I’m about to hit “send”. At the other end of the email is the Ulster Orchestra. Attached is a score: The Riot Symphony.
I sometimes think composition is like an act of gross indecency, publicly exposing yourself in the full knowledge of the dire consequences. After all that work, is it any good? And what am I thinking sending this to my home orchestra with that word on the front page? Riots, after all, don’t have a great reputation in Belfast.
The next time I see them, they’ll be rehearsing for the 10 May premiere. We’ll be in the historic Ulster Hall on Bedford Street – where the 15-year-old me saw Rage Against the Machine through a vodka-filled haze – and I’ll be at the back supervising a 12-metre projection of Vladimir Putin. That’s where the “riot” comes in – Pussy Riot.
Yes, Russian protest punk is not the first thing you think of when it comes to symphonies. But if you’re drawn to politically charged subjects and protest is on your mind, then there’s a lot to learn from a band who risked their own freedom to speak out. Sure, the music is different. But the idea is the same: weaponise your art!
Not a new thought, I know. Sibelius famously challenged Russian imperialism with his 1899 nationalistic tone poem Finlandia. Hans Werner Henze, Luigi Nono, Tippett, Adams, Verdi – they’ve all taken political positions in their work, often super-charging current affairs and moving them into wider public debate. More recently Anna Meredith’s jaw-dropping Five Telegrams became a rallying cry for pacifism at the Proms. And these are not three-minute punk songs. They’re symphonic, massive, opinionated and – generally – on the right side of history.
But it’s a risk. Expressing overt opinions in your work sets you up as a moral arbiter of truth. Risky because you cannot guarantee that you’re right.
“Fuck it,” I say. “I am right!” and press the send key full force, like I’m playing a Bartók piano concerto (badly).
What the orchestra will see is a score that’s loud, energetic, and relentless. Fifty minutes of panicked patterns searching for safety – or simplicity.
There are operatic soloists, too, adding fragmented texts from 1940s anti-Nazi pamphlets. Mantras. Words ripped from the illicit leaflets of the White Rose movement; a group of Munich students and academics who paid a heavy price for writing these – now sung – statements. The concert itself is titled The Sun Still Shines – the famed last words of 21-year-old Sophie Scholl who, with her brother, stood trial for treason in 1943. Horrifyingly, they were both guillotined in the same room within two minutes of each other.
Their words are the stuff of youth. Of conviction. I read them and instantly remember being 21; that feeling of restless certainty. I don’t have an ounce of Scholl’s brilliance, but I recognise her youth, conviction and – perhaps – the need to wake up those around you. I’ve come to see these leaflets as sacred, almost divine – treating each syllable with care; frightened I might do them an injustice.
Then I remember that it’s more than just the music. It’s the place, too. Belfast will hear these words sung out on the same stage where in 1912 Edward Carson sang a righteous O God, Our Help in Ages Past before signing the Ulster Covenant, galvanising opposition to Home Rule and cementing the inevitability of a partitioned Ireland. It’s where in 1986 Ian Paisley formed the ominous Ulster Resistance movement who pledged to defend their “cherished position”, and a 1974 Enoch Powell told the audience he was prepared to lead Ulster in Westminster.
And yet Sophie, in this same place where all those difficult, warlike words rang out, here are yours also. Tyranny was the teenage Scholl’s target. The dismantling of a democracy to realise expansionist ambitions. Invading neighbours … oh, hang on … I’ve skipped to the finale – the other voice to join Scholl’s: Pussy Riot.
The symphony shifts into a driving, turbocharged beat. The extracted vocals of the band ring out over the orchestra – Russian words screamed over accelerating, choking oboes. It’s an orchestral interpretation of Pussy Riot’s 2012 Putin Lights Up the Fires – a track released as the trial of the bandmates was reaching its conclusion. I love this track – its bravery, its bass line! I’ve got the tuba pumping that out fortissimo and, reader, you’d be surprised how neatly the Ukrainian national anthem fits on top of it.
There’s a synergy here. To me, the underground YouTube videos of this punk band (three of whom went to prison for “premeditated hooliganism”) are the illicit leaflets of their day; raging against the system they oppose and well aware of the consequences. This is hardcore punk at maximum volume, screamed out loud where most would whisper. So I’ll amplify it.
But there’s another link: they’re all young women. My mind immediately goes to Sinéad O’Connor tearing the pope’s picture live on TV – a condemned act that, time has told, changed Ireland for the better. She, like Pussy Riot, was a maker of protest song – a form that has always circled us. Anti-Vietnam war songs, anti-apartheid songs, Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, Finlandia – all driven by protest. And Scholl’s life story is certainly the stuff of an Irish rebel song. This country has a long tradition of memorialising acts of bravery; songs to inspire insurrection and resistance that are neither decorative or exploratory – art that calls us (as Scholl writes) to “awake”.
Maybe I’m drawn to this because I come from Northern Ireland, where – in my youth – everything was charged with sectarian meaning. Even the warlike drums of the Orange bands every July meant something. It hardwired me to see music as “about something”, for good or bad. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to make a living as a composer in Belfast, my home – where cultural investment is at catastrophic levels and making work of this scale is a protest in itself. But that’s another story.
Ultimately, I look at the email address and think of this glorious national orchestra which bears the same contentious word as the hall, Ulster. I remember that they continued playing throughout the Troubles, undaunted as Belfast fell apart around them; their concerts promoting a sense of normalcy and optimism in a city that had lost both. Wasn’t that a protest? A fuck you to 30 years of bombers?
So maybe this symphony is not about protest.
It’s about celebration. Celebration of everyone who’s made their opposing voice heard in the darkest of times, the darkest of places, and been proved right.