Composer Arthur Keegan on his work and inspirations, Thomas Hardy's often misunderstood legacy and so much more

From pre-historic soundworlds to classical music, folk tradition to jazz, music has always been influenced by poetry and writing. Whether an aural depiction of the written word or subtly implied, the interplay between word and sound runs deep within the very foundation of art. This June, Arthur Keegan will be shining a light on the wonders and joy of Thomas Hardy’s poetry, in a spell-binding concert featuring some of the world’s finest musicians. Ahead of their upcoming concert on Thu 13 Jun, we caught up with Keegan to find out more about Hardy’s legacy, his joyful approach to life and nature and what we can expect from this highly-anticipated programme.

You’re very honest on your website about your background and late introduction to classical music. How has this influenced your attitude to the world of classical music and your compositions themselves?

It’s definitely something I’ve been thinking about more over the past couple of years. Firstly, I’ve never lost or forgotten how intimidating classical music can be. I went to my first concert when I was sixteen or seventeen but if you’ve always been involved in classical music, you can forget what a rarified environment it can be and feel like. I do think a lot of that is mis-founded—I go to concerts wearing shorts and a t-shirt—but everyone involved should be really careful to ensure that everyone in the audience is having a good time. Venues are starting to get really good at this—as well as the performers—but I think this goes all the way back to the composer. When I’m writing, I’m always thinking about an audience experience. When people enter a dark room and sit down, the only thing that is happening is your music so you have an obligation to make it entertaining! But that’s why I fell in love with classical music—it’s the music. So having as few barriers as possible to that is really important.

In terms of actual music, when I first began composing, I didn’t actually know how to use notation at all so I mainly wrote electronic music and I definitely think some legacy of that soundworld is still in my instrumental music. I used to try to hide that but I’m happier now to let it sit there.

How important is it in your opinion to shift the expectations an audience holds ahead of a classical concert and around what a classical concert is? What more can we be doing to make classical music more accessible?

I think it’s a more difficult challenge than many of us even recognise. My family are not musical at all. They’ve come along to various concerts and enjoyed them (or not!). The worry before going to a classical music concert is enormous. People have this idea of it as being super posh and whilst nothing in the experience actually reinforces this—concert prices are cheap and people can wear what they want—it’s a perceived barrier. To break that down is really hard. I think one thing that makes that a lot harder is that it just isn’t in schools. Fifty percent fewer people take GCSE music now than ten years ago. The less it’s formally in our culture, the more rarefied it becomes. So whilst people are taking huge strides in the industry to make it more accessible and accommodating, there are other factors at play that make it harder as well.

Your artistic inspirations are vast and diverse – ‘from Twitter feeds to graffiti’. How does the world around you interact with your work and how do these inspirations translate into the soundworlds you compose?

It’s pretty inevitable that your everyday experiences come into your art and I certainly don’t fight that—I think that’s a good thing. The hardest thing in the composing process is when you open a blank page. So it’s great to already have those experiences to respond to. There was an early piece I composed for guitar and electronics and I had insomnia at the time. The only thing that could get me even close to sleep was the shipping forecast so it has samples of the shipping forecast built into the music. The programme that we’re bringing to St George’s is deeply tied in with Hardy’s view of nature, the Southwest landscape and also his relationship with his wife. We’re presenting a lot of different music in this concert but starting with something you can orientate yourself around is a great way for composer, performer and audience to find their way into the music.

Both your recent work and the upcoming concert at St George’s Bristol are rooted in the work of Thomas Hardy. What does the writing of the author mean to you and how does it resonate with you and your work?

Until six years ago, it resonated entirely negatively! My only memory of Hardy was at school and the most boring lesson ever reading Far From The Madding Crowd! He’s got this reputation for being a gloomy, Victorian, obsessed-with-death poet and I do want to challenge that and that’s one of the things that this programme hopefully does. Especially when he’s writing about nature, his imagery is actually really unusual, evocative and uplifting. He does mention death and time passing but it’s actually more in relation to the fact that he loves life and these markers of time passing are reminders that it’s fleeting! So there’s a side to Hardy that is joyous. He’s also a lot later than people think—he died in 1928! He’s also really interesting in terms of social issues and he’s really progressive with women’s rights (even if this doesn’t always follow through into his personal life, even by Victorian standards)—he’s just a really interesting character. In terms of the poetry that we have in this set, I’ve written two sister pieces—Elegies for Tom and Elegies for Emma. After his first wife dies, he suddenly finds this well of nostalgic love and writes a lot of elegiac poetry about his wife. A lot of it is complicated—he’s quite honest, he’s quite self-blaming—but he also looks back on their courtship in Cornwall and it’s rich with romantic imagery. He remembers every detail about trips they went on.

There’s also that element of thinking about his own mortality and how he’ll be remembered. But there’s also nature in there, there are fun train stories in there! Some of these poems are almost mini novels—they only last thirty seconds but they’re really rich stories. So it’s a celebration of Thomas Hardy really.

Your project with Ligeti Quartet responds to the Thomas Hardy poem Afterwards which depicts themes of death and mortality, nature and time. How do these themes present themselves in your work?

The poem has these really curious lines of imagery. For some, you can take these quite literally and turn these into musical ideas. At the very end of the whole poem, there’s a reference to a bell tolling across the hills—presumably a funeral bell. I spent a lot of time with the quartet trying to find a sound that in some way represents the idea of this bell tolling across the hills. So you can take some of that imagery and play with it very literally. But in others, the language is so abstract. There’s one line—“an eyelid’s soundless blink”—and it’s such odd imagery—an aural thing that isn’t there. It was such a joy to write that piece because there’s so much in there that you can approach in different ways as a musician.

We can’t wait to welcome you next month to St George’s. What can our audiences expect? Can you tell us a little about the narrative and programme of the concert?

We’ve got music that people will know and love—by Britten and Finzi—songs that are really beautiful things and really part of the canon. But we’ve also unearthed 

songs from the archives from composers who were unfairly overlooked—Imogen Holst, Muriel Herbert, Ivor Gurney—we’ve got songs of theirs that were never published in their lifetime. And a lot of them are really fun! I really want to show off Hardy as not quite the gloomy Victorian that we might think.

It’s going to be a real celebration of Hardy and the Southwest itself. A lot of the poetry is out of the local landscape. As well as the music that people know already—and love—we’ve got the additional music we’ve unearthed which is beautiful. It all spans one hundred years so we’ve got settings of pieces all the way from 1923 to 2023. We commissioned a new guitar piece from the incredible folk/classical singer Kerry Andrew and it’s a beautiful, haunting piece with a poem that has never been set by another composer. Much of Hardy’s poetry has been set hundreds of time by composers and we found this poem that hadn’t actually been set and it’s really beautiful. And it’ll be fun! Yes, there are themes of death and time but we’re going to have a great time. We’ve been working on this music for six years and it’s the first time we’ll be presenting it in its entirety. And let’s not forget that these performers—no matter what they’re playing—are absolutely amazing and I can’t wait for them to perform in Bristol. For instance, Lotte Betts-Dean has just won the RBS Young Artist Award and was in Switzerland last week, Germany the week before. She’s an era-defining soprano. The Ligeti Quartet have been at the top of their game for over a decade. And I’ve worked so closely with the guitarist on making these arrangements. He’s an amazing guitarist and he’s been so dedicated to the project. Just getting all of those guys together and presenting any music would be great! But the fact that it’s local to Bristol and we have this whole narrative arc around his wife, around nature, around his own memory will bring an additional significance to the project.

As the ‘May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings’, what else are you looking forward to this year?

We have more concerts coming up in the Southwest in July with a slightly different programme, so we’re really looking forward to that.

Words by Louise Goodger