Peter Seabourne
It was with renewed passion that the British composer Peter Seabourne returned to his craft in 2001, after retreating from it in 1989. Five symphonies, a clutch of concertos and a nine-volume piano cycle called Steps later, he is making up for lost time. Volume 6 of Steps is released on Willowhayne Records in May.
I was no prodigy, but I remember inventing a score at primary school. I worked out that you needed to see all the instruments playing all at once. I think it had recorders, and everything was in the wrong order, but it fired me up and became a kind of obsession. Composition was a pretty off-the-beaten-track activity at Cambridge University. I ended up studying with Robin Holloway, which was the biggest stroke of luck. He was ‘the young fogey’, writing scenes from Schumann when everyone else was into Serialism. He was wonderfully inspiring; after every session I just couldn’t wait to get back to the piece of manuscript paper sitting on my desk.
I stopped writing for 12 years and disowned everything I’d written. I realised that while the urge was there, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and I just started to detest new music in some ways. So I went off and ran a school music department for 26 years. Although I wasn’t writing, I was
arranging a lot and relearning my craft, so when I did start again it was almost as if it was a kind of gestation period.
Steps was my way back. Michael Bell, a fantastic pianist, taught at my school and he had a gifted pupil. And so the very first two pieces I wrote in the Steps cycle were for each of them. It was like a cloud lifting. Gradually I gathered more and more pieces into a first volume; there are nine now.
For me, music is about expression and not about playing games with notes. When I’m beginning, it has to have some kind of expressive starting point, which might be musical or it might be extra-musical. A lot of my pieces start from poems or paintings, but not all by any means. The symphonies are all pretty abstract.
When I start a piece, I have no idea what will happen, or where it will go. It’s like jumping in the river and trying to survive. Often I find that the piece needs to be expanded from inside, as if I’m blowing up a balloon.