Errollyn Wallen, composer
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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. MUSIC PLAYS

My castaway this week is Errolyn Wallen. She's the first woman to receive an Ivor Novello Award for classical music and is one of the world's most performed living composers. Her work has been played everywhere from the 2012 Paralympic Games to the late Queen's gold and diamond jubilees. She's prolific, writing symphonies, song cycles, chamber works and 22 operas. And early in her career, she learned to improvise.

Following her classical training, she worked as a session musician, even appearing on Top of the Pops. In 1998, she was the first black woman to have her work performed at the BBC proms and in 2020 reworked Jerusalem for the season's Last Night.

As a little girl growing up in London, she told her uncle Arthur that she had a head full of sounds and didn't know what to do with them. Perhaps, he suggested, you are a composer. She says, the calling to be a musician has been stronger than any other consideration. If along the way I've helped to dispel the myth that a composer is only white and male, that can only be a good thing. Aralyn Wallen, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Hello, Lauren. It's so lovely to meet you.

So, Errolyn, it all started with the piano for you. How would you describe your relationship with the instrument today? You know, it was in our house from the age of... I was about five years old. The piano came into our house because my father was writing songs, had a beautiful voice and he wanted somewhere to compose on. But we weren't sent to pianos until I was about nine years old, but my cousin Stephanie showed me where the notes were and...

Ever since I started playing it, I would go to bed as a child dreaming of the piano and I found it very hard to be separated from it. And to me, it was a place of dreams, of discovery and learning. So I would play my, you know, my weekly piano pieces, but I'd learn them very quickly, like in Adairs. So then I would use the piano to look for other music just to play through. And we had a piano store full of

Things like wartime tunes and, you know, Gracie Fields. And your fingers are going as you talk there. Oh, yes. Do you feel that when you think about it, when you think about playing, do you get that itch to the physicality of it is obviously important? Definitely. I mean, there was a time we would go to New York every summer for six weeks and

And my mother told me much later that she actually went to see a doctor to say, is it OK that my daughter's not playing the piano for six weeks because she's becoming very distressed? So it's a tactile thing and it's the way, certainly as a composer, it's like your mind and body are totally connected. And what's your starting point when you're writing? Where do you like to begin and where does your mind take you?

I feel I'm an explorer, to be honest. I start pieces anywhere. Sometimes I have a clear inspiration for the feeling of a work or the energy of a work. And then sometimes, particularly if I'm procrastinating, which can be quite a lot, I'll say, just...

Wherever your hands hit the keyboard, that is the beginning of the piece. Well, I think we're going to treat listeners to your music today. Let's get started, Evelyn, with your first disc. I mean, I can imagine choosing your final eight has been quite a task. It has been. And in the end, I thought of the works that, when I came across them,

It's as if my life changed. The sun came out and I became so obsessed. And what's sad, in a way, about being a composer, now when I listen to music, I think, how does it work? Oh, I'm trying to think. You've got your professional head on. I know, and as a child, you just soak it all in.

So tell me about this first piece. Yes, this is the fourth movement from Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. The thing about it is it's a recording which I probably would have heard conducted by Andrea Previn. When I heard this symphony, I was not sideways and I was at my boarding school

say 13 and other kids were listening to Donny Osmond and Jackson 5 and I would go to bed with this cassette player underneath my pillow and just play it again and again the energy the life in it and then because I was a bit obsessed with Andre Previn my friend Bobby Norky somehow got tickets for us to go to the Royal Festival Hall and somehow he got

and somehow I met Andre Previn. And Bobby says, my friend really, I couldn't speak to him, Aaron really, really loves you. What was he like? What did he say? He looked actually quite disinterested. But he was my pin-up. MUSIC

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What was the family story? My mum and dad, extremely musical people. In old age, they would jump up and dance to any bit of music they liked. It

It just consumed the music, the love of music. And you said your dad was a singer. He had a beautiful voice because he made a couple of records. He really did. When I was about four or five, he came home one day with these discs that he'd made. And he was working in northern clubs in Newcastle as a singer in a glittery jacket. He had his own band and everything. And he had this crooning voice and he was always studying singers to the point where I never thought I'd be a musician because I felt dad was music.

But you had been musical from when you were tiny. Yes. So dad told me that, mum and dad told me that I would never cry when I woke up ahead of them as a baby. I'd just be singing. And one day they came and said, I would have been between, somewhere between one and two, I was singing When I Fall in Love, It Will Be Forever. I don't know how they would have recognised those intervals because they're tricky. And da-dee-dee-dee-dee.

So it was always probably, you know, a thing I still do to this day. I sing little intervals and that probably started as a child, as a baby. So your parents, Henry and Barbara, they came to the UK when you were two and the family ended up living in Tottenham, London, with your father's brother, Arthur, and his wife, Rini. What memories do you have of your dad from your early childhood?

quite hazy. He was away a lot of the time. He was studying agriculture and then design. And then he went away to study. He got a scholarship to study in Trinidad. I was never clear exactly what he was studying. And so my mother was, when she came to England, she really wanted to get a state registered nurse in qualifications. And so she was studying for those. But she was very asthmatic, so was often ill. And

So to begin with, we were living separately, my uncle and aunt, and then mum and dad. But from the moment I met my uncle and aunt, when they first babysat, I did actually love them more. And eventually we all lived together. And then dad first went to the States, then my mother followed. So by the time I was about six, seven, they were both gone, I would just say. So you didn't have that very connected intimacy with your mother at that time when you were a little girl? No.

Not really. But up until the age of about six or seven, my mother was never a motherly mother. And it was as if my aunt, Keane, I called her, her name's Rini, she was always stepping in the breach, being the mother. She actually, to be honest, was the whole mother for the whole extended Wallen family. Somehow my mother was this invalid figure that my aunt was always saying, you know, your mother's not very well. But yes, my mother was fun-loving, life and soul of everything. But at the same time, something was up with her. Fragile. Yes.

So in 1964, you would have been about six, Errol, and that was when your parents moved to New York. Why did they go and what did you know about what was happening? They were going to New York where our extended family, particularly my grandmother, my mother's mother was there. And the idea was that we would be sent for. So there was this plan, but as time went by, you know, nothing was really happening. And eventually from the age of sort of 18,

maybe 11, 12, we started going to New York for summers. How much contact did you have with him? Was it an annual trip? That was it? Do you know, there's at one point, I think I actually didn't see my dad for something like six years, but I just can't say how much my uncle and aunt were like our parents. And we wanted to call them mum and dad, but we couldn't.

So my mum and dad were like this hovering presence who lived in this very glamorous place, New York, and they would send us Cracker Jack back and fantastic dresses. Did you miss them? Yes, I did. And I remember not long after my mother had gone, I came home from school one day. I was the eldest and I...

said to my aunt, I think I'll write my mum and dad a letter because I really, really miss them. And she said, no, don't do that. And that's when I knew there was a pull between the adults. You see, my uncle and aunt were sort of

They lived in absolute fear of us being taken away from them. So we had to live with that. You were aware of that as a little girl? You couldn't even have a cold, you couldn't fall down because they're terrified that our parents would think we weren't being looked after. They're terrified that the authorities would take us away. So if you got ill, you had to keep it a secret? Yeah, so I got pneumonia when I was four. My aunt spent the whole time saying to me, you know, you weren't really ill, Erin. But I think I was in hospital for ten days. Yeah.

So you lived in this, I felt this thing of trying to make an eggshells.

So in the end, I think there were four of you in London, is that right? Because your mother came back to London in 1969 to have your brother Byron. Yes. But then once he was weaned, she left him behind with you and your sisters too. I mean, that's quite a decision. It is. And my godmother, Catherine, evidently said to my mother, please, Babs, you know, Barbara, please know what it's like to bring up a child again.

But it was a plan. They planned it together. My aunt said, yes, we'll have the baby and we'll all... And it did cause tensions, great tensions in the end between Arthur and Rini. What kind of impact do you think your parents leaving had on you and how do you think it shaped you looking back? I had to explain things to my younger sisters, Karen and Judith,

And I was very entertaining, like I was explaining. We're so lucky we have two sets of parents. But after a while, you do realise that your parents, you know, they're not your school concerts. They don't really know anything about you. What I know about my mum and dad, their focus was definitely on each other. That's just how it was. And practically speaking, to be brought up by Arthur and Rini was by far the best thing. But it's just there was always these questions that were never answered.

That is a lot to manage on a day-to-day basis and I'm wondering whether there was a sense that when you were playing music, that was a place of freedom where you didn't have to deal with all of that. Yes, there was something about me as a child. When I look back, I was just...

Quickly at school, I seemed to switch off. By the time I was 10 or 11, I wasn't doing homework. I was reading voraciously. I would read walking on the street, reading or playing the piano. I needed to be in a space where I could just be absorbed. Well, let's hear some music, Carolyn. It's disc number two. What have you chosen? To be honest, Ella Fitzgerald, I consider her a composer. I don't have the words to describe...

She's beyond a singer, beyond a musician. The fact that she lived and walked on this earth is incredible to me. Wild again, beguiled again A simpering, whimpering child again Bewitched, bothered and bewildered Ella Fitzgerald and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.

Errolyn Wallen, you once said, I'll always know that the people who gave me life were of the opinion that I wasn't worth coming back for. That's such a difficult sentence to hear. Have you been able to make peace with your parents' choice?

The thing is, I absolutely love my mother and father. I love them, you know, unconditionally, and every child does. And particularly in their later years, I would be in New York often. And, you know, the strange thing would happen, especially when I was there, which told me that I was their first child. I'd wake up in the morning really quite early and I'd just jump into bed with them and they would sort of make room for me. We loved each other. It's that simple. But let's say there were a few flaws in their parenting. LAUGHTER

But you were able to get to a better place. I still feel angry with them because I think to be brought up in that amount of confusion is not fair to a child. But it was your Uncle Arthur and your Aunt Rini who brought you and your siblings up. That relationship, I think, in itself was complicated. How do you look back at it now? With gratitude, to be honest, because there were many difficult things we brought up in a very Victorian way. Everybody was scared of my Uncle Arthur.

But he did instill something in me. He had this great pride and this great belief in the arts and in culture.

And it was him that taught us all to love poetry. It was him that said we should go to piano lessons. Him that gave us elocution lessons, which is why I speak like this. And he was looking out for us, except that as little kids, we were just scared of him. There was always that overhanging threat of actual physical punch, which really happened maybe twice. But yes. You were scared of him. Yeah.

And what about Rini? So she had a different background. She was from the East End. Yes, she was born in Bethnal Green.

Cockney, and every Sunday she'd send out for cockles, you know, whelks, mussels from the pub up the road. So she kept her Cockney ways. So what was the cultural blend like in the house then? Mealtimes signifies everything. So you'd have a roast dinner, but you'd have rice with it, and rice and beans. So Rini was white, and she and Arthur got together at a time when interracial couples, you know, often faced abuse. Did they? Did they talk to you about that? Yes. My aunt's mother refused to come to their wedding.

And she said that when they were courting, people would spit at them in the streets. And so when I think of my aunt taking us kids around, people always commenting on it. So she would really stuck out. And she was extraordinary, really, in what she did in embracing of Belize culture. And she adored my uncle, even though he was quite a remote character. But he was, I think he'd been that way since he was young, to be honest, very internal. I think he wanted to be a writer. He wrote reams of poetry.

And, you know, then he found himself looking after four children and very little time for himself.

But he must have been very proud of you. I mean, and he was the person who said to you that you might be a composer. Yes, which is astonishing for him to know. It's a big thing to say at that time. I think he might be. I remember saying to him, there are these sounds and I just don't know what to do with them. They were tormenting me. I was going crazy. I know that sound now. It was the sound of strings and that sort of electronics. So you were imagining this? Yes. And he said, oh, I think you might be a composer. And I was always writing little tunes, but, you know, no fuss. But he said that and I was thinking, you're very...

And what was your relationship with Rini like? You had that sense that she could look after you, she could take care of you. How would you describe the relationship between the two of you? Very close. I was so attached to her and she was attached to me. And the heartbreaking thing is that as I got older, she thought I was leaving her. I could never leave her. So childhood was fantastic. But the moment I sort of hit puberty...

You know, life was very difficult with her. She grew very resentful of me, sadly. Did she? Do you think she was scared about losing you? Yes. Yes. Let's take a break for some music, Carolyn. It's your third disc today. What's next?

Well, I adore Stravinsky. And I thought I'd take the Freiburg, the first ballet that Stravinsky did. I remember going with my good friend, David Matthews, composer, to... The ballet was on at Opera House. And we had tickets to see Freiburg, Les Noces, and there's another ballet, I can't remember. But anyway...

We were sitting in our seats and, you know, the ballet was about to start and then somebody came and said to us, oh, you're sitting in the wrong row. So I said, it's OK, I'll climb the row in front. And I did, I was wearing a short skirt. You climbed over, you didn't go out. No, I climbed. And then... And I'm trapped between two seats. So whenever I hear the opening, I feel really embarrassed. MUSIC PLAYS

Part of the opening of Stravinsky's The Firebird, performed by the Bergen Philharmonic, conducted by Andrew Lytton. So that is taken from a ballet, and as a little girl, you dreamed of being a professional ballet dancer. Why did you want to do that so badly? Oh, goodness. I just loved the shapes. I'd spent hours with my friend Janice Kent, poring over ballet books. It was a really good experience.

There was a day, you know, when in the ballet class we usually have a terrible pianist called Miss E who was deaf so she would never know when to stop at the end of exercises and she would be thumping up the piano. Then this one day this other pianist came in

She played some Chopin for the ballet class. And I thought, oh, oh, you know, it's hyperventilating. What is this music? And we were dancing to the Chopin. And that was the moment I thought, I need to go home and find this again on the radio. I became desperate. And I said to my uncle and aunt, you know, when I was 12, I said, look, it's getting late to me to go to specialist school. I'd worked it all out. I knew where I wanted to go.

And I need to go to school where they predominantly do ballet, a bit of school on the side. And they said, no, we've never seen a black ballet dancer and we don't want you to be disappointed. I was so heartbroken. I can't tell you that was. And so, you see, then I turned to the piano.

Because you were so heartbroken. So heartbroken. When you were 13, your family scraped enough money together to send you to a private boarding school in East Sussex. This is Hollington Park School for Girls. And the teachers there spotted your potential. By the sounds of it, they gave you completely free rein to pursue your interests. They said, OK, you can give up geography, biology. I did no homework at all. I read books.

I was a shy, nerdy little thing. But without knowing it, I was so fascinated with how music was made and there was so much to learn. You just couldn't resist it. It was a treasure trove to me. How did that feel though, Errol? Because from what you were saying about life at home, that was all a little bit complicated and you were kind of skating on thin ice. I was absolutely free. But the thing is, I was always working hard, reading, looking at scores, learning about composers.

And in a way, I was amassing my own sort of beliefs about music. I came into my own at that school. So your music was developing and that side of life was going very well. But I know that while you were there, you also developed what we would think of as disordered eating these days. What was going on? What happened was the first term...

I put on a lot of weight because they were eating stodge, semolina as an extra and just loads of potato mash. So I put on 10 pounds. And I think the next term I came up with an idea. At four o'clock we would get...

a cake to eat and I thought I really like cakes so the way to lose weight is just to concentrate on things you like eating and just cut out everything else so I so cake first yeah so I ate maybe one cake a day anyway so I started to lose weight and other girls said ooh you've lost weight what diet are you on so I pretended I was on a really healthy diet so I said the first thing you must do is give up cakes and

And when it's your lunchtime or dinnertime, come and see me and I'll give you my vegetables. You'll be having lots of vegetables, but you must give me your cake at tea time. So I'd have about four or five cakes at tea time, just give my food the rest of the time. So it didn't feel like an eating disorder. But and also I would regularly sort of just fast, you know, for days at a time. So you were skipping meals or eating regularly?

unrestricted amounts of cake? Four, usually four a day. But the thing is, it was to do also with this developing a sort of discipline and willpower. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because, you know, you use the word discipline, but I think you could also think about the word control, couldn't you? Yes, I think you could. I

I was always trying to push myself. But the thing about the cake diet, it actually went on well into my 20s. How do you look back at that now? I don't know if I ever exit, but then I started to eat more normally. So was it just as life was changing? I think so. I suddenly thought, well, maybe you ought to eat proper food. I love vegetables now. I do eat more. But I have this terrible sweet tooth, which I always have to keep in check.

It's time for disc number four, Errolyn. What are you taking next and why? I am going to be taking I Am Sitting in a Room by Alvin Lucier. I adored Alvin Lucier. I met him at the Mines Festival in San Francisco in 1999. Alvin was a great American experimental composer. He died just a few years ago.

And he was very interested in the acoustics and space and using sound, what you could get out of it. So I think Alvin has changed my life because I never go into a room now without thinking, what would Alvin do with this room? What sound frequency do you get from it? And the thing about I'm sitting in a room is that Alvin, who had to stutter, he records himself and then he plays the tape recording back into the room again.

We're recording it, and then that's repeated, till in the end we get the sound and frequencies of the room, including picking up on his stutter. He's just this magician, and I really miss him. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice, and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves.

so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. Alvin Lussier. I am sitting in a room. Errol and Wollin, when you were 17, you left your boarding school and went back to live with your aunt and uncle in Tottenham. You had been very happy at school and felt free there. What made you decide to leave?

I didn't know what it was, but I had this incredible wave of depression. I didn't know it was that, but one day I remember thinking, I think I'll either have to stay in bed forever...

or leave the school. You know, I'm like that. I get these ideas in my head and that's it. And so I said, I'm going to run away. And then began my life at home again, which was the worst decision I could have made. And what was also more complicated is that the A-levels I was doing, there was no, well, my uncle and aunt couldn't find a school that did the syllabus I was doing. And I'd already done a year of it. So I had tutors in my music A-level. I actually did

correspondence course. So I was actually cut off from... I had no school friends. Literally at home all the time. Yeah, and I just was turned into this sort of

really at home and it was awful. What about life at home and your aunt and uncle's relationship? What was happening there? Well, they were sort of going through what would eventually lead to a divorce. My uncle didn't want to be at home anymore. You know, he'd met somebody else but for four years we all knew something was happened and he was very secretive and it was having a terrible effect on my aunt's own mental health. What happened to her?

She was tormented and, yeah, she wasn't that easy to live with. And my brother was still small and was at home. But it was the wrong place for me to be because I was... Yeah. No friends were around. So you didn't have the support of your peer group, friends at school. You're halfway through your A-levels and making do with these tutors and then dealing with depression as well. What kind of effect did all of that have on you? Well, I didn't know it was depression, but I was finding it hard and harder to do simple things. And when I reached the point I was finding it hard to compose a play...

I was really alarmed because thinking that's my life. And I quite rationally thought, well, if this is how you're going to be living, you are a complete waste of space and it's time to stop life, really. And I was very calm, but I just thought I didn't belong here anymore because I couldn't do the things that I felt I should be doing. And so I took as many tablets as I could and then that didn't work. So then I went downstairs, found some alcohol. I had wanted to die, but when it didn't work, it was as if...

I went to the hospital, was asked if I heard voices. I didn't. And that was the end of that. So no support, no follow-up? No. And when I think back now, you know, my family didn't really mention it. My aunt said, you know...

she was across from me and she was saying if you'd done this a few years ago it was a prisonable you know I could have ended up in prison but there was no no discussion about what was wrong but what happened was I thought about the things I wanted to do and they were to go back to dancing and I enrolled with the Leonie Erdang school with with a view to being in contemporary dance. So you

You decided that if you were going to live, then you had to start dancing again. I had to start doing the things that I really wanted to do and all the things that were buried. I'm a person, honestly, if there's something I want to do and I don't do it, I find it impossible to live. So that's what stayed with me. So you founded dance school. Was it in Golders Green? Oh, it's a wonderful, Leonie Erdang. She was a wonderful teacher. And then I went to the Dance Theatre of Harlem. They had several summer schools. And the thing about the Dance Theatre of Harlem is

predominantly black dancers and I thought oh my god this is four, five years later there are black ballet dancers just because my uncle and aunt didn't know about them they're there and I went to study there Did that depression ever recur? I don't ever think I'll sink so low and I know now the signs I now know if anything goes wrong I can fix it or I can have an outlook I can get through anything now really but then I didn't know you could get through that I think we should hear your fifth disc next

Oh my goodness me. So this is the second movement from Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D minor. And it's performed by Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman. And, you know, violins don't play the way Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman play, but I love that style, you know, full fat vibrato. And the other thing about it, recently my violin concerto was premiered, the youth's premiere was with Kansas City Symphony Orchestra and Michael Stern played

The son of Isaac Stern is a music director who is partly responsible for my own violin. I would never have foreseen that when I was listening to this recording as a teenager. ORCHESTRA PLAYS

Part of the second movement from Bach's double violin concerto in D minor, performed by Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta.

Eirelyn Wallen, you found your way back to dance in your teens and you also found your way to music, studying at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and then later for a Master's in Composition at King's College. You were an early adopter of the Yamaha DX7 digital synthesiser and after you graduated, you started playing in bands to earn some money. How did that go? My first proper band was a band called Pulse. We were on the alternative comedy scene and Pulse,

It took a year for me to realise that actually I never did play that keyboard. I was put on the glockenspiel. Somebody else played that keyboard. You got a degree and a master's and then got you on the glockenspiel. Also, I had a diploma in piano. I was really good, but nobody knew I could even actually play. And so I was also being told off for not playing the glockenspiel correctly. And then one day I thought, yeah, because I don't play the...

A day came evidently when I had to quickly accompany something with something. I thought, oh my God, Eleanor Mullen can play the piano. But I love being in that group. And having to earn a living, I played in care homes, I played in heavy metal bands, reggae bands, jazz bands, anything. Bands on their way to being signed...

Bands on the way to being dropped. Bands on tour. A few stadiums here and there. So you learned a lot. You had to be very versatile. You must have learned a lot during that period. Amazing. I learned so much about music and how it's made and the different, you know, the freedom, the enjoyment, the dressing up, the lights, the dry ice. Yes, there was a lot of PVC back then. I've looked back at some performances from back in the day. PVC and a bit of animal print. So you're earning money by doing session work. Yes.

and also trying to find your way into the classical world. I wanted to be a composer, but I had absolutely no idea how you could break in. And I know you had a conversation with Michael Viner, the musical director of the London Sinfonietta, who was quite dismissive of your aspirations at the time. What did he say? At that time, there weren't many women composers being promoted. And Michael Viner, who's then... I shouldn't speak badly of him, but the prevailing attitude was that

weren't to be taken seriously. And he said, oh, come up to my office and we'll have a good laugh over your score. So... But how did that land with you? Because you're working so hard to get there. And you're in love with this music. That must have been really difficult to hear. And we were told that in those days...

you had to be sort of chosen by somebody and only it's like felt like only two or three people could slip through if they were anointed from on high and a few points along the road people have said to me you know you don't really belong it's like a conductor

who's quite a champion of music, said to me, you know, you're a novelty and I hope you've got a good pension because things won't last. How close did you come to giving up, Errolyn? There were a lot of doors closed on you at that point. There was a moment in my 30s where I remember thinking life was really, really hard. No doors were opening. And I thought, just be realistic. Go away for... I actually spoke to myself. Go away for a few days.

And come back with your decision. This is me talking to myself. And I actually did. And I went away and, you know, went about my life. And I came back to myself and I said, E, I'm going to do this.

And where did that tenacity come from in you, do you think? I don't know if I call it tenacity. There's always been this sort of fire and a burning. And music gives me that fire. But there's this burning. I thought, just like when I was nine, there was sounds I had to get out. And there's just this sense of also wanting to fulfil a potential I saw in myself. I didn't know it was going to lead, but I thought if I don't go for it...

I'll never know. Did you spend much time thinking about why the conventional attitudes were as they were and why they were rejecting you? I decided early on, and maybe it's to do with being brought up by a white woman, a mixed household. I never looked for discrimination. I'm sure it was there, but I have always been good at circumventing things. I think if a door's closed to me, I will then make a door that I can open again.

You talked about choosing not to see barriers and that was very much at the heart of a project that you started in 1990 Ensemble X you started it with your friends to showcase your own music and that was kind of your philosophy wasn't it it was your manifesto almost Yeah we don't break down barriers in music we don't see any So those genre barriers almost breaking down a little bit And the more

music I started to write I noticed that I was influenced by pop music without actually having studied it very deeply but I felt why shouldn't the music a composer writes be of their time why does it have to sound as if it's been made in Germany in you know 1908 that's nutty

I think we'd better have another track. Now, I don't know how to say this, but I'm obsessed with Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours by Stevie Wonder. It's this recording on the Tamla Motown label that changed the quality of my driving from Inverness Airport to Strathy Point Lighthouse because the way the drum... It's Bob Babbitt on bass, but the way the... It sounds so simple, but the way everything comes in, I think it's one of the sexiest songs ever written, and...

I just play it on loop. So this is when you're driving to the lighthouse. Three and a half hour drive. I'll be playing it non-stop. And that's where you live and work quite a lot of the time. Yes, it is. A full three hours of this would be very welcome. Ooh, baby.

Errol and Wallen begging me to play that again already. You were just lost in that. The musicianship, the arranging. Stevie Wonder is the genius in our midst. I'd put him pretty close to Bach. Errol and Wallen, in 2020 you were commissioned to reimagine Jerusalem for the BBC's Last Night of the Proms. It was sung by the South African soprano Golda Schultz. What did you want to reflect in your new version?

Yes, well, I was asked actually just three weeks before the last night of the proms, and it was during lockdown. So those proms all took place in Albert Hall, but with no audience. And before that, you know, with the ever-changing regulations, all the orchestras had to be sort of hardwired

quarter the sizes so the orchestra had to be stripped way back so I was really being asked to write a slimmed down version but me being me I understood when they said oh your own reimagining I went to town with that and I thought right I will go back to the poem William Blake and try and get a bit closer to the questioning the darkness of that poem you know I grew up playing Jerusalem I would play for the hymn school so I love that hymn but

I just thought it was an opportunity to weave in something contemporary and really come from a point of view of the words contemporary

So something a little bit disquieting in there that you wanted to explore that perhaps gets lost in the traditional version. Yes, in the parry, which of course I love. The Hubert Parry, yeah. Anyway, I wanted to dedicate, this work is dedicated to the Windrush generation and also the fact that it's little understood that in the colonies de facto we live with the music of England. And so in Belize, all these hymns are our hymns.

And so I also put a little, added an extra sentence, mentioned that we, the Commonwealth people, we sing with you. There was nothing controversial. I didn't think about what I was doing, but certainly it seemed to cause a bit of fury. A lot of it amplified on social media. How did you respond to that? Because by the sound of it, you weren't expecting it. I was really shocked at the tirade and it became a target for something which...

I thought overshadowing the fact that the BBC were working so hard to produce a promise, it was almost impossible for, you know, the delight of all of us. You know, I spent the next day, Sunday, just going through deleting, deleting, deleting, you know, hundreds and hundreds of messages, you know, very abusive, thinking, well, actually, when was the last time somebody really talked about a new piece of music?

in the national press, so I'll take it. I'm proud of that piece of music. All I did was put an introduction that was very delicate, and then we moved by the end into the rousing, recognisable thing of Jerusalem. And the other thing is that Jerusalem has had so many reimaginings, hundreds of them. You said that a lot of the messages were abusive, so how do you deal with that? I think, you know, before The Last Night was broadcast, somebody actually wrote on Facebook, they said...

what does a black woman know about Jerusalem? And that's when I thought, they don't realise this song belongs to us. It belongs to all the commonwealth because that's what we've grown up singing. It's everybody's. So I hadn't realised there was a problem with the certain sacred things that no black person must touch. I, as a composer, I feel our music belongs to everyone. It always has done.

Errol, and as we've discussed, you know, your work can be political. You composed Our English Hearts about the Battle of Trafalgar and that referenced colonialism and empire. You also worked on Carbon 12, a choral symphony, which tells the story of coal mining in Wales.

Do you feel you have a personal responsibility to highlight some of these moments for our collective history, to articulate our collective history in that way? Yes, I feel I should be telling the stories of our time. Not to say that I don't feel very connected to centuries past. You know, I'm very connected to the tradition of classical music and I revere Vivaldi, Bach and Bach.

Beethoven, Mozart, but I live here now in my environment and their music is this incredible force of energy and love. And, you know, I feel as a composer, I have a responsibility to other people.

Classical music is facing many challenges at the moment, funding cuts, a need to broaden its audiences. If you were in charge, what would you do? Well, the first place I would start, the only reason I can sit here and talk to you is because at school we had free, it makes me cry to think, we had free music lessons. We had a fantastic music teacher.

who taught us all in Tottenham, nine years old, to read and write music and to love orchestral music. We grew up with music. It was part of the fabric of school life and you'd play in your local orchestra terribly, of course, but everybody would play. There wasn't this hierarchy. My absolute abject...

is that soon it will only be people with money who will be playing classical music. Now, this music was created by people from all... It was never created by super wealthy people. It was made, you know, people who were part of a trade. That's who composers were. And people who had something to say and had a great talent to share. I don't know how we've got to this point where it's perceived as this elite thing just for some people because all the musicians I've worked with

They are so dedicated and just in love with the passion that music gives us all. What gives you hope for the future? I have to do what I can. And the whole, it's the culture we've got to create of not being suspicious of things that are really good for us.

Errolyn, it's time for disc number seven. What have you gone for, your penultimate choice today? This song, What's Up Doc, is probably the first song I ever wrote. I sat down at the piano, it just rolled out. And what's special to me about this is the recording of it. It was one of the first recordings I ever made with Tim Harries on bass and Simon Pearson, a wonderful drummer who I only just recently heard died last year in his early 50s.

There's nothing you couldn't play, and this little song's got these tricksy little rhythms, and it brings back those memories too, but also the days of making an album, which actually has yet to be properly released, of where I wanted to make music, which you can say is inspired by pop, but in a chamber music way, where you're playing without a clip track with musicians who you love, and just the joy of songwriting, really. Sometimes it gets so lonely that I eat the table

An early song of yours, Errol and Wollin, What's Up, Doc?

Aralyn, you once said that for music, I've made myself lonely and it has eaten me alive. That's a visceral statement. What was on your mind when you said it? You know, there's a certain solitude you have to have as a composer and there's certain times...

You know, nobody can help you. And it really is, it can be tricky psychologically until you learn to accept it. But the payback is like thousandfold because then you're lucky enough to have your work performed. That's the thing I live for, you know, whether it's a small rehearsal, a huge concert. But it comes from a place of solitude and quiet.

But that requirement for solitude, difficult to balance with, you know, quite a conventional personal life. Have relationships suffered because of your work, do you think? I think so. I don't mean to shut people out, but I've been in relationships where I remember going up to somebody who said, you know, you need taking down a peg or two. And I didn't understand what they meant. In other words, I really enjoy what I'm doing. Just like so happy doing it. And sometimes people might feel a little bit left out, but...

It's all been worth it. Did you ever have a relationship with someone who really got it? Yes. Somebody very important to me, Rory Allum, and he loved music and he himself wrote tremendous songs. He worked at National Theatre as a musician and he just really, he had this sense of what the music I could write, how I would do it. And sadly, when I met him, you know, he had multiple sclerosis and he went downhill and

I would do anything I could to keep him well and it didn't work. His love of music, in a way he became like a muse to me. So songs like Rain and he's beloved to me. So he's still in your work now. Errolyn, you've previously mentioned the lighthouse at Strathair Point in the north of Scotland. How does living and working there inspire you?

I have panoramic views of the Atlantic. And when the storms come in, it's absolutely crazy. But I found great peace and I think it's totally increased my productivity. And I'm in London. I love London. I love the bustle of the city. But certainly looking at this vast panorama, I'm looking to sky and sea. I'm very, very happy composing.

So how will you be with the isolation on your island? I'm used to it. I will miss people. I have so many beloved people in my life, but I will remember them all in my music. I'll write them all. I love writing music thinking of other people, so that's what I will continue to do. I'll listen to these tracks and really try and study them and really get to know them.

One more disc before we cast you away, Errol and Mullen. What's it going to be? Benjamin Britten is a hero of mine and I would say his opera Peter Grimes is still, to me, something to aim for in operatic writing of any time. Every note in it feels necessary and with my friend Nick Mercer, we went to see a concert version of it. It was Edward Gardner. And...

We loved it so much because, well, it made me realise that in this score, you don't need sets, you don't need lighting, you don't need costumes. Everything is there in this music. It's an incredible score. If I could even... You know, I've written 22 operas. I've not written a Peter Grimes. It's fabulous. MUSIC PLAYS

An extract from Peter Grimes, composed by Benjamin Britton, with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Edward Gardner. So, Errol and Wallyn, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What will that be? Please, could I have the biggest collection of bark that you can source?

So it's all the scores and manuscripts. Why would you take it with you? To me, Bach is this endless font of inventiveness, joy, passion, and I would say genius, whose influence...

continues today. Of course you can have it. You can also have a luxury item, Errol, and it can't be practical. It's got to be for pleasure or sensory stimulation. Yes, well, now, because John Major took the Oval Cricket Ground, I would like Wigmore Hall, but particularly because I want to be sitting on the stage of the Wigmore Hall playing the Steinway D. But the thing about this piano is the middle pedal operates a self-dispensing keyframe

cake flap and it'll probably be Battenberg cake. So a piano that is also a cake dispenser housed within Wigmore Hall? Yes, please. Okay, well, I don't see why not. Why Wigmore Hall in particular? Oh, it's the most amazing acoustics but the feeling of playing on that stage is something I'll never forget. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves? Oh, I just don't know. I think it has to be the Bach.

Every note that man wrote has such energy, joy and love in it. It's like food. It's food to the soul, I think. Bark and cake. I think you're going to be fine on this island. I think I will be, yes. Errol and Wollan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you, Lauren. It's been a pleasure.

Hello. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Errolyn. I'm sure she'll enjoy studying her music choices at close quarters on the island. We've cast away many music specialists, including the composers Carl Jenkins and Selenix Barclay, and the conductor Marin Alsop. The composer and conductor Andre Previn, who Errolyn admired as a child, is in there too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and on BBC Sounds.

The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley. The assistant producer was Christine Pawlowski. The production coordinator was Susie Roylands and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the writer, David Nicholls. I do hope you'll join us. I'm Tom Heap. And I'm Helen Chersky. A journalist. And a physicist. Ready to tackle the biggest issues on the planet.

Each week on Rare Earth, a podcast from BBC Radio 4, we investigate a major news story about our environment and wildlife. We delve into the history. How on earth did we get here? We stir up the politics. Who's right and who's wrong? And we search for effective solutions to rising temperatures and collapsing wildlife. In our new series, we'll be learning how to reduce the destructive power of wildfires. And we'll be hearing how the most vulnerable communities are trying to flood-proof their cities.

And we'll reveal the new phenomenon of green hushing. Companies no longer want to talk about the environment. They're worried that green activists will point out their hypocrisy while right-wing critics accuse them of being too woke. Better to say, and perhaps sadly do, nothing. Listen to Rare Earth on BBC Sounds.