Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Blood on the Floor

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s orchestral suite
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
by
ABR Arts 14 April 2021

Blood on the Floor

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s orchestral suite
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
by
ABR Arts 14 April 2021

The writer and academic Malcolm Bradbury once argued that we can find traces of the chaos, contingency, and plurality that typify the modern urban environment embedded in the structure of the modern novel or in the design and form of modernist painting. But in music? I think it is fair to say that classical composers have struggled to find similes as obvious, potent, or effective for the experience of living in a modern city as artists working in other media, or indeed as musicians working in other genres. It’s not for nothing that we commonly speak of urban rap, but not, say of urban symphonic music.

British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s nine-movement orchestral suite Blood on the Floor (1996) is, however, just such a thing. This landmark composition was given only its second-ever complete performance in Australia, by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, appropriately enough as part of its ‘Metropolis’ series.

From the New Issue

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.