A psychiatrist, a composer and a string quartet
“…threads of memory nudge us, reminding us of what we must treasure, reclaim, rebuild.” Louise Webster
Composer Louise Webster was by herself for the world premiere of her latest work, This memory of earth, in May. She cleared her diary for a short time to watch and listen to the live-streamed performance in her office at Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland where she works as a child psychiatrist and paediatrician.
The musicians of the New Zealand String Quartet had been rehearsing together for just two weeks after New Zealand had moved to the “small gathering” level 3 lock-down rules. Webster's piece was the centrepiece of a New Zealand School of Music lunchtime programme of quartets by composers Gao Ping, Ross Harris, Jack Body and Natalie Hunt. There was no live audience, and no bouquet for the composer, but Webster was happy.
"It was so nice to be amongst those works," she says. "And fantastic to see them playing, as well as listening to the good quality recording." Her colleagues at the hospital continued working around her. "My team are fantastic and incredibly supportive but somewhat perplexed by what I do [as a composer]. I could be learning to speak Tibetan as far as they're concerned."
This memory of earth was commissioned by the Quartet early last year and intended for performance in New Zealand in 2020 at the double festival of ISCM World New Music Days and Asian Composers League Festival. Those events have been postponed till 2022 in the light of the global situation with respect to COVID-19 but the NZ String Quartet went ahead with the premiere of Webster’s work last month, offering a loving, thoughtful and carefully prepared performance of a beautiful, and moving piece.
Webster refers to “implicit memory”, a child development concept, when talking about her new composition. “Those very early experiences and images, associative stuff, the smell of the sea or a snatch of vision. Every time I fly into Auckland over the Waitakere Ranges and get this glimpse from the aeroplane, a flash of green – that has such a strong connection for me.” In her programme note she takes a wider view: “In a time when our world is under such threat, these threads of memory nudge us, reminding us of what we must treasure, reclaim, rebuild.”
This memory of earth is a substantial and skilfully written work, beginning with gentle bird-like calls and moving organically through many moods and colours. “Writing it,” she tells me, “suddenly another little bit would push its way in, in a funny sort of way. With this piece I started with ideas, not the title; it grew, a collection of fragmentary ideas that slowly accumulated and layered in the same way as my sense of the land and my memories of it do.”
The work reveals a composer familiar with string sound, confidently using a wide and effective range of timbre. Pizzicato becomes punctuation or anchor and strident solo explosions contrast with poignant melodic fragments, dancing duets and dramatic, urgent trios. Webster uses texture in the work to develop the structure; solo lines become duos, sombre three-part chordal sections accompany pleasing melodic shapes. The bird from the beginning returns at the end and the work resolves gently with quiet chords from the whole ensemble.
The circumstances of her latest premiere were unusual but the contrast between the two sides of her professional life is nothing new for Webster. It began in her teens. “I was very torn at high school and dithered around.” She kept playing the piano and studied medicine at the University of Auckland, still wondering if she had made the right decision and even taking a year off medical studies to continue piano lessons in Wellington with her eminent former teacher Judith Clark.
“It’s been a bit of a conflict all the way through,” she tells me. “And it didn’t occur to me at that stage that I could study composition at university – I stupidly assumed it had to be piano. Even though I was already composing and Douglas Lilburn was in the department in Wellington and I had played his music.” Medicine won that tussle. Webster went on to train as a paediatrician and child psychiatrist and playing piano and violin in chamber ensembles became her extra-curricular pleasure.
A turning point came in 2005. By then a mother of four children with a busy professional career at Starship, she thought “it’s time I did something about this” and began part-time composition studies at the University of Auckland with mentors Eve de Castro-Robinson, Leonie Holmes and others. Over the next decade she won numerous prizes for her music and significant commissions. Last year, almost four decades after finishing her medical studies, she completed a doctorate in music composition.
In spite of her composing successes, only recently has the modest Webster felt able to say “I am a composer.” She talks of making excuses: “I only do it part-time”; “I’m a doctor who’s pretending to be a composer.” Then, for the 2019 Adam Chamber Music Festival, she was one of a group of composers commissioned to write chamber works for the Festival. Her duo The shape of your words was premiered by violinists Wilma Smith and Helene Pohl. At the event with a group of composer colleagues, she suddenly felt “yes, I do belong here!”
Webster seems to have resolved the conflict between her dual roles of doctor and composer for now, perhaps because she can see retirement from medicine at some stage in her future. “I’m incredibly lucky to have a career that I feel fulfilled by. It’s just difficult clearing the space for composition, coherent time to develop something and continue to develop it rather than doing little bits; being able to hold it all in my mind. I comfort myself,” she says a little wistfully, “looking forward to the next patch in my life - having unbroken time and space to write music.”
You can watch and listen to Louise Webster’s new work in the video below, or listen to the whole New Zealand School of Music lunchtime programme from the New Zealand String Quartet here.