SAM: The Collection

He has gradually eschewed contemporary musical preoccupations with novel sonorities and formal schemes as foundational praxis, in favour of an engagement with a variety of musically contingent signifying practices, art-forms and disciplines relevant to his own creative aims.

The first piece of Roger’s that I heard was the gripping oboe solo Ausgangspunkte, written for his brother Chris. Although composed twenty years ago, it has all the hallmarks of his mature style, and still sounds as striking today, featured in the recent Bmic Cutting Edge series.

The first piece of Ross Lorraine’s that I heard (and played) was called "No Way". Written for The Lost Jockey, it stood at an oblique angle to the band’s general aesthetic in its alert, crafted self-containment. It was both repetitive and concise – an unusual combination for 1983.

In fact, Poppy’s work has continued to develop in many and varied directions since then. Laurence Crane fills in the blanks. Over the last two decades Andrew Poppy has steadily assembled a fascinating and unusual body of work which encompasses concert music, opera and scores for contemporary dance, theatre, film and television.

Laurence Crane’s miniatures present a return to figuration after abstraction, a return to clarity after excess, and a return to singularity after multiplicity. The material chosen is familiar; mostly consonant, often tonal, triads, elementary chords, old well-used intervals rescued from a previously unjust ignorant redundancy.

It can often be difficult (and rather paradoxical) to write of a music that speaks largely for itself – to fall into the trap of using one language to express another. As I made notes for this article I found myself facing the same paradox – how to comment on a music that asks only one thing of the listener – to listen.