Chris Swithinbank

Re­cent re­cip­i­ent of the 1er Prix Luigi Rus­solo for his work Gal­li­vant­ing (now reti­tled as The Suit­cases Piece), Donal Sars­field is an Irish com­poser cur­rently study­ing for a PhD in elec­troa­coustic music at the Uni­ver­sity of Man­ches­ter on an Irish Arts Coun­cil Eliz­a­beth Ma­conchy Com­po­si­tion Fel­low­ship. His re­cent tape music demon­strates poignancy and hu­mour in equal mea­sure, with at­ten­tion to the de­tail of even the most ephemeral ges­ture. For the sec­ond of an oc­ca­sional se­ries of pro­files of com­posers whose music I like (pre­vi­ously: Nina White­man), Donal kindly agreed to an­swer some ques­tions about what makes him tick.

Q&A

Chris Swith­in­bank: I re­alise that this is not a ques­tion that you prob­a­bly con­sider every day, but let’s start at the be­gin­ning. What drew you to write music? Is it a vo­ca­tion and if so, why?

Donal Sars­field: I al­ways lis­tened to music in my teenage years. I learned to play the piano my­self but was al­ways a re­luc­tant prac­tiser; I much pre­ferred im­pro­vis­ing to learn­ing pieces. It wasn’t until I went to col­lege and at­tended com­po­si­tion classes that I got a feel­ing that I could try things out on paper, and so after a few el­e­men­tal ex­er­cises I wrote my first piece when I was 20. I wouldn’t call com­pos­ing a vo­ca­tion.

CS: Hav­ing started out writ­ing music for acoustic in­stru­ments and voices, you are now work­ing on a PhD in Elec­troa­coustic Com­po­si­tion. What was it about stu­dio com­po­si­tion that you wanted to ex­plore?

DS: After first work­ing in the stu­dio dur­ing my MA in 2004 I re­alised that I en­joyed work­ing with sounds as much as I en­joyed work­ing with notes and in­stru­ments. Hav­ing been to a re­spectable num­ber of con­certs in­volv­ing tape or elec­troa­coustic works over the years I felt that most of the pieces I heard, though tech­ni­cally pol­ished, were lack­ing some­thing per­sonal. By per­sonal I mean ei­ther a clearly au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal sub­ject mat­ter or the more stub­bornly sub­tle, ec­cen­tric or es­o­teric side to life. That’s the area that I have set out to ex­plore in my PhD; the sub­ject of the per­sonal through sound.

CS: How do you deal with the dis­em­bod­ied na­ture of tape music?

DS: The pho­tog­ra­pher Garry Wino­grand often said that he pho­tographed some­thing to see what it looked liked pho­tographed and I try and apply the same ap­proach to record­ing sounds; I record some­thing to hear what it sounds like recorded. Even though 99% of my sounds are de­rived from recorded sound I never con­sider the sounds I use as dis­em­bod­ied. I think the term pre­sup­poses the “dis­em­bod­ied” el­e­ment in a lesser light and that seems an un­nec­es­sary weight on the work.

CS: How do you con­ceive of sound in your work?

DS: I usu­ally have some start­ing point or con­cept which I try and re­alise through sound. This seed evolves through a pe­riod of broad prepara­tory re­search into areas which I feel might be use­ful; pho­tog­ra­phy, paint­ing, Amer­i­can 80’s tele­vi­sion, and that then in­forms the prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions of con­struct­ing the piece: from how and where to record sound sources, how best to trans­form, or­gan­ise and com­bine sounds, and most im­por­tantly, how to re­solve and struc­ture each sound/ges­ture within each piece. At the minute I can’t re­ally offer a de­f­i­n­i­tion of res­o­lu­tion, it’s more an aware­ness that within the piece a sound must jus­tify it­self and, if re­moved, would weaken the equi­lib­rium of the work.

CS: Mov­ing from raw recorded sound to a fin­ished piece can be a con­vo­luted process. How do you go about it and what role does the source sound it­self play in a piece’s con­cept?

DS: I al­ways aim to make some­thing not “fac­tu­ally im­pec­ca­ble but seam­lessly per­sua­sive”, which is a phrase from John Szarkowski, the man who’s writ­ing I turn to most often when I’m stuck. The first three pieces of my [PhD] port­fo­lio point to an or­di­nary sound in an imag­i­na­tive, and hope­fully some­what in­tel­li­gent, man­ner. I try and use the sound source as the sub­ject of the piece, rather than just using the sound ob­ject as a means to cre­ate. Ma­tisse said that “The ob­ject is not so in­ter­est­ing in it­self. It’s the en­vi­ron­ment that cre­ates the ob­ject.”

CS: In The Clap­ping Piece (2010) the main ma­te­r­ial is the sound of ap­plause. There is a won­der­ful mo­ment just after it ends where the au­di­ence an­tic­i­pates its own ap­plause, recog­nises that this will be in some way a con­tin­u­a­tion of the work it­self and re­alises some­thing of the ridicu­lous­ness of the con­cert rit­ual. Was that a con­scious aim? Is a ques­tion­ing of the con­cert sit­u­a­tion an im­por­tant part of your com­po­si­tional ap­proach?

DS: With The Clap­ping Piece there was an at­tempt to make an au­di­ence not ap­plaud after the piece, but I failed in that re­spect. I think of that piece as a rather unas­sum­ing per­for­mance piece for con­cert hall. More than most pieces it re­wards pro­jec­tion within the con­cert hall en­vi­ron­ment more than any­where else (for ex­am­ple a radio broad­cast, lis­ten­ing at home, or on­line stream­ing).

CS: What pro­jects have you got in the pipeline at the mo­ment?

DS: Thank­fully the PhD will be my main pro­ject for the next 18 months and I am grate­ful for this time to make the work as strong as it can be. Out­side the PhD I have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Jer­wood Opera Writ­ing Foun­da­tion at Alde­burgh and that course cul­mi­nates in a short new piece with writer Alan McK­endrick and di­rec­tor Ted Huff­man in July.

CS: What ex­cites you about being an artist today?

DS: Wait­ing to see what Mar­tin Margiela will do next.

Links

• Donal Sars­field on Sound­Cloud
• Donal Sars­field at the Con­tem­po­rary Music Cen­tre, Ire­land
• In­ter­view about Gal­li­vant­ing/The Suit­cases Piece from CMC Ire­land