Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music and who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?
More than anything, I suppose, it was Leonard Bernstein. What a polymath! I watched his Norton lectures as a teenager and devoured the book; they set in motion so many questions for which I probably still don’t have the answers. The question of influences is interesting, though. Many of the figures that I am influenced by come and go in my mind at different times. Also, the sorts of figures I might consider as ‘influences’ in my performance work are obviously quite different to the sorts of figures that have influenced my academic research. As an organist, I often listen to the recordings of Marie-Claire Alain and Gillian Weir, even when I’m not playing the same pieces – they play with an astonishing combination of brilliance and grace. As a researcher, the analogous action for me would be something like sitting down with a book by Lyotard or Taruskin. Although what I ‘get’ from a recording is obviously of a different order from what I ‘get’ from a written text, and it serves a different purpose, what all of these four things have in common is that they make me sit up and think, “How do they do that?”.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
The word ‘career’ is a verb as well as a noun. My career (noun) has two main strands: (1) I’m lucky enough to have been employed in permanent full-time roles ever since I finished the doctorate; (2) I give organ recitals and play for choir and choral society concerts. The first strand combines teaching, research, admin, and management, and at times research can proliferate and take up all my time – as does instrumental practice for the second strand, if I’m not careful. In contrast, you could say that my career (verb) consists of a series of more or less controlled activities of careering, tumbling headlong one after the other; today I have to do this, tomorrow I’ll have to do that, the day after something else. Thus, I’ve published research articles on Delius but haven’t played any transcriptions of his music, nor do I intend to; and the two strands have only come together once, when I was asked a few years ago to write an article on Daniel Roth’s music for a French Festschrift. On a day-to-day level, I find myself veering from one activity to another in a manner that feels as if it’s not subject to a greater purpose; although I’m reading Flaubert’s L’Éducation Sentimentale on the train to work at the moment, the music on my headphones is far removed from Flaubert’s world. Obviously that’s no way to develop any kind of meaningful ‘expertise’ (the blunt instrument used to beat artists around the head in career development sessions), but it’s great fun. I recall reading, a few years ago, eighteenth century orchestral musicians’ accounts of their career paths, and being struck by their matter-of-fact admissions that it was very simple: more of the same until you retire and make the final step.
Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?
Probably those which have been premieres, or are pieces written for me. But the feeling of pride in a performance should be easily forgettable, and in any case it also changes with the type of music being played, and what I may have been ‘proud’ of the other day may have been instantly forgettable for the audience (including fellow organists as much as normal people). Perhaps ‘being satisfied’ is a better phrase. When I’ve performed cycles of complete works in a single recital (e.g. Bach’s Clavierübung III), or complete symphonies (Widor’s ‘Romane’, most recently), it’s been immensely satisfying to come to terms with a large body of work – to see connections between movements and pieces, to sense the ways in which the larger-scale shapes and structures resonate, to employ an extended range of colours, and to afford the listener an additional register of experience, etc. Given music’s existential link to ‘hope’, perhaps we should talk about aiming to be ‘proud’ of achieving something in our next performance, not our previous one…
Which particular works/composers do you think you perform best?
I always try to learn several works by the same composer, where possible, or works by related composers, so that performances of individual pieces come (for me, at least) within a broad context. Doing this helps me not just to understand where the individual piece arose within the composer’s career, but also to have a broad context for technical, registrational, and stylistic decisions. Playing Franck makes much more sense when you’re aware of the mass of music surrounding him from what we now judge to be ‘lesser’ composers; his Final, for example, is embedded within a broad historical context much broader than just the Lefébure-Wély upon which it obviously depends; ditto with his Prière, which is so different from pretty much all other examples in the genre.
But, to your question! Given the modus operandi I’ve just described, I’d like to offer the following as what I “perform best”: the gentle sprawling warmth of Roth’s Gregorian paraphrases, the sublime choral fantasias of J. S. Bach (I have a soft spot for the Leipzig chorales), and the astonishingly individual voice of Jehan Alain (organists should definitely play his piano music). Listeners may disagree!
What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?
I don’t listen to much classical music outside of my job and my family commitments (both of my children are choristers, so I spend a lot of time listening to music in that social-religious context). A long time ago I read Frith’s ‘Performing Rites, On the Value of Popular Music’, which made me think about the sophistication of non-classical musicians, and about how much we can learn from the energies, dynamisms, and subjectivities of music making outside the classical sphere. If only performers of, say, Paganini, Ligeti, and Dupré had watched Robert Plant or Steve Vai perform! If only it was compulsory for performers of, say, Schubert or Barber to watch Joni Mitchell do her thing! If only David Bowie graced module reading lists in performance psychology modules more frequently!
Having said all that, and by implication criticising classical music for its inwardness, I should admit that I don’t really think about ‘inspiration’ as such, when I’m preparing a performance. In my mind, the term has too much distracting baggage. It might be – shock horror – that performing is difficult enough without an additional imperative constraining the performer’s poor soul (“Am I inspired enough?”). There are things that need to be done on stage, things that would be better not done, things that nobody notices whether or not you do them, and things that seem to add value to the performance. The performer’s job is to sort out these different things, and hold them in some kind of loose, open-ended balance during the performance. In any case, what we do on stage isn’t what the listener hears, and what we remember isn’t what the listener remembers.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
I’m always interested in exploring forgotten byways in the repertoire. There’s a huge repertoire on every instrument, but only a fraction of it is regularly played, which is ridiculous (it’s a function of the unholy bond between capitalism and aesthetic taste, policed by pedagogues and the vagaries of social media). Organ recital programmes used to be extremely dull (or perhaps it was that expectations were lower); while there’s much more variety and imagination in programming these days (Black Lives Matter was transformative in many respects, and the work done by female performers has been extraordinarily positive, too), there is still work to be done, I think.
So, I spend lots of time thinking ahead, trying to plan programmes in which I can explore: (1) composer anniversaries; (2) particular themes e.g. pieces dedicated to Duruflé, or settings of ‘Wie Schön Leuchtet der Morgenstern’; (3) something relevant to the venue or instrument. There are a lot of pieces that I return to again and again, but I do like to add new pieces to my repertoire now and then; equally, there are pieces that I played twenty years ago that I haven’t played for ages. Of course, as an organist, all of my choices are made in relation to the instruments themselves, in a way that isn’t so relevant for oboists, who can rely on playing the same instrument each time.
After recitals people often come up and ask about the more obscure music. I take this as indicating a modest success. It matters less whether or not they liked my particular performance as such than whether they had some kind of reaction to it and sat up a bit straighter in order to listen in.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
There are several. St. Sulpice in Paris is iconic, historically and musically, as well as wonderfully colourful. In this country, Westminster Cathedral always excites me. Many of my other preferred venues – Chester Cathedral, say – are pleasurable to play in because of the welcome given by the resident musicians; we shouldn’t forget that, notwithstanding architecture and acoustics, venues are made or broken by the human personalities who inhabit them. I have a soft spot for Norwich Cathedral, having got married in it; I look forward at some point to playing the newly restored instrument. Small instruments can be more beautiful than larger instruments, if they have well-voiced 8 foot and 4 foot diapasons. Over the last few years, I’ve come to treasure the more gently voiced ranks on organs, flutes especially.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
Anything where the composer has been present and we’ve had an opportunity to chat afterwards. Of these recitals, those in St. Sulpice top the list. Sitting on the organ bench next to Daniel Roth as I played his music was quite something. I try frequently to include pieces by younger composers in my programmes, and I hope that hearing their music has been as memorable for them as it has been for me – there’s a lot of compositional talent out there just waiting for performers to come along and help.
And since I’ve just done the musicianly thing and gone straight to my own performances for an egotistical answer to your question, I should back up a bit and answer you more broadly. To wit: two experiences in particular remain memorable. (1) The most insanely exciting cheer I’ve ever heard was in the Barbican when, ten minutes into the set, Herbie Hancock walked on stage to join the rest of the musicians; that was an amazing evening spent with friends. (2) The loudest gig I’ve ever attended was Guns ‘n’ Roses in Wembley Stadium, supported by Skid Row and Nine Inch Nails; I went with a friend from university, had a whale of a time, and couldn’t hear a thing until the following afternoon.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
No longer worrying about what others may be thinking.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring musicians?
Several answers spring to mind. (1) Study lots of musical topics, seek out new musical styles, and – above all – spend more than 50% of your time sight reading through the repertoire. (2) Make sure that the decision to be a musician is yours. (3) Dare to challenge yourself, rather than just doing what your teachers tell you. (4) Play music by living composers. (5) Ignore this advice and think about your place on our planet.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
(1) Stop patronising them! Audiences can digest much more than performers often assume.
(2) Talk coherently about the music! The worst deflation of hope and expectation comes, even before the first note has been played, when the performer mumbles through some clichés and commonplaces about the composer or their piece.
(3) Don’t apologise for the repertoire! I don’t object to hearing an inordinate number of transcriptions / arrangements in recital programmes, and there are a few performers who make good cases for them; but often transcription is at the expense of perfectly brilliant and engaging repertoire written for the instrument.
(4) Take small steps! Remember that audiences for particular pieces and particular styles of repertoire are built up slowly, so keep programming pieces that you believe in wherever possible – don’t play only what you think that others think that they want to hear.
(5) Expand the opportunities for young musicians to play in concerts (they bring parents and friends but leave baggage and assumptions at home).
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?
The one thing that should be bothering every musician is the state of early musical education, by which I mean, pre-HE, and especially primary school. Without it there is no future.
What’s next? Where would you like to be in 10 years?
At the end of last year I decided that 2024 would include a bit of Stanford as my small contribution to the centenary celebrations. So, I made a rash announcement on social media that I’d play all five sonatas in March in a mini-sequence, starting with Queen’s College Cambridge where he was organ scholar and ending with Westminster Abbey where he’s buried. But the whole thing’s blossomed into something else, and evidently caught the imagination in various places: by the end of the year I will have given 30 performances of one or other of his sonatas (plus, inevitably, a selection of his other works, programmed alongside works by colleagues and pupils).
Next year I’ll turn my attention back to a project that’s occupied my mind for several years, namely the music of Grunenwald, who was Roth’s predecessor at St. Sulpice. And there are a few more pieces in project around the music of Duruflé that I need to learn.
Further down the line, it’s hard to say; I expect I’ll continue following my nose and playing whatever touches me; my ‘To Learn’ bucket list will certainly outlive me. As a researcher (speaking in relation to the institutional strand of my career), over the next decade I will presumably write a bunch of articles on the topics that continue to interest me, which are pre-eminently those of Cage, Delius, performance studies, aesthetics, and the phenomenology of music. Sometimes people ask me to write on specific topics, sometimes I follow my nose, drifting around the many – too many! – topics that pique my interest.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Watching my children play or sing music; followed closely by sitting on the sand dunes at Holkham with them.
What is your most treasured possession?
If we’re talking about tangible objects, then it would be a large oil painting of Rhossili Bay, which I bought for my wife almost a decade ago. On a smaller, more selfish scale, it would be my collection of autographed books from Claudio Arrau’s library – I’m fascinated by his eclectic reading interests (he picked up a huge number of books annually while on tour), and how – if at all – this related to his pianism.
If we’re interested in non-tangible objects, then I’d have to say, perhaps somewhat pretentiously, my ears: how else could I have encountered the wonders of Debussy and others – Roderick Williams singing Delius’ ‘Cynara’, Arrau playing Schumann’s Fantasie, Olivier Latry’s Duruflé, Alain playing Du Mage, to mention only classical music? Every now and then, I notice that many of my colleagues and friends both in academic and in the organ world wear some form of hearing aid, and it makes me realise quite how much literally hangs on tenterhooks between the ears.
What is your present state of mind?
Drifting…
Dr Anthony Gritten will give an illustrated organ recital of works by Stanford on Friday 12 July at Queens’ College, Cambridge, as part of the Royal School of Church Music’s Stanford Singing Break. Further information / tickets
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