Tarik O'Regan

Grammy nominated composer and AOP composer-in-residence Tarik O'Regan discusses his new BBC radio documentary, "TARIK O'REGAN: COMPOSING NEW YORK."

Duration: 30 minutes
Produced by Simon Hollis at Brook Lapping for BBC Radio 4

LISTEN LIVE AND UNTIL JULY 27 ONLINE HERE:

THE SIRENS CEASE

From my apartment on the Upper West Side, I can see down to the New York Passenger Ship Terminal on the eastern bank of the Hudson River between West 46th and West 54th Streets. Today it’s a large dock for enormous transatlantic ocean liners, but it used to be a smaller, dirtier, more anonymous affair.

I occasionally think of Benjamin Britten, in 1942, on board the Axel Johnson – a rough Swedish cargo ship – sailing from that terminal, out of the Hudson, past the Statue of Liberty and into the Atlantic Ocean, back to England after his three year stint in America. Was he pondering his failed New York ventures?

Being a European, or ‘Old World’, composer in New York meant, and still means, following in the footsteps of some rather daunting predecessors. Dvorak, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Bartok, Kurt Weill and many others lived for significant periods of time, composing, here in the city. Others, like Tchaikovsky, Puccini or Richard Strauss came on shorter visits to conduct and premiere their new compositions.

Unlike Kurt Weill, Britten never got his Broadway musical off the ground (Paul Bunyan was a flop at its opening); his performances and concert music hadn’t really set the American musical scene alight, as it had been by Rachmaninov’s work, either.

A good proportion of his time in the USA had been spent living in a gin-soaked house with W. H. Auden, Paul Bowles, Gypsy Rose Lee and Carson McCullers on Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights. Perhaps he felt he hadn’t been in the right environment to contribute to the American musical language in the way Dvorak had with his Symphony “From the New World”.

Maybe it was only as the skyscrapers receded into the distance, from the safety of his berth and with the sound of the waves lapping against the ship, that Britten finally felt the power of this New World muse. Maybe he saw for the first time that for some people – as F. Scott Fitzgerald had written from the top of the Empire State Building – “New York was just a city after all and not a universe.”

For it was whilst at sea, in a flash of inspiration, that he wrote one of his most cherished and widely performed works: Ceremony of Carols. He also completed his final large-scale collaboration with Auden, whom he’d left behind in Brooklyn, the equally well-known Hymn to St Cecilia.

It’s the text of a single stanza in this last piece which come into my mind when I think of all those composers who, before me, were lured across the Atlantic to this siren city; those who flourished or floundered, lived vibrantly or died quietly, those for whom New York became a home, or even an artistic hell.

Whatever their circumstances, the music they wrote was strong, important, seminal work; it's a collection of compositions with a real voice, one that has stood the test of time. Yes, it was a music shaped partly by a New World city born largely of Old World immigrants, but then these works have gone on to subtly change the face of classical music all over the globe.

Thus I think of Britten on his cargo ship, finally heading home, with Auden’s scribbled words in front him. The poem is about Cecilia, the patron saint of music, but I like to think it was that final glimpse of New York’s skyline which crept into view as those beautiful, intertwined melodies came into his head which he wraps around Auden’s words:

… appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:

… come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.

Tarik O’Regan
New York, July 2010

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Tarik O'Regan
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Tarik O'Regan's opera Heart of Darkness is currently in development at American Opera Projects and was most recently performed at a concert workshop at the Royal Opera House in London in partnership with OperaGenesis. AOP has also commissioned Mr. O'Regan's second opera The Wanton Sublime based on the book of poetry by Darkling scribe Anna Rabinowitz.

Coming Soon:
Latent Manifest world premiere at the BBC Proms, August 14, 2.30 p.m. (EST)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Litton