A Timely British Flavor at the 1988 Ojai Music Festival

With astrology suddenly front-page news, the presence of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies as composer-in-residence at the Ojai Music Festival this year (Friday through Sunday) is especially timely.

For years, the British composer-conductor has based many of his musical works on the medieval “magic squares”--arithmetic puzzles whose columns of figures, when added vertically, horizontally and diagonally, produce the same sum.

The opening section of his 1975 “Ave Maris Stella,” for instance, to be performed Saturday afternoon, derives its note values and rhythms from the magic square of the moon.

“The magic square has astrological overtones and may go back further than the medieval period--I’ve found Islamic ones,” Davies said during a visit to Los Angeles earlier this season to attend the local premiere of his Violin Concerto by Isaac Stern and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“It’s a way of arranging numbers to form patterns and relationships, like 9 sets of 9 that equal 81, which is the magic square of the moon.

“So in ‘Ave Maris Stella,’ 9 times 9 is the note length played on the cello. The square gives you phrase lengths of a particular recurring number and thus assures a symmetry. The whole work then develops that idea.”

Widely considered the most influential British composer since Benjamin Britten, the 53-year-old Davies will see two of his works given their U.S. premieres here: “Into the Labyrinth” (1983) and Concerto for oboe and chamber orchestra, first performed in April by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Presiding over the festival as music director this year is Nicholas McGegan, the 38-year-old leader of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco. Though both are British--Davies hails from Manchester, McGegan from Cambridge--they will work together for the first time this week.

The theme of the 1988 festival is “Fanciful Legends.” Said McGegan: “That came about in part because we wanted to do Sir Peter’s music, which is often based on Celtic myths. Almost every concert will have at least one work based on a myth or legend.” In addition to the five concerts at Libbey Bowl, there will be three performances of Davies’ children’s opera, “Cinderella,” at the Ojai Valley Arts Center.

The Camelot legend comes to Ojai in the festival’s opening concert Friday night, when the sole work will be Purcell’s “King Arthur.”

McGegan will conduct soprano Nancy Armstrong, tenor Paul Elliot, baritone James Busterud, narrator Malcolm McDowell, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and members of the Santa Barbara Choral Society in what he calls “a romp, a very amusing work. The music is gorgeous and the text, by Dryden, is often quite naughty.”

The Saturday afternoon program lists the Highland Park-based California E.A.R. Unit and Friends performing two of Davies’ works: “Ave Maris Stella” and “Purcell: Fantasia on a Ground and Two Pavans,” a treatment of the pavane dance form, ending with a fox trot.

Davies will be on the podium throughout the Saturday evening performance, directing the Festival Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven’s Third Symphony (“Eroica”) and his own compositions, “Into the Labyrinth” with Scottish tenor Neil Mackie and “An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise.”

Both works reflect life on the remote Scottish islands of Orkney, where Davies has resided in relative isolation six to eight months of each year since 1971.

“The text of ‘Into the Labyrinth,’ by the best Orkney poet, George Mackay Brown, deals with the history of Orkney as seen through scientific progress in relation to the elements--earth, air, water, fire,” Davies noted.

“An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise,” which Davies says has become his signature piece, was composed for John Williams and the Boston Pops in 1984. It was inspired by an all-night wedding Davies attended and the dawn he encountered en route home.

McGegan will return Sunday morning, conducting his Philharmonia Baroque on original period instruments in Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 4, Rameau’s Dance Suite from “Pygmalion” and the complete “Water Music” of Handel.

The closing concert, Sunday afternoon at 5, features what McGegan calls “the jewel in the crown” of festival repertory. Davies will conduct soloist Stephen Colburn and the Ojai Festival Chamber Orchestra in his own Oboe Concerto.

Also on the program are Martinu’s “Toccata e due canzoni,” conducted by Diane Wittry, and Stravinsky’s “Petrushka,” conducted by McGegan.

“The Martinu bridges the gap between the Baroque period and the 20th Century,” McGegan said, “as it’s written by a contemporary composer but in the style of the Baroque era. As for ‘Petrushka,’ it scares me. I’ve done a lot of Stravinsky, but not this. The rhythms are very complex, and to someone used to 17th- and 18th-Century music, it’s daunting.”