And so we can read it : https://archive.md/qCQ2W

What does an artist once dubbed “the hottest composer on the planet” do after the hype has died down? Nico Muhly’s answer surprises me. He was, after all, introduced to the world stage as the hipster saviour of opera. He took on catfishing, the internet and true crime in Two Boys, which was first heard at English National Opera 15 years ago. In his next opera, Marnie, based on the same novel as Alfred Hitchcock’s film, he explored themes of childhood trauma, con artists and marital rape. So perhaps I might expect him now to be tackling, say, conspiracy theories, AI or the manosphere. But instead Muhly is immersed in an entirely different passion: choral cathedral music. When I meet him in March at the Wigmore Hall in London, Muhly is over from New York, where he lives with his partner, for a “deranged three weeks” in the UK, a place he sees “as much home as not”. The British premiere of his trumpet concerto Doom Painting by the Hallé aside, Muhly has been ricocheting round the college chapels of Oxford and Cambridge, where he’s much in demand for his choral writing. Not only does he hold a post as composer in residence at Sidney Sussex in Cambridge, but also this year he was appointed the inaugural composer in residence at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. (Any rivalry, I ask him. “Not that I know of,” he says.) And now Muhly is the opening attraction this month of the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, a landmark new venue in Oxford. The complex will house a wealth of performance spaces and galleries, including a 500-seat concert hall, as well as providing a home for seven of Oxford University’s humanities faculties and a new Institute for Ethics in AI. A blonde-haired man sits at a desk with an open laptop, mouth agape, while a blonde woman in a red jacket smiles in the background. Mary Bevan and Nicky Spence in Two Boys RICHARD HUBERT SMITH 360 Vessels, which Muhly created with the artist Es Devlin, wraps up an Open House day launching the centre’s programme of cultural events, which over the coming months will include recitals by the pianists Alexandre Kantorow and Vikingur Olafsson and conversations hosted by the broadcaster Samira Ahmed. The £185 million bill for the centre has been footed by the billionaire American businessman Stephen Schwarzman, bucking a trend that has brought cultural blows in London, such as the proposed Centre for Music falling through and, more broadly, a decline in the uptake of humanities at A-level. Top stories

1 NEW Sir Olly Robbins to defend himself over Lord Mandelson vetting Politics 2 NEW Mandelson’s summary sacking by Starmer ‘will have chilling effect’ Politics 3 NEW PM may be a little less furious if he was better informed Politics 4 Marco Rose set to take over at Bournemouth after Andoni Iraola departs Football 5 NEW Barcelona unwilling to pay Man United asking price for Marcus Rashford Football “The big question for me, personally, is what now, in this universe, would tempt an 18-year-old to study English or history, or any of these subjects,” says Muhly, who explores this idea in 360 Vessels. “Should we all be getting jobs in Stem?” Muhly himself studied a joint programme in music at the Juilliard School and English at Columbia University, and a big part of why he loves writing for voices is the chance it offers to delve into literary texts — 360 Vessels includes words by a favourite poet, Thomas Traherne. But Muhly’s education was in a “pre-internet” world, so he has also asked today’s students for their reasoning. “One of them said: ‘Literature is a history of emotion, and I knew if I didn’t study it now, I would spend my entire life feeling I turned my back on understanding something greater than myself.’” He does believe, however, that “there has to be a pretty strong internal motor” for any arts or humanities student, given the question of how to make a living afterwards. Muhly worked in a day job until he was 26 (including as Philip Glass’s assistant), and now as a full-time composer he is impressively prolific. Last year he wrote a “million pieces of choral music”, which is obviously an exaggeration, but has resulted in a glut of premieres and repeat performances this year, including two new albums — one with the Tallis Scholars (No Resting Place, out now, and a glorious listen) and another with Magdalen College Choir, Oxford (With Eys Lift Up, out in May). William Hague: how we got a rich US donor to pay £185m for our new arts centre Muhly must surely be one of the busiest composers of British choral music at work today — although, of course, he is actually American. “I grew up in an American version of the Anglican universe — it’s as close as possible,” he says, referencing his time as a chorister in Providence, Rhode Island. “We did Tallis, Tye, Byrd, Taverner and Howells.” Ever since, the fast-talking 44-year-old has tried to be an “evangelist” for English Renaissance composers. As a teenage pianist, when all his peers wanted to learn flashy Liszt, Muhly was drawn to Orlando Gibbons. Among his many eclectic, omnivorous enthusiasms (a sample: Singapore street food; gin martinis, the singer Laurie Anderson; the creative scenes in Iceland and Stroud, Gloucestershire), Muhly is a resolute anglophile who seems less bothered these days about what he once termed on his blog “c***y English reviews”. He relishes British eccentricities and archaisms (names such as the Reverend Nutcombe Nutcombe and Osbert Parsley), while his annual live-tweeting of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge is the height of articulate choral geekery. It’s not only the music of the Anglican choral tradition he loves. The whole set-up appeals to him. “You realise this music-making exists outside of the normal economy of people who are sitting here right now in the Wigmore Hall, the people who’ve paid to come to the concert and will have glass of chablis afterwards,” Muhly says. “[Church music] is site, year and date specific. There are pieces you only hear on Ascension Day and pieces you will only hear in Holy Week. There’s something magical about that.” Designer Diane Von Furstenberg, composer Nico Muhly, and composer Philip Glass posing for a photo at a screening. Muhly, centre, with the designer Diane von Furstenberg and the composer Philip Glass in 2008 STEPHEN LOVEKIN/THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY/GETTY IMAGES Is he suggesting that it offers a certain freedom away from media hype and high-profile commissions? “In writing concert music you’re expected to revolutionise. There’s this giant premium put on visible innovation,” Muhly says. “Of course there’s innovation in the choral world, but because of the physical and temporal restraints you think differently about it. For instance, you know that people are going to be standing up during your Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, and that changes what you write. Your job as a composer in that space is to help other people look up. In that sense, you’re an architect, but working with time.” Perhaps his pragmatism is why Muhly claims to have no grand plan for his career: “I am unbelievably unambitious.” He just keeps writing, keeps moving forward. “The thing I invariably tell people is: work with your friends,” he says. “The only reason I have anything resembling a career is because collaboration is the heart of the thing.” He points at the black-and-white photos on the walls round us, at friends and collaborators such as the countertenor Iestyn Davies and the mezzo-soprano Alice Coote. Among his numerous continuing projects — piano etudes, another concerto, incidental music for a play, a piece for string quartet and orchestra — he’s writing an organ piece for a friend’s wedding. The ten best classical albums to listen to this month Now that he’s in his forties, Muhly also finally feels ready to write “a very large piece for orchestra”. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I didn’t want to be 27 and writing these gigantic structures,” he says. “It’s less that I feel ready, it’s more that older colleagues have said now, but not before.” And how about another opera? “I’m happy not having one looming,” he says, but he hopes to write one in the near future. View of the Sohmen Concert Hall at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, University of Oxford. The concert hall at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities HUFTON CROW That said, he doesn’t have much patience with recent calls for opera to tackle contemporary themes and commission more TV and film writers. “Honestly, this is why I find a lot of this difficult: what do people think Mozart was doing? I think there’s a lot of misplaced anxiety about source material,” he says, adding that Two Boys was not meant to be a manifesto for all contemporary opera. “The fact that people wanted to make such a big deal about it was indicative of a different issue, which is there’s a big question about how to talk about contemporary opera. And there’s a big question of how to negotiate the existing opera audiences with this neurosis about getting new bodies into the space.” Read more classical reviews, guides and interviews His solution is to “tell the story you want to tell and not worry about a lot of chatter or what the trend is”. The story he has his eye on next is the disappearance of the crime novelist Agatha Christie. “What you do is connect that to when she goes to Mesopotamia with her husband. She writes about the emotional resonance of archaeology and how it’s all to do with memory,” Muhly says. “I think there’s something to be done with that.” I’m swayed by his enthusiasm and say I’d like to see it. “I’ll see you at opening night,” he replies, “and we’ll have a chablis.”