the Senate House music library and picked out, at random, sheets of long forgotten Nineteenth Century Scottish folk songs.  And then, after composing on a cheap synthesiser that rested on top of a Black and Decker workbench in a house that was undergoing significant building work, he would send transcribed variations of this music to Holly Hunter (the actor who played Ada in the film) that she could then learn.   

Jane Campion's The Piano. Was it really 1993? 

'The Heart Ask Pleasure First' will never sound the same again.  But then maybe that's the issue with this.  Maybe that's why Nyman avoided listening to the Bach, not wanting to taint something that he sensed – after reading the music – he could one day work with.  For instance, even the briefest encounter with one of Glenn Gould's astonishing and eccentric interpretations of the Goldberg Variations, would never leave you (Nyman talked about how he had only ever read about Gould's two iconic performances of the work).   

Indeed, my own two favourite Nyman pieces stir up very subjective connections.  The manic and mesmerising score for Peter Greenaway's film A Zed and Two Noughts conjures up the image of a Russian ex-girlfriend dancing around a North London flat to 'Angelfish Decay' whilst eating kidney beans straight out of a tin.  And then there's Nyman's majestic score for Michael Winterbottom's largely unheralded masterpiece Wonderland.  One scene alone in that film, accompanied by Nyman's simple yet stirring motif, as lonely singleton Nadia walks away from a miserable blind date into the dazzling Soho and Chinatown lights – the film speeding up in a blur of neon as she wanders around aimlessly – captures night-time London in all its boozy, romantic glory.  I absolutely adore this film and urge you to seek it out.  

Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland. My two cinema buddies hated this film. I loved it. 

We also got to hear and see some music accompanied by film after the lecture. The 2015 song cycle, War Work: 8 Songs with Film was instantly recognisable as the work of Nyman.  Archive footage of soldiers exercising, and then a single soldier suffering from the horrifying effects of shell shock, was played on the overhead projector.  The latter's danse macabre, twisting grotesquely to the mechanical quality of the music, brought a sombre close to the evening, one that was heightened even further when the next song in the cycle was paused a little too late and a large image of a raw piece of meat remained on the screen.

But back to the subject of the lecture, 'Music which has influenced me but which I have never heard'. It's almost as if Nyman needs to bring absolute purity to his creations.  But for myself, as a habitual consumer of culture rather than a creator, there's something depressingly ascetic about the this deprival.  Although it is one that certainly rejects the adage, that in order to create you need to engage with the canon.  Except, perhaps, in music.  Indeed, Nyman has certainly 'read' the Goldberg Variations, and maybe, as a creative genius, that's is all that is necessary.  Or, indeed, for him, essential.