Joseph Phibbs

Summary

‘I find it rather difficult that you have to tell people what a piece is about, rather than just letting it be.’

This encounter was atypical in that it was based on knowledge of only one work by its subject: Lumina, commissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and first performed during the Last Night of the Proms in August 2003. Earlier that year Joseph Phibbs had been the subject of Gramophone magazine's regular ‘One to Watch’ interview feature and had explained that in responding to the BBC commission he’d wanted ‘to present what I feel is my musical language at this stage of my life, in the clearest and simplest way possible’. When I watched the television broadcast of that Last Night his name was still new to me and I was more interested in other items on the programme, but Lumina was an enjoyable discovery. And because I videotaped the broadcast I was able to hear the work many times during the eight years before I asked him to contribute to this book.

His response to my request was to prove similarly serendipitous. ‘I remember coming across Paul Griffiths's book in my school library when I was fourteen, and finding it very inspirational’, he wrote, ‘and I’ve felt for ages that an updated version of it is long overdue, so yours sounds like a wonderful idea.’ What if the current book, I wondered, were also to find its way into school and college libraries and be read by aspiring young composers? What information in it would they find most useful? So was born the idea of inviting every contributor to offer his or her most important piece of advice (collected in the Appendix on pages 477–486) to a hypothetical young Phibbs of the future.

As for my encounter with the real one, I hope he won't mind me suggesting that it was memorable chiefly for the extraordinarily difficult journey to and from his home in north London. On that hot, sunny day in August 2011 a burst water main stopped all rail travel through south Croydon, and during both my journey to London and my return home after the interview I was stranded with hundreds of other passengers waiting for alternative transport or at least news of when train services might restart.