Contemporary Chamber Music Series: John Palmer's 'Utopia':

This work goes beyond frontiers especially in the style of its performance. The listener does not find himself in the usual frontal collision with the work, but in the middle of it. Note at the beginning of the piece: “... darkness on stage, the flute and the oboe play behind the stage, both invisible.”At the entry of the singer, dressed in black, a soft light goes on and the music begins. From time to time there are notes regarding the scene. Movement is everything. Movement of lights, movement of the actors on stage, movement in the musical material, movements in motives. Moreover, the sound contains special effects, too. The voice has to sing with the hand to the mouth, inhaling and exhaling, humming repetitions of words, whispering, high and low speaking effects, changing sounds between English and German. The wind instruments are treated in a similar manner. Noises caused by particular embrochures, speaking and playing at the same time, a “rrr” to be spoken before the actual note is played, key-clips, lips-glissando to imitate laughter, use of quarter-tones and whistle effects. The work shows a consistent formal idea carried out through long motivic contours and clear changes between monophonics and multiphonics. Free rhythms are always resolved in exact notation. The composition is a conglomeration of compositional techniques of recent years and is an attempt at a utopian collage directed towards the next century”.

MUSE, Cultural Journal of Liechtenstein, March 1990 (Translation by GBZ Management, London)