Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker, known for numerous film scores (many written during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway), and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. He has written a number of operas, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; Letters, Riddles and Writs; Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs; Facing Goya; Man and Boy: Dada; Love Counts; and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond. He has written six concerti, five string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band. He is also a performing pianist. Nyman prefers to write opera over other forms of music.[1]
English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist
This article is about the composer/musician Michael Nyman. For his eponymous album, see Michael Nyman (1981 album).
This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. (January 2015)
Nyman in 2015
Early life and education
Nyman was born in Stratford, London to a family of secular Jewish furriers who immigrated from Poland.[2][3]
Nyman was educated at the Sir George Monoux Grammar School, Walthamstow. He studied from 1961 until 1967 at King's College London and at the Royal Academy of Music until 1967, with Alan Bush and Thurston Dart,[4] focusing on piano and seventeenth-century baroque music. He won the Howard Carr Memorial Prize for composition in July 1964.[5] In 1965–66 Nyman secured a residency in Romania, to study folk-song, supported by a British Council bursary.[6]
Career
Work as music critic, 1968–1976
Nyman says he discovered his aesthetic by playing the aria "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" from Mozart's Don Giovanni on his piano in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis, which "dictated the dynamic, articulation and texture of everything I've subsequently done."[7] It subsequently became the base for his 1977 piece In Re Don Giovanni.
In 1969, Nyman provided the libretto of Harrison Birtwistle's opera Down by the Greenwood Side and directed the short film Love Love Love (based on, and identical in length to, the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love"[6]) before settling into music criticism, where he is generally acknowledged to have been the first to apply the term "minimalism" to music in a 1968 article in The Spectator magazine about the English composer Cornelius Cardew). He wrote introductions for George Frideric Handel's Concerti grossi, Op. 6 and interviewed George Brecht in 1976.[citation needed]. His 1976 album Decay Music was produced by Brian Eno. In 1974 Nyman published an influential book on experimental music called Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, which explored the influence of John Cage on classical composers.
Founding of Campiello Band and collaboration with Peter Greenaway, 1976-1990
In the 1970s, Nyman was a member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia – the self-described World's Worst Orchestra – playing on their recordings and in their concerts. He was the featured pianist on the orchestra's recording of Bridge Over Troubled Water on the Martin Lewis-produced 20 Classic Rock Classics album on which the Sinfonia gave their unique interpretations of the pop and rock repertoire of the 1950s–1970s.
In 1976, he formed the Campiello Band, which became the Michael Nyman Band, for a production of Carlo Goldoni's Il Campiello. Originally made up of old instruments such as rebecs and shawms alongside more modern instruments like the saxophone to produce as loud a sound as possible without amplification, it later switched to a fully amplified line-up of string quartet, three saxophones, trumpet, horn, bass trombone, bass guitar and piano. Many of Nyman's works are written for his ensemble, with the line up variously altered and augmented.
One of his earliest film scores was the 1976 British sex comedy Keep It Up Downstairs, followed by numerous films, many of them European art films, including eleven directed by Peter Greenaway. Nyman drew frequently on early music sources in his scores for Greenaway's films: Henry Purcell in The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) (which included Memorial and Miserere Paraphrase), Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber in A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Drowning by Numbers (1988), and John Dowland in Prospero's Books (1991), largely at the request of the director.[citation needed] He wrote settings to various texts by Mozart for Letters, Riddles and Writs, part of Not Mozart.
In 1987 Nyman composed the opera Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs, for soprano, alto, tenor and instrumental ensemble (based on Nyman's score for the ballet La Princesse de Milan); the opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986), based on a case-study by Oliver Sacks; and five string quartets.
He also recorded pop music with the Flying Lizards; a version of his Bird List from the soundtrack to Peter Greenaway's The Falls (1980) appears on their album Fourth Wall as "Hands 2 Take".
1990´s
IN 1990 he composed Ariel Songs for soprano and band; in 1993 MGV (Musique à Grande Vitesse) for band and orchestra; concertos for saxophone, piano (based on The Piano score), violin, harpsichord, trombone, and saxophone & cello recorded by John Harle and Julian Lloyd Webber;
In 1993, Nyman's popularity increased after he wrote the score to Jane Campion's award-winning 1993 film The Piano. The album became a classical music best-seller with over three million copies. His soundtrack won an Ivor Novello Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and American Film Institute award He was nominated for a British Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
He produced a soundtrack for the silent film Man with a Movie Camera which largely reworked material he wrote for the soundtrack of the 1996 video game Enemy Zero.
In 1999, Nyman created a group called Foster's Social Orchestra, which specialised in the work of Stephen Foster. One of their pieces appeared in the film Ravenous and an additional work, not used in the film, appeared on the soundtrack album.
21st century
From 2002–2005 he was a composer-in-Residence at Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany, who performed three Nyman operas and more tunes for his daughters.
In 2000, he produced an opera on the subject of cloning on a libretto by Victoria Hardie titled Facing Goya, an expansion of their one-act opera Vital Statistics. The lead, a widowed art banker, is written for contralto and the role was first created by Hilary Summers. His newest operas are Man and Boy: Dada (2003) and Love Counts (2005), both on libretti by Michael Hastings.
He composed the music for the children's television series Titch[8] which is based on the books written and illustrated by Pat Hutchins.
On 7 July 2007, Nyman performed at Live Earth in Japan. Nyman began a long-term artistic collaboration with the filmmaker Max Pugh which resulted in many short art films, three experimental feature documentaries and a number of video installations. In 2008 Nyman realised, in collaboration with the cultural association Volumina, Sublime, an artist's book that unified his music with his passion for photography.
In October 2009, Nyman released The Glare, a collaborative collection of songs with David McAlmont, which cast his work in a new light. The album – recorded with the Michael Nyman Band – finds McAlmont putting lyrics based on contemporary news stories to 11 pieces of Nyman music drawn from different phases of his career. [9]
In 2012, he made a soundtrack for film Everyday. Keith H. Yoo in 2012 commissioned Nyman to write a 26 minutes long piano quintet in four movements titled Through the Only Window. It premiered at the gala dinner for his father Yoo Byung-eun's photographic exhibition "Through My Window" in the Tuileries Garden of The Louvre in Paris on 25 June 2012. The work has been recorded by Nyman Quintet in the Abbey Road Studios, and has been released on Nyman's record label.[10][11][12] In 2013 Nyman was again commissioned to compose a piece for Yoo Byung-eun's exhibition in the Orangerie Hall of the Palace of Versailles, and wrote the 32-minute-long symphony in four movements, Symphony No. 6"AHAE", representing the four seasons in nature as depicted by Ahae, a pseudonym for Yoo Byung-eun. The London Symphony Orchestra premiered both pieces at L'Opéra of the Palace of Versailles in Paris on 8 September 2013 under the baton of the composer.[13] It has been recorded for a planned future release.[14][15][16]
In 2015 he performed in Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera at the Potemkin Stairs. The show was part of the 6th Odessa International Film Festival and gathered approximately 15,000 spectators.[17]
Personal life
He was married to Aet Nyman (née Toome), with whom he has two daughters, Molly and Martha. His first string quartet quotes "Unchained Melody" in homage to Aet, who appears in Greenaway's The Falls, for which he also composed music. Molly is also a composer and in collaboration with Harry Escott has written several film scores including for The Road to Guantanamo by her father's frequent collaborator, Michael Winterbottom. Martha is a development researcher for the BBC.
Nyman was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.[19]
Nyman was awarded an honorary doctorate (DLitt) from The University of Warwick on 30 January 2007. At the degree ceremony, The University of Warwick Brass Society and Chamber Choir, conducted by Paul McGrath, premiered a specially composed procession and recession fanfare by Nyman.[20]
In 2015, he was awarded the Golden Duke for Lifetime Achievement, the special award of the 6th Odessa International Film Festival.[21]
Works
Besides his compositions Nyman is also a filmmaker, having made over 80 films, his first shot in 1968.[22]
1963 – Introduction and Allegro Concertato for Wind Quartet (lost)
1984 – The Abbess of Andouillets (choir and percussion)
1984 – Bird Work (for the Michael Nyman Band)
1984 – The Cold Room (film music for chamber orchestra)
1985 – Nose-List Song (soprano and orchestra) [this and the above three works are from an unfinished opera setting of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which Nyman has repeatedly cited as his all-time favourite book]
1985 – Childs Play (2 violins and harpsichord or ensemble)
1986 – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (opera; libretto by Christopher Rawlence; adapted from the Oliver Sacks case study by Nyman, Rawlence, and Michael Morris)
2005 – Love Counts (opera; libretto by Michael Hastings)
2005 – Melody Waves (Chinese orchestra)
2005 – Revisiting the Don (Chinese flute and the Michael Nyman Band)
2006 – gdm for Marimba and Orchestra (concerto)
2006 – Acts of Beauty (song cycle for soprano and 6 players)
2006 – For Kiyan Prince (choir)
2006 – I was a Total Virgin (orchestra)
2006 – That's the Lover (voice and 5 players)
2007 – A Handshake in the Dark (choral piece with orchestra; text by Jamal Jumá [world premiere 8 March 2007, Barbican, London, performed by the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, John Storgards conducting])
2007 – Interlude in C (expansion of a theme from The Libertine for Accent07 touring ensemble)
2007 – Warwick Fanfare (Parts 1 & 2) (procession and recession fanfares used for graduation ceremonies at the University of Warwick)
2007 – 50,000 pairs of feet can't be wrong. (for the Michael Nyman Band)
2007 – A New Pavan For These Sad, Distracted Times (cello concerto)
2011 – On Languard Point (soprano and the Michael Nyman Band)
2011 – Let's not make a song and dance out of it (String Quartet No. 5)
2012 – Through the Only Window (piano quintet)
2012 – Devoción (orchestra)
2013 – Trumpet & String Quartet
2013 – Goldberg Shuffle (piano)
2013 – Symphony No. 2
2013 – Symphony No. 5
2013 – Symphony No. 6
2013 – Water Dances (Symphony No. 8)
2014 – Symphony of sexual songs (Symphony No. 3)
2014 – War Work: Eight Songs with Film (song cycle commissioned to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War)
2014 – Hillsborough Memorial (Symphony No. 11)
2014 – Symphony No. 12
2014 – Two Sonnets for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (choir or voice)
2015 – Chromattic (saxophone, accordion, marimba and double bass)
2015 – Empresa Cines Merida (piano quintet)
2015 – Symphony No. 4
2016 – As You Watch The Athletes Score (for the Michael Nyman Band)
2016 – No Time In Eternity (countertenor and viol consort)
2019 – Flute Concerto No. 2 (flute and strings)
2019 – Neat Slice of Tango (piano)
2019 – When Ingrid Met Capa (string quartet)
Nyman's music re-used
Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" (from The Piano) is the music on which Italian rock noir band Belladonna's song "Let There Be Light" is based. Released in December 2010, the track features Michael Nyman himself on piano.[24]
Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" (from The Piano) was used as backing music for one of the bank advertisements for Lloyds TSB broadcast on television. It has also been featured in episodes of 20/20.
Music from Ravenous has been used at least once on WFYI's Across Indiana, in a segment titled "On the Trail of John Hunt Morgan", produced by Scott Andrew Hutchins.
Nyman's soundtrack for Carrington is mostly based on his own String Quartet No. 3.
A Cock and Bull Story contains music from The Draughtsman's Contract, as well as Nyman's arrangements of classical music used in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. (It does not use any music from Nyman's Tristram Shandy opera.)
Nyman's music for Peter Greenaway's films has been used in the Japanese television program Iron Chef.
Popular "Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds" (from The Draughtsman's Contract) constituted the main theme of Spanish TV program Queremos Saber, presented by Mercedes Milà in the nineties. In 2013, it was sampled in the Pet Shop Boys single "Love Is a Bourgeois Construct", produced by Stuart Price.
Nyman features in '9 Songs' (Michael Winterbottom, 2004) playing at the Hackney Empire on his 60th birthday.
Nyman's MGV: Musique à grande vitesse was used in November 2006 for a new one-act ballet for the Royal Ballet in London, DGV (danse à grande vitesse) by Christopher Wheeldon.
Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" was covered by the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish. Nyman had refused to release the song initially; the band was later granted permission and the song was released on 29 February 2012 as part of the single The Crow, the Owl and the Dove from their album Imaginaerum.
Time Lapse was used in Sky's 2008 'Heroes' advert
Selections from Nyman's catalogue formed part of the soundtrack for James Marsh's 2008 documentary, Man on Wire, a film about Philippe Petit, a Frenchman, who in 1974 illegally strung a tightrope between the top of the WTC buildings and danced between them for 45 minutes, thus committing the "artistic crime of the 20th century".
Nyman's piece "Car Crash" from A Zed & Two Noughts was used for once on the final episode of a Greek series called 'To Kafe Tis Xaras'
Nyman's soundtrack for Wonderland has been used as part of the soundtrack for Juan Rodriguez-Briso's 2014 documentary film, Eighteam based on the true story of the Zambian national football team and its journey from tragedy to glory.
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