Look north: composer Gavin Higgins on his new song cycle celebrating northerness

The Guardian

a day ago

As a child, the idea of 'the north' captured my imagination. Images of lonely moors, mist-drenched mountains and driving rain provided backdrops for some of my favourite books, poems and films. But for me, the raucous energy of Manchester had an almost religious pull. It was the birthplace of bands I loved – Oasis, Happy Mondays, Joy Division, A Guy Called Gerald – and home to that palace of techno and acid house music, the Haçienda, which I dreamed of visiting.
I grew up at the rural borderland between England and Wales, but moved to Manchester when I was 16. It was my first time experiencing a real city with its cacophony of police sirens, shop alarms and drunken revelry, a far cry from the woodlands I'd grown up with. It was also the first time I realised I spoke with an accent. Against nasal Mancunian colloquialisms, my broad west country twang made me feel that I was from a different planet. But one of Manchester's great charms is how its people throw their arms open to strangers. The city quickly became my home and I became a proud northerner.
Every city, town and village in the north of England has its own unique cultural identity, while the surrounding wild places – the moors, mountains, and coalfields – have an almost mythical allure for poets, painters and hikers alike. Walking the Lakes and Peak District – the beauty and melancholy of those landscapes permanently etched in my mind – changed the way I think about nature and our place within it. Experiencing community spirit at the annual Whit Friday marches in Saddleworth shaped my feelings towards the importance of community and ritual. The vibrancy of Manchester turned me from a provincial country boy to a card-carrying, coffee-drinking urbanite. Even my west country accent, an integral part of my identity, was changed for good, the singsong 'hello there' replaced by a succinct 'y'aright?'. I began to question the nature of my sense of Englishness, of my British identity. How do you even define such a thing?
As a composer, the north remains a place of keen inspiration for me and one I was eager to revisit. So when soprano Claire Booth approached me to write a song cycle about 'the idea of the north', I was intrigued to explore more. The very idea of northernness felt so clear in my mind. But as I dug deeper, it proved more elusive and hard to pin down.
My new song cycle, Speak of the North, is a vast and sprawling journey across the moors, mountains, cities and coasts of the north of England. Set to words from a host of northern poets such as Katrina Porteous, Tony Williams and all three Brontë sisters, the 11 songs explore ideas around regional and national identity, our place within the wild places of the north, and navigating life and hardship at the very edges and borderlands of England.
In Great Northern Diver by Michael Symmons Roberts, Manchester is slowly revealed from above, from districts to stadiums to factories to pubs until we are on the very pavement itself, the earth rushing up to meet us as the rhythms of acid house music pound in the background. Here we learn the spirit of Manchester is not in its buildings or roads, but in the people who live there: 'so what keeps this city alive is you'.
Zoe Mitchell's Sycamore Gap – written before the tree was felled – places us in border land, looking north to Scotland and south to England, not knowing which side is home. These liminal places fascinate me, challenging our absolutisms around identity. Where does Englishness stop and Scottishness start? Where does the north begin and where does it end?
In Offcomer by Katie Hale, the very idea of northern identity is questioned. Through a series of visionary statements, she confronts her roots, her heritage and the way landscape has shaped her. 'My skin is a prairie, / my hair and eyes an Irish peat and sky, / my bones a Midlands town,' we are told. 'But put your ear to my chest […] you will hear / water, the raucous gathering of clouds.' This dichotomy is at the heart of this song cycle. Are we defined solely by our place of birth? Or by the movement of our ancestors, wars, stories, language, the weather?
These are timely questions. Over the past decade, there has been a concerted effort from the right to push their definition of Englishness into public discourse, a definition that feels completely at odds with my own. Though these songs ask questions about northern identity specifically, they also invite a broader discourse about what it is to be English and to live in these isles.
The simplicity and directness of folk music stands as a testament to the tenacity of ordinary people, holding a mirror to our deepest passions and concerns. The 'folk' is never far away in my composition. Whether through the inclusion of a folk-like violin part, or the leaping fifths and ninths in the vocal writing, mimicking the open strings of the violin, the use of folk ideas to explore class struggle resonate throughout the song cycle.
The final song is a setting of the Northumbrian folk song Here's the Tender Coming, and leaves us on a sombre note. Here, a mother whose husband has been press-ganged faces the reality of her child being brought up in a broken home. This could equally be the story of a struggling single mother, or a wife mourning the loss of her husband in an industrial accident, and we are reminded that political choices made far away, by privileged people in fancy houses, can have a devastating impact on the lives of ordinary people.
Though the cycle is made up of 11 clearly defined movements, melodic and harmonic motifs are heard throughout in different guises. The invigorating fanfares that open the piece return at a later point softer and muted, the dream of the north slipping through our fingers. The vocal leaps are littered throughout the cycle: at times jubilant and invigorating, at others stark, cold, relentless.
In other moments, entirely different sound worlds are explored. In Sedimentary, the music is low and resonant, the pianist asked to play 'like a brass band' – a nod to the musical tradition that grew in the coalfields of the north. In Here's the Tender Coming, the piano part is prepared with Blu-Tack so that the strings resonate out of tune, tolling like a distant ship's bell. Techno piano rhythms feature throughout Great Northern Diver, beginning quietly as if from afar, later pounding as though we are on the dancefloor itself.
The idea of the north is complex. It is a place of industry, of rolling moors and mountains. Of brass bands and acid house. It's a place of rain and proud, weather-worn people, of struggle and of survival. And it is also place of deep friendship and core memories: my friend and I deciding to climb Helvellyn but our plans being thwarted when she turned up in high heels; my first time in Manchester's gay village, the bar lady with a knowing wink giving me more money back in change than I'd handed her to pay for my drink; night swimming in the Lake District and then watching the sun rise over the mountains.
Thinking of the north gives me a feeling of rootedness. It grounds me and reminds me of who I am and, in returning to the north for this song cycle, I feel like I've come home.
The world premiere of Gavin Higgins' Speak of the North is at the Aldeburgh festival on 17 June. It is also at the Ryedale festival on 12 July.