Erika Fox
Born in Vienna in 1936, Erika Fox has spent the majority of her life in England. Her output includes the acclaimed puppet opera The Bet and the Olivier-award nominated The Dancer Hotoke. A disc of Fox’s chamber works is being released by NMC this June, marking something of a rediscovery of her music.
I first started composing as a very little girl. It was during the Second World War. My mother and I lived in Leeds for 18 months in a vast house, some of which was given over to Jewish refugees. It was a bit derelict, but there was one of those hatches where they pass food in. I looked through it, and there was a piano, so I climbed into the room. I immediately started making up little pieces at the piano.
I was the only woman studying composition in my time at the Royal College of Music. I was there from 1954-58. I knew there were women who had written music – Elizabeth Maconchy and Elisabeth Lutyens were working then – but nobody ever mentioned a woman’s name. So I had no role model at all. That’s a hampering thing, of course.
All kinds of things inspire me. If I hadn’t been a musician, I might have wanted to be a poet. Poetry is very important to me, as is theatre and any kind of drama or ritual. I love Eastern European music – particularly Kurtág and
Ligeti – and the British composer Harrison Birtwistle.
I usually have to make a plan when I compose. Not to say that I stick to it, but some days you’re inspired and others you’re knackered. If you can see what you should be doing, it helps. Harmony isn’t my thing but melody is. My grandfather was a Rabbi and we had a synagogue in our house – the sound of men singing was what music meant to me. I wrote music based on those folk tunes in a minor mode. I always think in horizontal rather than vertical lines.
Pianist John Tilbury was the first person I met at college. We’ve been close friends ever since. I’m trying with little success to write a new piece for him and the flautist Carla Rees. It’s di cult, as John specialises in the music of Morton Feldman. He can probably play a chord more evenly and more quietly than anybody in the whole world, but my music has lots of notes! I’m finding it hard to think in a di erent way.