Reviews

James Patten

 

Stabat Mater

The Stabat Mater is unashamedly tonal, with whole-tone leanings. It is also openly lyrical. It is written for SATB chorus (without soloists), treble voices (optional) and string orchestra. In addition to the Stabat Mater, a Latin Collect and Gradual, from the Mass of the Seven Sorrows of Mary and a setting of the Ave Verum are incorporated.

Richard Stangroom (conductor of 1st performance):
" . . . the overall construction and integration of the subtle orchestral texture with the simpler choral writing was very impressive, but, above all, it was the integrity and expressive power of the music which remains in the memory."

"Your Stabat Mater is very beautiful and done with such economy - there's not a note in it that shouldn't be there."

Dom Gervase Murray-Bligh OM:
"It is a most impressive work and I hope it will go on to be appreciated by an ever widening audience."

Chairman of the Polish National Committee of the International Music Council:
"I listened to the tape which I got from you and I am very impressed by the simplicity of texture and the beauty of the composition."

"I found it haunting. It struck me that it could well have the potential to command a wide public audience."

Kevin Mayhew (publisher):
"Your piece is really fine and deserves a publisher who can really push it with the choral societies and get lots of performances."

Dr. Franz Patocka (Vienna)
"I have just received the CD, thank you! I have already listened to it once, and I must tell you I like it from the very beginning. There is a strange peacefulness in your work, which I find very impressive. What I like most (but this may change) is the part "Quando corpus morietur ...". Many other composers of the Stabat Mater have tried to make the music to the words "paradisi gloria" as triumphant as possible, whereas in your composition there is a kind of joyful but quiet anticipation of the world to come. - I like your composition very much, and I wish I could write music like that. (I hope I have been able to express my impressions in English.)"

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Of An

There are 12 sections each using a different combination of instruments and exploring one idea - melody, free percussion, static chords, rhythmic canons etc. The sections are grouped to form short movements - I + II + III, break, IV, break, V + VI + VII, break, VIII + IX, break, X + XI + XII. Some of the techniques used in Of An form the basis of the larger work FLUX, commissioned by the Bristol Sinfonia with funds made available by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1970. Of An was originally written for the BBC TV Omnibus programme 'Portrait of an Architect'.

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Taiko

TAIKO consists of 16 sections arranged in 5 groups and played without a break.

TAIKO, a Japanese word, has many meanings. The relevant ones for this work are - large drum, glissandi and various other percussion sounds. The Percussion Ensemble consists of 8 Metal Blocks, 4 Gongs, 5 Metal Plates, 4 Tubular Bells, 4 Cowbells, 4 Handbells, 6 Drums, Metal rods, Pebbles, Maracas, Cymbals, Hand-Flexatones and also Piano and Piano Inside. The Solo Percussion part consists of Drums, Metal blocks, Wind-chimes, Metal rods and a Hand-Flexatone, which plays an important part throughout the work.

The Strings and Flutes are often divided and there are many solo lines.

TAIKO explores a new sound world, one in which some of the traditional materials of music are reinterpreted. Counterpoint, for one, is enlarged to include Heteraphony and also the counterpoint of "time", i.e. music in different speeds played simultaneously. The work is, by and large, dramatic. Some of the percussion music in TAIKO was drawn on for another work "Multiple" (Metal Music) which was commissioned by BBC Radio (Schools) for the programme "Music Club".

TAIKO was written specially for the Cirencester School Percussion Ensemble, Morris Pert, and the Bristol Sinfonia between June and December 1971.

Steve Gray (composer and arranger):
"Dear Jim, I've always loved your writing - I told you when I first heard it that it was right up my street - but 'Taiko' is extraordinary. I've never heard sonics like that produced before (and it would have taken those boffins in IRCAM a year to do them electronically) and the way you integrated it with the orchestra - I'm glad you left the applause on [the tape] so I could join in. Why isn't it recorded? It could easily become a modern classic. Send it to every record company extant, and if they don't bite start up your own! All the best, Steve."

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MULTIPLE

Elis Pehkonen (composer/teacher) writing in The Music Teacher:

At that time, when looking for more substantial pieces, I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of the composer James Patten, who lives near Longleat, and he gave us the opportunity of extending our range of instrumentation by writing a major piece in this genre, MULTIPLE. The instrumentation included such novel instruments as metal plates and pieces of angle iron, pebbles and two flexatones. The music revolves around groups of players who often play independently of each other, albeit within a carefully controlled mensural framework. Stylistically the piece is very reminiscent of Boulez, but to say this is really to add nothing or take nothing away from it. It remains the most satisfying piece that we have ever played because, although not written down to the players, it is well within their capabilities and young people quickly become attached to its individuality and unique charm.

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Sonata 1 for Chamber Orchestra

Denis Frost (from a review in the Guardian newspaper, February 1966):

Almost wholly unaided, the student organisers of the Bristol University Arts Festival devised a vintage programme for their concert at the new students' union last night, with the Bristol Sinfonia conducted by Sidney Sager and Michael Tippett, a commissioned work from James Patten, and Alan Civil and Gervase de Peyer in Mozart concerti.

Mr Patten is Professor of Composition at Trinity College of Music. His Sonata One for Chamber Orchestra could well establish him, if he can add luck to his original talent. He has dissected the basic sonata form movement into three separate movements - exposition, development, recapitulation - imposing a clinical serial structure which, once launched, mellows into a central lento molto section of passionate lyrical invention.

The first movement provides the inchoative thematic material from which the whole sonata derives, with an intriguing mirror canon emerging in metamorphosis in each succeeding movement. His scoring is more than useful, with devastating effects from pizzicato figures and extended col legno.

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Divertimento 2 on a Theme by Purcell

Newspaper review of first performance (Great Elm Music Festival):
. . .although it opened the concert, the major work of the evening has to be the world premiere of Divertimento 2 on a Theme by Purcell by James Patten. Patten, born in 1936, studied music in London and Berlin; he taught at Trinity college of Music, London, where he was Professor of Composition, at Downside, and at Bristol University and Birmingham Conservatiore. He is conductor of Frome Choral union.
He is no mean musician; and his Divertimento of ten short variations, played with, dare one say,almost loving care, will be seen as a work of great importance. It is capricious and effervescent; it is meticulously structured, free of any gimmickry; altogether enthralling.
I do hope to hear it again: soon. He richly deserved his applause. The combination of the Alberni String Quartet and the English Virtuosi sounded a happy marriage.

Steve Gray (composer and arranger):
"Dear Jim, Thank you for the tape of the Divertimento to which I listened with a big smile on my face. When people ask me in future why don't write music like they used to, I'm going to reply 'they do!' (cf. also Maxwell Davies' 'Orkney Wedding' and most of Robin Holloway). But it's lovely - a real Mozartian Divertimento (with a nice Beethovian E flat surprise at the front) that just sets out to entertain - succeeds! Bet you were happy with the players, too - I really liked that good fruity horn (get a synthesiser if you want perfect F sharps!). And a lovely sweet oboe player and in-tune strings - lovely that viola intro. Few too many "lovelys" getting into this letter but I hope you'll forgive that. Jim, someone who can write that and Taiko and the Nocturnes, plus the Beckett pieces - well, you should be famous! All the best, Steve."

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a leaf falls

From 'Music and Musicians', 1972:

Patten has a definite bee in his bonnet about neatness, which I imagine stems from his early training as a student of Trinity College under Richard Arnell. This fastidious approach is reflected in the organised chaos of his life-style. His workroom is carpeted with those outsize scores and snippets of manuscript paper waiting to be pasted up. He dresses carefully, notates precisely in a miniscule hand, and is propelled by nervous energy.

At root, however, Patten seems to feel the insecurity of the composer's lot more than most. After Trinity and the 1962 Royal Philharmonic Society's composition prize, his destiny, it seemed, was assured: and it was off to Berlin the following year on a two-year Academic Exchange Scholarship to study with Boris Blacher and Josef Rufer. Rufer was demanding, and dismantled pieces until they met up with his own ideas; Blacher was more tolerant of other styles. Patten learned much. Back to Trinity - this time as Professor of Composition. But where did the future lie? Would the real Patten now stand up?

Patten is cagey about his works before 1967, although he indeed had some degree of assurnace before then. The reason is that he underwent a stylistic spring-clean, and the outcome has been Five Short Piano Pieces (BBC broadcast by Malcolm Binns), Piano Sonata No.1 (first performed at Dartington), Music for two guitars and tape, and, later, Gilbert Biberian's Wigmore Hall premiere of 'I watch the storms' for solo guitar and tape.

Since then he has concentrated to a great extent on more elaborate forms. His 15 minute 'Of An' for alto flute, vibraphone, harp, piano and percussion was well received at its SPNM premiere last year, and this led to 'a leaf falls', which could be counted as his first large scale production. It was an Arts Council backed commission from the enterprising Richmond Choral Society and, present last June at the behest of an amateur-operatic lady of no-mean coffee-making prowess, I was immediately asking myself (and others): why on earth hasn't this Patten been discovered?

'leaf' is ambitious in every sense of that much abused word, and the scoring - it reads like a police list of wanted property - is worth quoting in full: eight cowbells, ten tubular bells, eight metal blocks (non-resonant), eight metal blocks (resonant), tam-tam ('very large'), four gongs (SATB), suspended cymbal ('very large'), bongos (SATB), tenor drums, bass drums, three flutes, two trumpets, three trombones, piano, organ, two choirs, semi-chorus and tape loop. In addition Choir I plays wood (sticks), Choir II plays stone (pebbles), and the semi-chorus metal (rods - 'SATB if possible'). The text - it is no more than the title) is especially telling done into the eleven other languages of which the composer makes use (Turkish or Arabic, for example). The work all too fully realises the desolation of those few words, for Patten lived it to the hilt during a time of immense personal anguish in the bleakness of a Chicago winter. It is, perhaps, significant that the period of his life that produced what is surely worthy of consideration as contemporary masterpiece is the very period he would rather forget.

'leaf' is 17 minutes long; 'Flux', commissioned by Bristol Sinfonia, is 40. Scored for percussion, harp, piano, solo and tutti strings it is obviously not as lush a score, but the complexity and depth are there, and this, in a way, was Patten's undoing. With regret and limited rehearsal time, the Sinfonia shelved the projected first performance. Patten is currently buying that time by putting in for what he described as a 'large' Arts Council grant, with the backing of Tippett, Blacher and Birtwhistle.

And so to 'Taiko' for percussion (much of it metal), strings and two flutes. Patten hopes the BBC (for whom he has done incidental television and radio music in the past) will be interested in the Colston Hall premiere on February 9 in some form or another. I indeed hope so: Patten is too talented to become yet another case of neglect. He has been.

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Nocturnes 3-5

Nocturnes 3-5 were commissioned by David James CBE, Chairman of the ESO,for performance by Richard Leigh-Harris at the BMIC,London,on 14th September.

No 3 explores the effect of overtones, produced by striking a low note while holding others silently, on a higher melodic line. And also explores the possibility of sustaining sound without the use of the Pedals. Structurally the Nocturne is influenced by a Stage Direction in Samuel Beckett's short Play "Ohio Interlude".

No 4 is based on two sets of Chords made up, for the most part, of Fourths and on two simple Sequences. There is but one small moment of Drama, towards the end of an otherwise peaceful, unassuming, work..

No 5 summarises, in short,some of the techniques in earlier Nocturnes and has a repeated reference ( varied ) to a passage in Nocturne No 1.

".. these are wonderful examples of wholly individual piano writing, which are fresh, beautiful and yet dramatically unpredictable. The keyboard resonates and vibrates, particularly in the third and fifth Nocturnes". Richard Leigh-Harris.

Nocturnes No 1 and No 2 were written for Kathron Sturrock and broadcast in a programme of British music on BBC Radio 3.

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". . his Divertimento of ten short variations . . will be seen as a work of great importance. It is capricious and effervescent; it is meticulously structured, free of any gimmickry; altogether enthralling."