INTERVIEW

Glyn Maxwell and Ed Hughes in conversation with John Fulljames about The Birds (2005)

JOHN: How closely have you followed Aristophanes’ 2,500-year-old play?

GLYN: It had to be a new piece simply in terms of length – the text of the play is at least ten times the size. I suppose I tried to imagine how Aristophanes would write what I was being asked to write – a libretto in London in 2005. Now I think he would probably write for Private Eye, so it’s topical, full of bad puns and a bit childish, but at heart dead serious about the life we lead here. All good comedy gives a damn. I would hope people find it a bit coarse and a bit silly, I’m sure they thought the original was. After all, it only came second in the festival.

JOHN: Why did we decide to make Pitcher an actor?

GLYN: Well, it’s transposing the awe we feel when we see birds fly to the awe people like me feel when we hear singers sing. Seeing or hearing the body used beyond our reach. Pitcher is earthbound. He’s a ‘pitcher’ – a vessel stuck on the earth and a man tossing out ideas.

ED: Do you write differently as a poet if the work is to be performed as opposed to read? Or is sound always important in your work?

GLYN: Sound is always vital, but in poetry it shoulders everything. Here I’m making sprung little lines for Ed to work into or across the music. You can’t wire in subtle metrics or sound-echoes, because the music will either not need them or replicate them in its own space. You want clarity, concision, repetition, and a certain thematic coherence.

JOHN: How do specific sounds of the city enter the piece?

ED: A theme that we can clearly understand today is the contrast between countryside peace and quiet, and city sounds. I thought back to early twentieth-century evocations of mechanised and urban city life (e.g. percussion works of Varèse, and the films Metropolis and Sunrise) and thought it would be great if we could use electronics and percussion to create something of this atmosphere, of being on the edge of a great city, with its colours and sounds, and its negative things as well – notably the things that Pitcher is fed up with; the chaos, the perpetual hustle and bustle, and so on.

JOHN: And what about birds?

GLYN: I listened to bird-songs (on the internet, obviously, to be true to the theme of spiralling ‘civilisation’) and tried to give specific birds their appropriate vowels and fricatives. Owls rhyme ‘oo’, that sort of thing. Not quite that unsubtle, but nearly. For poets, bird-song is a metaphor too close for comfort, because if we’re remembered at all it’ll be by voice alone, by the little song we made, and probably on the internet.

ED: I listen to birds on walks and appreciate the fact that they are communicating, and at the same time listening very hard (unlike humans perhaps), and I’ve taken in something of the repetitive rhythmic patterns they use. But I’m not an expert.

GLYN: Did working with I Fagiolini present specific challenges or benefits?

ED: Yes, I’d written for them before and love the integrity and musicianship which they bring to new music and the energy with which they reinvigorate historic forms such as the madrigal comedy. They have a special sense of ensemble.

JOHN: I spend a lot of time in the rehearsal room trying to form an ensemble – I thought it would be an interesting experiment to work with an existing vocal ensemble – a group of singers who already have close musical relationships and a shared language and process. The chance to plan a new piece – in part responding to specific singers and their roles within the ensemble is unique. Aristophanes’ comedies are totally focused on the chorus – they are the protagonist – and so ideal for an ensemble-focused piece. Does anyone remember what else attracted us to The Birds in the first place?

GLYN: Any story that’s lasted that long just makes me kneel in awe. And to last that long with all those filthy in-jokes – well, one is prostrate with respect.