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1:15

BBC sounds music radio podcasts. Hello.

1:17

I'm Kirsty Wark and this is

1:19

start the week from BBC radio

1:22

for I Hope you enjoy

1:24

the show Hello

1:26

and welcome to a start the week

1:28

infused with the joy of music making

1:30

in the lyrical line of poetry and

1:32

from the Discoveries of the most ancient

1:34

instruments in the world to a shiny

1:36

new piece played in Britain for the first

1:38

time But sounding almost prehistoric

1:58

Well the elephant in the room is the

2:00

internationally renowned soloist Alison Balsam playing

2:02

Wynton Marsalis' trumpet concerto, a

2:05

piece she believes to be the most

2:07

important and impactful composition written for

2:09

the trumpet in 200 years. Creating

2:13

and playing musical instruments appears to be

2:15

a universal skill across time and place.

2:17

The music archaeologist Graham Lawson has been

2:20

digging for clues in his new book

2:22

Soundtracks and has brought a replica

2:24

of a 13th century mouth harp to the studio

2:26

in a matchbox and we're going to hear him

2:28

play it a little later. And

2:31

completing our musical trio, the poet

2:33

John Burnside, for whom poetry is

2:35

musical, his new collection,

2:37

Ruin Blossom, is his first since

2:39

2020 when he had a near-death

2:42

experience and he explores ideas

2:44

of renewal even in the darkest

2:46

of times. Well, welcome to

2:48

every musical morning. John,

2:51

for you, how much is poetry connected

2:53

to music in your head or musicality?

2:56

Well, music is

2:58

the essence of poetry. Mahler May said

3:01

poetry is part of the condition of music and

3:04

so the craft makes a different kind

3:06

of music than, you know, sounding like

3:09

an elephant on the trumpet. But

3:14

it's a craft, the essence of the

3:16

craft is to make the language musical in a

3:18

certain way. Prost can be

3:20

musical too, but the quality of lyricism in poetry

3:23

is, can advance musically

3:25

if you like. Alison, we heard that

3:27

extraordinary elephant call there

3:29

from the sixth movement and we hear of course a

3:31

little bit of it in the first movement. But

3:34

in many ways the trumpet, the instrument

3:36

that's used, that's attached to

3:39

you almost genetically, is

3:41

very much about the human voice. It

3:43

really is. It is like an extension

3:45

of the body and I do feel

3:47

so passionately that it can say so

3:50

much. As John was just

3:52

saying, it's the essence of what we've got

3:54

to say. It's reaching for

3:56

something that might be words, but it

3:58

might be beyond words. The Abstract.

4:00

And I think it's so interesting that

4:02

human beings are just. Endlessly

4:04

the troops his to music and at

4:07

all. it's various guises and them I

4:09

think in a with the trumpet not

4:11

could be more ancient that that than

4:13

the original trumpeting which is an elephant.

4:15

absolutely. And the thing is that the

4:18

you realize that from the very beginning.

4:20

I. Was going to have a very beginning

4:22

the what humans we're doing. We're taking signs

4:24

of nature. And. As it were

4:26

making him the rune. Was instruments

4:28

and as it started to think about that

4:31

and you think music graham. Essential to

4:33

human history. Or

4:35

do this. or do I think

4:37

I'm on? I'm not. Some of

4:39

the elephants in the room was

4:41

the promises maroon some from. It's

4:44

hard to imagine the stones or

4:46

sons with mammoth mode. But

4:48

we do know that the people

4:50

who's lived alongside the members were

4:52

making music of the most the

4:55

lumber from conflicts and and it's

4:57

always been there for on the.

5:00

Part of the mission of my work

5:02

has been to try and establish just

5:04

how much further back the story goes

5:06

when the evidence that we so far

5:08

have discovered i what you do so

5:11

brilliantly in your book is you can

5:13

bring slice the idea that it is

5:15

that it's not some kind of are

5:17

linear progression to some super instruments that

5:19

all. The way Sue the was complexity people

5:21

were using whatever they had to hand. Exactly

5:24

some bones, pieces of

5:26

wounds, and any anything

5:28

really. but most especially

5:31

of course the most

5:33

own. Of

5:35

invisible of all those things poetry on

5:37

songs of I must have been doing

5:39

us with thought of my work is

5:42

being devoted to trying to make that

5:44

connection in the evidence betweens. This is

5:46

a killer, sees the instruments and what

5:49

my also been going on alongside us

5:51

and you made very clear that. This

5:53

is this is on the of a little of

5:55

what we should be able to find. It's just

5:57

that of the ice baths and tell me that.

6:00

of island? Yes,

6:03

that is quite astonishing. The

6:08

ship went down in

6:10

a sea battle off the island

6:12

of Erland in the Baltic in

6:16

a terrific explosion. I mean it's

6:20

hard to imagine how a violin could

6:22

have survived the explosion but it did. The ship

6:24

split in two, sank to

6:26

the bottom taking all

6:29

the possessions of the sailors

6:31

and officers with it

6:34

and amongst them

6:37

was a box containing a violin. When

6:39

was this? It went down about 1676 and

6:42

on the 1st of

6:49

June actually, if you will clear

6:51

it all day.

6:54

Very few people survived unfortunately.

6:57

This is one of the features of

6:59

the archaeological story if you like is

7:01

that we are working with

7:04

ruins all the time and other

7:06

people's terrible misfortunes but out of

7:08

the misfortunes come this wonderful narrative

7:13

of the development of music. This fiddle

7:15

is a case in point. It was

7:18

in almost perfect condition even

7:20

to the extent of the varnish still

7:22

being on the surface of the wood.

7:25

Just because of the way that there was

7:27

so little salt in Baltic waters? So

7:29

little salt, yes. So the things

7:31

that normally like

7:34

salty water couldn't survive and the

7:36

little beasts that would normally gnaw

7:38

wood that like freshwater

7:40

can't really survive and

7:43

you've also got tremendous water. You've also got the story of

7:45

the Mary Rose and of course

7:47

when the Mary Rose was brought up everybody was

7:50

all very excited about what they might find about

7:52

what was going on at that time but it

7:54

was laterally that they found the instruments and

7:56

bits of instruments. Yes, yes

7:58

the the Things, they

8:00

come out in various orders. Sometimes they're amongst

8:03

the first things to appear because

8:05

they're part of the debris field. But

8:08

at other times, it only

8:10

emerges when great lumps

8:12

of stuff that have been brought up

8:14

off the seabed are not patiently dissected

8:17

on the laboratory bench. Yeah,

8:19

and you've got this wonderful word I've never heard

8:21

before. There's a few words in this program I

8:23

haven't heard before, but this one, debitage. Debitage, yes,

8:26

that's a good archeological word. Tell me about the

8:28

word debitage. It's about bits and

8:30

pieces. It's

8:33

about all the brick and brick that

8:35

we find that relates to a particular

8:39

activity. So we

8:41

find where somebody has been sitting,

8:43

making, shall we say, a

8:45

stone axe, all the little flakes

8:47

of flint lying around are preserved. Very

8:49

often the axes know where to be

8:51

seen, but all the bits and pieces

8:54

of the rest of the stone are

8:56

there, and you can piece them back

8:58

together again if you're really patient and

9:00

work out what's missing. I

9:02

think also you've brought something which

9:04

is tiny. Just describe what you've

9:06

brought before you play it for

9:09

us. I've brought a replica

9:11

of a medieval mouth harp.

9:16

We go by many names. In

9:18

Scotland, it's known as the

9:21

trompe. And it's

9:23

a little brass frame,

9:26

rather like a belt buckle or

9:28

a hair clip. And

9:32

in the middle of this frame, there

9:34

is a spring, a steel spring, which

9:37

if you twang it, makes

9:40

a rather pathetic springy

9:42

sound. But if you place

9:44

the whole thing between your teeth and the cavity

9:46

of your mouth, it's amazing. Yeah, and it gives

9:48

you the tone. You

9:50

amplify the whole tone. But just before you play

9:53

it, that mouth harp

9:55

is metal, but we're mouth harps

9:57

way back in the stone age. this

10:00

has been one of the most exciting discoveries

10:02

of recent years. We

10:04

were struggling to find the origins of this instrument

10:07

because when it first appears in the Middle Ages

10:09

it looks fully formed and you think how

10:11

can that possibly be? There must be early

10:13

ones and we couldn't find them and then

10:16

suddenly they turned up in China from the

10:18

Neolithic, the new stone age, about 4,000

10:20

years ago. Amazing, so there's a direct line. A

10:23

direct line, yes. Okay,

10:26

give us a performance. Minding

10:34

my tooth enamel, of course. That

10:37

spring is a dangerous thing. Amazing

11:01

and able to play quite sophisticated tunes.

11:05

Yes and that is one of the wonderful things about

11:07

it that that shares with brass

11:09

instruments, the

11:11

harmonic series, as the fundamental.

11:14

What you're doing is the instrument

11:16

only plays one note but with

11:18

your mouth you're articulating all the

11:21

harmonics of your windpipe and

11:24

your sinuses and everything else. Alison,

11:26

from you, from the trumpet, there's a resonance there

11:28

for you but that's from the trumpet. Yeah,

11:30

absolutely. That's why it's such a

11:32

natural thing to blow into a

11:35

horn because of exactly what you're

11:37

saying, Graeme. This idea of the harmonic series, that's

11:39

how the trumpet works, that you

11:42

change the way your lips make

11:44

the noise. You make

11:46

them tighter to get the different notes of the harmonic

11:48

series and the development of

11:51

the technology is what added the valves which made it

11:53

an instrument that could play all the notes of the

11:55

scale. But before that happened, which

11:57

was as late as the 19th

11:59

century. you

12:01

were only playing around with the harmonic series

12:04

and writing the upper echelons, you know,

12:07

the Baroque era, that's what they were doing. So

12:10

it's very much all

12:12

from the same world really. And

12:15

then you have a story in the

12:17

book about Hadrian's Wall and

12:19

how the room is communicated. Tell me first

12:21

about that for us, Gallatin, about it. One

12:28

of the problems with Hadrian's Wall is

12:30

that there are places on the wall

12:32

which is a frontier system which requires

12:34

good communications along its length. There

12:37

are places where you have no line of sight to

12:40

signal stations in

12:43

the vicinity. And the

12:45

only way that you could make this

12:47

connection would be if you had to

12:49

get out a signal in an emergency,

12:51

for instance, you would have to make

12:53

some loud noise or other. And of

12:56

course the trumpet and its relations, its

12:58

ancient relations are perfect

13:00

for that in the days

13:02

before gunpowder. Yes, but also

13:04

only within their specific distance.

13:06

Yeah, there's a limit, especially

13:08

in those bitter northern winters

13:10

with which I'm so familiar.

13:13

But the idea that that

13:15

whole idea is that the trumpet

13:17

was for communication, not necessarily

13:20

just for the musical joy of it, but

13:22

it was for communication. No, it's a

13:24

very multifaceted instrument in that regard. It

13:26

wasn't just for entertainment, it was for

13:28

all sorts of other things as well.

13:30

And it would be an instantaneous way

13:32

of communicating. Of course, if

13:34

you'd had fog, it would have been even more impossible even

13:36

if you did see each other on

13:38

a nice day. But if you

13:40

knew how to decipher the code of the notes

13:42

that were chosen to play or the rhythm that

13:46

the trumpeters were playing, you could pass that

13:48

message incredibly quickly, very long distances. So it's

13:50

got this sort of multifaceted

13:54

approach. And also the idea that

13:57

instruments, it's all about identity,

13:59

relationships. as well as communication

14:01

and there were trumpets at Tutankhamen's tomb. Yeah,

14:04

this is fascinating. I'm so interested in what

14:06

they said in the book about this because

14:08

it's so magical. Yeah. Well,

14:12

there were two trumpets parked

14:16

at various positions in the tomb and they are very

14:18

fine instruments.

14:24

They're quite short. They don't have a

14:27

huge amount of musical complexity

14:30

to them but they're beautifully

14:32

made. They're kind

14:34

of cylindrical tubes with a funnel on

14:36

the end basically. But

14:39

they were in pretty

14:41

perfect condition when they were found. But

14:44

this, of course, reveals one of the problems

14:46

with archaeology is that what can

14:48

look pretty perfect isn't actually pretty perfect.

14:52

It's 2,000, 4,000 years old, whatever

14:54

it might be. If you

14:56

were to make a replica of that, what

14:59

would that sound like? What

15:01

would it sound like to you? Well, with

15:03

Alison, it could sound like anything I had

15:05

seen today. I mean, it's interesting because the

15:08

trumpet, as we were just saying,

15:11

it does have this characteristic of

15:13

being militaristic and have

15:15

strength and power. And I believe

15:17

that when they found these trumpets and they actually tried to

15:19

play them in 1922, they

15:25

tried, they got a bandman to play and

15:27

it didn't really work the way they were

15:29

expecting it at that time to work, being

15:31

powerful and sound like one would be used

15:33

to a brass instrument sounding. So

15:36

the bandman took his mouthpiece from his

15:38

modern trumpet and put it into this incredibly

15:40

precious – was it the silver one or

15:42

the bronze one? And

15:44

he put it in to give it a good blow

15:46

and the trumpet shattered. And I

15:49

believe that one of the archaeologists actually

15:51

was hospitalized by the shock of this

15:53

happening. And this is something that I've

15:55

been fascinated about for years and also

15:57

the fact that every So

16:00

you think bad seemed to happen very shortly

16:02

after it. So this curse from the... The

16:04

curse of just getting to... But

16:07

the other thing I was going to say

16:09

is that there's a whole other side to

16:11

the trumpet which is very intimate, which is

16:13

very human voice-like and very quiet and very

16:16

feminine, if you like. And

16:18

I think the bandsmen in 1922 totally

16:21

missed the point of what this trumpet was there for.

16:24

Exactly. John, the idea that people have been

16:27

making music for 4000 years and people have

16:29

been writing poetry for

16:31

4000 years probably too. Just

16:34

tell me how you feel that music and

16:36

poetry enmeshes. Hmm.

16:39

I was just thinking what Alison

16:41

was saying just now, I was thinking it. I

16:44

often listen to a piece by Copeland called

16:46

Quiet City, which I think that's the

16:49

trumpet that's in that beautiful meditative

16:54

sound. And it's interesting to

16:56

think that something as militaristic

16:59

as a trumpet can seem can also

17:01

provide this beautiful... Soulful.

17:03

Yeah, very soulful. I

17:06

think I wrote a book

17:08

called Ponds once which was very much inspired by

17:10

blues songs, called The Black Cat Bone. And

17:14

first because blues imagery, the actual words

17:16

of blues songs are very

17:18

interesting and the way they use imagery in

17:20

the Black Cat Bone is something that if

17:22

you have it, it guarantees invisibility and saxophone

17:24

and all kinds of other things. It

17:27

gives you this magical power as

17:29

it were. But obviously

17:32

poetry at one time and

17:34

perhaps even still, there was an attempt by

17:37

poetry to give the poet magical powers

17:40

to heal or to change

17:42

things or to attract friends

17:44

or maybe to

17:46

help the world get

17:48

better. And we still have a

17:51

kind of strange idea that somebody

17:53

will one day will write a poem that

17:55

will make war end or the environment will

17:57

be suddenly saved because of a few poems.

17:59

Because it doesn't happen, but

18:01

I think that the way of poetry,

18:04

the way of everyone

18:07

who writes poetry for

18:09

that end can make a difference. I

18:12

don't mean by communicating necessarily, but

18:14

it's like Thomas

18:17

Burton said that contemplation happening

18:21

in a monastery somewhere where one person

18:23

is sitting meditatively contemplating does

18:26

actually change the world even

18:28

though it's not seen by

18:30

anyone. I do believe

18:32

that when I'm writing poems, when others are writing

18:34

poems, it has some kind of

18:36

a fact like that, maybe it's metaphysically. Well,

18:39

let's move on to that

18:41

very point, Alison, about the

18:43

whole impact of Wynton Marsalis'

18:46

trumpet concerto. Now,

18:48

for you, were you

18:50

reading on the page? Were you reading the music first?

18:52

When you first handed

18:54

this incredible thing, which is six

18:57

movements and it's 35, 40 minutes, it's

19:00

extraordinary. You're going to be playing it. I

19:03

have played it already with the Swedish Radio Symphony

19:05

Orchestra in practice, but you're going to be playing

19:07

it on Thursday night. I am, yeah, and

19:09

I'm going to meet the London Symphony Orchestra for

19:11

the first time tonight. Actually, I

19:14

was just thinking very moved by what

19:16

John just said, which is it's about, it's

19:20

not necessarily about the intellectual understanding of it,

19:22

but it's about feeling. Maybe

19:24

we don't understand something, but we feel it before

19:27

we understand it. I think with

19:29

Wynton, I remember being a kid and hearing

19:31

his album, The Majesty of the Blues come

19:33

out, I can't remember, I think maybe like

19:35

1989 or something like that. I

19:38

didn't really know exactly why it was so

19:40

incredible, but I knew I could feel it

19:42

and I knew it was something extraordinary. This

19:46

piece is about the feeling of

19:48

it. It's intellectually incredibly sophisticated. This is

19:50

a man who's spent his life not

19:53

only being one of the world's greatest

19:55

jazz musicians, but he's spent his life

19:57

studying Beethoven and the genius of Beethoven.

20:00

he has thought this piece through

20:02

from the top to the bottom in every

20:04

way and I in fact wasn't handed the

20:06

score first. I heard about the fact it

20:08

was happening and I knew it was going

20:11

to be something really special so I got

20:13

on a plane and he wrote the piece

20:15

for his very very old friend from college

20:17

who's now the principal trumpet of the Cleveland

20:19

Orchestra. And that's where it premiered. Yeah so

20:21

I jumped on the plane to Cleveland because

20:23

I knew I had to hear it in

20:26

in real life. I couldn't just look at the

20:29

score. I had to hear what it was really

20:31

like when it got up on its feet. So

20:33

I did that and that was a year ago.

20:35

Almost exactly. Yeah exactly and I

20:37

think at that point I had already agreed

20:39

to this series of concerts with the orchestra

20:42

because of course the LSO have a long

20:44

and wonderful relationship with Marsalis and his other

20:46

works. And

20:48

so I sort of agreed to playing a piece that

20:50

I hadn't even really seen or heard

20:52

or anything but as soon as I

20:54

was able to have some experience of it I

20:56

was very very excited and

20:59

the more I got to know

21:01

it this is what happens with the greatest things. You

21:03

know you think I don't understand this. I think it's

21:05

good but I don't really understand it and I went

21:07

to Winton and I said I don't understand why have

21:09

you done this and why is the second movement so

21:11

different from the fourth movement? Why are there so many

21:13

movements? You know it's like an anthology

21:15

of the trumpet and he explained it to me.

21:17

And I really went to him

21:19

with so much conviction that it would be

21:21

changed and he was so charming and so

21:23

he really listened to me with an open

21:25

mind but we didn't change one quaver. He

21:27

knew exactly what he was doing and now I

21:29

totally believe in every single note myself. And the more

21:31

you listen to it the more differentiated it

21:34

is. I mean and tell me ultimately there's

21:36

as you say six movements and

21:38

each has a very an overarching

21:40

sound but a very distinctive sound. Very

21:43

distinctive sound and that's again why the trumpet

21:45

is you know this instrument that I've championed

21:47

all my life because it has so many

21:49

characters and so much that it can say

21:51

and ways that it can move you.

21:53

And he really you know he goes from literally the

21:56

elephant sound and he goes

21:58

through the form of you know the starts

22:00

very much in a style of a classical symphony,

22:02

you know, with the timpani and

22:04

lots of extended techniques, so it's

22:06

fluttering and alternative fingerings, it's very

22:08

virtuosic. The second movement is like

22:10

a homage to Louis Armstrong,

22:13

if you like, it's a love ballad. The

22:15

third movement, you know, he touches on the

22:17

Spanish bolero. The fourth movement is all the

22:19

mutes you can imagine. Yeah, you use seven

22:22

mutes. Yeah, including a hat mute, which is

22:24

a thing a jazz trumpeter would use that

22:26

I've never used before. The

22:28

fifth movement really takes me back to my time at

22:30

the Paris Conservatoire, a very sort of

22:32

French waltz. It's really difficult, it sounds

22:35

really easy, it's really hot. And

22:37

the sixth movement is a sort of tour de

22:39

force of everything virtuosic that the trumpet can do.

22:42

Well, tell me a little

22:44

bit about the third movement. Shall we just hear

22:46

a little bit about the third movement from the

22:48

third movement first? Yeah,

23:54

that's the end of the third movement. We've really

23:57

come on a very long journey. It starts with

23:59

this sort of razor- sharp, exciting,

24:02

heavy attack. It's called Mexican Sun.

24:05

And it really does take us on a... It

24:08

tells a story, if you like, but it ends up

24:10

in this place, which is, as you heard, it started

24:12

this sort of prayer-like chant and

24:16

then finishes with this sort of shining, these

24:19

like sort of harp-like scales where it's like

24:21

pressing an answer with the string players. It's

24:24

really masterful orchestration and everything

24:26

that's difficult about this concerto

24:29

feels like my problem. There's been many

24:31

great works written for the trumpet in

24:33

recent times, but when there's a

24:36

technical challenge, sometimes it's like you could spend months

24:38

working on something because the composer doesn't truly understand

24:40

the instrument quite to the degree that's needed, but

24:44

Wynton understands it exactly. So when it's

24:46

something difficult, that's my problem, I have

24:48

to sort it out. And

24:50

how difficult is it to perform? It's really

24:52

difficult. It's

24:54

35 minutes for a trumpet concerto and

24:57

there's very little rest. But

25:00

again, it's worth it. Everything that's written,

25:03

there's nothing that doesn't have meaning in relation to the

25:05

rest of it. You're using two

25:08

trumpets, I think, and one that you've actually

25:10

bought for the purpose. I have, yeah. Now tell

25:12

me why you felt you should buy a trumpet for

25:14

the purpose. I mean, I play... Since I went to

25:17

the Paris Conservatoire, I've been playing the C trumpet, not

25:19

the B flat trumpet, which is more usual in this

25:21

country, because it's slightly more

25:23

focused sound and really like slightly more

25:25

virtuosic for playing at the front of

25:27

a big orchestra. And so I'm

25:29

using that for most movements, but for the more

25:32

jazzy movements, I'm using this B flat trumpet,

25:34

which is really heavy and dark. It's a

25:36

sort of burnished gold colour. And it's a

25:38

bit like the one that Wynton Marsalis uses.

25:41

And it just creates a sort of breadth

25:44

of sound and a darkness that I feel

25:46

that I hear in his playing and in

25:48

jazz. And so, yeah, I felt that

25:50

it was important to do everything I could. I

25:53

mean, Wynton Marsalis writes about this whole

25:55

concerto so brilliantly and a

25:58

very informative, clear way for... lay people

26:00

I think. But he

26:02

talks about the trumpeters, the role

26:04

of the mythic trickster, that actually

26:06

the role of the trumpet is

26:09

almost a defy authority. Yeah,

26:12

I mean the trumpet has so many roles.

26:14

As we've talked about, it

26:16

has the ceremonial role,

26:19

the militaristic role, the connection, and if

26:21

you think about the explosion of jazz

26:23

in the 20th century and what the

26:25

trumpet was in that time and the

26:27

sort of expression of people's most inner

26:30

emotions and things they couldn't find the

26:32

words to say. And then of course

26:35

people think a trumpet

26:37

player by nature has to be fairly, I

26:41

don't know, you have to be ready to make

26:43

a joke or take the leap, take the plunge.

26:46

You can't half play the trumpet, you have to

26:48

really go for it. And everyone knows if you've

26:50

missed a note on the trumpet, everyone knows about

26:52

it. Everybody knows. There's no hiding. There's no particular

26:54

personality attracted to the instrument, I think. And

26:57

Wynton, he understands this, he's met so many

26:59

trumpeters and has his friends with so many

27:01

trumpeters himself. John, poets

27:04

could also be called mythic tricksters as well,

27:06

I think. Tell me, when you listened

27:08

to this concerto, what was your

27:10

kind of overarching emotion? Well,

27:12

there wasn't one overarching, I mean, so many

27:15

things going on all the way through. I

27:19

speak from a position of probably ignorance to some

27:21

extent, but I felt I heard

27:23

echoes of

27:26

Copeland and of obviously

27:28

of blues music and the

27:31

great jazz trumpeters. But

27:34

yeah, it was a kind of panoramic vision

27:36

rather than one overarching thing. It kept on

27:38

moving and it must have been exhausting to

27:40

play that for so long when you're out

27:43

of front all the time. It's

27:46

a bit like being handed the Tchaikovsky violin concerto.

27:48

Here you go. Here's a new piece.

27:51

The biggest challenge of my career has

27:53

been finding things really to get

27:55

your teeth into and here it is. But

27:57

also, yes, because for the trumpet. You

28:00

know, there aren't many of you who are these

28:02

incredible trumpet soloist around the world because, as you

28:04

say, and because you've had to commission work as

28:06

well and transpose it because it is not enough

28:08

work for trumpet. There's plenty of work here. Yeah,

28:10

exactly. But then it goes back a little

28:13

bit to Graham's work, which is it's

28:15

very much about the technological revolution.

28:17

You know, the instrument couldn't do

28:19

the things that other solo instruments

28:21

could do until relatively

28:24

recently. So the

28:26

technology and the creation,

28:28

the artistic creation, they go hand in

28:30

hand. And that's really... I

28:33

want to ask Graham about a particular trumpet. Before

28:36

I do, have you had a hand? I'm really interested in

28:38

this. Have you had a hand in trumpet

28:40

changing? Well,

28:44

I have actually, but

28:46

nothing to do with this project. I've

28:49

just recorded an album with Trevor Pennek

28:51

and some baroque musicians all playing authentic

28:53

period instruments, string, you know, gut strings

28:55

and that sort of thing. I

28:57

was playing on the piccolo trumpet, which was... is

29:00

a very modern invention. I think most of us had the

29:02

piccolo trumpet for the first time on Penne Lane. And

29:05

to make a marriage of these two things, I was

29:08

playing this modern instrument at baroque pitch and

29:10

it created all sorts of challenges. And I

29:13

needed to adapt my new instrument in order to work

29:15

with these old string instruments. So I had that going

29:18

on at the same time as learning Marth Vallis' work.

29:20

Well, you see, there we have it. Another 4,000 years.

29:23

The idea that Althaus has done this

29:25

for this instrument will suddenly come out

29:27

the silt. Yes. But

29:30

you've got, as we talked about here, James,

29:32

well, we talked about trumpets and trumpeters in

29:34

your book. What about the 8th century wooden

29:36

trumpet that came out of the River Arran

29:39

in Ireland? Yes. There's been...

29:42

There's more than one of these. And

29:46

the wonderful thing about river silt is that

29:48

it preserves wooden objects that are buried

29:51

in it. This

29:53

particular one is... I can't remember exactly

29:55

the length off hand, but it's about

29:57

four feet long. What

30:01

really surprised me about it when I

30:04

was playing with my colleagues, Simon

30:07

and Joachim and John in Berlin

30:09

at a conference was

30:11

the sweetness of the tone that could be got out of

30:13

this. And so often when

30:15

we find these trumpets in the archaeological record,

30:17

and we do find them because bronze brass

30:20

and so on, that tends to

30:22

survive very well, they are labelled

30:26

as warhorns by archaeologists, it's kind

30:28

of sexy to talk about warhorns

30:30

and Celts fighting battles and so

30:32

on. The intimacy

30:35

of the sound of this instrument

30:37

when played by an expert, it

30:40

was absolutely astonishing to the extent that I

30:42

was able, with my

30:45

little gentle lyre, I was able

30:47

to perform a perfect

30:50

improvisation duet with the trumpets. And up

30:53

to that point everybody had assumed that

30:55

there's no way these two instruments could

30:57

ever have played together but they were

31:00

absolutely perfect for each other. John,

31:02

let us move on to talk about ruin blossom

31:04

because as I said earlier for you poetry is

31:07

music, you hear it in your head. Explain

31:10

the title ruin blossom. Yeah,

31:15

the ruin reference was partly to do with

31:17

my own personal condition because I was actually

31:19

a bit of a ruin coming

31:21

out of being very, very ill. But

31:24

also it was a

31:27

kind of response to the current environmental

31:29

situation and I think

31:33

that many people have been suffering from

31:35

the same anxieties and sense

31:38

of dread watching our

31:40

environment be so badly hammered as

31:42

it were. And it

31:44

comes from a quote that the actual words are drawn

31:46

from a quote that I drew from

31:49

Schiller and his play

31:51

William Tell, he talks

31:53

about out of the ruins

31:56

comes new life blossoms. So

31:59

that's the actual answer. epigraph of the book.

32:01

So the book is called Ruin Blossom and

32:03

the sequence I hope is

32:05

a sort

32:08

of hope because ruin first and then

32:10

blossom. But I think ruins are very

32:12

important and I'm very interested in the

32:15

work of people like John Ringerhoff

32:18

Jackson talking about the importance of

32:20

ruins and what we can learn

32:22

from ruins. And I

32:24

wrote a piece with my son who's a

32:28

17 year old composer. I

32:30

wrote a piece using the

32:32

famous Anglo-Saxon poem The Ruin

32:35

as a basis and I wrote a modern

32:37

response to that. But we also built into

32:39

that the Anglo-Saxon poem

32:41

and he using something

32:43

and all kinds of other techniques

32:45

made this piece which transitions from

32:47

a sense of chaos

32:50

disorder and decay into a

32:52

kind of lyrical movement

32:54

away. So that's an excellent book actually

32:56

but that somehow was kind of

32:59

touched on for this book. And yes

33:01

that whole idea about ruin is if you

33:03

leave ruin don't rebuild, leave ruin, renewal will

33:05

come and that comes through very clearly in

33:08

the book. You grew up

33:10

with only a bible in the house. You

33:13

were a Catholic family in an area

33:15

where most people were Protestants and you

33:17

obviously learned a lot about the Catholic

33:19

faith which now is not part of

33:21

your life but the history of it

33:23

is. And

33:25

you had a

33:27

troubled childhood but the thing is interesting

33:29

about this is there's so many allusions

33:32

to Catholic faith and

33:35

to liturgy. Tell me

33:37

about that. Tell me it's so present in this. Yeah

33:41

it's interesting when you say it's not part

33:43

of my life. I don't go

33:45

to church but

33:47

it's still the iconography

33:50

and the beauty of the

33:53

golf tools and beauty

33:55

of prayer still permeates

33:58

how I I think of

34:00

myself as a contemplative first and foremost and

34:03

my great model for that I kind of touched

34:05

on for that is Thomas Merton who was a

34:07

Catholic monk and so it's

34:10

like you know and I think I just

34:13

a simple case of the old Jesuit ideas

34:15

you know once we got the seven years.

34:17

But also this is compounded by the fact

34:19

that the natural world is so important to

34:21

you and you trained as a gardener I

34:24

mean you you're a

34:26

horticulturalist and there's a wonderful

34:28

line in the book in summary

34:30

it was harder to be churched.

34:33

Yes and the

34:35

pagan look as a child I

34:37

was always aware I mean I was very very pious

34:40

for the last 12-13 years of my life I

34:43

was very church going and very church and

34:45

pious but I

34:47

was also aware of the underlying pagan

34:50

presence if you like and

34:52

I still feel that very strongly actually. So I

34:57

felt as though the Catholic Church preserved

34:59

also alongside what it was

35:02

offering me officially also preserved

35:04

that kind of pagan magical

35:08

quality of the earth somewhat

35:11

disguised but nevertheless it was still there. Now

35:15

you're going to read one poem from

35:17

the collection and that poem is called The Night

35:20

Fairy. Would you read it for us

35:22

please? Sure and this is a poem

35:24

this is a poem about indecision really

35:26

and it's partly about how one

35:29

makes decisions at the wrong time and does

35:32

something that was perfectly sensible at the wrong time and that

35:34

makes no sense at all in the end and

35:36

then thinking back how one should have done it. The

35:41

Night Fairy. Had

35:44

I been less prepared I would

35:47

have left in springtime when

35:50

the plum tree in the yard was still

35:52

in bloom. The

35:54

windows open after months of snow one

35:58

magpie on the road. and

36:00

then another. I

36:03

could have slipped away late afternoon

36:05

when everyone was busy somewhere else,

36:08

the fish ban at the corner, children

36:10

dawdling home from school in

36:12

twos and threes, a

36:15

porch light lit against the dusk

36:18

on Toba's wind. Give

36:21

me these years again and I will spend

36:23

them wisely. Done with

36:26

the compass, done now with

36:28

the chart, the ferry at

36:30

the dock, lit stern

36:32

to bow, the next

36:34

life like a fruit fall in my heart.

36:38

Thank you for reading that. In a way I

36:40

also think that poem is like Sharon

36:43

waits for all the ferryman because you

36:45

know this is your first collection

36:48

since 2020 when

36:50

you were at the point of death. Can you

36:52

explain what happened to you? Yeah,

36:55

it was right at the beginning

36:57

of Covid and I thought I

36:59

had difficulty breathing to use the

37:01

term and I thought I must

37:03

have Covid and I

37:05

had actually been ill for a while and

37:08

I just saw that as the usual exhaustion

37:11

and so I thought that must be Covid

37:13

so I locked myself away and decided

37:15

on my own kind of form of

37:17

quarantine and eventually my family got anxious

37:20

and broke into where I'd locked myself

37:22

up. You literally locked yourself up.

37:24

Yeah, I locked myself away so that they wouldn't

37:27

be exposed to the danger. It was right at the

37:29

beginning of Covid when we didn't know anything about what

37:31

the nature of Covid was and so

37:33

they broke into it just in time in fact and

37:39

the ambulance came and took me away. I was having

37:41

hallucinations of bats lying around my head and all kinds

37:43

of stuff and of course I was saying this, I

37:45

don't remember saying any of it but because

37:49

of the lack of oxygen to my brain I

37:51

was actually having hallucinations. The ambulance

37:53

took me to the Covid ward in Victoria

37:56

Hospital in Cacodie and

37:58

then as soon as they got there the doctors said

38:00

this is not Covid and this is

38:02

heart failure and so during

38:04

that night they

38:07

lost me and they decided that they would throw

38:10

a DNR on me because of the

38:13

co-morbidities I had had so

38:18

much wrong with it, I wasn't going to

38:20

have tractors which didn't tell me of course

38:22

until later but a very nice young doctor

38:24

came in later on after I got through

38:26

and sat down with me, I was still

38:28

all breathing stuff on

38:30

in various wires and

38:32

he said look I have to tell you this

38:34

because it's important that you know that we decided

38:36

that if she didn't come back off you're on

38:38

the court we weren't going to do anything which

38:40

was kind of nice meant that at least I

38:42

made it by myself. But

38:45

tell me what it was like when

38:47

you went because you described very vividly

38:50

what it was like. Yeah

38:52

it was the main

38:54

experience it's really hard to convey this

38:56

because if I

38:59

say I went into a kind of white

39:01

light that's not quite right because it

39:04

isn't like being in the light it's

39:06

being the light that that's the experience

39:08

I had it's like I was

39:11

becoming this light and I had

39:13

a sense of dissolving that who

39:16

I was was dissolving into this light but I

39:18

was also the light it's

39:20

so hard to paraphrase and I

39:22

remember one moment of thinking

39:24

about my sons because I hadn't

39:27

seen my sons obviously since

39:29

they'd ambushed to me because you know I

39:31

was in the common ward anyway and

39:34

they couldn't come and visit me or anything so I had

39:36

the sense of the

39:39

anxiety that they would be upset and obviously they'd

39:41

be upset but I wouldn't see them say goodbye

39:43

and I let just like go of that thought

39:45

as well and that was the last thought I

39:47

had that was that held me here I just

39:50

thought well that's his problem I don't know who he

39:53

was but it was like my former self and

39:55

then I just let go and it

39:57

was incredible feeling of peace and detach

40:00

and just tall,

40:02

calm, really a sense of belonging.

40:04

Until you came back. Until I came back, then I

40:09

felt dreadful. Not immediately, not

40:11

immediately, but... But that

40:13

chimes with a lot of

40:15

people's experiences Alison. Yeah, my

40:18

friend and the great broadcaster

40:20

Clemency Berthton-Hill who had

40:22

a brain haemorrhage, she described something very, very similar

40:24

to me about when she was at

40:26

the worst point of what happened to her right at

40:29

the beginning when it was almost like she...

40:31

I think she described that there was this one

40:33

way she could choose to go which was

40:35

very, seemed very calm, very, very

40:38

seductive. It seemed like the easiest way, the most

40:40

attractive way to go, but then there was this

40:42

other option which seemed almost like annoying,

40:44

like that's going to be too much hard work. I don't want

40:46

to go that way, but that was the way back to life

40:48

and the other way was like, just let go and, you

40:51

know, and it was like that's... I don't know whether

40:53

it's a conscious choice. I've never experienced that, but I

40:55

know, John, that you were saying

40:57

that that's a very common phenomenon that one would

41:00

feel this almost like a choice at that moment

41:02

in, you know, when you're at the best door.

41:05

And John, in a way, knowing

41:07

that, knowing that, you

41:09

almost read Ruined Blossom differently or

41:12

you read it, I think, from

41:14

the point of view, would it have been this book

41:16

had this not happened to you? Oh, no, I wouldn't

41:19

have written this book at all. I mean, some of

41:21

the poems might have been in the book, but

41:24

it wasn't just that moment. It was

41:26

about six weeks afterwards. When

41:28

I got home, my family said that

41:30

it was summertime and I sat in

41:33

our paddock in amongst all

41:35

the weeds because we were just letting go

41:37

wild, watching the butterflies

41:39

and birds flying around. And

41:42

I just felt I want to be

41:44

here. I don't want to do anything. I don't want

41:46

to go back to my life. I don't want to

41:48

go back to, you know, the job and all that

41:50

response. I just wanted to just sit and commune with

41:52

the natural world as it were. And

41:54

that was the moment, you know, when. Well,

41:57

for you, Graham, Ruined Blossom is a very, very important

41:59

book. a way describes your architectural world

42:01

and the work that you're doing. It

42:04

does. It's what we do. We

42:07

take other people's misfortunes and

42:10

we construct from all

42:12

the debris the magic

42:15

of the ancient world. Well

42:18

thank you all for this morning.

42:21

Graham Lawson's soundtracks Uncovering Our Musical

42:23

Past is out now. John

42:25

Burnside's new collection Ruin Blossom

42:27

is published later this week. Alison

42:30

Balsam will be performing the

42:32

Winton Marcellus Trumpet Concerto with the

42:34

London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican on

42:37

Thursday and Bristol Beacon on

42:39

Friday which will be totally thrilling. Many

42:41

thanks to today's engineer, the studio Bob

42:44

Nettles. Next week Tom Sutcliffe discusses

42:46

the state of democracy both here

42:48

and around the world. But for

42:50

now thank you all for listening.

42:52

Goodbye. Thank you for listening

42:54

to this download of Start the Week on

42:56

BBC Radio 4 produced by Katie Hickman.

42:59

And if you're after more conversations

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