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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022
This article considers the recent music of the British composer Richard Emsley. It takes as a framework Tim Ingold's reflections on the creation of knowledge, not as the study of fixed objects but as a study with them, expressed in his 2013 book Making. The article examines the forces of resistance and opportunity that have shaped Emsley's creation of an algorithmic compositional method, and its use and adaptation in two groups of works: the series for piano (1997–) and the cycle Still/s (2002–19). The origins of for piano lie in a creative block that Emsley suffered between 1987 and 1996, during which time he began experimenting with using simple computer programs to create algorithmic compositions. Still/s extends this practice into a cycle of 24 pieces for instrumental quintet, originally inspired by a collaboration with the painter Joan Key. What emerges from both collections of pieces is not a form-based way of making but a practice, out of which forms might be discovered, and which requires skills of attentiveness, or what Ingold calls ‘correspondence’. The origins and subsequent elaborations of both for piano and Still/s show how the music itself has altered Emsley and his ways of working.
1 For details of Suoraan's history and place within British new complexity, see Roderick Hawkins, ‘(Mis)understanding Complexity from Transit to Toop: ‘New Complexity’ in the British Context’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds, 2011).
2 Barrett, Richard, ‘Richard Emsley: A View of His Music’, TEMPO, 164 (1988), pp. 20–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Whittall, Arnold, ‘Expressionism Revisited: Modernism beyond the Twentieth Century’, in Transformations of Musical Modernism, eds Gulbrandsen, Erling E. and Johnson, Julian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 56Google Scholar, quoting Emsley.
4 He has since written two more works for orchestra: … des tactiques de lenteur… (2015) and The Uncertain Life of the Brain (2018) – but these are as yet unperformed.
5 Barrett, ‘Richard Emsley’, p. 20.
6 Philip Rothman, ‘An Interview with Ben Finn, Co-founder of Sibelius [Part 1 of 2]’, Scoring Notes, 23 June 2015, www.scoringnotes.com/news/an-interview-with-ben-finn-part-1/; and interview with Richard Emsley, 14 February 2022.
7 Interview with Richard Emsley, 14 February 2022.
8 Ibid.
9 Interview with Richard Emsley, 31 January 2022.
10 Ian Pace, ‘The Music of Richard Emsley’, sleevenote to Richard Emsley, flowforms. 2002, Metier, MSV CD92044.
11 Interview with Richard Emsley, 31 January 2022.
12 So far, for piano 22 is the last to be composed, but Emsley expects to continue writing more pieces in the series.
13 Interview with Richard Emsley, 31 January 2022.
14 Ibid.
15 Interview with Richard Emsley, 14 February 2022.
16 Interview with Richard Emsley, 31 January 2022.
17 Ibid.
18 In the event, Darragh Morgan, the commissioner of the piece for solo violin, was superstitious about giving this the number 13, so numbers 13 and 14 in Emsley's original plan were swapped around.
19 Cage, John, ‘Experimental Music’, in Silence (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), p. 10Google Scholar; Ingold, Making, pp. 105–108.
20 Interview with Richard Emsley, 31 January 2022.
21 Ingold, Making, p. 108.