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Michael Nyman

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Michael Nyman
Occupation(s)Minimalist composer, pianist

Michael Nyman (born March 23, 1944) is a British minimalist composer, pianist, librettist and musicologist, perhaps best known for the many scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the British filmmaker Peter Greenaway.

Biography

Nyman was born on 23rd of march, 1944 in London.

Nyman studied music composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Nyman, who had studied with the noted Baroque music scholar Thurston Dart at King's College London, drew frequently on early music sources in his scores for Greenaway's films: Henry Purcell in The Draughtsman's Contract and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber in A Zed and Two Noughts, Mozart in Drowning by Numbers, and John Dowland in Prospero's Books.

File:Micheal Nyman.jpg
Michael Nyman -Numbers

Nyman's popularity increased significantly after he wrote the score to Jane Campion's award-winning 1993 film The Piano. The album became a classical music best-seller. Although Nyman's score was central to the movie he did not receive an Academy Award nomination despite being nominated for both a British Academy Award and a Golden Globe. He has scored numerous other films, the vast majority of them art films from Europe. His few forays into Hollywood composing have been Gattaca, Ravenous (with musician Damon Albarn), and The End of the Affair. He wrote settings to various texts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for "Letters, Riddles, and Writs", part of Not Mozart.

Among Nyman's better known non-film works are the opera Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs (1987), for soprano, alto, tenor and instrumental ensemble (based on Nyman's score for the ballet La Princesse de Milan); Ariel Songs (1990) for soprano and band; MGV (Musique à Grande Vitesse) (1993) for band and orchestra; concertos for piano (based on The Piano score), violin, harpsichord, trombone and saxophone; the opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986), based on a case-study by Oliver Sacks; and several string quartets. He has also produced a soundtrack for the silent film Man with the Movie Camera. Recently, he produced a new 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 opera is titled Man and Boy: Dada.

On children's television shows, Michael has created the music for Katie and Orbie and Titch.

Many of Nyman's works are written for his own ensemble, the Michael Nyman Band, a group formed for a 1976 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 in order to produce as loud a sound as possible without amplification, it later switched to a fully amplified lineup of string quartet, three saxophones, bass trombone, bass guitar and piano. This line up has been variously altered and augmented for some works.

Nyman also wrote an influential book in 1974 on experimental music called Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, which explored the influence of John Cage on classical composers. 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.

In the 1970s, Nyman was a member of the infamous 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 Waters on the Martin Lewis-produced 20 Classic Rock Classics album on which the Sinfonia gave their unique interpretations to the pop and rock repertoire of the 1950s-1970s. Nyman created a similar group called Foster's Social Orchestra, which specialized in the work of Stephen Foster. One of their tracks appeared in the film Ravenous and an additional track, not used in the film, appeared on the soundtrack album.

He has also recorded pop music, with the Flying Lizards.

He is married to Aet Nyman and 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.

Career highlights

  • 1961-67 - Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and King's College, London.
  • 1968-78 - Works as music critic (becoming first person to apply the word "minimalist" to music).
  • 1976 - Founds the Campiello Band (now the Michael Nyman Band) and embarks on eleven-film collaboration with Peter Greenaway.
  • 1981 - Releases first Michael Nyman Band album.
  • 1993 - Soundtrack for The Piano wins an Ivor Novello Award and goes on to sell over three million copies.
  • 2002-2005 - Composer-in-Residence at Badisches Staats theater in Karlsruhe, Germany, who performed three Nyman operas and more tunes for his daughters.

Works

  • 1976 - Waltz in Love (variable)
  • 1977 - In Re Don Giovanni (ensemble)
  • 1978 - The Otherwise Very Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz
  • 1979 - The 'Masterwork' Award-Winning Fish-Knife (ensemble)
  • 1980 - A Neat Slice of Time (choir)
  • 1981 - Think Slow, Act Fast (ensemble)
  • 1981 - Five Orchestral Pieces Opus Tree (band)
  • 1981 - M-Work (band)
  • 1981 - 2 Violins
  • 1982 - Four Saxes (Real Slow Drag) (saxophone quartet)
  • 1983 - Love is Certainly, at Least Alphabetically Speaking (soprano and band)
  • 1983 - A Handsom, Smooth, Sweet, Nude, Clear Stroke: Or Else Play Not At All (orchestra)
  • 1983 - Time's Up (chamber ensemble)
  • 1983 - I'll Stake My Cremona to a Jew's Crump (simultaneous singing)
  • 1984 - The Abbess of Andouillets (choir)
  • 1985 - Nose-List Song (soprano and orchestra) [this and the above two 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 favorite book]
  • 1985 - Child's Play (2 violins; harpsichord)
  • 1985 - String Quartet No. 1
  • 1986 - Taking a Line for a Second Walk (for orchestra or piano duet)
  • 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)
  • 1986 - And Do They Do (modern dance, 1986)
  • 1987 - Vital Statistics (opera; libretto by Victoria Hardie)
  • 1988 - String Quartet No. 2
  • 1989 - Out of the Ruins (choir)
  • 1989 - La Traversée de Paris (soprano and band)
  • 1989 - The Fall of Icarus (band)
  • 1989 - L'Orgie Parisienne Arthur Rimbaud setting (soprano or mezzo soprano and orchestra)
  • 1990 - Shaping the Curve (soprano saxophone, string quartet or piano)
  • 1990 - Six Celan Songs (contralto and orchestra)
  • 1990 - Polish Love Song (soprano and piano)
  • 1990 - String Quartet No. 3
  • 1991 - Where the Bee Dances (soprano saxophone and orchestra)
  • 1991 - Fluegelhorn and Piano
  • 1992 - Time Will Pronounce (violin, cello, and piano)
  • 1992 - For John Cage (brass ensemble)
  • 1992 - Self-Laudatory Hymn of Inanna and Her Omnipotence (alto and string orchestra or countertenor and viol consort)
  • 1992 - The Convertibility of Lute Strings (solo harpsichord)
  • 1992 - Anne de Lucy Songs (soprano and piano)
  • 1992 - The Upside-Down Violin (orchestra/ensemble)
  • 1993 - MGV: Musique à grande vitesse (band and orchestra)
  • 1993 - The Piano Concerto (piano and orchestra)
  • 1993 - Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs (1993; opera-ballet setting William Shakespeare's The Tempest)
  • 1993 - Yamamoto Perpetuo (violin solo)
  • 1993 - Songs for Tony (saxophone quartet)
  • 1994 - To Morrow (soprano or soprano saxophone, organ)
  • 1994 - Three Quartets (ensemble)
  • 1994 - Concerto for Trombone (trombone, orchestra, and steel filing cabinets)
  • 1995 - String Quartet No. 4
  • 1995 - Tango for Tim (In memoriam Tom Suster) (harpsichord)
  • 1995 - The Waltz Song (unison voices)
  • 1995 - Viola and Piano
  • 1995 - Grounded (mezzo-soprano, saxophones, violin, piano)
  • 1995 - HRT [High Rise Terminal] (chamber ensemble)
  • 1995 - Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings
  • 1995 - Double Concerto for Saxophone and Cello (saxophone, cello, and orchestra)
  • 1996 - After Extra Time (ensemble)
  • 1997 - Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks (orchestra)
  • 1998 - Cycle of Disquietude (Coisas, Vozes, Lettras) (soprano, mezzo-soprano, and band)
  • 1998 - Orfeu (band)
  • 1998 - De Granada A La Luna (band)
  • 1999 - The Comissar Vanishes (band)
  • 2000 - Facing Goya (opera; libretto by Victoria Hardie)
  • 2001 - a dance he little thinks of (orchestra)
  • 2003 - Violin Concerto (violin and orchestra)
  • 2003 - Man and Boy: Dada (opera)

Music for films, television, and video games

Nyman's music re-used

  • 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.
  • "Sheep & Tides" (from Drowning by Numbers) was featured in a commercial in which a woman smashes a man's car.
  • 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.
  • Tristram Shandy: 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). Director Michael Winterbottom also reused some of Nyman's score for his Wonderland in 9 Songs.
  • 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 sheperds" (from "The Draughtman Contract") constituted the main theme of spanish TV program "Queremos Saber", presented by Mercedes Milà in the nineties

Selected recordings

  • Man and Boy: Dada - MN Records 102
  • The Very Best of Michael Nyman Film Music 1980-2001 - Virgin EMI CDVED957
  • String Quartets Nos 1-3 - Decca 4730912

Listening

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