Symphony No 11: Hillsborough Memorial – Michael Nyman

Hillsborough Memorial - LFC Anfield

Hillsborough Memorial – LFC Anfield

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Symphony No 11: Hillsborough Memorial – Michael Nyman

Symphony No 11: Hillsborough Memorial – Michael Nyman, was composed in homage to those 96 Liverpool football fans who were killed as a result of ‘the corruption of the Thatcher government and her duplicitous police force’ during the FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, the home ground of Sheffield Wednesday, on 15th April 1989. It was chosen as the cultural performance to officially launch the 8th Liverpool Biennial 2014 – the city-wide celebration of contemporary art that will run this year between 5th July to 26th October.

This public performance on the Saturday evening in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral was preceded earlier in the afternoon by a performance to invited guests, including representatives of the families of the 96.

The Symphony, which lasts for about 50 minutes, is divided into four movements.

The First Movement consists of the reading of all the names of the 96 killed that day, now more than 25 years ago. This reading of the names has become a tradition at any commemoration of the event, especially that which takes place every year on the anniversary at Anfield, the home of Liverpool Football Club.

This must be highly emotional in any circumstance but when the names were sung by Kathryn Rudge, a mezzo-soprano, standing in the pulpit of one of the top 5 biggest cathedrals in the world (depending upon how the statistics are measured), her voice reverberating around the huge space, this rendering of the traditional practice took on a greater poignancy – each person listening being able to relate to any death that might have effected them in the past. For close family members it must have been very difficult.

As the names were being sung the orchestra, mainly the strings, were intoning a slow, repetitive rhythm, typical of many of Nyman’s works, which got louder as more instruments joined in and reaching a crescendo as the last name, in alphabetical order, was read out.

The Second Movement is more lyrical and is based on an aria that Nyman had previously rejected for one of his earlier operas. This breaks, slightly, the sombre mood created by the reading of the names and turns more into a celebration of those lives that were prematurely cut short. The violins are lighter in tone and their pace quickens. The older children of the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth and Training Choirs vocalise and their young voices have the effect of adding to the lightening of the tone. When the other instruments, especially the brass, are added to the mix the sound of the orchestra seems to fill the cavernous space and the movement ends in an affirmation of life – of those who had died and of life in general that goes on, even after a major disaster.

For Nyman, the composer and mathematician (as all composers are in many senses), the Third Movement is all about numeric symbolism, a play on the number 96 – different combinations of bar phrases and chords. That means nothing to me (my technical musical knowledge amounts to zero) but I feel it takes the different elements and emotions from the first two movements and plays them together, sometimes a battle between the sombre and the more cheerful.

The movement starts with the bassoons and deep-toned brass instruments introducing the theme called Memorial (the name of the Fourth Movement). When the theme is introduced it is played very slowly and deliberately but this is soon left behind as the rest of the orchestra, and the choir, join in. The first part of the movement is the domain of the bass and the larger stringed instruments, with the violins being virtually silent. However, slowly the rest of the orchestra joins in and the mood lightens and the pace quickens.

The violins pick up a repetitive phrase that they continue to play, with slight variations being introduced at times, as their pace quickens and gives the impression of flight. This part of the movement has more elements of life than death and the players have to be more animated to keep pace with the notes on the page.

The brass and the woodwind sections join in and the sound again starts to fill the Cathedral space, reaching a crescendo but not a movement ending crescendo, more the sound comes as if in waves, building up and then quietening to gather pace and volume once more.

Just before the end of the movement the players slow down and the full children’s choir takes over as they again vocalise until the full orchestra again takes control and speeds up yet again to end the movement on a high note.

If the first three movements are new, or at least re-workings of previous material, the Fourth Movement would be recognised by anyone who is, or was, a fan of 1980s British art house cinema as Memorial (as this movement is known) was part of the soundtrack for the 1989 Peter Greenaway film The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover.

However, the piece goes back even further than that and, coincidentally, involves another footballing disaster and Liverpool FC. Memorial was Nyman’s response to the Heysel stadium disaster where, due to the poor crowd control arrangements, a surge of Liverpool fans led to the death of 41 Juventus supporters – it’s unfortunate that two of the most serious football catastrophes of the 1980s concerned Liverpool, although as time goes by it emerges that the fans themselves were not those principally to blame for how events developed.

It was never publicly performed but Greenaway considered it perfect for his 1989 film about a brutal and uncouth gangster. The story was generally considered to be a modern-day fable, paralleling the accumulation of wealth by culturally ignorant barrow-boys in the City of London during the hideous Thatcher era to the pretensions of a violent criminal who thought that wealth bought sophistication. Here Greenaway does the same with Thatcher as Bertolt Brecht did with Hitler in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, comparing the individuals, their policies and the consequences of such policies upon the majority of the population to that of vicious, self-seeking criminals

In this film the gangster, Spica, gets his comeuppance and it’s during this particular scene that we hear a large section of Memorial. Somewhat surprisingly, to me, in a very recent interview Nyman states that he thought the use of this piece of music and its juxtaposition with the images of cannibalism ‘totally loathsome’.

I knew they had fallen out but Nyman is being disingenuous to be so angry about the use of his music by a director he had been working with since 1982 (on The Draughtsman’s Contract). If he was so disgusted why did they work together in the 1993 on The Baby of Mâcon, another allegory, this time about the exploitation of women and children?

The Fourth Movement is loud and strident from the beginning. It does get louder but there’s no gradual rise to a crescendo as in the previous movements. And that’s as it should be. We have had the statement of the crime, the sadness it had caused and the waste of life involved. Now it has to be brought to some sort of conclusion, the demand for justice against all the years of lies and, yes, some sort of retribution.

From the beginning the violins are played in a choppy, staccato manner (there’s probably a term for it but unknown to me) and this rhythm is in the background for virtually the whole of the 12 minutes or so of the piece. It’s almost like a sound of the tramping of feet, of people marching which is more than appropriate when we consider that at the time of the premier the re-called inquest into the deaths of the 96 was taking place only a few miles down the road in Warrington.

This is a valid interpretation even for a piece that was written almost 30 years before. Nyman has chosen to take it from the past and placed his music into a ‘story’ that cries out for resolution. The brass section blows out a call to arms, to action, for justice. This is strident, angry music reflecting the feelings not only of the families of the 96 victims of Hillsborough but of many in Liverpool, as well as many thousands of football fans throughout the country, who consider they are often being made scapegoats for the inefficiencies and inequities of the society in which we live.

Pain and anger can’t be expressed by sweet pastoral music that lulls the listener to sleep. The meek only inherit the earth in that they are forced to eat dirt, martyrs who refuse to resist their oppressors will only end up crucified on the cross, the symbol at the far end of the building and which all in the audience were facing at Liverpool Cathedral.

If the families of the 96 had submitted meekly history would have recorded that they were responsible for their own deaths and the cause of the disaster, the real guilty going free. Now, with the new inquest and whatever comes of it, there’s no guarantee that those responsible will ever pay for their crimes (of lying if not for incompetence) and that will mean many people will remain angry but that’s better than regretting not having struggled in the first place.

By the end all the players are performing, as are the children in the choir and the mezzo-soprano, all adding their weight behind the call. Eight or nine minutes in the sound becomes more discordant depicting anger and pain. You can almost hear the cries of those trapped behind the reinforced steel fences introduced as a knee-jerk reaction to pitch invasions – without thinking of or taking into account the possible consequences. If the movement was already strident perhaps the one change I was able to notice was the crash of cymbals and the beating of the kettle drums at the very end. The music finishes with a further call to mobilisation.

I don’t know if it was just due to the fact that the Philharmonic Hall is currently undergoing major renovation that the Cathedral was chosen for this performance, or whether it would have been performed there whatever the situation of the orchestra’s normal home. It can only be said that attending this performance in the cavern that is the Liverpool Cathedral was the best choice. For those with a religious bent there’s the obvious symbolism that goes with the Christian penchant for pain and suffering, for those who are not so inclined being surrounded by sound in such a large space made it an unforgettable experience.

A recording of the Symphony has been made and will be played in the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral on Wednesday 6th August, Monday 26th August, Wednesday 3rd September and Wednesday 17th September. All performances will start at 15.06 – the time when the match was stopped on 15th April 1989.

Symphony No 11: Hillsborough Memorial – Michael Nyman is a fitting memorial to those who died so needlessly 25 years ago and also a fine way to open the 2014 Liverpool Biennial. I only hope that the next ten weeks provide experiences of such calibre.

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Hillsborough Memorial Sudley

Hillsborough Memorial Sudley

The Facts about the Palestine Problem

Young Palestinian Refugee

Young Palestinian Refugee

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Ukraine – what you’re not told

The Facts about the Palestine Problem was a series of pamphlets produced from 1968 until, at least, 1970. They were published by The Arab Women’s Information Committee based in Beirut, Lebanon.

Financial constraints effected regularity of the, planned, monthly bulletin – a problem that the Palestinian cause has always had to face, even when ‘supported’ by some of the most wealthy nations on the planet.

The stated aim of the editors was to produce a factual background to the situation in Palestine following the disastrous war of June 1967 (known as the Harb – The Setback – in Arabic) which saw the annexation of huge tracks of Palestine by the Israeli Zionists.

At the time of the 1967 ‘Six Day War’ pro-Zionist propaganda was riding high in the capitalist ‘west’ with the idea being promoted that Israel was the innocent victim of an anti-Semitic plot of genocide. These bulletins were part of the propaganda fight back to put the case of the Palestinian people.

Events in the now almost 50 years since that war the world has witnessed countless examples of the attempted genocide (now re-branded as ‘ethnic cleansing’) of the Palestinian population by the increasingly Fascistic Zionist State of Israel.

Notwithstanding the time that has passed since The Facts about the Palestine Problem were first published they still contain many facts and details that many people don’t know about, realise or understand. It is hoped they may be useful in reminding people of what is happening in that part of the world by providing an historical background.

51st state of the united states

51st state of the united states

 

 

The attitude of the United States of American to the migration of American Jews to Palestine, especially in the time just before the formal declaration of the State of Israel on 15th May 1948.

 

 

 

Plan Dalet

Plan Dalet

 

 

 

The Zionist Plan for the occupation of Palestine before 15 May 1948.

 

 

The Promised Land

The Promised Land

 

 

 

 

The Zionists claims that the existence of the State of Israel on the land of the Palestinians lay in what was written in the Christian Bible.

 

 

 

 

From the Nile to the Euphrates

From the Nile to the Euphrates

 

 

 

The Zionist plan for the expansion of the State of Israel to cover all the territory between the rivers Nile and Euphrates, demonstrated by a series of maps and accompanying statements.

 

 

The Arabs under Israleli Rule - The Gaza Strip

The Arabs under Israleli Rule – The Gaza Strip

 

 

 

The treatment of civilians in the Gaza Strip under Israeli Occupation after 7th June 1967.

 

 

 

Did you know that...

Did you know that…

 

 

 

 

Zionist attitudes and Palestinian reality after the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 and the war of June 1967.

 

 

The Background - Statements by Zionists

The Background – Statements by Zionists

 

 

 

 

 

Statements by Zionists, from the late 19th century until the 1960s, where they declare their true intentions in Palestine.

 

 

 

Jerusalem June 1967 - The Occupation

Jerusalem June 1967 – The Occupation

 

 

 

What was happening in Jerusalem during the first days of ‘The Setback’, from 5th to the 8th June 1967.

 

 

 

The Background - Statement by Zionists 2

The Background – Statement by Zionists 2

 

 

 

Further statements by Zionist about their plans and intentions over the Palestinian homeland.

 

 

 

 

For an Arab-Jewish State in Palestine

For an Arab-Jewish State in Palestine

 

 

 

The argument for a state of Palestine that would be home for both Arabs and Jews. This first appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde on 9th January 1969.

 

 

 

Israel and the Demilitarised Zones

Israel and the Demilitarised Zones

 

 

 

How Israel has been using the so-called ‘Demilitarized Zones’ as an extension of the Zionist State of Israel.

 

 

 

Israeli Designs on Lebanon

Israeli Designs on Lebanon

 

 

 

Statements from the 20th century where the Zionists have made it clear that their idea of the State of Israel extends from the Nile to the Euphrates.

 

 

The Machiavellian Approach

The Machiavellian Approach

 

 

 

 

Tactics used by some Zionists in trying to convince Jews to leave their original homes and to migrate to Israel.

 

 

 

When the Soldiers Cried

When the Soldiers Cried

 

 

 

How the Israeli Defense Forces treated prisoners after the war of June 1967 – and a trend that has continued to the present day.

 

 

Women's Resistance

Women’s Resistance

 

 

 

 

The women of Palestine fight against the occupation in the Occupied Territories and abroad.

 

 

 

 

 

The Facts, March 1968

The Facts, March 1968

 

 

 

 

Includes statements by Zionists, over the decades, of their intentions for the ever greater expansion of the State of Israel.

 

 

 

The big lie of the boots

The big lie of the boots

 

 

 

One of the more successful lies that the Israeli Settler State was able to peddle in the aftermath of the so-called ‘Six Day War’ of June 1967.

 

 

More on Palestine

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Ukraine – what you’re not told

Dazzle Ship

Dazzle Ship Liverpool Biennial 2014

Dazzle Ship Liverpool Biennial 2014

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Dazzle Ship

On each occasion it’s been held (this is the eighth) the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art always tries to have at least one large outdoors installation. In 2014 this is the so-called ‘Dazzle Ship’, a repainted pilot ship based at the Canning Graving Dock, next to the famous Pierhead on the shores of the River Mersey.

The project is the work of the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez and takes its inspiration from the dazzle painting of ships which became common towards the end of the First World War.

There are a few reasons why Cruz-Diez developed this idea for the Liverpool Biennial 2014.

Not surprisingly the original concept for this after the outbreak of war came from contemporary artists at the time. There’s some debate about who actually came up with the original idea, a zoologist, John Graham Kerr, even putting in a bid but the names of Norman Wilkinson and Edward Wadsworth are normally credited with the concept.

The Biennial falls in the same year as the hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War (I’ll never understand the concept of celebrating the beginning of a war that caused such death and destruction) so funding was available from 14-18 Now – WWI Centenary Art Commissions.

Finally, Liverpool was one of the ports where much of this dazzle painting of ships took place, even down to the fact that the dry dock in which the Edmund Gardner (the pilot ship that has been revamped) now sits was used during the second half of the war.

You tend to hear a lot about such projects long before you see them and I must admit I was a little underwhelmed when I got down to the waterfront to see for myself. First it’s in bright colours – but that’s all right as this is not a reproduction of the scheme used for military purposes but an artistic twist. The problem is the regularity of the use of those colours. It was the irregularity, the uniqueness of the design for each ship, that made the project (which, although never fully proven to be successful in the misnamed ‘Great War’, was used again in Great War Part II) such an innovative one a hundred years ago.

Cruz-Diez has chosen a design which has vertical lines of 4 colours (red, green, black and orange – always in that order) on the hull and vertical lines of red, green, yellow and black on the ships superstructure.

Apart from being commissioned for the Biennial it is also part of a larger project, Monuments from the Future, which ‘invites artists and architects to bring large-scale imaginary monuments from the future into the present. In order to fulfill this paradoxical task, artists will collaborate with professional futurologists (social scientists who predict possible future scenarios) to determine possible future circumstances and set of events for which a new monument can be imagined and produced. This project will slowly turn Liverpool into a sci-fi sculpture park making use of Liverpool’s industrial archaeology to celebrate its possible new futures.’ So that’s something to look out for on the streets of Liverpool in the coming months.

Across the road, in the approach to the Liverpool One shopping complex, the pavement has been painted with similar colours and in a ‘dazzle’ pattern. This is on Thomas Steers Way and is supposed to link the shopping complex with the ship on the other side of the Dock Road. I doubt if one in a hundred of the people who walk along this 100 metres or so of painted walkway have any idea what it’s all about.

I was slightly disappointed by Cruz-Diez’s creation as I would have preferred the lines to have been less predictable, more haphazard, more (dare I say it) dazzling. Investigating the background to the whole dazzle ship project at the beginning of the 20th century I saw a photo of Wadsworth’s 1919 painting of men working on a ship in a dry dock in Liverpool. I thought that quite impressive.

Dazzle-ships in drydock at Liverpool

Dazzle-ships in drydock at Liverpool

Anyway, I was glad I went down to the Albert Dock complex to see the work as I then had the opportunity to visit the inside of the pilot ship itself. Being virtually as it was when launched in 1953 it was instructive as an indication of the class structure that existed within the pilot service at the time of its construction but also well into the 1970s. It was eventually taken out of service in April 1981.

Although the Biennial ends in October this year the Dazzle Ship will stay as it is until the end of 2015, so there’s no mad rush to have a look. The tours of the ship are run by the Merseyside Maritime Museum. These are free and will take place every Thursday till the end of August at 11.00, 12.30 and 14.30. To avoid disappointment it’s best to book on 0151 478 4499.

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