SAM: The Collection

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.