Photo © Sheila Rock

When Michael Nyman published his study Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (1974, reprinted 1999), he could hardly have foreseen his own contribution to that 'beyond'.  Disaffected with the then current orthodoxies of international modernism, Nyman had abandoned composition in 1964, preferring to work as a musicologist, editing Purcell and Handel, and collecting folk music in Romania.  Later he wrote criticism for several journals, including The Spectator, where, in a 1968 review of Cornelius Cardew's The Great Digest, he became the first to apply the word 'minimalism' to music.

That same year, a BBC broadcast of Steve Reich's Come Out opened his ears to further possibilities, and a route back to composition began to emerge.  In 1968 he wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's 'dramatic pastoral' Down by the Greenwood Side.  Later, Birtwistle, by now Musical Director of the National Theatre, London, commissioned him to provide arrangements of 18th century Venetian songs for a 1976 production of Carlo Goldoni's Il Campiello, for which Nyman assembled what he would describe as 'the loudest unamplified street band' he could imagine: rebecs, sackbuts, shawms alongside banjo, bass drum and saxophone.

Nyman kept the Campiello Band together after the play's run had finished, adding his own propulsive piano-playing to the mix.  A band needs repertoire, and Nyman set about providing it, beginning with In Re Don Giovanni, a characteristic treatment of 16 bars of Mozart.  The Band's line-up mutated, amplification was added and the name changed to the Michael Nyman Band.  This is the laboratory in which Nyman has formulated his compositional style around strong melodies, flexible yet assertive rhythms, and precisely articulated ensemble playing.

If works for the Michael Nyman Band have dominated his output, the composer has written for a wide variety of ensembles, including symphony orchestra, a cappella chorus and string quartet.  He has written several stage works, notably The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1986), derived from a case study by Oliver Sacks; and has provided music for such distinguished choreographers as Siobhan Davies, Shobana Jeyasingh, Lucinda Childs, Karine Saporta and Stephen Petronio.

His music has reached its largest audience by way of his film scores, most famously for Peter Greenaway, with whom he collaborated on eleven movies between 1976 and 1991.  Other directors with whom he has worked include Jane Campion (The Piano, 1992), Volker Schlöndorff (The Ogre, 1996), Neil Jordan (TheEnd of the Affair, 1999) and Michael Winterbottom (Wonderland, 1999 and The Claim, 2000).  He also collaborated with Damon Albarn on the music for Antonia Bird's Ravenous (1998).

Nyman has provided music for a fashion show (Yamamoto Perpetuo for designer Yohji Yamamoto, (1993), the opening of a high-speed rail link (MGV, 1993) and a computer game (Enemy Zero, 1996).  That sensitivity to occasion is enriched by a talent, shared with baroque composers, for refiguration: the Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings develops ideas encountered in The Convertibility of Lute Strings and Tango for Tim; the Third String Quartet lies behind the score for Christopher Hampton's 1996 movie Carrington.

The music/multi-video event The Commissar Vanishes, based on David King's book about Stalinist manipulation of photographic documents, received its first performance in London in December 1999, and the opera Facing Goya was premiered in Santiago de Compostela, Spain on the 3rd August 2000.

In October 2001, Romaeuropa Festival, Rome dedicated three entire days as a homage to Michael Nyman and his music. The programme included world premieres, including a specially commissioned choral work to celebrate the restoration of Michelangelo’s Mosè statue in the Church of St.Peter in Chains.

On 17th May 2002 Michael Nyman and his band returned to the Royal Festival Hall performing in the UK for the first time the soundtrack to Dziga Vertov’s 1929 classic black and white film Man With a Movie Camera.  The film documents the full spectrum 1929 Soviet urban life with dazzling inventiveness.  Performed with The Commissar Vanishes, these two films contrast the light and dark sides of Soviet life in 1920’s and 30s.

Nyman together with U.Shrinivas (electric mandolin) and the singers Rajan and Sajan Misra presented on the 24th July 2002 an evening of music. SANGAM, a joint project that subtly combines the talents of the assembled artists, represents a period of collaboration between Nyman and the Indian master musicians.   It is part of the touring repertoire and is available on CD through Warner Classics.

Nyman revised his opera Facing Goya for the Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, premiered on 19th October 2002.  This marked the start of a three year period as ‘Composer in Residence’.  Man and Boy: Dada, an opera based on the Dada artist Kurt Schwitters’, with a libretto by Michael Hastings was the second opera.  This had its Karlsruhe premiere on March 13th 2004.  A new production directed by Lindsay Posner was premiered at the Almeida Theatre on 15th July 2004. This highly acclaimed production is to move to America this December. The opera soundtrack is to be among the first releases on Nyman’s own record label.  The final opera for Karlsruhe is Love Counts, also with libretto by Michael Hastings.  Its German premiere is in March 2005.

Commissioned by the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, on 29th August 2003, Nyman’s first violin concerto was premiered at the Musikhalle, Hamburg, performed by violinist Gidon Kremer and the Festival Orchestra under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies.

Other recent successes have been the play Power by Nick Dear at the National Theatre, London premiered on July 3rd 2003 for which Nyman wrote the accompanying music and the BBC Concert Orchestra’s programme of selected Nyman film scores performed at the Royal Festival Hall, on June 17th 2003.

Nyman premieres include Beckham Crosses/Nyman Scores, originally commissioned by BBC Radio3 programme Between the Ears; and Acts of Beauty, commissioned and performed by Sentieri selvaggi, conducted by Carlo Boccadoro with singer Cristina Zavalloni at the Mantova International Literature Festival.  This exciting piece has a repeat performance on the Italian stage during the Genoa Science Festival November 2004.

On 22nd November at the Wigmore Hall, Angelika Kirchslager, and Ian Bostridge come together to celebrate Nymans 60th birthday. The programme (part of the Song Recital Series) features some of Nyman’s most notable vocal compositions. 

Diversity has always been part of the Nyman relationship with music. So it comes as no surprise that on 16th July 2004, the young musicians of the Havering Music School embarked on a programme of Nyman pieces at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. On 22nd September Nyman conducted the Rome Sinfonietta in a programme of film music and Trinity College continue the birthday year acknowledgements with a concert of his music on 28th November.

Forthcoming projects include The Libertine – a film directed by Laurence Dunmore, starring Johnny Depp. The soundtrack belongs to the list of planned Nyman releases, along with Acts of Beauty for his own label. 

Commissions include a new work for the Singapore Chinese Orchestra with planned performances at the Barbican London 2005. Dance work for the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Theatre – a 30 minute composition to be premiered in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music on1st February 2005.

At every turn Nyman has proved eminently practical.  Not for him the ivory tower anguish of a tormented composer grappling with abstract systems.  Rather he has consistently displayed an openess to collaboration, a spry sense of humour, a literate imagination and an instinctive ability to engage a highly diverse audience.

© 2004, Nick Kimberley