Article on Roger
Doyle's early days.
Extracts from an article Roger Doyle wrote for The Crane Bag magazine,
Dublin 1982, called 'A Composer's Story':
'When I was 16 I gave up learning the piano. In her report my music teacher
wrote: "What an awful shame". The story is a common one. Young peoples'
lives become filled with music on records, video, in films, on radio and tv,
during Saturday nights, in Supermarkets, in amusement arcades, on the streets
and in concerts. Culturally exploded thus, they sit down to Mr. Beethoven and
wonder what on earth this glaring composer from the distant past has to do with
the rhythms they feel and the harmonies they hear.
When I left school I was drumming in a local pop group and living at home, sleeping
till lunchtime. I hadn't qualified for university and my father wanted me to
get a job. I remember replying in writing in answer to an ad for a shop assistant
and saying that my hair was long and I wouldn't get it cut. I only had the music.
I used to sit at the piano for a few hours each afternoon, improvising. Over
a period of months I gradually composed a four page piano piece and showed it
to my former piano teacher. She suggested I contact Dr. A.J. Potter in the Royal
Irish Academy of Music. I played my four page piece for him; he had a vacancy
and the following week I started composition studies with him, once a week for
an hour. From then on I had to have something composed for every Monday
afternoon.
Dr. Potter never said 'you can't do that'; on the other hand he never told me
exactly what to do. Maybe this was his approach. We talked about life and art
and he gave me the musical space I needed. He said you could read all the books
you like about instrumentation but if you really wanted to know how a trombone
works you should buy a trombonist a drink after the concert. He never encouraged
me and I needed a little.
After a year at the Academy I submitted my compositions for the Junior Composition
Scholarship which would mean a year's free tuition. At the beginning of the
next term I received a phone-call from the office of the Academy: "With
regard to your recent application for the Junior Scholarship in Composition
we wish to inform you that you have been successful in...."
I had never planned on being a composer; necessity was the mother of my invention.
I wanted to write a piece for orchestra in my first scholarship term. Dr. Potter
said: "Well go ahead!" I had a drawing of the highest and lowest notes
of each instrument in front of me as I composed 'Four Sketches' for orchestra.
It took five months and was later performed by the Dublin Symphony Orchestra
(because it won second prize in its competition for composers) and the RTE Symphony
Orchestra (the National Radio/Television orchestra). The first radio broadcast
of any work of mine was of 'Four Sketches'.
In 1969 at the end of my second year at the Academy I was awarded the Vandeleur
Scholarship in Composition. During my third year I began experimenting with
my tape recorder at home in my search for new sounds and compositional approaches.
I took to tape music like a duck to water without ever being bothered about
the 'do you call this music?' syndrome. I never stopped and thought too much
- I just did it. When I first heard tape music (loosely termed electronic music)
on record, it was as though it had been brought back to me as a memory. It was
strangely familiar. It was what I was looking for. The next time I submitted
taped works to the Academy, I wasn't awarded the scholarship. Since the Adademy
only had a cheap mono tape recorder and I needed a recording studio I thought:
'Three years is enough', and so I left. The Academy is not a University so there
was no degree to get even if I had stayed.
I was 21 and still sleeping till lunchtime'.
Roger Doyle taught piano for the next three years (composing 'Six pieces
for Pupils who Don't Like Exams') and played drums and keyboards in jazz/rock
and experimental improvisation groups.
Returning to his article:
'A small record company in Dublin promised to bring out a record of my music,
recorded some of my pieces and then went bust. Then in 1974 I was awarded a
Dutch Government Scholarship to enable me to study electronic music at the Institute
of Sonology at the University of Utrecht. This changed everything. In Holland
I had the chance to come in out of the cold and join the stream of European
avant garde music. I attended three weeks of the ISCM World Music Days Festival
in five Dutch cities. At the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht the students had
to complete fourteen studio excercises before they were allowed to submit a
compositional, or purely technical project, to a committee which would decide
if it was of 'sonological interest' (sonology is the study of sound), or not.
It took me ages to understand the principles of how the studio worked, about
voltage control, amplitude modulation etc. I was the last to complete my fourteen
studio excercises. In the second term I was alloted twelve studio hours per
week in response to my project, all on my own. I used to get heart poundings
opening the door of my alloted studio, the best equipped in Europe. I began
a new composition using almost entirely electronically generated sounds for
the first time. This piece later became 'Solar Eyes', which was broadcast backwards
on Irish radio.
During the Easter holidays I got a great idea: why shouldn't I bring out the
LP myself that had met such a disastrous fate a year earlier - the covers had
already been made and were sitting at home. I had saved enough from the scholarship
spending money to be able to do it. I sent to Ireland for the recordings of
my instrumental pieces and set about making copies of my tape pieces in the
Institute's studios, revising a section of my piece 'Oizzo No' in the process,
improving it immensely. I took this new Master tape to Phonogram in Amsterdam
and asked them to make me 500 records and gave them the money. When I told them
I couldn't afford a test pressing they said: 'Don't worry Mr. Doylee, we'll
keep trying till it comes out OK'. And they did, and it did.
I wanted to cover up the name of the record company that had gone bust, on the
back cover, so I had 500 new backs printed with some new information on them,
which I began to stick on individually with glue over the existing ones, thus
becoming the first composer in the history of the world to stick his own record
covers together. I was twenty five and had a record of my own music out, called
OIZZO NO. I shipped them off to Ireland and sold one to a customs man at Dublin
airport on my arrival home. I had to sell 330 to break even, which I did after
two years.
I returned to Holland at my own expense to continue my studies in Utrecht, composing
'Thalia' as a guest composer there in 1976. I had gone around all the record
companies in Dublin after 'Oizzo No' came out (say 'I don't know' in a thick
Dublin accent) to try to bring it to a wider audience, without luck. At CBS
the manager David Duke staring incredulously at me had said: 'Do you call this
music?' As I was soon on my way out the door he said: 'Wait a minute'. For an
unknown reason CBS sold a few copies of Oizzo No for me and I always kept in
touch telling them the latest news about my concerts, broadcasts, travels etc.
I lent Mr. Duke records of electronic music. I finally took 'Thalia' to him
and...yes, he would bring it out! Early in 1978 it appeared on CBS Classics.
'Am I too young to be famous' I thought. Even with CBS help I couldn't sell
200 copies. They deleted it soon after without telling me'.