Sir Paul Is
Still Standing
After losing his wife Linda, Sir Paul McCartney is now faced with some tough times ahead. However, it is highly likely that he will survive. We examine his second major classical composition and the story behind it, the symphonic poem Standing Stone.
What will be the new direction now for Sir Paul McCartney? It is of course, with great sadness that we report on the death of Linda McCartney in our news section this issue. She will be greatly missed, and we send Sir Paul our deepest sympathies and condolences.
Linda was a great photographer, and Paul’s lastest album, Standing Stone, features much of her work. The music itself is based on a poem Paul wrote, and he himself said of it in July 1997: “I’ve spent much of the last four years composing what has now become my second large-scale classical work, the symphonic poem Standing Stone… [it] relies entirely on colours and effects drawn from orchestral and choral forces. With no soloists to propel the `story’ and to help keep me on track throughout the writing of about 75 minutes of music I wrote a poem in which I try to describe the way Celtic man might have wondered about the origins of life and the mystery of human existence.”
Any
new work by Paul McCartney is bound to attract worldwide
attention, closely scrutinised as it will be by those who have
followed his career since the early 1960s. In the case of Standing
Stone, McCartney has composed a vast symphonic poem in which
the origins and meaning of life itself are addressed. The four-movement
work requires a large orchestra with large chorus and exotic
percussion.
In common with his best popular melodies the score is packed with memorably direct tunes that instantly appeal to the broadest range of taste. It represents the sum of almost 40 years of music-making, a career in which Sir Paul has moved from one stepping stone to another. With the Beatles he used instruments lying around the studio and together they explored the different instrumental colours. As they went on, they began to use orchestras and choirs, such as in Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
(Yesterday by the Beatles — click for MIDI)
He has always wanted to experiment, and eagerly accepted an invitation to write a piece to mark the 150th anniversary of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. But he could never read or write music; of course, this did not stop him writing much for the Beatles, it was just that they did not notate what they composed. They employed others to write it down for them. And for the Liverpool Oratorio McCartney shared the writing process with Carl Davis, who notated it for him.
The Liverpool Oratorio has now been performed by over a hundred different orchestras since its 1991 premiere, a record equalled by few large-scale modern composers.
Following on from this, Richard Lyttelton, president of EMI Classics, commissioned McCartney in 1993 to write a work to celebrate the record company’s centenary year and mark McCartney’s own close links with EMI. McCartney was soon at the piano forging themes for what eventually developed into a substantial work, Standing Stone.
The initial keyboard “sketches” for the piece were
written down from cassette tapes by jazz musician Steve Lodder.
Later McCartney used an electronic keyboard linked to a computer,
complete with music notation software to translate his playing into
printed music and a MIDI file (we shall cover this topic in more
detail in a later issue).
However, he was not used to the regular beat clicks and his performance was quite erratic looking on the computer. It was up to composer David Matthews,who had made arrangements of parts of the Liverpool Oratorio, to patiently decode the computer print-out and put it into a readable form.
McCartney decided to make the work a story (“programme music”, see article on musical terminology) and wrote his poem based on his desire to explore his Celtic roots. Richard Rodney Bennett, one of the most versatile modern composers, was then invited to become overall supervisor of the orchestration of Standing Stone. Luckily Richard and Paul McCartney hit it off really well, and Paul was very pleased with Richard’s orchestral arrangement of his piano piece Spiral.
Opening Night
Among the many images that fire Paul McCartney’s creative imagination, few are so clearly defined as his desire to visualise the opening night of a new work and predict the effect it has on an audience. “I want to be captured by a piece if I’m in the hall” he explains. His initial ideas for Standing Stone were formed after painting two canvasses which dealth with the dawn of time and which included an interpretation of a spiral design from the entrance stone to the prehistoric passage grave at Newgrange in Ireland’s County Meath.
The opening movement, titled “After heavy light years” describes the Earth’s formative years of creation. McCartney’s approach to this was influenced by his long-standing fascination with ancient music and the religious and transcendental importance of music to the ancient world. Besides exploring antitquated ideas on music, McCartney also prepared the creative ground for Standing Stone by reading about the worldwide survival of ancient megaliths, menhirs and other monumental objects, e.g. the statues of Easter Island, the stone-age burial chamber at Newgrange, and the stone circles of northern Europe.
“There are many things that we love that we can’t explain,” McCartney says. “But it seems that everyone I know has some deep feeling for these standing stones, even though they are a complete mystery. That clinched the title of the work for me, and that has always been an important part of how I work.”
Standing Stone
is founded on a literary programme, developed by the composer out
of his reading of Celtic legends and a variety of mythic sources
into an extended narrative poem. The narrative element of the
poem served as inspiration for McCartney’s choice of musical
themes and their vivid and often strongly contrasting characters,
including the fire and flood of the opening. When human beings
arrive the harmony settles on the bold optimistic key of C major,with
the works of creation now accomplished and ready to be explored
by Homo Sapiens.
The second movement, “He awoke startled”, depicts the first human, Adam, now faced with the challenges of the world around him.
The third movement, “Subtle colours merged soft contours”, could well describe the subtle instrumental tones and delicately reflective melodies unveiled by solo cor anglais and immediatly after by flutes and clarinets in unison. This movement is also about the man meeting other people.
The finale (fourth movement) begins with a rousing response to its title, “Strings pluck, horns blow, drums beat”, cast in the key of E minor and full-blooded in its delivery of a victory tune. McCartney’s desire to produce what he describes as a “scarf-waving finale” was tempered by a determination to use his lyrical tune as the movement’s unifying theme. “I want everyone to leave happy after a performance of Standing Stone, since I do write for people and so that the audience is able to understand most of what they’ve heard.”
The man shares a tender moment with his girl, and a solo flute delivers the first full statement of McCartney’s fine love theme. The choir then takes over to give an unaccompanied version of the same tune, now heard complete with heart-felt lyrics.
We can only give a very brief synopsis of the piece here; if you are interested in Standing Stone we suggest you listen to a copy of it for yourself. If you have any comments to make on the piece, after listening to it, just send them to Good Music Magazine. We’ll print the best letters.
Source: partly from EMI / MPL Communications Ltd.
Click here to return to front page of Good Music Magazine
http://music.kingdavid.org/paul.htm
Updated 12 March, 2003 © David King 2000-2003