Robert Worby, in his foreword to The Music of Michael Nyman, recalls his first visit to the cluttered, curio-filled home of the composer and reflects on his predilection for cataloguing ephemera: Nyman, for Worby, is a ‘guardian of the forgotten’ (xi). This penchant for cataloguing, recording, recalling, and exploring feeds, ap Siôn suggests, into a compositional style that relies heavily on the stylistic, formal, and (at times) literal quotation of past works. Such an approach, he argues, has led many musicologists and critics to dismiss Nyman's music because of its reliance on that of other composers. What he sets out to show is how, as Worby puts it, ‘the results of his appropriation always sounded like Nyman’ (xii). In order to do this, ap Siôn adopts an intertextual approach that seeks to examine Nyman's methods of quotation, while at the same time situating his œuvre at the intersection of the British experimental tradition and American minimalism. Ap Siôn suggests that Nyman's music may be under-represented in musicological discourse because aesthetic value judgements are traditionally based on the Kantian ideal of ‘creative individuality’ (xvi). We need, he argues, not simply to consider the compositional function of quotation but to situate that function in relation to the (probably fictional) notion of the ideal listener who will recognize a quotation with reference to both its source and its manipulation. Ap Siôn's intentions, then, hang on the question he sets out in his introduction: ‘What are we supposed to make of [Nyman's borrowing], and what is Nyman really trying to say?’ (xvi). To answer this question, he sets out a dual approach: on the one hand exploring the problems of intertextual interpretation through a focus on specific works and, on the other, seeking to contextualize these with reference to Nyman's broader musical activities as critic, performer, writer, and ethnomusicologist.

The book has a broadly chronological structure, tracing developments and changes in Nyman's use of quotation. Its first half places Nyman's early works in the context of his activities as musicologist and critic, and also sets out ap Siôn's approach to intertextuality. The latter part of the book then develops this methodology by focusing on various genres in which Nyman has utilized quotation: film collaborations (with Peter Greenaway in Chapter 5 and with Jane Campion on The Piano in Chapter 8); opera (The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat in Chapter 6 and Facing Goya in Chapter 9); and the string quartets (Chapter 7). Ap Siôn outlines a gradual shift from direct and explicit forms of borrowing in Nyman's earliest works to more self-referential and obscured borrowing in his most recent. Ap Siôn's treatment of these various methods is predominantly explanatory and avoids value judgements or critical engagement with Nyman's stated intentions. For the most part this stance is welcome and allows the complexities of Nyman's own processes to speak (for better or worse) for themselves. At times, however, particularly in the later chapters, a more critical, or at least comparative, approach seemed lacking: some of the details ap Siôn reveals in relation to later works beg questions (discussed below) that are not addressed.

Ap Siôn begins by launching a defence of Nyman's use of quotation, exploring notions of authorship and originality in the Classical and Romantic eras, before considering an early work, In Re Don Giovanni (1977). Preceding as it does the exposition of ap Siôn's methodology, this example serves as a simple introduction to some of Nyman's more explicit and direct kinds of quotation. It also allows the author to draw comparisons of Nyman's approach with that of such pop-art practitioners as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, inasmuch as their respective forms of reproduction involve both preservation and alteration. While ap Siôn clearly sees this type of approach as one of Nyman's (and pop art's) most attractive features, one suspects that those less well disposed towards Nyman's music would view this as a way of excusing, rather than justifying, it. Setting Nyman alongside the pop-art movement also raises other questions about commercial considerations and the way in which he chooses his sources – questions that are never more than fleetingly addressed in the book.

Chapter 2 delves further into Nyman's early output and briefly explores his initial education and subsequent years at the Royal Academy of Music. Ap Siôn considers the impact that Alan Bush's concern with older formal models had on the young Nyman, but rightly avoids any temptation to shoehorn repetitive elements of the early scores into evidence of a nascent minimalism, instead emphasizing the ways in which Nyman relied heavily on eighteenth-century forms and Bartókian melodic patterns (20) in his student works. However, this sense of distance is not maintained throughout the chapter: later ap Siôn recounts that Nyman's proposed doctoral thesis was on seventeenth-century ‘systems music’, and argues that he was ‘unwittingly aligning himself with the a-teleological structure of American minimal music’ (23). Such observations, particularly when they occur in a chapter that deals with the impact of British experimentalism (and its systems) on Nyman, seem to warrant further consideration of the distinctions between American minimalism and other process musics of the time. It might be instructive, for example, to recall the relatively small proportion of Nyman's book Experimental Music Footnote ¹ that is given over to minimalist music (one chapter, divided equally between America and England) and to observe that, while quotation finds no place in the early works of Steve Reich or Philip Glass, the ‘found-object’ approach of early Gavin Bryars or the ‘machine music’ of John White can be aligned much more convincingly with Nyman's own preoccupations. The source of some of this ambiguity might be observed in Chapter 3, where ap Siôn discusses Nyman's early Bell Set and 1–100, emphasizing their use of ‘people process’. The term is borrowed from Nyman's study (ap Siôn sets out a useful ‘cosmology’ of various types of experimental music on page 36), yet there occasionally seems to be some confusion between specifically minimalist and other experimental kinds of process. At one moment he writes that 1–100 operates ‘through the application of a minimalist aesthetic – setting up a process and allowing it to run its course’, whereas he later describes the piece as ‘another example of a “people process”, one where each performer must remain steadfastly independent of the other’ (47). This seems to undermine his earlier emphasis on the distinction in Nyman's ‘cosmology’ (36) between various forms of process for the sake of aligning Nyman with the American minimalists.

Ap Siôn also considers the vernacular in Nyman's music, exploring strands of congruence such as the Portsmouth Sinfonia, Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, and pop music, and highlights the significance during this time of Nyman's first encounters with Cornelius Cardew. Ap Siôn suggests that Cardew's politics can be considered influential on the Michael Nyman Band and is keen to interpret the band as a symbol of ‘proletarian-style “collective accountability” and unity of purpose’ (18). According to ap Siôn, Nyman's popular and economic success, rather than undermining a political stance aligned with Cardew's politics, is in fact ‘subverting the cultural fabric and dynamic of late capitalism from within’ (18). While it is possible that Nyman, given his extended involvement with the British experimentalists, had sympathies with Cardew's politics, such arguments seem insubstantial and implausible when measured against the stated aims of groups such as De Volharding or, indeed, the Scratch Orchestra itself. Curiously, no mention is made of the Scratch Orchestra's draft constitution (1969). Written by Cardew, the constitution outlines ‘repertory categories’ and instructs members to keep a ‘Scratchbook’ (a notebook containing various ideas for accompaniments).Footnote ² Significantly, the second of Cardew's categories is titled ‘Popular Classics’ (the first appendix to the manifesto lists some of the eligible titles, which include works by Beethoven, Cage, Mozart, Schoenberg, and Brahms). While ap Siôn refers to the inclusion of these borrowed materials in passing – at greatest length while discussing similar activities by the Campiello Band (84) – it seems as though a potentially significant influence on Nyman's selection of sources has been overlooked.

Ap Siôn sets out the basis of his approach to intertextuality in Chapter 4, modelling it closely on the theories of Gérard Genette and, in particular, his use of the term bricoleur (59).Footnote ³ Genette's influence manifests itself in ap Siôn's decision to limit his exploration of Nyman's intertextuality to musical sources, echoing Genette's notion of a closed literary system. When considering later works, ap Siôn also refers to John Frow's theory of intratextuality (though he replaces the term with ‘inter-referentiality’ to avoid confusion) – a method of matrix-formation that provides a text with ‘a set of semantic co-ordinates plotted across a larger intertextual field’ (61) and which can be identified in Nyman's more self-referential works. As a starting point ap Siôn considers an ‘inventory’ of quotation methods drawn up by Nyman himself, and begins to relate it to the various types of intertextuality outlined by Genette. However, Nyman's list seems overwrought, and ap Siôn therefore outlines his own independent list of intertextual methods. He first distinguishes between abstract intertextuality (involving stylistic allusion rather than detailed quotation) and referential intertextuality (involving the deliberate quotation of a musical source). Abstract intertextuality is divided further, into ‘general (non-specific)’ functions (for example, the use of certain instrumental combinations to evoke style periods) and ‘specific’ functions (such as dance forms). Similarly, referential intertextuality is considered in terms of two distinct types: paternal (involving the introduction of quotations from other composers or sources), which can function either extrinsically (passively) or intrinsically (actively); and maternal (quotations that are allowed to develop and generate subsequent material). Ap Siôn also notes that ‘the unity of Nyman's entire output is tied to the concept of the work as a family of associations. Within this unity, external factors – outside, referential texts – are admitted and employed. Indeed the transformation of this body of work is replenished and reanimated through the use of specifically “referential” intertexts’ (78). Ap Siôn thus aligns Nyman's catalogue of references with Frow's matrix of intratextual references within an intertextual space. Interestingly, there are times when ap Siôn's descriptions of abstract intertextuality seem to stray closer to a description of ‘the composer's voice’ than to anything more tangible. Tellingly, the majority of the detailed analyses that follow seem to identify referential intertextuality.

Ap Siôn first applies his intertextual methodology to the products of Nyman's collaborative phase with Peter Greenaway, in which he identifies six sets of relations between film and music: coexisting function, primary function, prefatory function, commentary function, diegetic function, and subsidiary function. He also maps out a genealogy of inter-referentiality between various sources and the scores themselves (89), which goes some way towards illuminating the networks of inter-referentiality that operate here. Ap Siôn acknowledges that much has been left out of the diagram, which omits reference to certain works derived from film soundtracks and fails to differentiate between the various kinds of quotation and how they might be experienced by listeners. But just as problematic is the diagram's arborescent structure: deliberately laid out to resemble a family tree, it is too unidirectional in nature, with, for example, source leading to score leading to further score leading to subsidiary work. In reality it is just as likely that a listener will discover a source through the score that quotes it (Nyman is open about the sources of his material in liner and programme notes), and therefore a less hierarchical presentation, more like ap Siôn's earlier ‘cosmology’ of Nyman's experimental types (36), might have invited a more open reading.

To demonstrate some of the references laid out in the diagram, ap Siôn gives a detailed account of Nyman's use of a Purcell-derived ground bass in The Draughtsman's Contract, an example that enables him to address the question of parody in Nyman's music. If there is a parodic impulse in Nyman's music, he concludes, it aligns itself with Fredric Jameson's postmodern styling of neutral, ‘blank’ parody.Footnote ⁴ He also notes the marked difference between the earlier ‘narrative films’ and the later Drowning by Numbers, arguing that the music's function here is more metatextual, directing the viewer's critical attention to certain aspects of the action on screen. Turning to the later films, ap Siôn draws on Chris Cutler's commentary on plunderphonics and his typology of sources: total importation, partial importation, sources irrelevant, and sources untraceable.Footnote ⁵ Ap Siôn argues that ‘Cutler's partial or total importations are certainly present in [Nyman's] work. Inevitably there also exist some irrelevant or untraceable varieties, suggesting that at times identifying the intertextual basis of a work does not always cast light on its function, although it may help explain some of its mechanisms’ (110). This comment is crucial to questions of how one is to read an intertext, particularly in relation to Nyman's later works, such as Facing Goya and the last of the Nyman/Greenaway collaborations, Prospero's Books, which is in one sense the ultimate metatextual and intra-referential soundtrack from Nyman's output. However, ap Siôn also observes that the intertextual elements found in Nyman's earlier work are almost entirely lost to self-referentiality, and this raises questions about the potential implosion of intertext: can layer upon layer of self-quotation eradicate any notion of ‘source’?

Chapter 6 explores the function of very specific forms of quotation in the opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Here Nyman uses quotation in a way that correlates directly with the information contained in Oliver Sacks's case study of the patient,Footnote ⁶ whose confusion arising from visual agnosia seems to have been tempered by his love of Schumann's Dichterliebe. However, the relationship between that source and the manner of Nyman's quotation of it is somewhat overlooked in favour of a detailed analysis of the musical material (both original and quoted) in terms of Lerdahl and Jackendoff's generative tonal theory.Footnote ⁷ This approach seems to run at a tangent to the rest of the study, obscuring important questions regarding the methods and contexts of assimilation in the opera. More effective is ap Siôn's analysis of the ‘eye-test’ scene, where an examination of the processes that govern the repetition of Schumann's original material is married well to an account of the way Nyman's manipulation of it, moving further towards fragmentation and then disintegration, illustrates the growing confusion of the opera's central character, Dr P.

A study of the string quartets follows in Chapter 7, and interestingly ap Siôn here rejects a ‘generic analytical methodology’ as being of limited use, adopting instead a ‘comparative approach’ (149). This is followed by a detailed analysis of the First String Quartet, which considers metric modulation and form as vehicles for the various sources of quotation. The other string quartets are considered in lesser detail, but ap Siôn concludes that within this genre a ‘meaningful exchange of signifiers’ can take place only if the inter-referential sources are known, and that such factors ‘serve to consolidate the primary position of the composer rather than to complexify it’ (179).

Chapter 8 returns to film music to consider the function of the soundtrack of The Piano. The score of The Piano functions on three levels, made distinct through instrumentation: the solo piano takes on the diegetic function, the orchestra represents non-diegetic material, and the two combined indicate what ap Siôn calls the ‘quasi-diegetic’ function, which mediates between the other two and thus reflects ‘the music's dual role at both conscious and subconscious levels’ (188). When considering the use of Scottish folk melodies as source material, ap Siôn explores processes of augmentation and paraphrase, again often likening the resultant music to American minimalism. However, the way in which Nyman appropriates minimalist techniques ‘for his own European musical ends’ ultimately creates ‘an unorthodox synthesis which parallels the film's paradoxical world’ (191).

Finally, Chapter 9 considers one of Nyman's more recent works, Facing Goya (2000). Ap Siôn situates Goya within a later period of Nyman's output that deals in large-scale works with a greater emphasis on self-quotation. He outlines the ways in which Facing Goya makes significant use of an earlier Nyman opera, Vital Statistics, but without addressing in any detail the issues surrounding the earlier work's withdrawal. While ap Siôn calls this borrowing ‘mass inter-referential migration’ and ‘opera within opera’, a less generous assessment might be the lazy rehashing of old material that no longer exists in the public domain. Facing Goya again raises questions about how intertextuality can function when the source becomes unavailable (recall ap Siôn's earlier conclusion, when considering the string quartets, that sources should be ‘known’ in order to function correctly). Might the postmodern trend for a rejection of the masterwork and the foregrounding of the intertext lead us, paradoxically, to focus even more on a composer's ‘voice’, even when that voice is undermined by later works from the same composer? Ap Siôn closes this chapter by observing that Nyman's more recent work has become more ‘transparent’ (211) as it makes less and less use of quotation, but he does not question the causes or consequences of this. Once this core function has been removed from Nyman's music, does it leave behind anything more than a commercially driven empty vessel? While much of the detail ap Siôn explores from Nyman's early career highlights strong links with experimentalism, these seem to be overruled by a desire to make Nyman fit the minimalist box: a categorization that, if applicable at all, seems justified only as Nyman becomes increasingly self-referential and the music increasingly surface-oriented. An intertextual reading would surely allow for the possibility that minimalism has become a source of stylistic or genre quotation for Nyman without the composer ever really adhering to the dogmas of its original aesthetic.

Ap Siôn's brief conclusion highlights the way in which Nyman's music, in foregrounding the function of quotation, is influenced by and also influences the source material. Perhaps more could have been made of this dual function throughout the book, and particularly in the layout of the genealogy. While ap Siôn situates this study within postmodern discourse, a consideration of Nyman's commercial motivations and his engagement with the production side of the industry is almost entirely absent, perhaps for fear of making him seem too populist. Also, since this is the first book-length study of Nyman's music, a more comprehensive summary of how his writings, compositions, and related activities intersect might have been welcome. When such information does appear (for example, on page 26), the facts illustrate ap Siôn's arguments well, but are frustrating in their relatively limited chronological purview. Ap Siôn acknowledges that this study does not present ‘the “whole story”’ (213), yet perhaps there are areas that demanded more attention in the context of this intertextual focus.

More striking still throughout the book is the avoidance of engagement with what ap Siôn described at the start as ‘the inherently “textual” characteristics of Nyman's musical language’ (xvii). This deliberate exclusion, while it aids the clarity of his focus on intertextual elements, also restricts his ability to locate Nyman's aesthetics in relation to both experimentalism and minimalism. Ap Siôn acknowledges that Nyman's collaborative projects and the later works, which place ‘increasingly less emphasis on intertextual and inter-referential aspects’ (xvii), demand further attention – and such attention will no doubt ultimately add further and more malleable layers of interpretation to ap Siôn's initial intertextual forays, though perhaps in a manner that undermines some of the composer–authorial emphasis that emerges from this study. However, these are all issues that ap Siôn gives the impression of recognizing, being careful to reject the notion that his book ‘be understood as “the last word”’ (xviii). To return to his introductory question, ‘What are we supposed to make of [Nyman's music], and what is Nyman really trying to say?’, one might argue that the question itself jars with the intertextual approach that ap Siôn has chosen. To situate Nyman as he does, on the cusp of minimalism and experimentalism, modernism and postmodernism, is perhaps to point to a more open reading of the intertext – one that goes beyond Genette's closed systems of reference. Perhaps the importance of Nyman's activities lies as much in the questions he raises about authorship, collective interpretative memory, and modes of response. If this is the case, then ‘what Nyman is trying to say’ becomes just one more weave of the text.