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Gavin Bryars. En paroles, en musiques, a collection of interviews with Jean-Louis Tallon, is the first book devoted to the British composer born in 1943, who wrote the iconic The Sinking of the Titanic in 1972. The man who has been a member of the Collège de 'Pataphysique since 1974 reveals himself to be an eminently unclassifiable artist, with a panoramic curiosity and a career path as rich as it is exemplary.
What a fascinating career and personality Gavin Bryars has had! For many music lovers, the English composer born in 1943 remains above all the author of two pieces that have had the rare privilege of becoming "hits" of so-called "contemporary" music with an experimental bent:The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, both premiered in 1972, recorded three years later for Brian Eno's Obscure label and regularly revived ever since, whether by musicians or choreographers. But these soon-to-be-fifty-something scores, the work of a composer who was only 29 years old at the time, cannot in themselves sum up a body of work that has since continued to expand and branch out, to include almost 200 opuses today, and an artistic path that is in many ways exemplary.
This is the primary virtue of Gavin Bryars. En paroles, en musiques, a collection of interviews published by Le Mot et le Reste by Jean-Louis Tallon and the first book ever devoted to the composer, is to enable us to take the full measure of this exciting career. Author of several books of interviews, with writer Pierre Bergounioux or musicians such as Meredith Monk(1) or Philippe Hersant, Jean-Louis Tallon spoke at length with Gavin Bryars between 2017 and 2020, chronologically unfolding with him the main stages of this journey. It's a path that's far less linear than one might think, beginning with learning to play the double bass and studying philosophy. A jazz enthusiast, Gavin Bryars practiced free improvisation with guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Tony Oxley from 1962 to 1966, notably as part of the Joseph Hollbroke Trio, before abandoning the practice overnight, putting his instrument away for many years to devote himself to composition.
The beginnings of his "career" as a largely "self-taught, unorthodox and empirical composer", in his own words, are closely linked with the emerging "experimental" - as Michael Nyman understands it in his book Experimental Music - and minimalist scenes. During a trip to the United States, he worked for a time with John Cage, met Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams (towards whom he was sometimes tenderly caustic) and above all Terry Riley. In England, strongly influenced by the approach of composer Cornelius Cardew, in 1970 he helped found the mythical and iconoclastic Portsmouth Sinfonia at the Portsmouth School of Fine Arts, where he teaches: an orchestra open to all aspiring musicians, whatever their age or level - Michael Nyman, Brian Eno and Simon Fisher-Turner were among its members, along with numerous art students who were complete beginners - which sets out to cover classical music standards in a perfectly relaxed and refreshing way.
At the same time, Bryars teaches at various art schools and pursues extensive research into the artists and figures who fascinate him: a connoisseur and fervent admirer of Marcel Duchamp and Jules Verne (whose work inspired many of his pieces, starting with his second opera, Doctor Ox's Experiment, premiered in 1998 at the English National Opera and directed by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, or By the Vaar, a piece for double bass and orchestra written for jazz double bassist Charlie Haden), he is also particularly fond of eccentric figures (from Erik Satie to Lord Berners and the OuLiPo poets). His panoramic culture and curiosity for all fields of art and science, spiced up with a dry British sense of humor, are two of Bryars' most striking personality traits. It's hardly surprising that he has been a member of the Collège de 'Pataphysique since 1974 (when his work on Duchamp began) , and in 2015 he joined - like Jacques Prévert, Joan Miró, Man Ray and Umberto Eco before him - the top of the hierarchy: the Transcendent Corps des Satrapes.
It's tempting to understand Gavin Bryars' career through the notion of "eccentricity", especially if we refer to its astronomical definition: "That which deviates from a point considered as the center." The composer never ceased to go where he was not expected, to be eccentric, as distrustful of dogma and academicism as he was concerned not to repeat himself. At the same time, this follower of Zen Buddhism appears to be excessively centred and balanced, despite the periods of doubt and sometimes intense depression that have marked his career...
Be that as it may, the early 1980s marked a new turning point in his work. Assuming his love for the post-Romanticism of Strauss, Busoni and Zemlinsky, as expressed in his first opera, Medea, staged in 1984 by Bob Wilson, he set out to revisit nine centuries of Western musical history, from Pérotin and Palestrina to Webern, Bill Evans and Minimalism, via Schubert, Alkan and Saint-Saëns. A history that provides him with the argument and material for a work that is less postmodern - insofar as irony, as opposed to humor, is mostly absent, as is quotation - than "posthistorical", in the words of David Christoffel(2). Gavin Bryars does not hesitate to tackle the canonical genres, signing five operas, several concertos, four string quartets, two requiems, imposing cycles of lauds and six books of madrigals on Petrarchan sonnets, while creating his own ensemble and reviving the practice of double bass...
The story of this musician, investigator and explorer, Sherlock Holmes and Philéas Fogg, is a fascinating one, as we cross paths with Carla Bley and Philip Jeck, Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Carlson, Delphine Seyrig and Bertrand Belin(3).... Through the pages and the questions of an interviewer who never seeks to put himself forward, Gavin Bryars emerges as a man both humble and self-assured, in love with life and curious about people, sensitive to landscapes and geography as much as to history and fiction, never shying away from a critical spirit (Brian Eno, Philip Glass or Michael Nyman are gently scratched) that he seems to exercise above all towards himself. In the end, he's an eminently sympathetic and attentive man - that's also the impression left on me by our one and only brief meeting in 2012 at Le CentQuatre in Paris - a family man and a fulfilled artist (his four children are musicians and work with him)... One leaves admiring this reading, which makes you want to lose yourself in this labyrinthine work, faced with a journey of such richness, such coherence even in its reversals. The work of an artist who, in classical times, would certainly have been described as an honest man.
David Sanson
