Contemporary British Composers 3: James Dillon: Currents of Development

Author(s): Keith Potter

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 131, No. 1767 (May, 1990), pp. 253-260
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
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CONTEMPORARY BRITISH COMPOSERS 3

James Dillon: currents of developme

Keith Potter

I should say first of all that I'm surprised that people are still writing
at all in the late 20th century .. .For example, mass communication,
media, the domination of the media: the fact that the media actually

controls our lives more than politicians now. All these things,

music by reference to postmodernist issues. Despite the

composer's perfectly natural protestations.
It will probably be seen, to those who know his music,

doing... I see what I'm doing, personally, as defending something

connect James Dillon with the postmodernist debate. It

actually, are completely undermining the principles of what we are

that should not be lost. But having said that, I'm still surprised that
there are still so many people around willing to defend what lies at

the heart ... of European culture.

It's struggling with this notion of cohesion all the time, you know. I
always remember being rather frightened by the first time that I
read Fundamentals of Musical Composition by Schoenberg; the sentence that always stuck in my mind was this notion that the one

thing the composer is always struggling with is the notion of

cohesion. And of course it's absolutely true. Because at one

particular moment in the construction of any work, you can go off

in infinite directions. You can easily start off in the same position
and end up with a piece of Phil Glass, if you manipulated it in a

not merely surprising but totally wrong-headed to

certainly does to the composer himself. As a prime
mover in the area of contemporary music which
generally goes under the label 'The New Complexity' -

no better, but perhaps also no worse a 'tool' than

postmodernism - this Scottish composer has frequently

been seen as heir to the tradition, if such it can already
be called, of Brian Ferneyhough: as firmly committed,
that is to say, as is his English colleague to a music of

dense surface, close to if not beyond the limits of

performability, justified by reference to the fearsome

particular way. And so the important thing for me when I'm

intellectual discourse which is said to lie behind those

one can limit the movement.

torrents of notes. It would seem more natural - perhaps,

indeed, potentially very fruitful - to link any attempt to

composing is, how far can I close this space down? Ultimately the
most important thing is the question of boundaries itself, and how

define postmodernism via real pieces of music with the

of either James MacMillan or Malcolm Singer,
two predecessors in this series.
Even in these two cases, however, it should quickly
become clear that to deal with postmodernism is to be

If you flatten anything out, there's not a great deal you can do with
outputs
it afterwards. I like all the kinks and the bumps and the grit and the
Dillon's
dirt and the mess and the beauty and everything that lies within an

untouched landscape.

dealing
If one
is still
struggling
with the such
idea of
formp...
to createthat
something
in
search
of itself...
it involves
complex
questions
the

with something rather more than a simple,

comforting rejection of avant-garde ways. It is true that

one of the many useful things the postmodernist debate
These quotations tell us a good deal. Perhaps most ofhas
all,thrown up is a re-examination of what, to some, was
they convey the urgency with which James Dillon
the formerly simple division of composers into 'conseraddresses the relationship between the shape his music
vative' or 'radical'; and one of the spin-offs of this is an
idea of simplifying is a betrayal. Who are you writing for?'

takes - in particular the literal, formal shape - and

a
increased
suspicion of the validity of such terms at all.
range of considerations, some of which others would
One might still, though, hazard the observation that the
say went well beyond the province, the purview, recent
of
traces of 'I told you so' to be found in the
music itself. Dillon has always been an 'anti-specialist',
conversation of some fairly hard-line - to the extent of
while still managing to acquire an enviable range
of self-professed - conservative composers misses
being
specialist skills to do what he feels needs to be done
in point fairly comprehensively. For one thing, both
the
his own compositions. There is more than a hint that
MacMillan and Singer, for instance, combine what may
the pushing against boundaries which is the necessary
be seen as a non-avant-garde intention with at least
'other side of the coin' to the concerns for limitingoccasional,
the
if not more fundamental, use of what are
field in certain ways, and most of all for 'cohesion',
in
usually
seen as avant-garde techniques, as has been
achieved against the grain in some way; certainly music
demonstrated. But the problems of defining the postsuch as Dillon's is not exactly easy to write. But some
modern do not, of course, stop there. Let us temporarily

readers may be surprised at the extent to which

a this discussion, in order to pick it up again in more
abort
composer usually considered a member of the school
of confrontation with the attempt to describe the
direct
'The New Complexity' is dealing with a range music
of
written by the subject of this article.
concerns we may perhaps call 'humanist'. There is
a
James
Dillon was born in Glasgow on 29 October
recognition, for instance, of the need for coherent
1950. At the age of nine, the settled family life in which

structure, though the need to address the 'infinitude

he of
was initially brought up was disrupted, and he was

possibilities' is also acknowledged. There musteventually

be
brought to London where he has largely

'direction' in the music, but also what the composer

lived ever since. Before he left Scotland, though, the
frequently calls 'disruption'. Since there should beelements
no
- musical and otherwise - of a typical Glasgow
danger that he will be mistaken for a purveyor eitherCatholic
of
background had played an important part in
familiarly fractured modernism or of the kind of posthis life: church music (he served as an altar boy until the
modernisation which also has an image of 'bitsage
andof 12), playing Scottish pipe music, football chants
scraps' existing in a cultural void, it just might
at be
Celtic. The explosion of rock music in the 1960s led to
possible to examine a few of the complexities and, rock
yes, being his chief musical concern as a teenager: he
the contradictions which lie behind Dillon's ideas and

1These and all quotations not otherwise acknowledged

recent interview or correspondence with the composer.

was in a rhythm-and-blues band called Influx; Geno

was one of his heroes; and Billy Currie
comeWashington
from
numbered among his friends. (It would be interesting to
253

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James Dillon Photo: Susan Homewood

discover just how many British composers

ofknowing
Dillon's anything of Dillon's re
Anyone
generation essentially came to musicfairly
via the
rock boom
fearsome
musical intelligence would
of the period, and whether its effect
them
waspoint
more
iton
was
at this
that he went to univers
spent
two
than passing.) For him, though, '[i]t all
died
outyears
in '69at
orKeele University (readi
so, when rock believed it could change
the world.'2
physics)
only some time later, in 1976-8, b
he had his own family but had hardly be

himself
a composer.
It was not, it w
2The composer, quoted in Dick Witts, 'The New Dillon',
Timeas
Out,
no. 743
(15-21 November 1984), p.6.
question of indecision about becoming
254

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something Dillon appears to have fixed on quite early;

rather, it was chronic uncertainty as to how to proceed.
The late 1960s and early 1970s were spent trying to sort
all this out, and these years were filled with a disconcerting mixture of experiences: lactivities at the Drury

Lane Arts Laboratory, deep involvement with the

Kabbala, via Robert Lenkewicz and a period spent in
Devon; taking a course in linguistics at the Polytechnic
of Central London; and generally soaking up a whole

library's worth of books on philosophy, aesthetics,

acoustics etc. to which the walls of his house still testify.

Most importantly, perhaps, all this was part of what

Roger Wright has called Dillon's 'own personal compo-

For Dillon, indeed, compositional validity seemed

more achievable in the isolation to which he could be

said to have returned after his Keele experience: 'I

wanted,' he has said, 'to claw my way back to where

music still has meaning, and not present some kind of

second-hand experience.'5 At least that isolation had

now started to produce some tangible results: he began

to be able to finish more pieces and, at the end of the

1970s, to gain some performances of work which,

because of the difficulties it has always involved, can

only rarely be played by anyone other than experienced new-music professionals. With Dillug-

Kefitsah, (1976) for piano, Dillon finally abandoned his

previous experiments with such things as proportional
notation in favour of the characteristically 'complex'
approach he has adopted ever since. With... Once upon
to abandon at least some of those distinctions between
a Time (1979-80) for eight players, he achieved, in a more
consistent and extended way, what Toop has called the
'musical' and 'extra-musical' in what one might call the
'sheer aggression'6 which has been seen as a major
various stages of pre-compositional research, but also
characteristic of his mature music: the characteristic
to forge a vigorous dialectic between them which will
which, coupled to his concern for timbre (which has
impinge on the substance and nature of the resulting
compositions themselves.
gone through various stages, some already welldocumented),7 has brought about the frequent suggesAccusations - which, in their politer expressions
tions of some association with Varese and Xenakis.
emerge in such forms as the criticism that contemappeared finally to have found himself in a style
porary music is too formalist, or too concernedDillon
to
that seems to thrive on constraints - of notation, of
examine its own innards - are widely levelled at music
instrumental possibility - for which he has not merely
such as Dillon's; its 'complexity' and its 'intellectualism'
settled, but which themselves imply - perhaps even
are often seen as deliberate barriers erected to protect
or embody - a very uneasy relationship
an intellectual and privileged elite from the hue and manifest
cry
of those who demand that music shall 'communicate',
between form and expression. Or, as Toop graphically
and do so instantly. What more natural, then -puts it, the stereotypical Dillon work 'would grapple
relentlessly with some post-Varesian "harmonic
especially in these hard times for education generally,
block" '.8
and when the BBC has already become markedly less
'elitist' than it was in the 1960s - than that The New
There are at least three ways of questioning this issue
'aggression', and they all suggest fruitful paths into
Complexity should be seen as finding its natural of
home
investigation of Dillon's output in more detail. The
among dessicated intellectuals more concernedanwith
easiest
the structure of musical works than with their ability
to one to deal with is the 'historical' point raised by
Toop:
inspire whatever it is that music is widely felt should
bethat the particular sort of vitality best, if crudely,
summed up in this way in fact 'seemed to retreat briefly
inspiring?

sition course',3 with topics both musical and 'extramusical' explored by a rigorous and scientific mind
which has always seemingly been concerned not only

In fact, few of the leading British figures in the field of

New Complexity have had much better than a tangen-

tial, and in some cases abortive, relationship with

universities in this country. Dillon left Keele, dis-

illusioned, after only two years; his only involvement

with a British university since then has been two years
of part-time teaching at Goldsmiths' College, London
(1986-7 and 1988-9). Thus, for example, none of the four

composers discussed in Richard Toop's large-scale

survey, 'Four Facets of the New Complexity',4 has even

completed a B.Mus. or its equivalent, let alone pursued
postgraduate composition studies or taught full-time in
a university. Dillon is, indeed, frequently celebrated in
Continental Europe (where he still, like Ferneyhough
and the other three subjects of Toop's article - Richard
Barrett, Chris Dench and Michael Finnissy - receives
more attention than at home) as 'an autodidact'. The
composer, too, clearly feels that his 'personal composi-

in the works of the mid-eighties', even though it

're-emerges untamed in Uberschreiten'9 and can be
observed too in recent works. While it is perfectly

possible for a perceptive commentator such as Toop to

describe Dillon as 'probably the most metaphysically

turbulent' of the four composers discussed in his

already-mentioned article,10 and for the composer himself to discuss his work using what Toop aptly sum-

marises as a 'typically Varesian "cosmic and sexual"

formulation'," it is also valid to assert, as Wright has

done, that 'Dillon's music has become more and more
refined since... Once Upon Time. His aim has been to
move away from bold, empty, noisy, gestural music to a
music in which formal elegance plays a large part.'12 It is

tempting to link this increase in, or rather arrival of,

'formal elegance' in his output with the other chief

technical and stylistic change in Dillon's work to date:

the influence of the so-called 'spectral composition'

tion course' allowed a different relationship to, for developed via new research into properties and appli-

cations of the harmonic series undertaken by the group

instance, the whole business of serialism, which he
encountered for himself in the early 1970s, or, as he 5Quoted in Wright, op. cit., p.20.
6Toop, op. cit., p.38.
himself puts it,
tripped on... too late to really affect my thinking. What it did do...
it does actually force you to think about what the hell you're doing
in terms of the implications and the richness and complexity of the

whole thing. But I'm not a product of the conservatoires and the

universities.

7See especially Dillon's own article 'Speculative Instruments', unpub-

lished in its original English, but available in French in ed. J. B. Barri're,

Le timbre, metaphores pour la composition (Paris: Christian Bourgeois/
IRCAM, 1987).
sToop, op. cit., p.6.
9Ibid., p.38.

lOlbid., p.6.
3Roger Wright, 'James Dillon', Contact, no. 24 (Spring 1982), p.20.
4Richard Toop, 'Four Facets of "The New Complexity" ', Contact, no. 32llIbid., p.50.
12Wright, 'Breaking Boundaries', The Listener (29 May 1986) p.30.
(Spring 1988), pp.4-50.
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of French composers known as L'Itin6raire (the principal figures involved here are Gerard Grisey, MichaOl
Levinas and Tristan Murail). But while it is surely true

to say that Dillon has developed a new, or at least

different, interest in harmony - and to date this from

Windows and Canopies (1985) for chamber orchestra, in
particular: the work in which he applied some of the

'spectral' notions of composing with the harmonic

series to his music for the first time - there is hardly any

simple relationship between 'formal elegance' and use

of the harmonic series, still less (though I know it

scarcely needs saying) between Dillon's present practice and any simple 'return to tonality'.
The second line of questioning starts with the simple
- though these days, in particular, crucial - aspect of
'marketing', but would quickly find itself embedded in a
heavy discussion about meaning and values, were this
article to have the space for it. For Dillon himself, the

business of 'aggression' is straightforwardly dealt

with:

Ten years ago as you know (to my dismay), I found myself

lumbered with a spurious 'angry' image with all its complicit

'anti's'; cultivated less by implication, than by the surface charac-

teristic associated with gestural polemics, it may be a useful

marketing ploy but I prefer to leave the 'bovver boy' image to

others[.] God only knows there are enough successors willing to be

neutralised by demands of the market.

We may perhaps best engage at least one or two of

the implications of this by passing on to the third line of

questioning, with which we finally reach the point at

which it might be possible usefully to reintroduce the
postmodernist debate begun earlier. The reason for this

is partly that to describe this music as 'aggressive'

suggests too direct or at least too simple a link between

Dillon's conceptions and intentions on the one hand,
and the resulting musical 'product' and the way it is
perceived by individual listeners on the other: or, as

Dillon himself puts it, such notions are surely too

anthropomorphic. And while this may be essentially

true of all music, and all composers, it has, it seems to
me, particular significance for many things about this
composer's work, not least the ways in which discussion about its structure may be undertaken.
Recent repeated listening to Dillon's String Quartet,
(1983) - initially without the score (which is often more
of a hindrance than a help, I find, to getting to grips with

music of such 'Complexity') - suggested a degree of

motivic structuring in the piece surprising in the work

of a composer so apparently 'modernist', so 'angry', in
his rejection of the paraphernalia of the past. Or rather
(since I have arguably already confused conception and
perception), the work's opening (see ex. 1) suggested a
few fairly immediately audibly identifiable fragments

(chiefly concerned with pitch, secondarily with

rhythm), the memory of which helped to make sense of

what followed, especially of how it unfolded (even

developed) in time. Readers will have to believe me that

this exercise was under way before encounter (though I
must confess it was a re-encounter, after more than 18
months) with Toop's analysis of this work, which posits
a firm, if in certain respects 'unorthodox', motivic basis
for approaching it. While giving due acknowledgement

to Wright's description of the work as a 'complex

network of braids which overlap and interact'13

(arguably a rather modernist-sound metaphor), Toop

goes on to analyse the work as 'not only a "discursive"
13Ibid.

quartet, but also - however eliptically - a thematic one, to

a degree one would scarcely have expected from any of

the other composers [Finnissy, etc.] discussed here."'4
One might even interpret the Quartet's final 'coda' as a
kind of 'summing up', using concepts which rely so
strongly on notions of recapitulation, thematic structuring and cohesion that even the work's more fragmented moments (and there are several of these) seem

somehow in the end no more than the expected

'fall-out' of a work involving a classically familiar

process of tension and resolution.

Perhaps, though, this is going a little too far. Certainly, Dillon's own conception of the String Quartet

turns out to be rather different: sufficiently different to

make him uneasy about any 'motivic' approach,

especially his own acknowledged feelings about the

final sense of resolution, about which it is clear he is

uneasy. On the one hand, he responds positively to the

idea of 'narrative' in his music, or at least in this

particular piece: comparing his idea of this to what he

identifies as the 'modernist' one as both
more traditional and less traditional. It's more traditional insofar as

one associates narrative with, for example, the structure of myth or

the structure of story telling, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
... But it was less traditional insofar as I wanted to create a kind of

notion of directionality in terms of discontinuities, in terms of...

the surface detail of what existed within that narrative - as not

necessarily continuous. In fact, a kind of disrupted surface inside a

narrative flow... In other words, I was maintaining the notion of a

traditional narrative, but . .. through disruption rather than

through continuity.

This - arguably contradictory but also arguably quite

deliberately contradictory - structure was apparently
conceived not motivically but in terms of a formidablesounding complex of technical procedures involving, it
is true, a four-note chord which is seemingly, in its
simpler and more linear appearances, responsible for

the 'motivic' surface (as at the beginning: the G/A

'motif', for instance, started conceptual life - and is

revealed elsewhere in the work - as the bottom and top
notes, respectively, of that chord), but also a 'taxonomy'
of relationships between the four instruments, 'the
permutation of four morphogenetic fields... defined as
a conflation of vectorial and scalar information', and
much more besides. It seems, too, that the idea of the
'braiding' metaphor is Dillon's own: interestingly, this,
again 'modernist'-sounding, notion came from plaiting
his young daughter's hair, and the composer actually
thinks it a good metaphor for all music.
The idea that a certain kind of tension could be
created - and indeed manipulated in all sorts of ways
which are probably as 'difficult ... to unravel' as the
composer says would be true of the 'rich mixture of

systematic deduction (maintaining variety) and in-

tuitive selection (maintaining disruption)' involved in

writing the Quartet - by such means is surely a fruitful
way of looking at this music theoretically. At the same
time this music's 'cohesion' denies 'anger' no more than

its composer's questioning of art as simple self-

expression denies the possibility of something worthwhile resulting when what would usually be thought of

as 'modernist' techniqes are confronted with such

things as Romantic notions of 'Grand Form' which the

modernists had long since pronounced unrecover-

able.

Any idea that even such ill-defined notions of continuity can confidently be applied to Dillon's output as a
whole is, though, quickly thrown into doubt by the
14Toop, op. cit., p.42.

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Ex. 1 String Quartet, bars 1-6.

Q ;-56
4A A I etij,"n3

ptiA~
cn -'a Wfpr
16e (9~
. el~seoco) 4pI'l
8 sewzw
es~ fo
pppp

If

In

ppj-

-,

dog

( iioZo'no o _________
- ,

(i'eJiw4, zn-) ---:-. "' . -',7

# ..": ... '- -6,j,Wl-a,,
A
pp
L

7:5

-PIP

4:2

----, -------

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.. ..

_____________________ if 1

_______________ (--de -fl ott oof~-J?

r ------------------.
'F-

__>

8(4p

2ppp

. -' ' #lot &a ?t 'fas)'

composer, who appears to 'start ingly,

over' with
many
too, he
makes the attempt to conn
aspects when moving on to a new piece.
This
could, ofof postmodernism.)
ments
to notions
course, be accounted yet more evidence
for to
the
music seems
resist any straightforwar
espousal of a 'modernist' aesthetic. And
generally,
evenmore
of such
relatively basic notions as 'c
as Arnold Whittall has pointed out,connection',
we at present
lack seem foolhardy to rais
it might
any adequate theoretical base from which
to discuss the
of postmodernism
as well. Yet it is tempt
structural procedures of contemporary
even
late on music,
the extent
to which possible cont
that which appears to trade in modernist
ideas in
return
especially
structural
contradictions, or
for a 'new' purchase on 'tonality'.15
Whittall
uses
theoretical
possibility
of contradictory str
theories involving 'contrast and connection',
'confronings' - can
be accounted for by, say,
tation and complementation' and 'synthesis
and sym-postmodernism', which
'poststructuralist
biosis' to challenge the absence, in Toop's
article, of
arts, 'launches
a 'a
critique in which repr
proper, i.e. theoretical, considerationshown
of the to
aesthetics
be moreof
constitutive of reality
structure, such as would help to create
a clearer
picture
parent
to it',"17
as well as of an acceptance
of where these four composers actually
in terms
wantstand
of a better
word, we may call struc
of the development of the art in our
time'.16
perhaps
it (Interestshould be 'poststructuralist') th
generally.
15See Jonathan Dunsby and Arnold Whittall, Music Analysis in Theory and
Especially on the level of form, Dillon's own arguPractice (London: Faber, 1988), especially Whittall's chapter 'The Structure of Atonal Music: Synthesis or Symbiosis?', pp.173-85; and Arnold
ments rely to some extent on accepting, and trying to

Whittall's two articles, 'The Theorist's Sense of History: Concepts of

Contemporaneity in Composition and Analysis', Journal of the Royal
Musical Association, vol. 112, no. 1 (1986-7), pp.1-20 and "Complexity,

Capitulationism, and the Language of Criticism', Contact, no. 33

(Autumn 1988), pp.20-23.

16Whittall, 'Complexity, Capitulationism, and the Language of

Criticism', op. cit., p.20.

take account of, the role of memory and recall, both local
and what we may call 'cultural', in the listening process
itself. Lberschreiten (1986) for 16 players, for instance,

17Hal Foster, Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Port Townsend

Washington: Bay Press, 1985), p.121.
257

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hardly conforms to any stereotypical notion of 'elegant

form'. As the first in what at present remains an

incomplete trilogy of works based on what the composer describes as 'Heideggerian notions of construction', this London Sinfonietta commission seems to set
out to blow apart all one category of memories: those
accruing to the image, right or wrong, of this ensemble
as the epitome of Establishment Modernism gone soft.
Uberschreiten's title means, literally, 'overstepping',

crossing over or transgression, so this particular

interpretation of the work (not, I hasten to say, direct

from the composer's mouth) seems somehow relevant.
Yet it also does what Foster might describe as 'disclose a
historical identity'.'1

cohesion and of its very existence in the work's unf

ing - that at least starts the listener and the theoris
the path towards making sense, first of the mome

'where things are between order and disorder'

Dillon calls them, and then of the wider implication

this quotation which so interested Whittall. It is p

haps here that 'deconstruction' in a more rigor

critical sense can begin to mean something too, and

find its place musically in the postmodernist debate
helle Nacht (1986-7) for orchestra - the second work
a trilogy of pieces of which LUberschreiten is the first,

in several respects the composer's strongest work

far: not least in its revelation that Dillon can now

compose stunningly well for large orchestral forces,

Uberschreiten conforms more to the 'big bang' model of

which his ideas not only justify but arguably turn out to

form than to any conventionally developmental notion

of unfolding. Its basic material is the harmonic series
based on the note E natural, which explodes from the

piece of the three, Blitzschlag (Thunderclap) - a flute

full ensemble at the outset, constituting what the

composer calls 'an initial state' which also in a sense

require - benefits considerably from the 'research' of

Windows and Canopies as well as Uberschreiten. The final

concerto for Pierre-Yves Artaud - has suffered from the

uncertainties to which commissioning is sometimes

remains 'steady', since some semblance of it is present

subject these days, and has yet to be written.

surfaces clearly at only a few points. It is symptomatic

that this Ur-material does not in any meaningful way
separate harmony and timbre: among other things, this

started to conceive his works in cycles. In part this is in

throughout the work's 22 minutes, even though it

provides a valid basis for viewing, and hearing,

Uberschreiten as 'texture music' underpinned by a much

more secure foundation - both musically and intellectually, for want of better words - than music given that

label tends to have. Dillon describes the early stages of

what happens after the 'big bang' in terms of its decay,
in the course of which inharmonic tones are gradually
introduced (that is, notes which are not integer mul-

tiples of the fundamental E natural). Any notion of

Like Ferneyhough and others, Dillon has recently

order to achieve a closer match between what he wants

to write and the vagaries of our commissioning

systems. But it also seems to tie up with deeper notions

of form, the most important of which is probably the
one indicated by the title of the grand cycle Nine Rivers,
on which he is at present working. Conceived in 1983 on
the realisation that the percussion piece of the previous
year, East 11th St NY 10003, could best be considered as
part of a larger project taking the spatial concerns of
that work into the logical 'next stage' of using electronics, the eventual nine pieces of Nine Rivers (of which
four are now complete) are all involved in some way

conflict in this increasing dissonance is, though, undermined by the low dynamic level, thus offering another

with the idea of a river: with, to quote the Shorter Oxford

effect quite different, if not opposite, to that which the

Dictionary quoted in the composer's 1983 'Synopsis' for

the cycle, a 'copious stream or flow of (something)' used

would suggest: that is, 'dissonance', even given a clear

context, is here not perceived as really being dissonant

death 1790'. Dillon also links his application of this in

Introitus, the most recent contribution to the cycle, to

way in which parameters can combine to create an

direction currently being pursued by one of them

at all.

The basic technique of Uberschreiten, that of 'continually dividing and subdividing the chord and the
proportions of that chord', as the composer puts it, is
conceived by him as a sort of deconstruction of the
chord or 'state'. This is where the attempt to harness, or

at least take account of, the role of memory becomes

most meaningful: while still accepting the harmonic

series as what he calls a 'found object' - and thus in

'euphemistically for the boundary between life and

chaos theory. Scored for a variety of forces, the works in

the cycle draw on a variety of imagery from poetry and

philosophy; the 'Synopsis' also provides a complex

'colour scheme'. Introitus (1989-90) for twelve strings,

tape and live electronics, the work Dillon has just

completed for performance at IRCAM this month, is the

composer's first piece to use electronics, breaking his

previous apparent resolve to avoid the electronic studio
on account of his concern for 'a peculiar and granular
energy that emerges from the large number of variables
contained within, and emanating out from, the mediation of performance'.20 The tape part, which I have

some way 'natural', as has so often been argued - Dillon

also treats it as something which brings its own history.
UIberschreiten represents an attempt, the composer says,
to examine the relationship between these two interheard, was made at IRCAM and is largely based on
pretations of his Ur-material, which includes the accepstring sampling; it promises to provide a suitably
tance of the resulting harmony's tendencies to imply
torrential complement to the live ensemble. A close
tension and release. There is, however, none of the
integration of taped and live elements is promised via
focusing on small areas of the harmonic series which the live use of the same algorithms employed to
characterises some French 'spectral' compositions, and generate the tape part to make a 'new live mix, so that
which can too easily lead to kitsch, as Toop observes.19 every time you hear it, the work will be different'.
Ultimately, Dillon's use of the harmonic series formally Foster's 'poststructuralist postmodernism' - to
in Uberschreiten seems actually bent on its destruction. return to our debate - is, like the 'postmodernism' of
But it is the way in which this 'deconstruction' is carried other theorists such as Ihab Hassan, posited as radical,
out - the extent to which the music allows one
and open to the charge that it is better to regard it as an
simultaneously to follow a 'cohesive form' extension
and remain
of modernism rather than something diffesuspicious of both of the 'contemporary validity'
rent;of
itssuch
'profoundly anti-humanist' stance would pres18lbid.

198Toop, op. cit., p.47.

20Dillon, 'Speculative Instruments', op. cit.

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Ex. 2 Del Cuarto Elemento, bars 1-9.

;=84
scintillante

? <:A,,,V.------- 1AA4'K

( e1p ) k/con energico e brillante

Music examples reproduced by kind permission of Peters Edition,

London, Ltd.

London, Ltd.

virtually a 'given', anyway, if, as seems inevitable, the

umably stand in the way of any straightforward
piece
is played in an 'avant-garde context'. But, far more
reacceptance of such notions as 'Grand Form'
anyway.
than
It is, on the other hand, probably simplyquickly
foolish
to the above sentence takes to read, we are,
surely deliberately, thrown into doubt by the comsuggest that Foster's much simpler 'neoconservative
poser.
The music suddenly takes on a dancing quality:
postmodernism', with its 'return to narrative,
ornament

the fleeting
and the figure'21 and its humanist sympathies
has regular rhythm and the (modal?) pitch

sequence
suggest some sort of folk dance, and the high
anything to do with Dillon. (Further, I would
question
register
now says 'folk fiddle traditions' rather than
whether Whittall's application of the term
'post-

modern' to the music of Nicholas Maw and Robert

'avant-garde acrobatics'. In retrospect - and again I

emphasise
that all this has taken only a few moments to
Simpson is to identify even a 'neoconservative'
postplay
- the previous little glissandi have become
modernism; I regard Simpson's work, at least, as
simply
we thought they'd said 'Xenakis', but now
conservative.)22 But even if calling Dillon ambiguous:
a postit seems
modernist is considered pointless not only by those
forthey might have meant '19th-century virtuoso
violin
concerto'. And so on throughout the work, which
whom any attempt at categorisation is pointless,
but
might
formally be read as a very devious exercise in
also plain wrong by some of those who, like me,
accept
'cohesion'.
that such categorisations are probably necessary
to any The feeling I have is that 'Modern tech-

kind of coherent reflection of our current musical

niques' in an ostensibly 'modern' context are being

subverted. Irony plays a familiar part in this sort of

situation (surely, they'd say, Dillon is a modernist!),
postmodernism,
to the extent that suspicions of kitchthere still perhaps remain ways in which it can
be

useful.

ness are often aroused, and though Dillon himself

disclaims the idea, I sense some ironic dimension to the

Charles Jencks's idea of a postmodernism involving
exercise here. The music gives the impression of con'double coding: the combination of Modern techniques
fronting the whole 'violin tradition' too, both 'classical'
with something else ... in order ... to communicate
'popular'; and here one could argue that composer
with the public and a concerned minority'23 doesand
seem
andfor
commentator are in greater agreement, since Dillon
relevant to a work such as Del Cuarto Elemento (1988)
- impatient
with the 'modernist' premise of 'extended
solo violin. The work begins 'texturally', as it were
(see
instrumental techniques' because of what he regards as
ex. 2): and so high in pitch and sufficiently free
rhythmically that its 'modernist credentials', intheir
the basis in 'secondary phenomena' extrinsic to the

instrument
in question's real concerns - admits to
crudest sense, are immediately asserted - they
are

21Foster, op.cit., p.121.

trying quite deliberately to engage the violin, in this

case, on its own terms in some quite vital sense.

22Whittall, 'Complexity, Capitulationism and the Language of

However one goes about 'reading' Del Cuarto Elemento, it

23Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism? (London and New York: must be clear that the listener's experience of the past is
crucial to the listener's experience of the present; and I
Academy Editions, St. Martin's Press; 2nd edition, 1987), p.14.
Criticism', op. cit., p.22.

259

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would maintain that the work 'takes account' of this in

East 11th St NY 10003 (1982) for six percussionists (1*)

String Quartet (1983)

some way; or perhaps I should say that I find no barrier

Zone (... de azul) (1983) for eight players

to such past associations is raised by the present

Le

rivage (1984) for wind quintet

flute
for piccolo
Windows and Canopies (1985) for chamber orchestra (also available in
eating it, theoretically, then the naughty (post- version for large orcestra)
modernist?) thought occurs to me that it might only be
Uberschreiten (1985-6) for 16 players
Birl (1986) for harpsichord
by such strategies that musical theory finally catches
helle Nacht (1986-7) for orchestra
up with musical practice in the 1990s. And with the
Shrouded Mirrors (1987) for guitar
contradictions which have started to emerge from the
Del Cuarto Elemento (1988) for violin
debate.
L'ecran parfum (1988) for six violins and three percussionists (2*)
La femme invisible (1989) for 12 players (4*)
Introitus (1989-90) for 12 strings and electronics (8*)

experience.
sgothan (1984) for
Diffraction (1984)
And if all this is considered as having your cake and

DILLON'S COMPLETED WORKS

Babble (1974-6) for 40 voices

Dillug-Kefitsah (1976) for piano
Cumha (1976-8) for twelve strings
Incaain (1977) for 16 voices
Ariadne's Thread (1978) for viola
Crossing Over (1978) for clarinet

*Part of the cycle Nine Rivers (number in the sequence given),

progress.

Ti re.Ti ke-Dha (1979) for drummer

James Dillon's Introitus for twelve strings and electronics will
... Once Upon a Time (1979-80) for eight players
be premiered by the Ensemble InterContemporain under
Spleen (1980) for piano
Peter E6tv6s on 10 and 11 May at IRCAM, by which it was
Who do you love (1980-81) for female voice and five players
commissioned.
Evening Rain (1981) for voice
Parjanya-Vata (1981) for cello
Come live with me (1981) for female voice and four players
Keith Potter is a Lecturer in Music at Goldsmiths'College, University of
A Roaring Flame (1981-2) for female voice and double bass
London.
(Time Lag Zero) (1982) for female voice and viola

D I
Windows and Canopies (1985) Shrouded Mirrors (1987)

SChamber Orchestra
Solo
Guitar
P-7319
P-7359
Del

Cuarto

Solo Violin 6 Vln and 3 Perc.

P-7366

Elem

P-7402

La femme invisible (1989) Introitus (1989-90)

8 Woodwind, Pf and 3 Perc. 12 Strings, Tape and Elec.
P-7404 In preparation

N iIPeters Edition Ltd, 10-12 Baches St, London N1 6DN. Tel: 01-253 1638
1722

260

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