Michael Nyman

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Nyman in Sant Cugat del Vallès (2010)

Michael Laurence Nyman CBE (born March 23, 1944 in London ) is an English composer who is best known for his music for numerous Peter Greenaway films.

Life

Nyman studied piano and music history at the Royal College of Music and King's College London , among others . Because he rejected the then predominant atonal contemporary serial music , Nyman gave up composing in 1964 and worked as a musicologist . In a 1968 review of Cornelius Cardew's The Great Digest , he was the first to use the term minimalism for a new musical style that was mainly represented by the composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass .

Reich's composition Come Out impressed him so much that he found his way back to practical music: in 1968 he wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's Down by the Greenwood Side . The latter asked him to work on 18th century Venetian songs for a stage production of Il Campiello . For this purpose, Nyman founded the Campiello Band in 1976 , whose music was played partly on old instruments such as the shawm and partly on modern instruments such as the saxophone . Nyman's goal was to play as loud as possible without using electronic amplification. After the drama ran out, Nyman kept the group together, added his own piano playing and wrote For them In Re Don Giovanni , a 16-bar variation by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . He now also used electronic amplification and renamed the formation the Michael Nyman Band . Almost all of Nyman's pieces are tried out in this band first.

The public was Nyman primarily as a film composer known especially for Peter Greenaway , but also for more conventional productions such as Gattaca , The End of the Affair ( The End of an Affair ) and especially Jane Campion's The Piano ( The Piano ), his biggest commercial success . The piece Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds from the film The Draftsman's Contract achieved greater fame .

In 1974 Nyman published a book on experimental music ( Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond ) in which he examined the influence of John Cage on contemporary music. He was a member of the infamous Portsmouth Sinfonia , the world's worst orchestra according to its self-description, which varied and deconstructed rock and pop classics such as Bridge over Troubled Water . He formed a similar orchestra called Foster's Social Orchestra, which focused on the music of Stephen Foster .

In addition, he played pop music , for example with the Flying Lizards , and wrote music for a fashion show by Yohji Yamamoto and for the computer game Enemy Zero .

In order to be able to publish his works independently, he founded his own record label MN Records in 2005.

plant

Michael Nyman's music is based on the rejection of contemporary music that he encountered: “As a student […] I wrote in the style of Paul Hindemith and Dmitri Shostakovich . Then I came into contact with the Manchester School - Peter Maxwell Davies , Harrison Birtwistle and Alexander Goehr - and not only was it an absolute imperative to write serial music, but also all music that was not serial than the music of Look at idiots. [...] I didn't write a single note from 1964 to 1976 because I couldn't come to terms with writing serial music. "

The encounter with the American pioneers of minimal music led Nyman back to music; In contrast to their model-free, precisely controlled systems of forms, his less restricted compositions were based on the western musical tradition in order to create expressly "beautiful" music.

Composers whose works Nyman often sees as a starting point for his own compositions with a wink of the eye include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ( In Re Don Giovanni , Drowning By Numbers ), Henry Purcell ( The Draftman's Contract ), Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber ( A Zed and Two Noughts ), John Dowland ( Prospero's Books ) and Anton Webern ( Five Orchestral Pieces for Opus Tree ). Nyman combines quotes from music history, avant-garde form and catchiness.

“Following a fixed procedure, Nyman [...] selects very short verbatim quotations from the classic template and subjects them to a minimalist repetition. The tonal orientation is retained, but the harmonic progression is changed. After all, entire bars of the source material are missing and the harmonic steps are suddenly next to each other instead of logically following a cadence . ”The result is music that is equally appealing for both the initiated and the historically uneducated listeners, as it plays intelligently with tradition on the one hand, but on the other never becomes atonal.

In recent years, Nyman has increasingly turned to art music . For example, in cooperation with the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, three operas were premiered between 2002 and 2005: 2002 Facing Goya , 2004 Man and Boy: DaDa (text by Michael Hastings) and 2005 Love Counts (text by Michael Hastings).

At the Berlin MaerzMusik -Festival for contemporary music 2011, Nyman presented his new setting of Dziga Vertov's film One Sixth of the Earth in the Berliner Volksbühne . Vertov's film The Eleventh Year was also set to music by Nyman. Both films were broadcast by Arte tv in June 2012 for the 20th anniversary of the broadcast.

A film music by Nyman (1996/2002) is also available for the legendary Vertov film The Man with the Camera . Nyman is said to be the composer of most of the settings of this film still commercially available today (4/2019).

Works (selection)

Film music

  • 1982: The Draftsman's Contract (The Draughtman's Contract)
  • 1986: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
  • 1987: The Miracle of Papu (Le miraculé)
  • 1988: Conspiracy of Women (Drowning By Numbers)
  • 1989: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover)
  • 1989: The Engagement of Monsieur Hire (Monsieur Hire)
  • 1990: The hairdresser's man (Le Mari de la coiffeuse)
  • 1991: Prospero's Books (Prospero's Books)
  • 1993: The Piano (The Piano) (UK / US: goldgold)
  • 1994: Carrington
  • 1994: Mesmer
  • 1996: The Ogre (The Ogre)
  • 1997: Gattaca
  • 1999: The End of the Affair (The End of the Affair)
  • 1999: Ravenous - Eat or Die (Ravenous)
  • 1999: Wonderland
  • 2001: The Empire and Glory (The Claim)
  • 1996/2002: Man with a Movie Camera
  • 2003: The Actors
  • 2003: Nathalie (Nathalie ...)
  • 2005: The Libertine
  • 2008: Man on Wire
  • 2012: Everyday
  • 2012: The Hidden City ( Elefante blanco )
  • 2015: I'm Ingrid Bergman, documentary
  • 2018: Alexander McQueen, documentary

Other works

  • 1977: In Re Don Giovanni
  • 1985: String Quartet No. 1
  • 1988: String Quartet No. 2
  • 1985: A Zed and Two Noughts
  • 1990: String Quartet No. 3
  • 1993: The Piano Concerto (piano concerto)
  • 1994: String Quartet No. 4
  • 1994: MGV (Musique à Grande Vitesse)
  • 1995: Concerto for harpsichord and strings
  • 1995: Concerto for trombone and orchestra
  • 1997: Concertos
  • 1997: Enemy Zero (video game)
  • 1999: The Commissar Vanishes, for David King 's book of the same name
  • 2000: Facing Goya
  • 2003: Gattaca for Orchestra
  • 2003: Violin Concerto
  • 2003: Man and Boy: Dada
  • 2004: Acts of Beauty
  • 2005: Love Counts
  • 2012: Through the Only Window (piano quintet)
  • 2013: 2Graves, incidental music for the play by Paul Sellar
  • 2013: Trumpet & String Quartet
  • 2013: Symphony No. 6 "AHAE"
  • 2014: Symphony No. 11 "Hillsborough Memorial"

Awards and nominations (selection)

  • 1990: César nominated , category Best Music Written for a Film (Meilleure musique) for Monsieur Hire (German: The engagement of Monsieur Hire )
  • 1993: AFI Award Winner, Best Original Music Score category for The Piano
  • 1994: Nominated for the BAFTA Award , Best Score category for The Piano
  • 1994: Nominated Golden Globe , Category Best Original Score - Motion Picture for The Piano
  • 1994: CFCA Award winner, Best Score category for The Piano
  • 1998: Nominated Golden Globe, Category Best Original Score - Motion Picture for Gattaca
  • 2000: Nominated BAFTA Awards, Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music for The End of the Affair
  • 2000: Nominated Golden Globe, Category Best Original Score - Motion Picture for The End of the Affair
  • 2019: Nominated for the International Film Music Critics Award (IFMCA), Best Original Score category for Alexander McQueen

Movie

  • Michael Nyman - Composer in Progress. Documentary, Germany, 2010, 50 min., Director: Silvia Beck, production: Arthaus Musik , review by kino-zeit.de .

Web links

Commons : Michael Nyman  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The London Gazette. In: thegazette.co.uk. June 14, 2008, accessed July 8, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Biography ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on michaelnyman.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.michaelnyman.com
  3. ↑ Interview Michael Nyman in K. Robert Schwarz: Minimalists , London 1996, ISBN 0-7148-3381-9 , pp. 195 f.
  4. ↑ Michael Nyman: Experimental Music. Cage and Beyond , Schirmer Books, New York 1974, ISBN 0-02-871200-5 , pp. 135 f.
  5. ↑ Michael Nyman's Music as Music History by Volker Straebel, 1999
  6. ↑ Šestaja čast 'mira. One sixth of the earth. Film by Dziga Vertov (1926) on berlinerfestspiele.de , 2011
  7. ↑ Film review and film (dates also in the credits): https://www.fvalu.ch/index.php/film-und-videotechnik/12-filmemachen/298-der-mann-mit-der-kamera-der-film .html
  8. ↑ z. B. Productions by: British Film Institute (bfi), absolut Medien GmbH / Arte Edition (also indicated on the cover: In the Nursery and Werner Cee ).
  9. ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK US
  10. ↑ Complete list: Awards for Michael Nyman , IMDb , accessed on October 2, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Nyman, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nyman, Michael Laurence
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH London