Errollyn Wallen, Becoming a Composer

 Errollyn Wallen, Becoming a Composer (Faber)

There is no reason at all why Errollyn Wallen shouldn't admire the poems of Philip Larkin, it's just that they present two apparently opposite personalities. It's a sound choice, not least in respect of Larkin's reflection that,

       how we live measures our own nature,

which is perhaps the difference. There might have been much Larkin would have liked about living in a lighthouse but after that his studied misanthropy and how his output declined to less than ever while his attitudes became less generous contrasts with Errollyn's energy and exuberant creativity.

Her book is more memoir than musical handbook but it has elements of musical biography to it, organized, if that is the word, thematically and not chronologically. It wasn't always easy from the difficult childhood through various hard times in pursuit of a career as an artist rather than in a sensible job. If her motto is really about not recognizing musical barriers, it could equally have been the one about getting out what you put in.

Her involvement is total, as evidenced by the immense variety of projects she undertook, and still undertakes. I don't imagine that all 22 of her operas are on a Wagnerian scale but there are far more ideas pouring out of her, travel, commissions, administration and a vast array of friends and family that populate these pages in among the texts and programme notes of a vividly personal self portrait.

The teenage hitch-hiking in Europe included some narrow escapes, the trek up Kilimanjaro brave but overly ambitious and having one's old car stolen twice, once with the only copy of one's latest magnum opus in the boot, all add up to what begins to sound like a hellbent determination to flirt with disaster but she's come through it in good order and became what the placemats on the dinner table in her childhood, with their depictions of Carmen, made her want to be - an opera composer - notwithstanding that she didn't know then what an opera was.

She understands about 'the grimace of time', cites many choice reference points, like Bach, baroque and Bobby Womack and perhaps best sums up the interaction between her Belizean and New York heritage with her Tottenham, and English, upbringing with,

there is a fire in me, which, living in British society, where it is actually 'cool' to be cool and where deep emotions don't always seem to matter that much, is something I can never quite get my head around.

Being of the same generation, though, it seems to me as if that English reserve isn't what it was when we were kids and that, having been a part of the partial social revolution that changed it, she might not see the difference it has made.

She goes on to say she 'cannot compose music that is ironic or cynical' but there's others can do that. There's the non-English Stephin Merritt, for example. While admiring the creativity, intuition, undaunted spirit and immense hard work of Errollyn, there's almost a self-help book in the sub text of Becoming a Composer and perhaps there needed to be. It's a moving and ultimately triumphant story of 'becoming' and however much joy her work transmits to her audience it is also her own reward, somehow fitting in writing a 300-page book alongside an increasingly eminent role in contemporary music. 

She is enthralled by life and the late passage about one day writing music to try to capture the aurora borealis comes as no more than one would expect of her but there's been much to overcome and moments of despair that required such commitment, and no little talent, to get by. I'm not as enthralled as she is, being very much, I reckon, an ironic sort of writer or I'd like to think. Less isn't always more but not everybody can maintain such levels of intensity. Nevertheless, one can't help but be impressed and glad for her, too, because she is a genuine light, the sort of thing we need and those of us that know about her are much the richer for it.