Proms 2016: Anthony Payne – Of Land, Sea and Sky (World Première)

There were paradoxes at play throughout Anthony Payne‘s new work for choir and orchestra, Of Land, Sea and Sky, given its première at last night’s Prom by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Andrew Davis. Well, paradoxes is one word for them: inconsistencies and/or anachronisms would be another equally accurate way of putting it. First is the matter of old and new. Aesthetically speaking, Payne’s musical language emanates from the 20th century, a mash-up of idiomatic traits from the likes of Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Walton and, occasionally, Britten, all of whom made their presence felt in this piece. It’s not pastiche exactly, and he certainly avoids becoming a kind of ‘neo-pastoralist’, but a key question that permeates Of Land, Sea and Sky is the extent to which such well-worn tropes and demeanour can maintain or even approximate vitality today, regardless of the composer’s skills. There’s certainly no lack of clarity in Payne’s writing here, indeed the musical details and the carefully guided drama could hardly be more obvious. But it’s interesting to note that for all its lucidity, the music continually sounds overwhelmingly tired, aching joints painted with a muted palette, ‘pension music’ if you will.

One of the work’s key strengths is its impressive lack of compositional coercion; Payne is clearly moving his material as desired, but there’s a strong sense of going with the grain, making its episodic structure feel generally convincing and organic. This was particularly nice in the work’s opening minutes, essentially using the strings to brainstorm ideas. Yet militating against this were various things, especially the bland delivery of its drama—Payne’s text articulated by a grey chorus set almost permanently in ‘declamatory’ mode, often coming across as though they weren’t actually singing—and above all its duration which, having ballooned to 30 minutes, proved fatal both to the unfolding narrative and to the already questionable vitality i mentioned before. So what was, in fact, extremely clear and simple word-setting ended up becoming empty and workaday, enunciated with little interest and still less subtlety. When the choir fell silent (which they didn’t do nearly enough), Payne at times approached something more magical, yet these instances too became undermined by regular recourse to bouts of disruptive chatter, hollow displays of mere activity.

The work’s biggest paradox, though, is that something so completely innocuous should ultimately be so completely toxic. It would, i suppose, be easy to respond to such familiar, undemanding and ostensibly inoffensive music as this with a kind of benign indifference, but its aftertaste only becomes more and more bitter. It may not be nasty (superficially at least), but Of Land, Sea and Sky is certainly cheap and complacent and—far from past its prime—sounds unbelievably knackered. Is this really the kind of thing we should be celebrating? or commissioning in the first place for that matter? Where’s the vigour? Where’s the vision?

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