Maggie Broadley, who sings soprano in the GSA Choir, writes about her experience of rehearsing Within The Living Eye – composed by Rebecca Rowe, with lyrics taken from a selection of poems by Kathleen Raine.
When Jamie Sansbury, the GSA Choir’s Musical Director, revealed our next commissioning project, Composeher, I was beyond excited…then beyond terrified! As someone who doesn’t read music, the thought of getting to grips with seven new choral pieces was daunting. However, being part of the GSA Choir means you have to be up for a challenge, and the prospect of being part of bringing these new pieces to life for the first time was a huge incentive.
It’s not just the music itself that is so exciting; through GSA Choir’s commissioning of seven composers and the accompanying series of workshops, we will delve into each composer’s creative process whilst spotlighting the huge under-representation of female composers. Reflecting on the way the musical talent of Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847) had been tolerated but not supported by her father, and overshadowed by that of her brother, I am dismayed that the contribution of female composers is still being undervalued. I remember my mum telling me that, in common with other girls, she had to leave school at 14 (in 1937) to help at home, rather than stay on to study English.
The lack of expectation I encountered at school, compounded with other aspects of my life at that time, contributed to my not achieving at school first time around. A ‘late bloomer’, I was encouraged by my husband to return to formal education in my early 30’s. After waving off our youngest child on his first day into the big world of primary school, I registered as a returning adult student at Cumnock Academy, our local secondary school. Initially terrifying, I’m indebted to everyone there who encouraged me. That first step led on to another incredibly enriching period in my life as a student at The Glasgow School of Art and, in its way, it guided me to the GSA Choir and to re-discover a voice that had been buried under a load of emotional debris from the past.
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I was sustained through listening to music and singing, which I’ve loved for as long as I have memories. My early recollections are of pop music and, importantly, Scottish Gaelic songs experienced through summer seasons with my mum who worked in hotels as a pastry cook. On these occasions, I spent time with the ‘Herring Girls’ who came down from our home island and sang Gaelic songs. I also listened to the Beatles on the girls’ transistor radio. I vividly remember, aged 9, singing at our school’s Easter service in a newly constructed church in Springburn; coloured light danced in through stained glass windows and warmed my face as I sang, transfixed, There is a Green Hill Far Away. During my self-conscious teenage years I suffered, terribly, from performer’s anxiety. It always started off with my left leg trembling and rapidly worked its way up my body until I couldn’t control my voice properly. It was so embarrassing that it led me to stop singing in public.
As my sixth decade loomed, I determined to join a choir. I googled ‘choirs in west of Scotland’ and up popped the GSA Choir – ‘no audition or requirement to read music’; kismet indeed. Had I known it performed ‘proper music’ I might not have had the courage, but I turned up on that first night with just a little trepidation. The experience was brilliant. I honestly felt like I’d come home. Everything about the rehearsal set my fears to rest, including the coaching style of our Musical Director, whose drive and commitment was infectious – and whose occasional forays into witticisms made me laugh (quietly) out loud.
I’ve had so many fantastic experiences performing with GSA Choir, including being part of an ensemble singing at the Scottish Parliament during the Edinburgh International Festival. However, it is no disrespect to say that Composeher feels like a project with added weight and significance. At first just reading through the biographies of our seven composers left me in awe and very nervous, but once we started rehearsing, that feeling was replaced by the desire to become immersed in each piece and to savour the experience.
Within The Living Eye, composed by Rebecca Rowe and inspired by the poetry of Kathleen Raine (1908 – 2003), is the second of the pieces we’ve rehearsed so far and becoming more familiar with the composer and the poet has been an inspiring journey of discovery. I greatly admire Rebecca’s commitment to increase access to contemporary music for all; managing her composing and performing while, as a teacher, inspiring the next generation of musicians and future audiences. I am gravely concerned that the current underinvestment in the arts and culture undermines the delivery of an education system and society which values inclusion, diversity and the empowering impact upon developing young minds, that early exposure to the arts can have.
Through Rebecca’s Composeher blog, I discovered Raine studied psychology and natural sciences at university and her poetry explored themes of ‘ecology, landscape, the cosmos, spirituality and humanity’. I noted with great interest that she had close ties with Scotland through her mother and visits to Wester Ross. That pull of ancestry and the land is one I recognise; although born and raised in Glasgow, it took just one visit to my mother’s home on the Isle of Lewis at the age of 10 for my sense of self to change, to shift from ‘where I was born’ to the ‘people I belonged to’. Although not religious, I feel a deep spiritual connection with the generations before me (who worked the Hebridean landscape around our croft) and their affinity with the land. It resonates with a power that continues to inform my practice as a ceramic artist.
Rebecca has taken quotes from a selection of six poems, written over four decades and connected by evocations of almost mystical interactions between us, our planet and the universe. I am a reformed ‘anything but poetry’ advocate and I love the way Rebecca describes herself as ‘a servant to the text’. Being introduced to the work of more women poets has been another joy but it’s the combination of words and sound that really grab me. Rebecca has skilfully woven musical textures and colours sympathetically around Raine’s poetry. Her composition deftly heightens the drama and softens emotions and memories by turn. It conveys a real sense of physical and metaphysical space – I can literally hear ‘a gust of wind sounds’…and feel myself ‘listen too long to the mute sky.’
Covid has intervened and, like so many, the GSA Choir has grasped the nettle of the digital world and taken its rehearsals online. Those weekly sessions have helped keep me on track, focussed and connecting with others through friendships forged by a shared love of singing; for that I’m truly grateful. However, it has been tough not to be in a rehearsal room together. The process of ‘note-bashing’- getting the notes fixed and the technical aspects of each piece right – and of being supported (and sometimes cajoled) by Jamie to not ‘just sing’ but convey the composer’s intentions, is incredibly rewarding.
I so look forward to performing this glorious programme of new choral work ‘whole body and soul’; it’s a visceral experience, singing as part of a large choir. The intensity of being in the midst of the choir and directly communicating, through our voices, with an audience – and knowing that the composers will be part of that audience – is no longer a pressure but a privilege that would have been wholly impossible for the 15 year-old me to contemplate and I want to make the most of these moments whilst I can.