The Leeds Songbook: How Leeds Lieder is creating a snapshot of the city

The perennially wonderful Leeds Lieder festival bursts into bloom this June, with a bumped-up nine-day programme and a fresh, decidedly post-pandemic sense of optimism. The festival’s director, pianist Joseph Middleton, is inviting audiences to ‘make 2023 the most joyous festival Leeds Lieder has mounted’, and to share in ‘the magic of an un-amplified human voice and piano, mining the depths of what it means to be human, to connect with one another and with nature.’

A fixture that is now firmly established on the international calendar, the festival is consciously cementing its local roots this year with a new project called The Leeds Songbook. The idea grew out of a long-standing programming tradition. Every year, Leeds Lieder mounts a ‘Composers and Poets Forum’ (pictured below) in which they bring together composers and writers to create new songs.

‘This year, the brief for the poets is to write about somebody they know in Leeds,’ Middleton (pictured below) tells CM. ‘So, the idea is that we have the opportunity to bring these people to the concert hall; people who may not have been to one before, and to tell their individual story through song.’ 

(Image courtesy of Askonas Holt)

There are 12 composers, all postgraduates studying at UK conservatoires and northern universities, and 12 Leeds-based poets providing the texts. The process by which the poets and composers pair up is something of a creative art in itself, and is a subject that never fails to bring a smile to the face of whoever I ask about it. ‘We have a kind of speed dating day,’ says Middleton. ‘The composers come to Leeds and meet the local poets, who come from all walks of life and are of all ages. Every year you think, “I can’t see how this will work,” but all of them do pair up. There are never any issues; they all seem to feel this kind of pull towards somebody when talking about their work that really resonates with them. And then over the course of a few months they write a new song.’

The day of musical ‘speed dating’ (pictured below) is organised by poet and academic Hannah Stone and Leeds University professor of music and aesthetics Martin Iddon.

‘We created a showcase event where everybody had five minutes to speak about their work,’ says Stone, who sourced the 12 poets. ‘I tried to introduce as much diversity as possible, and I did some nudging on the day to help them to pair up, but it did work. The word we used was “alchemy” – in putting them together there is that little bit of creative magic.’

‘There is always something special that happens on the day in terms of composers and poets finding one another,’ adds Iddon. ‘When I look back, the thing that struck me was the diversity of ways of music making and the different modes of putting words together to make poems. I couldn’t have expected this breadth. I’m just waiting for the exciting bit now of seeing what comes out at the other end.’(Image courtesy of Leeds Lieder)

One pair that found each other very early in the process was poet Adrian Salmon and University of Leeds composition student Niki Zohdi. 

‘I knew straight away that I wanted to work with Niki,’ says Salmon. ‘When I saw his presentation, I wrote of his music, “Lush, gorgeous and dark”. What I love about his music is that he is very interested in both ends of the historical scale of Western art music. The title of my poem is Voluntary, and it refers to the musicians of Leeds Minster, which used to be a professional choir but is now a voluntary choir. I was a choral scholar and a cathedral lay clerk and what I tried to get into the poem was really what that means to me, and what I suspect it means to all of us who do this; why we do it. I’ve tried to give Niki some musical tags to play with, so there are references to composers. It talks about Pérotin; it talks about Pärt; it quotes the gradual for the dedication of the church, Locus Iste, which was set to music so beautifully by Bruckner.’

‘My compositional interest involves the use of pre-existing materials,’ says Zohdi, ‘so the fact that Adrian has included these composer references gives me a lot of source material that I can use as starting points to develop my material. It suits me to a tee.’ 

In terms of creating ‘The Leeds Songbook’, Middleton says: ‘What we are planning is that, in discussion with the poets and composers, these scores will be put on our website, with links through to the performances as well. Each year we would like to add the new works and build on this Leeds Songbook, so that it becomes a place where singers and pianists can go and search out works if they would like to find something new.’

To launch the Songbook, this year the festival is combining the composers and poets strand with another established tradition: its Young Artists programme. The 12 new songs will be performed by the festival’s young artists in a showcase concert on 13 June, with everyone involved having taken part in a day of workshops on the material the day before.

Actor Rory Kinnear workshopping poetry at Leeds Lieder (Image courtesy of Leeds Lieder)

‘As somebody who absolutely loves performing new works and working with living composers, I really want the young artists to experience this,’ says Middleton. ‘Afterwards, you go back to older works with a completely fresh set of ideals. I think it is something that all artists should do.

‘Every year something happens on concert day that is magical and that really makes you stop and think. Last year, one of the poets was an 80-year-old talking about the loss of her adult daughter, who sat next to a 19-year-old poet talking about clubbing, and these two ended up really close friends.’

The showcase concert, Composers & Poets Forum concert: ‘A Leeds Songbook’, takes place at Leeds Conservatoire on Tuesday 13 June, beginning at 5pm. Tickets and more information can be found here.