Breath of life
It’s something we do 17,000 times a day, without giving it enough thought: breathing. It’s the physical necessity without which speaking, singing and whole families of instruments couldn’t be quickened into life, from didgeridoos to French horns, and saxophones to ophicleides.
But some composers have paid proper attention to this continuous miracle of inspiration and exhalation, in pieces that use the arc of the human breath as structural and expressive necessity, like the framing sections of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, or Richard Reed Parry’s album Music for Heart and Breath. Yet few musicians have delved as deeply as the flautist Kathryn Williams. Williams’s Coming Up For Air project is a series of commissions – around 100 of them so far, with 40 pieces released on a 2019 CD – of complete pieces of music designed to last for the duration of a single arc of her breath. The range of sounds and expressions the composers have found is, well, breath-taking, from Cee Haines’s post-modern hip-hop miniature DOOO to Lucy Hale’s aching, halting When We Breathe.
Other woodwind instruments can give the illusion that the player is capable of breathing – continuously, superhumanly, uncannily – for minutes on end. That’s thanks to the tighter embouchures of the oboe, bassoon or saxophone, and the virtuosic technique of circular breathing, in which you fill your cheeks with air, expelling it through the instrument at the same time as breathing in through your nose.
It requires the brilliance of musicians such as Heinz Holliger or Pascal Gallois to make it work in pieces by the Italian composer Luciano Berio that seem to pass in a single breath. The saxophonist Kenny Gee uses the technique in his easy-listening rhapsodies: he once played a single record-breaking note for more than 45 minutes.
Yet breathing is vital for instruments and ensembles that don’t require air pressure to bring their sounds into the world. Orchestras need symphonies to have the ebb and flow of breathing on an epic scale. Conductor Claudio Abbado conceived his performances as arcs of breath so that music like the vast 25-minute final movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony rode on a single, elemental span of tension and release.
The American composer Pauline Oliveros worked with this expanded idea of breath in a sonic meditation called Teach Yourself to Fly. How?
‘Begin by simply observing your own breathing… introduce your voice… Continue as long as possible naturally, and until all others are quiet, always observing your own breath cycle.’
Our breathing is our most essential connection to the natural rhythms we’re all part of, from the heave of the tides to the lunar cycle, from the ellipses of the solar system to the breath of the universe. As Pauline Oliveros said: breathe, and fly, and breathe, and fly.
Orchestras need symphonies to have the ebb and flow of breathing on an epic scale
Osian Ellis Born 1928 Harpist
With a harp in the house, it was fairly natural that Osian Ellis would take to the instrument as a child. His mother was an amateur player, and he claimed he was largely self-taught. A win in 1943 at Bangor’s National Eisteddfod led to a Royal Academy scholarship, and he never looked back. The Academy became a firm fixture in Ellis’s life, as he served as professor of harp for some 30 years from 1959. As principal harp of the London Symphony Orchestra, he worked with many composers and inspired new works; a friendly collaboration with Benjamin Britten lasted until the composer’s death. Before the LSO, Ellis performed in various ensembles, including the Wally Stott Orchestra and the London Palladium pit orchestra. A proud Welshman, he was honorary president of the Wales International Harp Festival and was also a talented composer in his own right.
Elijah Moshinsky Born 1946 Opera Director
It was a philosophy scholarship that brought Elijah Moshinsky from his native Melbourne, Australia to Oxford, and it was at the university that he cut his teeth as a director. Talent-spotted there by Covent Garden’s general director John Tooley, Moshinsky landed himself a job at the Royal Opera House. His philosophical background would inspire the very distinct theatrical vision for which he would become known and admired around the world, in productions of everything from Verdi to Britten.
Eva Coutaz Born 1943 Harmonia Mundi
Her working life might have begun at a university bookshop in the south of France, but it ended as the beating heart of one of classical music’s most respected record labels. Eva Coutaz joined Harmonia Mundi, which was started by her husband Bernard, as a press officer in the early 1970s. She found her passion in working directly with musicians and before long she was organising recordings and concerts, which she went on to do for three decades. She took over as CEO when Bernard died in 2010 and retired in 2016. Eva was warmly regarded by the classical music industry and popular with all who worked with her.
Also remembered…
British violinist and conductor John Georgiadis (born 1939) was a familiar presence as leader of the LSO in the 1960s and ’70s. He went on to conduct the Bangkok Symphony and Essex Youth orchestras, among other ensembles.
Claude Bolling (born 1930), the French composer, pianist and bandleader, was one of France’s leading jazz musicians. He studied with Duruflé and his natural talent crossed over into classical and film music, scoring over 100 films during his career.