Tansy Davies: ‘I don’t think a 9/11 opera could have been done earlier’

You’ve written your first opera, Between Worlds [for ENO, premiering at the Barbican this week], about the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center. Why a 9/11 opera now?
I don’t think it could have been done earlier. It just grew organically. We had another idea first. But gradually the librettist [poet] Nick Drake and the director Deborah Warner moved step by step towards it. The idea grew in all of us, and we knew we had to be brave and let ourselves be led by our highest instincts; to make something intensely human and to somehow transform or transcend the darkness into light. The story is told from many perspectives, from those trapped inside one of the Twin Towers, from there on the ground (people in NYC looking up), and from a far, cosmic place: an orchestral “fabric of the universe”, with the figure of a shaman at its centre who relays messages across time and space.

What are the ‘worlds’ we’re between?
Life and death. There’s a character who begins the opera – a janitor – with an aria from the office floor that others later inhabit; high up in the tower. It’s the early hours of the morning. He’s already lost someone but we don’t yet know that. He opens up spiritually and becomes some sort of a bridge, encouraging those who have lost loved ones to make an act of faith.

Is opera the right place for such a massive global subject?
Yes I think it is. We’re not following the details as if for a film or a documentary. It’s more the ripples that this terrible event has on peoples’ lives. Music is a fantastic vehicle for expressing energy, emotion, feelings that go beyond language.

Is it in any sense a conventional opera?
Yes and no! We have opera singers, chorus, arias, orchestra, so in that sense it’s traditional. But the voices are used in very different ways; the Shaman has some extended techniques, and a duet with the Janitor where they produce almost guttural sounds and half-formed words, like speaking in tongues. There’s a strong, surging quality to the orchestral writing in Between Worlds, as if the whole opera is riding on a deep ocean, with wave upon wave rising up. It’s different from my other works; it’s an unpredictable and unstable kind of energetic structural drive.

Did you grow up expecting to become a composer? Was your family musical?
Not musical, but very encouraging, with no expectation that I would become anything in particular. I think that freedom was enormously helpful to me – and to my younger brother too [comedy writer Toby Davies]. My mother was an art teacher, my father an engineer, and I can see both of them in me – especially the engineering side when it comes to creating big projects like Iris – my sax concerto – or Falling Angel (inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s painting).

Did school help or hinder?
I went to a local primary school (in Kent) which had a brilliant but terrifying headmaster who ran two recorder consorts of a really high standard. So before I was 10 I was playing Vivaldi to a top level, which was incredible. Then I went to a comprehensive where they said: “OK what do you want to learn?” I said flute, and they said here you are, take this home. I got home and thought, that’s a bit big for a flute. It was a French horn. Apparently I’d passed well on the aural tests so they thought they’d give me an instrument notoriously difficult to play! So I learned the horn. It was all a bit haphazard.

But you didn’t start out, musically, where you’ve ended up. You played rock first?
I began in wind bands and orchestras on French horn. Later I played electric guitar and sang in bands too. A neighbour who was a carpenter with great taste in music helped me build an electric guitar and also introduced me to Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell. Inspired by Stevie Wonder, I used a clavinet in one piece [Neon]. And I’m a big fan of Prince because his music is quick-witted, naughty, surprising and sexy! Then I discovered Boulez, Berio, Birtwistle and realised this was more the direction my own musical future lay. And I’ve always loved Stockhausen.

You’ve instructed your music to sound ‘seedy’, ‘low-slung’, ’urban’…
They’re words that get a picture of my music across. It’s the most efficient and vivid way I could think of. Classical musicians don’t have enough time to rehearse. Notation can be awkward and the rhythms hard. Images like this might help, and give the sense of the music being organic, visceral – rather than just plain difficult.

… and like cracking, whipping, slapping…
It’s all about attitude. I want musicians to have the confidence to swagger on stage and play like rock stars might. A few can do it, especially younger ones growing up with different ideas about performance. Generally I think my music has a robust quality; it can usually withstand mishaps in performance. Much of it involves an almost forensic level of detail, and when it goes exactly as it should it’s like rocket fuel for the moment, but when it doesn’t it still sounds OK! I like found noises, which might be music or might be natural sounds treated electronically. In Salt Box, I had gone to a garden in the south of France one winter. Everything was frozen hard. There were crunching sounds. I put that into my piece – which was commissioned for the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. The Thames estuary is in that piece too – the work was performed in Chatham dockyard near to where I now live in north Kent.

Do you have anything to say on the question of women composers?
You mean, except that I am one? [Laughs.] I’ve never had to address the issue. I’m grateful for that. And I like the fact that the generation below me is being quite strident on the issue. Of course women need to have a wider public role, but I’m not sure it’s just about women. We all have masculine and feminine in us. We’ve lost our balance globally, as a species. We’re all responsible and we all need to work to adjust that balance. It’s not only a problem for women; we all need both kinds of energy if we’re to function at our best.

I’ve heard you have big muscles – which is to say, you work out a lot?
Yes, it’s a great stress buster. The thing about composing is that it’s a lot of head work. You’re sitting down, doing a mixture of mathematics and soul searching. I used to do a lot of running. Now I’m doing circuit training… it’s a great focus while the opera is being rehearsed. Otherwise I’d just be worrying about it constantly – trying to figure out what, if anything, I can do to help. At the moment it’s sometimes more useful all round if I just to go to a boxing class instead!