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Jeremy Thurlow Interview
Posted on Monday, August 20, 2007. © Copyright 2004-2008 David Bruce
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C:T talks to Jeremy Thurlow, composer and author of a new book on the music of Henri Dutilleux
Tell us something about your background.
My parents were not musicians, though they were interested in going to concerts and indulged and nurtured my craze for music, which started early and has never gone away. I studied music at Cambridge, and sang, conducted and played piano there, and then at the Guildhall and at King's College London. Later I spent a year in Paris and lived for some time in Scotland.
How did you start composing?
I started composing when I was quite little - about 6 or 7 - and wrote a piece for the recorder. I followed this up with little pieces for piano, and then some sort of string quartet and a march for wind band. I remember enjoying buying the different kinds of manuscript paper, and then thinking I really ought to write something on them!
Which composers have influenced you the most?
Very hard question to answer, as my music is very much steeped in my love of all sorts of composers from Byrd to Murail, but despite this I always feel that it stands up best when I've managed to do something independent, something that's simply in my head. For quite a long time I was influenced by Britten, but now, though I still admire his music, I feel that cultivating that kind of language was holding me back, and excluding too much. I like the way Berio managed to embrace so many different sounds and ideas, and still be recognizably himself. Other influences might include Lutoslawski, Tippett, Judith Weir, Sandy Goehr, Alejandro Viñao, and plenty of older figures including Bartók, Berg, Beethoven…
Which non-musical influences have affected your music most?
This is also hard to answer, as I'm interested in various things, but it's
hard to say which of them actually influence my music. That process is
largely unconscious, so if I know about it at all it's largely in retrospect. One the one hand there are various mathematical ideas I find inspiring - fractals, algorithms, shapes and processes in different dimensions - and I wish I had studied maths for longer and could pursue these things in more detail. And on the other, there are all kinds of sensuous experiences - fields of wheat, trees, skies, also paintings, sculpture and design, theatre, modern architecture especially, which stopped me in my tracks.
You've written a book on Henri Dutilleux. Tell us something about your
I'm particularly interested in the way Dutilleux writes for orchestra. He has a magical feel for sonority, creating soundscapes which shimmer and glow, and transform organically as you listen. I think all his orchestral pieces from the two symphonies up to The Shadows of Time have something special to offer.
Interview by David Bruce © Copyright 2004-2008
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