London Bridge is Broken Down

An interview with Mike and Kate Westbrook

By Chris Parker

The interview below marks the reissuing of one of Mike and Kate Westbrook's most evocative and haunting works, London Bridge is Broken Down, a late-1980s collaboration between a 22-piece chamber orchestra (Amiens's La Sinfonietta) and a nine-piece jazz ensemble.

CP: Could you amplify your description of London Bridge as 'a personal map of Europe'?

MW: Like so many of the compositions that Kate and I have done, it was very influenced by playing around Europe. We always carry manuscript books; that seems to be the way we've always worked, since The Cortřge, a sort of cumulative process. I don't know whether I can remember all the places in order, but we went to Leipzig and played in the jazz festival with the Brass Band, then to Canada with the Trio, then almost immediately went on our Rossini tour to Paris, Zurich and various other places.

Then just before Christmas we went with the Orchestra to Florence, and some time during that tour we had a Trio tour in Germany, which took us to Berlin, where we had greatly contrasting and heightened experiences. And then, this year [1987], in the closing stages of the writing and rehearsal of the piece, we went right up to the north of Sweden, so we had this opportunity to carry on working in all these different settings, and it seems that one is particularly aware in situations like that, where everything is new and very different; these things made very strong impressions. We tried, in the titling of the work, to find some way of suggesting it, but this proved impossible, so in the end we thought of 'London Bridge', which was the starting point of the composition in some ways – the starting point of the journey (where we live), also the bridge to Europe – but we were looking for something to suggest the idea of these icons of contemporary Europe, and Picardie, where we go quite regularly, to Amiens, where the piece was commissioned and where the orchestra was based – It's not like a comprehensive map of Europe, but just odd places here and there, with great gaps in between: there was Florence, Berlin, Leipzig, Stockholm, Paris and Prague.

KW: But in order to focus it Ž it's an odyssey, a sort of diary, but very selective, otherwise the piece becomes too programmatic Ž in order to make it clear, there are basically only five different places.

MW: The thing got honed down in the process of writing.

CP: Why Wenceslas Square [Prague] rather than somewhere in Florence, for instance?

MW: It could easily have contained something from Florence Ž there are sections I didn't finish scoring and which haven't been performed Ž but the whole musical thing's a sort of continuum anyway: you take a slice, a particular thing, and say: 'That's a composition'. But Wenceslas Square was a particularly profound experience; it's not a place for us to visit very often, and there were particular things about the circumstances of our visit there and the way we became aware of the Jazz Section situation, meeting people playing just off Wenceslas Square Ž and just because of what one knows about what happened there in '68, it's a place of great pain and shame. It's not really a square, more a wide street, which is a national rallying point, and there's a huge building blocking out the sun Ž It's just impossible to go there without feeling some of the pain of the place Ž the people have been incredibly brave.

KW: We got caught up in a very complicated situation, which we can't go into here. There was a great deal of pressure on both of us from the British Embassy, with the Jazz Section thing, so we were being lobbied from all sides Ž Prague is a very beautiful city and Mike and I sat in the square, and what started as a sort of meditation for the two of us became a musical meditation; things are never so clear-cut and simple Ž what the Russians did there was dreadful, but the complexity of the EastŽWest thing, also expressed in the section about the Berlin Wall, is very present to us, because we play in both the East and the West.

MW: Yes, the three places central to the piece are very much places of conflict rather than resolution –

KW: We didn't want to attempt to do another Cortřge, because it couldn't be done again Ž The Cortřge was so diverse, so many different languages; with London Bridge I felt I wanted to limit the texts to English, German and French, for numerous reasons, some of them very personal and private: for instance, with the Berlin Wall section, which includes the three German texts, we both felt we wanted to do a love song in German. For us the German thing lends itself very well to political cabaret and bitterness and humour, and we wanted to do a love song.

So when we talked to Tommy [Bodmer, the translator] about the section. we said we wanted all the texts to relate to the Berlin Wall, which is a very potent symbol for Mike and me Ž and I know for all the people who've seen it Ž but we very much wanted to have a love song. It seemed very important that within these places of conflict there should be this enormously forceful element of hope, which is what the Goethe ['Nĺhe des Geliebten'] is there for and, in a slightly different way, 'Es sitzt ein Vogel' – the Wilhelm Busch (the 19-century poet); apparently he was a devotee of Schopenhauer, but it's a kind of note of optimism and ordinary human endeavour in the most abominable of circumstances.

CP: There is another hint of lightening at the end, with the text about Nicolette, though Ž

KW: We felt we wanted to end London Bridge with something very optimistic, because 'London Bridge' itself, and the piece as a whole, has some of the darkest moments that Mike has created musically.

MW: As you say, these are all places of tragedy and conflict, and I think that's how one feels, travelling round; one feels it in London. There were these wonderful spiritual moments, like Florence, but when we went to Berlin, there was none of that whatsoever. Our hotel, called the Bellevue, was a tower block overlooking the Wall. But there was hope there too, because we played at a festival being organised in a sort of art centre in one of the arches of the U-bahn, right up against the Wall. The atmosphere was absolutely marvellous and the young Berliners are terrific people Ž the way they respond to art and to the new experimental things is extremely encouraging Ž all in the shadow of the Wall.

KW: Extreme political situations can make young people so vigorous. One looks down on this obscenity, the Wall, and then one goes to do the gig, and the young people there are so committed Ž both sides of the Wall; we found the same thing in East Germany.

MW: It's fantastic the way they seize on music Ž especially new music Ž they don't want to mess around. In Leipzig we had a marvellous concert: we did the Blake in this enormous concert hall packed with people for the most modern, wildest manifestations of music, which would die a death over here. They don't want the commercial, trendy stuff; they want something real. Prague, also, is full of paradoxes: the event we played in was a most exuberant and turbulent affair Ž again, a packed crowd all drinking and laughing and lapping it up, whatever it was, this enormous programme of bands, starting early in the morning, dozens of them, trooping on and off the stage one after another.

At the end of the night, a big band would suddenly appear, then there'd be a trad band, then someone would sing the blues, then there'd be a free-form group from East Germany Ž incredible Ž so the Wenceslas Square section reflects the conflicts and paradoxes there: it's simple on the surface, but as soon as you get a little below the surface, everything becomes very much more complex. In the texts and in the music Ž that's what jazz does Ž improvisation Ž it takes a simple idea, and as you get deeper into it, all these complexities are revealed, so it reflects that Ž

KW: Just to finish off the Berlin Wall section: the poem 'Traurig, aber falsch' is by Bernhard Lassahn, a young East German, now living in West Germany. It seems to us to epitomise the paradoxes that face young people Ž our children Ž political paradoxes. There is a move towards expediency which we, being good old 19-century Romantics, find very hard to deal with. And so he seems, in a very witty and pertinent way, to have captured the fact that evil people do have songs and can make you laugh. I like that poem very much, because I feel that in the end he's struggling against the reality of the paradoxes and the expediency with which we live constantly.

When I wrote to ask him if we could use the poem in the piece, he said: 'Yes please, but not too much of German thoughtfulness.' And I had to write back to him and say that there are two passages Ž the two slow passages Ž when Mike and I were talking about the way to structure it, they have to be about German thoughtfulness because, for us, it's an enormously important thing: to be a little simplistic about it, I think there's a greater lightness here Ž in the pejorative sense Ž than there is in Germany. I think Germans are much more serious, more engaged, and we very much like the young Germans. They're not so beguiled by the laughter that evil people have.

MW: And it's all around them there: Berlin epitomises all the West can possibly throw at them in the way of distractions; then there's suddenly the Wall Ž

CP: Tell me about the title, which is intriguing, London Bridge of course being in Texas now Ž

KW: The poem was a musical idea that Mike was working on in the very early stages from the time it was first commissioned to the time of the first performance, and as we were travelling around, Mike was working on various musical ideas, which are always much more difficult to talk about, but of course are the heart of it. The texts are significant, but only a part, a small part, of the whole composition. Mike was working on an idea that suggested to me, as I was pottering about, the children's rhyme. So I went to buy the Opie [nursery rhyme] book and I decided to take total liberties Ž no repeats, just one idea after another. I wanted to pare it right down to its essentials. The thing that the Opies point out, which I hadn't known before, is that it crops up in a number of different cultures, this particular kind of image about the bridge.

There's a very savage footnote about master bridgebuilders: when the bridge fell down in the Middle Ages, there were rumours, even some slightly doubtful records, of a baby being built into the base of the bridge in order to make it sound. And there was one builder whose bridge kept falling down, whose wife was built into the base of the bridge. Very heavy. I feel such anger against this country and this government that I felt actually that this is, in a sense, what's being done as the National Health Service is being pared away, social services and all the old people being thrown on the scrap heap Ž I know Mike had qualms about incorporating it, but I felt it was important to do so, as a kind of kick-off for the composition, a statement about the sort of anger that one feels here, before going off into Wenceslas Square, Berlin, Vienna.

But there's another thing about 'London Bridge' which illustrates the way we work together well: in this case, Mike had written an idea for which I then structured a children's rhyme Ž rewrote it, really, entirely. We then both felt that it wasn't right to sing the words to the tune; we had somehow to turn it on its head, and Mike had written that very tricky riff, but it just fitted in, like the last piece of a jigsaw, the way that the text sat on that riff. That was how that piece came together Ž it's a process that comes from our living together: morning, noon and night we're discussing things, listening to each other's ideas; it's a constant thing, and it resulted in a great number in 'London Bridge'.

CP: Was the piece commissioned for a specific number of jazz musicians plus the Sinfonietta?

MW: They didn't specify the number of the jazz band, but the Sinfonietta was a given. I was touting around for something to do in my fiftieth year Ž something that fell on totally stony ground in England, I'm sorry to say Ž and, typically, the response came from Italy, where we did a number of concerts, and France, where we have this long and fruitful association with many different people. We tour there regularly, and some of our biggest opportunities come from France. Michel [Orier], who had commissioned On Duke's Birthday, in conjunction with another friend from Angoulme, came up with the idea of using our orchestra with the Sinfonietta, based in Amiens.

The size of the English orchestra was something which emerged over the year, really, partly governed by budgetary considerations Ž it could possibly have been a very big band, but that was unaffordable, so in a way one made a virtue of having a smaller group. I really started with carte blanche. The line-up evolved as the piece evolved: gradually as the creative process got under way one talked to people, [guitarist] Brian [Godding] and [bassist] Steve [Cook]. By January, we had the band, all people we'd worked with before in different contexts. It partly arose out of things we were doing Ž the Trio [with saxophonist Chris Biscoe] had become very central and a vehicle for our interest in texts and travelling abroad Ž Also, with the other band, the 'dance' band, we'd done another tour with the Extempore Dance Group during which we did sixty performances of the piece and developed a very tight rapport with [altoist] Peter [Whyman] and Brian. And during the autumn we were doing a lot of the Rossini, and so [trombonist] Paul [Nieman] became a regular member of that, and his interest in electronics seemed to fit. And Steve is just one of the greatest musicians I've ever worked with.

MW: We persuaded him to take time out from his highly successful work in the computer field and get his bass out again. [Drummer] Tony Marsh we've worked with a lot, in On Duke's Birthday Ž It was a strange melange, really, the band, because some people are classically trained, great sightreaders; some straightahead jazz people; some people who can't read music in any way, self-taught, like myself. It's not easy Ž we had long periods of rehearsal, three or four months, which I found very helpful, because we started rehearsing with the sketches, and by the next rehearsal I could write something more Ž quite a lot happened collectively, and it gave people a longer learning period. It wound up being the most musically difficult cycle I've ever written. As the piece evolved, it just became more and more complex. It made tremendous demands on the musicians, but all these people with different backgrounds and skills eventually gelled together and it's much richer as a result than a band with all the same backgrounds.

KW: There were two visits to Amiens before the proper rehearsal period, the first with Peter Whyman, and for that visit Mike scribbled out some of the ideas in various hotels; and then subsequently with Steve and Tony. Of course, the Sinfonietta play the normal classical repertoire. They've never worked with a rhythm section before, so Mike thought it might be useful for them to have some experience with that before we went for the final rehearsal with them.

MW: I must just mention [trumpeter] Graham [Russell]. He came in as a replacement at the end of last year when we went to Florence, and we were very impressed with him as a great lead trumpet player. I have a great feeling for the lead trumpet and a great regard for the people who play it. In fact we don't use Graham as an improviser at all, and it was interesting because, having players like that, it gave me the opportunity to write solos and juxtapose them with the improvised ones.

People like Graham are often the key members of the band, often unnoticed in reviews, but to us on stage, the people who are making everyone sound good, including the soloists, are the unsung heroes in the section; that division of responsibility within the group is always very interesting. It's very important to to try to get it right: of course you want creativity Ž those who have the gift for doing wonderful things you don't expect Ž but that has to be balanced against those people who have a sense of the shape, and a sense of the way the whole collective thing has to be played. But it's not an easy balance; we don't find it easy Ž it's a lot of work and the playing doesn't happen automatically by any means.

CP: How much control do you like to have over the improvised sections?

MW: I'm very concerned, especially when there are large forces involved, that the thing has an integrity Ž not the iron boot trampling on everything, but a sense in which it's all going to interrelate. What happened in the rehearsal was that no solo was planned at all as we ran through, it was all left open, and gradually it just became clear who was going to solo on which things. Anyone could do any of the solos, really, but it's just that certain people Ž I mean, very early on, Chris took charge of 'Berlin'.

And with Peter, I felt very early on that his thing on 'Wenceslas Square' was right Ž also, some of that began as fragments for a TV score, so there was already a connection there. Sometimes, it's because a number needs a particular thing, and you think: 'Who's going to deliver that?' I hope it's worked satisfactorily; it might yet change.

CP: How do the Sinfonietta cope with that? Do they know how long the solo's going to be?

MW: When it's over, there's a cue Ž It's very tightly structured. It shouldn't sound so; hopefully, it should just flow, from solos to ensembles. I would like to blur the distinction between what's improvised and what's written. That's something I find increasingly unsatisfactory about the jazz idiom: there's the tune, and then everybody else goes to the back of the stage and somebody does a solo, and the person standing at the back would never dream of starting to play during that solo. It must be the same sort of thing Mingus must have felt when he did his things Ž I like to blur the edges, even to the extent of having an ensemble passage written, which could be improvised.

We've got these brilliant Sinfonietta players who could play Ž it doesn't really work if the only really complex things are when people are improvising; in a typical mainstream jazz performance, you get people playing a simple riff Ž blues Ž and then it goes off into very complicated solos. Bebop resolved that by having very complicated themes, and then very very complicated solos, though sometimes what you get in jazz are very complicated bebop themes followed by very simple solos, and that doesn't work either, so they tested my writing Ž I've never written such complex stuff before: there are passages of blinding playing which equals anything that anyone's improvising, so it should be one thing, not segregated, and blurring the distinction between the band and the Sinfonietta.

But this is only a beginning; it's the first time I've ever written for a string section. There could be a lot more in the way of intregrating the two, but there are passages I'm very pleased with. The time of getting dissatisfied with them is no doubt further ahead, but there passages where the two bands are playing together: our brass, their clarinet, the woodwinds are all mixed up together, the strings Ž passages where it's all just one music. These are very special, the moments everyone likes in both bands.

KW: In Amiens, the two orchestras were much more physically integrated on stage than we were when you saw us in Strasbourg Ž I was next to the violas, for instance Ž which meant that people didn't know quite what was improvised and what was written. It's two and a quarter hours of extremely complex music, in which the solos and texts play an important part. What better plaudit, though, could one have, than that the Sinfonietta absolutely love it; they're young and keen, and for them it's difficult music, and they enjoy it enormously. The lead violinist [Constantin Bobesco], for example, to my mind plays like a jazzer Ž his playing is so passionate; he loves those lines.

MW: What terrifies me sometimes is that I came very near in my career to never writing for a string ensemble Ž in our regular, if infrequent, orchestra, we have a cello and violin, and I love those Ž but I could easily have never written for strings were it not for Michel.

CP: When you got the commission, did you go back and listen to the various previous collaborations between jazz and strings? I'm thinking of things like the very uneasy alliance between Charlie Parker and strings Ž

MW: I don't think there's much of any value that you can really refer to; there are current things where people use strings, but they use them mainly for holding long notes behind solos. The Parker things are just prettiness behind the solos. But I didn't really listen; we've got Clifford Brown with strings, the Nat Cole 'Lush Life', I've not heard the symphonic Ellington. A lot of people, when they heard about this commission, said: 'Ah, third stream.' They can't think of anything other than those rather academic things where you wound up with neither the virtues of classical music nor those of jazz. I do think those things, though, are valuable but I've never really listened much Ž Alexandre Myrat, our conductor, said very early on: 'You can think of the strings as just one voice, as fifteen individual voices Ž whatever you like.'

Basically, you need to know what's the top note and what's the bottom note, and a bit of help with writing it out, which I got from [music copyist] Andrew Jones and Peter. But, like a lot of jazz people, I've always had this awe of strings, this ambition to write for strings, as if there's some mystique about writing for them that somehow makes it more difficult than writing for saxophones and brass. I can now see why, ever since they were invented, the strings have been the centre of music: they're the most natural way of putting a musical idea together; if you hear something, you can write it down, and sure enough, it'll sound better than you imagine.

Of course, having a good woodwind section is marvellous, but the strings are the crowning glory of the thing. There's no mystique, really, it's just that the music has to be very well thought out, prepared, the detail, the complicated interrelationships I've worked out on the piano Ž it has to be carefully considered Ž At the two days of preliminary rehearsal in Amiens, the first thing we did was the slow theme from 'Picardie', where the oboe comes in with the slow tune, and it just sounded wonderful from the word go. There were other things that didn't work so well Ž very sketchy things, of just four bars Ž but most of those ideas were carried through into the final thing; they sounded all right.

KW: A propos of the string thing: I suppose composers would say that perhaps in many ways the string quartet is the most perfect form, but in 'Viennese Waltz' there's a very funny reference Ž and also a very beautiful reference, just a string quartet Ž a kind of little dig at the classical Viennese school. Entrancing! At the first rehearsal, it was really thrilling. I got gooseflesh all the time; it was almost unbearable, because it was just absolutely right Ž

CP: How's the length and complexity gone down with your record company [Virgin Venture]?

MW: They've been exceptional in accepting the length [Ž] but the length of things should clearly be determined by musical considerations; I have produced a series of very long works Ž The Cortřge is two and a half hours Ž and I know this is longer than a lot of people want these days, but I think that when the length is self-indulgent and not necessary Ž not musical and not structural Ž then I think it might be criticised, but as Alexandre says, you shouldn't be aware of it: if it's a ten-minute piece, like some of the things they perform with the Sinfonietta, you shouldn't feel it's been short Ž you should feel it's been the perfect length, and then afterwards you think: 'Oh, ten minutes.'

And the same with this: hopefully, you're not looking at your watch and thinking: 'When's this going to be over?' It's a long one, that's all Ž we do do short things. So it was very encouraging that [executive producer] Declan [Colgan]'s reaction wasn't: 'This would make a great album if you boiled it down a bit', but: 'This is a double CD.' It was left to us to cut, for musical reasons. Things just don't come in handy sizes, in packages Ž

KW: With the current cult of the soloist and improviser, a work like this is quite a mouthful, and I hope that it's going to reach out to an enormous musical audience Ž because it's music. Mike is known as a jazz composer, but it's just music; spiritually, it started from jazz roots, but it's gone out from there.

MW: I think that's the way things are going for us Ž I feel increasingly the predominance of the solo improviser in jazz Ž it tends to row the composer out of a job in the end, because improvisers write the sort of tunes they want to improvise on, and they're not all interested in being put in the context by someone else. That interrelationship is very important: the people in our band enjoy having that context to work in and at the same time I try to be sympathetic to people's playing so that it works for everybody. I think that the death of Ellington and the general decline of jazz composing as such Ž I can't think of many people to cite in that tradition at the moment. It's gone right back to jam-session music: a few riffs and a lot of solos. I just find that, caught in the greatest music of any sort, there is that sense of structure; there are exceptional improvisers who have an understanding of form, but most people just scribble Ž

KW: When Duke Ellington was chosen as 'This Week's Composer' on Radio 3, there was actually a letter in the Radio Times from 'Outraged of Cheltenham'.

MW: But I do think that jazz should be very much a part of it, this new music, because things are very definitely forging ahead in modern classical music, and I don't think jazz has been a part of that; it's continually marginalised, perhaps because of its refusal to work within the same sort of structure. People in the classical world don't know about jazz Ž they're not interested, by and large. In Europe, there are various bands, like the Vienna Art Orchestra, who are taking apart this whole classical/jazz thing and creating a whole new repertoire; that's the sort of milieu in which we've moved with our theatre work and dance work and our use of the texts Ž no one else does that, as far as I know. The thing has opened out a little, but you still don't get very much that brings jazz and classical musicians together, in a sort of equal way, and that's why our work is important.

CP: What do you think of Gershwin, for example?

MW: Well Ž I'm such an Ellington man Ž I quite like it, but I think Gershwin's over-praised. It's a great shame that there isn't any Ellington music in the contemporary classical repertoire now.

KW: He's much more accessible to people with a classical background, Gershwin, than Ellington. But these areas are sometimes so hurtful.

MW: The Vienna Festival was called 'The Secret Love of Jazz for European Modern Music' Ž they're very seriously Ž and, I think, rather humourlessly Ž tackling the problem. I do think there should be a festival like that in Vienna, which is important because of its musical tradition, and we fitted in well there, and I think it's very important for people in Britain to realise that there are other centres like Vienna which are probably more important than Britain at the moment. I don't think the centre of things is London, not creatively, not artistically. It could be Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Switzerland Ž And it's not just easy for them: in Geneva, they put on a magnificent show Ž they got money from the town, but mostly they rely on selling tickets, and the things are packed out; there's an audience there. It's not true to say that they're subsidised. Christ knows it's a pretty awful situation here, but I think the point's worth making that, despite the fact that most London musicians think they're at the centre of things, there are things going on round Europe that the British scene doesn't even dream of: festivals packed out with people, seriously involved, and really interesting and innovative things going on. A lot of our musicians take part, but I think this Viennese thing is very important: a really serious, philosophical approach to 'Where is jazz now? Where does it relate to European music?' We were very pleased to be part of that, even if we do slightly cock a snook at it in the piece. Because I'm not sure they've necessarily got it right, but I think it's really fascinating that that's going on.

CP: Let's get back to 'Picardie'.

KW: After 'FÁr Sie', which is a ballad which everybody in the band absolutely loves Ž

MW: Ž which broke the ice more than any of the other pieces. Its basic tune and chords were the cornerstone of the entire work. The very first step on the piano was playing what I do on the piano at the beginning of 'FÁr Sie' and so it has ramifications in all kinds of directions. but in 'FÁr Sie' itself it's just an expansion of that basic idea, and whereas harmonically and melodically the rhythmic structures and so on of all the other pieces use familiar (for us, anyway) and experimental techniques Ž we don't follow conventional chord progressions; one tried to create a new language, really, for the piece Ž in 'Fur Sie' it's basically a modern jazz ballad composition, with solos and ensemble passages and an interlude for orchestra, and when we'd played that, there was spontaneous applause round the orchestra: everybody in the orchestra really loved it. We'd found a romantic centre for everybody, which everyone needs Ž it's a piece basically about pleasure, the pleasure of playing music. But then we move on to 'Picardie', a long, very serious section.

KW: The whole of the end section is called 'Picardie' Ž most of the second part Ž starting with the poem 'Blighters', a Siegfried Sassoon poem about the First World War, because, for both of us, Picardie evokes strong feelings about the First World War. Because the piece was commissioned by Amiens, and the Sinfonietta de Picardie is the orchestra with whom we're working, we wanted to do a piece about an area we've been to often and where they've been very good to us. I looked through the English First World War poets and eventually settled on the Siegfried Sassoon.

We felt that it expressed English involvement in that particular part of the world, and one Sunday morning Mike got up and just wrote this music-hall tune, with many inversions, and stood on its head a few times. This expresses the text very well. It's very chilling indeed. We also wanted a French poem from the First World War, because although the enormous German, Italian and English output from the trenches is quite well known, there is very little Ž there's Apollinaire and so on Ž but very little with the same degree of directness in French.

And when we talked to Ann-Marie Le Pape about what we wanted Ž three texts which expressed one's feeling, in three different aspects, about this particular place Ž she found an English translation by Christopher Middleton of RenŹ Arcos's poem ['Les Morts']. We wanted to do it in French Ž Mike had written the chords and so on Ž so we then tracked down Christopher Middleton in Texas, and he sent us the French text, with a delightful letter, just as we went to do the rehearsal. He actually said he didn't much like this sort of rhetorical poem Ž he's a wonderfully sardonic person Ž but when I wrote back, I said it wasn't always the best poems which make the best songs. It was like flamenco Ž a lament Ž for what happened in that time in Picardie. That's followed by an improvisation.

MW: The first thing we played with the Sinfonietta was the 'Picardie' tune, but it became expanded and 'Picardie' was built around it Ž that theme comes about a third of the way in Ž

KW: I don't want it to sound too programmatic; one danger is that one may say that a piece of music is about something, when it's just about music. The texts are a starting point. 'Une fentre oŕ se pencher': AndrŹe Chedid was born in Egypt, now lives in Paris Ž she's known in France. It's a surreal poem, in a way, about the ordinariness of human activity in adverse and troublesome times. I wanted to do it in the upper register Ž the very high, pure thing I do with Chris on soprano saxophone.

Both Mike and I started as painters, and I still paint. With a painting when all the tones, the colours, the structure Ž one has this feeling: it's 90 per cent there, then there's the point that you put in, which may be very high in tone, or very high in colour, or quite the reverse, but it's something which makes the whole thing gel. 'Une fentre' is like that: it's very very short, but it's like the point of light within the whole two and a half hours which says: 'There! That's it!' It's very high and pure.

The director of the Maison de la Culture in Amiens gave us a book of texts written by natives of Picardie, from early ditties to modern texts. Ann-Marie and I settled on two or three which were suitable. The 12th-century text we eventually chose concerns a person, rather like the Wife of Bath, who says, with a rather Chaucerian spirit, 'I don't want to go to heaven because of the company' Ž and there's a wonderful list of the boring people you might find there Ž 'but I want to go to hell, because of the exciting people, kings and princes and so on, who are going to be there.' It's completely irreverent, but it's a great ride-out, a great relief, after a piece which is about places which are basically very trouble-torn, to have this great paean at the end to life and joy and love Ž he actually says that he'll go to hell as long as Nicolette can go with him.

MW: Love is the best thing and the rest of it can go hang.

KW: It also came quite late in the composition process.

MW: 'Picardie' was the first musical fragment we tried out with the orchestra. It took ages getting hold of the texts, until there were a few very fortunate breakthroughs, which you get in the creation of anything, whether it be a play or a novel, when you're so into it that you're living the thing twenty-four hours a day, and there's a state where you suddenly get these great thunderbolts. Seeing 'Blighters' as a music-hall song was one of these, though now it seems blindingly obvious, of course.

And 'Nicolette' also resolved itself into a very simple form, although at first it read like something out of a dictionary. 'Les Morts' also. I should explain that in the early stages of the piece, before there were any texts or anything, I was amassing musical ideas, improvising on the piano, making cassettes and writing things down, and in the end I had a little book of exercises or ideas Ž I didn't know whether they were going to be fast or slow, or songs Ž whatever Ž purely musical, abstract things, which were emerging Ž I kept going back to those sources Ž

KW: For 'Une Fentre' Mike gave me this tune, and I took it away and took each line and went through Mike's music, and then we got together and I said: 'It would work if we did it like this Ž' and we jiggled back and forth, and eventually the thing took shape.

MW: 'Une Fentre' is special, because it allows us to play with the Trio, which is a central musical relationship for us, a format in which we work a lot, and it uses that great strength in a very delicate way.

KW: Chris Biscoe understands texts like few others Ž

MW: The strength come through very well, with the luxury of the first and second violins playing patterns in the background. It's one thing this composition has enabled me to do: go further in this direction of having things happening on different levels simultaneously Ž for one thing, strings can play anything for a very long time, which horns can't. 'Picardie' is what the piece is all about Ž the form it takes is often very long, sustained, sometimes relatively uneventful. Basically, it's just the change from major to minor, though there are lots of other things going on.

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London Bridge is Broken Down

An interview with Mike and Kate Westbrook

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