Robert Ashley, the American composer, was a focal point at the Lovely Music Festival organised by Louth Contemporary Music Society. Born in 1930 and demised in 2014, coming to terms with Ashley’s influence isn’t always straightforward. However, exploring his impact via this publication’s archives certaintly helps. Ashley first emerged in TV listings back in 1984, when Channel 4 aired Four American Composers by Peter Greenaway, a programme that also covered John Cage, Philip Glass and Meredith Monk, as well as all six episodes of Perfect Lives, Ashley’s own televised opera.
His influence was most notable in July 2021 when Amanda Feery made mention of Ashley while discussing A Thing I Cannot Name, her video opera with a libretto by Megan Nolan. She referenced Ashley stating, ‘“If you think it’s an opera, it’s an opera. If you want it to be an opera, it’s an opera.’ She found this quite affirming and reassuring.
In an interview back in 2015, Donnacha Dennehy conversed about his first opera, The Last Hotel, and credited Ashley’s Perfect Lives which, coincidentally, opened in a hotel room. Similarly, a few years earlier, singer-songwriter Julia Holter acknowledged his influence, praising Ashley’s distinct style of allowing any voice to emit freely, albeit in his unique way.
Moreover, in 2012, The Béal Festival, an event organised by David Bremner and Elizabeth Hilliard, featured Atalanta (Acts of God) by Ashley, renditions of When Famous Last Words Fail You, and World War III Just the Highlights, performed by baritone, Thomas Buckner.
The features that were characteristic of Ashley’s work were: inseparability of words and music, a diffused articulation of wording resembling a ritualistic rhythmic process, and a mixture of everyday, erratic, puzzling and inspirational content in his actions. Typically scatterbrained, yet somehow intensely concentrated.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music offered an enlightening interpretation, saying he believed himself to be mildly affected by Tourette’s syndrome, this led him to document his bouts of uncontrollable conversation. These transcripted episodes were then crafted into narrative operatic pieces, each opera building upon the storyline and characters of the previous one.
His last offering, an opera named Crash, first debuted in Europe at the An Táin Arts Centre in Dundalk, last Friday. It presents as a well-orchestrated and deeply personal tale with philosophical undertones, yet it also possesses a sense of linguistic chaos.
This performance involved six members of the impressively subdued Varispeed Collective, seated in a semi-circle, providing a vocalised, trio-conducted symphony in three dynamic styles.
Despite each passing year of the composer’s life being portrayed in a brutally honest manner, the whole ensemble runs the risk of feeling overly abstract. This is primarily due to the rate at which concepts and phrases are presented, resulting in a form of sensory inundation. However, this bombardment is akin to that experienced when navigating a gallery, a museum or a landscape too quickly to absorb the marvels fully.
Admittedly, such an experience can be vexing. However, there’s an undeniable attraction in it – an allure that leaves me with the irresistible urge to explore it at least one more time.