Frank Denyer’s creative impetus has taken him all over the world, from the UK to Japan, Senegal to the US on a lifetime quest to cultivate an intangible musical territory. ‘In the Margins of Composition’ brings together reflections on the obsessions of a life spent in contemplation and creation, its impulses and influences with a personal review of his works and constitutes an indispensable and concise personal window on a unique artistic journey.
The occupation of an artist rests on the cultivation of an inner world, the boundaries of which remain unknown, but which slowly solidifies until it pushes an inadequate simulacrum of some part of itself into existence. Thus materialised, it can finally be properly confronted as an independent entity. Art is the attempt to build bridges between this secret unknown inner space and the outside world, but the process is not a simple one.
Frank Denyer
Composers Edition is delighted to be collaborating with Vision Edition on this publication at a time when Denyer’s music is receiving renewed interest. It will be formally launched on Saturday 23 November at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival following a screening of Suhail Merchant’s film Some Sounds are Gates, which explores Denyer’s attempt to bring music closer to life. The screening will be followed by a Q & A and a book signing.
The Festival also sees the premiere of his massive and extraordinary ensemble piece The Fish that became the Sun at the festival and we’re delighted to see that this coincides with the release of two new CDs on the Another Timbre label, including a recording of The Fish that became the Sun.
Denyer’s work resembles no one else’s. Here acts of regeneration are effected by the very waste thrown out by an industrialised society. Our elegies must become new births if we are to have a future, so Denyer’s green ethnicism is the opposite pole to what Steve Reich called ‘the old exoticism trip.’ There can be no doubt that it matters.
Prof Wilfrid Mellers (Classic CD)
Frank Denyer is an English composer whose imaginatively rich compositions fall between several and into none of the accepted categories of contemporary music. Each of his works present an astonishingly varied array of musical sound sources – new instruments of his own invention, adapted instruments, instruments of non- Western traditions, rare and virtually extinct instruments, and conventional Western instruments.
Dr Bob Gilmore (musicologist, biographer, editor of Tempo)
Tags: Another Timbre, Frank Denyer, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, In the Margins of Composition, Octandre Ensemble, Some Sounds are Gates, Suhail Merchant, The Fish that became the Sun, Vision Edition