Richard Ayres

• Born: October 29, 1965, Cornwall, England

(c) Hanya Chlala

“Saying Goodbye” from No. 52: Three Pieces about Ludwig van Beethoven 

• Composed: 2019
• Premiere: September 10, 2020 during the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Nicholas Collon conducting the Aurora Orchestra 
• Instrumentation: bass drum, sampler, strings
• CSO notable performances: These performances are the work’s CSO premiere.
• Duration: approx. 7 minutes

Richard Ayres, born in 1965 in Cornwall, England’s southwestern prow, studied composition, electronic music and trombone at Huddersfield Polytechnic and during the summers participated in American composer Morton Feldman’s classes at Darmstadt and Dartington. After graduating in 1989, Ayres moved to The Hague for postgraduate study in composition with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatoire, graduated in 1992, and taught at that school from 2004 to 2006 before joining the faculty of the Amsterdam Conservatoire. He still makes his home in The Netherlands. Ayres’ prominence in Dutch music has been recognized with two of the country’s most prestigious music awards—the International Gaudeamus Prize for Composition (1994) and Vermeulen Prize (2003). His works for orchestra, chamber ensembles and opera have also been commissioned and performed across the U.K. and Europe and, increasingly, in America; he was Featured Composer at both the Aldeburgh Festival and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and is Visiting Professor at the Royal Conservatoire in Birmingham.

Ayres began suffering hearing loss before he was 40, a condition that has worsened as he ages. Of his No. 52: Three Pieces about Ludwig van Beethoven (2019; Ayers numbers his works consecutively instead of giving them traditional opus numbers), he said:

“More than other pieces of mine, this one is all about hearing loss. I have focused it on Beethoven’s hearing loss and its effect on him. Writing it was a kind of therapy for me and a way for me to understand Beethoven, how he suffered so much and had such a hard time…. [That realization] has given me a stronger sense of urgency and purpose, since every sound has to be special because it might be the last I create. Like Beethoven, I have to rely on my imagination to understand what I’m doing. It becomes much more vivid, much more three-dimensional and lively in my mind, but I also realize I’m not going to hear all that in performance. I made the piece in three movements. Saying Goodbye is a melody played by a solo cello but gradually amplified by strings and distorted as a sort of tinnitus [ringing or other noise in the ear], appearing like a fog.”

—Dr. Richard Rodda