Tom Phillips, Gavin Bryars, Fred Orton
Irma - An Opera by Tom Phillips, Music by Gavin Bryars, Libretto by Fred Orton
Originally released on Brian Eno's Obscure imprint in 1978, 'Irma' is a British minimalist milestone, an experimental opera that contains some of Bryars' most enduringly haunting cues this side of 'The Sinking of the Titanic'.
'Irma' was originally written by British visual artist Tom Phillips in 1969 as a groundbreaking graphic score. Based on W.H. Mallock's Victorian-era novel 'A Human Document', it's a sequence of collaged poems overlayed on the book's pages, split up by drawings and paintings that caught the eye of Eno, who'd used one of Phillips' paintings on the cover of 'Another Green World'. Eno was keen to have the score interpreted imaginatively so he tapped Bryars, who obsessively analyzed Phillips' score, searching for clues and references that might guide his interpretation. Taking direction from Phillips' own montage process as well as the directions in the text, Bryars imagined a hypothetical past, using Phillips' own taste (Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Strauss) to anchor the compositions and collaging these references with more contemporary interpretations. It's such in-depth work that we'd direct you to Bryars' own notes on the process, where he goes deeper into the history, themes and hidden cryptographical messages.
Critic Fred Orton was brought in to handle the libretto, but the instrumental parts are Bryars through and through - he even brings in arch minimalist Michael Nyman to play piano, marimba and glockenspiel. Just peep the percussive "onomatopoeic" repetitions on 'Introduction', or the sweeping, ethereal 'Overture', that sounds as if it's slowly treading over Wagner's 'Das Rheingold: Vorspiel'. It's an odd, enveloping suite that, like all of Bryars' work, is deceptively simple. Listen while spying the score and you'll be set.
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Originally released on Brian Eno's Obscure imprint in 1978, 'Irma' is a British minimalist milestone, an experimental opera that contains some of Bryars' most enduringly haunting cues this side of 'The Sinking of the Titanic'.
'Irma' was originally written by British visual artist Tom Phillips in 1969 as a groundbreaking graphic score. Based on W.H. Mallock's Victorian-era novel 'A Human Document', it's a sequence of collaged poems overlayed on the book's pages, split up by drawings and paintings that caught the eye of Eno, who'd used one of Phillips' paintings on the cover of 'Another Green World'. Eno was keen to have the score interpreted imaginatively so he tapped Bryars, who obsessively analyzed Phillips' score, searching for clues and references that might guide his interpretation. Taking direction from Phillips' own montage process as well as the directions in the text, Bryars imagined a hypothetical past, using Phillips' own taste (Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Strauss) to anchor the compositions and collaging these references with more contemporary interpretations. It's such in-depth work that we'd direct you to Bryars' own notes on the process, where he goes deeper into the history, themes and hidden cryptographical messages.
Critic Fred Orton was brought in to handle the libretto, but the instrumental parts are Bryars through and through - he even brings in arch minimalist Michael Nyman to play piano, marimba and glockenspiel. Just peep the percussive "onomatopoeic" repetitions on 'Introduction', or the sweeping, ethereal 'Overture', that sounds as if it's slowly treading over Wagner's 'Das Rheingold: Vorspiel'. It's an odd, enveloping suite that, like all of Bryars' work, is deceptively simple. Listen while spying the score and you'll be set.