BBC
Radio 3’s programme on “Eight Songs for a Mad King”
Peter Maxwell
Davies
During the Members’ Weekend,
Paul Silber and his wife Clara Silber gave a presentation centred around
the BBC Radio 3’s programme on “Eight Songs
for a Mad King” written by Peter Maxwell Davies in 1969 with Roy
Hart, as soloist, singing the role of King George III. Sir Peter Maxwell
Davies had some really interesting comments to make on the conception and
creation of the piece. To illustrate the interview, various parts of the
work were sung by the classical baritone, Kelvin Thomas. After each example
Paul added Roy’s original interpretation of the exact same excerpt.
It made fascinating listening.
When the interviewer
asked Sir Peter Maxwell Davies “How does a voice, a single voice, create
a chord?” he replies “There was this wonderful actor from South
Africa called Roy Hart. This Roy Hart ran a vocal group who did these multi-phonics
at a place in Hampstead called the Abraxas Club. It was all very much of the
period, these people writhed around on the floor singing these extraordinary
harmonics. … Roy Hart was the first soloist in this piece and he could
do these multi-phonics so I put them in the score never thinking that anyone
would want to play this piece after he’d done it....I had never written
anything like this, it was absolutely crackers.… It’s a piece
of its time. I’m very pleased that it’s survived its time and
that there are lots and lots of mad Kings running around all over the world
performing this piece.”
The interviewer finishes the
programme with “It has to be said that “Eight Songs for a Mad
King” is a seminal piece of music theatre. … We do confront
madness here. … What’s most unsettling about this work is that,
like all great works of art, it holds a mirror up to all of us. When the
King and his music are more normal, in inverted commas, through this piece,
not only do they throw the more disturbing material into relief but they
remind us that we’re not just spectators.”
In addition to
these insightful comments, Peter Maxwell Davies spoke about “pushing
back borders”: how his students were tackling range in music with much
less difficulty than they used to. Roy Hart was not credited with helping
this trend, as he was not credited with inspiring the creation of the music
line of “Eight Songs”. But he should have been. What seemed “crackers”
for Peter Maxwell Davies in the late 60s has now become part of music history.
As the interviewer indicated, the “pushing back of borders” has
moved into people’s personal lives too and this can surely be attributed
to Roy Hart’s multi-octave approach to life and our continuation of
this teaching.