Speak of the North is evocative, immediate, and unmistakably Higgins
Full transparency: I’m a big fan of Gavin Higgins’ work. Colourful, energetic, and thoughtful, Higgins has a knack for handling material that meets the need, meets his need, and meets the needs of the audience.
In Speak of the North, he’s built on the strengths of his 2019 opera critically celebrated The Monstrous Child, with a song cycle for piano, voice and violin that’s both different from his other output, but also characteristically him. He creates music that leaves a lasting impression. Speak of the North is a solid addition to the catalogue.
The thirty-minute song cycle draws on multiple verses that celebrate ‘northness’—however you define it—starting with the Brontë sisters, reaching into the twentieth century, and including the present day. Musical ideas stick close to the text, with violin harmonics stirring an evocative image as ‘the stag drinks from the stream’. In The North Wind, there’s a distinctly icy feel conjured at the top of the keyboard, with sharp-edged arpeggios in the violin. In Awaken, Higgins writes a vocal line that gives Booth permission to go full throttle—her delivery commands a straightened spine and widened eyes. But it’s in Sedimentary (text by Katrina Porteous) that the musical description deepens, inviting reflection on the interior of the earth: murky chords crawl through the piano line, while delicately placed violin harmonics evoke ‘dust’. Sycamore Gap was written before the jaw-dropping vandalism of one of nature’s greatest monuments, yet the characters still resonate—not only because of the writing but also because of Booth’s subtle shifts in tone and character. I’d never considered the idea of a tree being arrogant and a stone wall the delicate hero, but it turns out I’m still rooting for both—and relieved the former is making a celebrated comeback.
What makes his scores effective? The writing is evocative, and that is down largely because he has a canny sense of what text works and what doesn’t. In Speak of the North he’s picking out the most immediate ideas and mining them for potent imagery. He paints vivid pictures using a musical language that treads the fine line between recognisable and fresh. It’s not an easy line to find let alone tread, but he does it consistently. A Festival has been built on the principle.
Might it have been an opera? Higgins revealed in a discussion event exploring how ‘north’ is codified in culture and the arts, that Booth had originally pitched the idea of an opera initially. “It might be, but it’s not for me,” replied the composer. What we have instead is easier on the budget in our cash-strapped future.