The harp and the hurdy-gurdy turn up with the voice as well as the piano, the hurdy-gurdy not out of the Auvergne or Transylvania but a guest from the Indian street, where Elias remembers it was sometimes referred to by the British as a ting-a-dee. Five Pieces for right hand (1969), marks the first appearance of Elias in print. They are by no means all miniatures either, though vocal composition predominates. Looking at the Elias work list, the 1970s and 1980s are not short of music that offers pleasure and surprises in the revisiting. It is without a feeling of compromise that he applauds the force of Boulez’s imperative that one should burn the library of the past every day, before starting to write, while recognizing that this is not wholly realistic, even for Boulez.
He demands the best of himself and expects it from others. Paul Griffiths has called it a Berio-esque essay, and so it is, but Elias has made something original, and you do not think of him as looking over his shoulder as you listen, but rather of a man of our time treading a path of discovery. On an NMC compilation (NMCD025, 10/95), a virtuoso setting of Robert Browning’s Peroration for unaccompanied voice, composed in 1973, is an example of what he was capable of as a burgeoning vocal – and theatrical – composer. Testing the ground every inch of the way, the 1970s had periods of reflection and even withdrawal from composition entirely. It was an attitude that enraged Elisabeth Lutyens, who used to refer to Elias as a mandarin. He likes too ETA Hoffmann’s warning: ‘Great mischief could be caused in the realm of art through mistaking a strong external stimulus for a true inner calling’. Quoting Auden with approval: ‘Ariel sings because he must, Prospero, because he can’, he will not be shaken from the position that ‘a piece has to have a reason for its existence and should be written out of real need, not simply to fill up paper or fulfil a commission. In 1967 the individuality and polish of La chevelure were noticed with enthusiasm, and in the 50 years since, Elias has produced, on average, one piece a year. And of course I heard all the contemporary music I could – the 1960s was a very exciting time’. ‘At first, I developed a kind of 12-tone technique that was heavily influenced by Webern, even though I was more attracted by Berg’s lyricism and the energy and fantasy of works such as Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Pierrot lunaire. However I did from infancy hear a wonderful kaleidoscope of sound and music – from the Arabic songs and Hebrew prayers of my Iraqi-Jewish grandparents, to the endless variety of folk music, festivals and prayers of the greatly varied ethnic and religious communities in Bombay, the calls of street vendors, hideously amplified Bollywood songs in every street, the baffling number of languages and dialects spoken everywhere – the list is endless and all these things, more than any formal training I have had, are what I think of as my musical psyche’.Īs a student in London, he deliberately ignored his heritage in his attempts to acquire a European technique and discipline. ‘I do not come from a musical background, and despite being in India I was never trained in Indian classical music, something I regret deeply. After being taught by nuns and Jesuits, he attended The Cathedral, an Anglo-Scottish foundation in Bombay which he calls a ‘Boxwallah’s Eton’, vividly described by his fellow pupil and near contemporary Salman Rushdie in Midnight’s Children. His general education in India was entirely Western, apart from having to study Hindi and Marathi in school, and some Hebrew at home. English is his mother tongue, though he is bilingual in Hindi and retains a smattering of Arabic. With his childhood in Bombay and ancestral roots in the ancient Jewish community in Baghdad and a long creative life in London, he has experienced a wider diversity of cultural, religious and musical tradition than most of us will ever know. Webern is a model but the Elias voice is there. He was 13 when he first came to England and was in his early twenties when I got to know him through his teacher and mentor Elisabeth Lutyens at the time he had just written La chevelure (1967), a setting of Baudelaire for solo voice and orchestral ensemble. Brian Elias was born in Bombay (modern Mumbai) in 1948.
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