Steve Pratt talks to Nicola FeFanu about medieval music and making a stand for women.

WHEN she was teaching, composer and musician Nicola LeFanu became aware that women were getting a raw deal in the music world. "I'd had some success and it was up to me to stand up and speak for them," she says. "I was probably in my 30s and my pupils were starting to have their own careers. I became more aware of the problems they were having establishing themselves."

LeFanu, a music professor at York University, became active in the field of equal opportunity. It wasn't exclusively composers, but all female musicians who were having a hard time establishing themselves.

"There was a stage when composers were being hard done by, but it was really all musicians," she says. "Time affects these changes - you have to point out these things slowly and quietly. We have achieved some change by being prepared to speak out. My female students now have successful careers and young pupils of their own."

LeFanu is currently rehearsing her sixth opera, Light Passing, which will be premiered this month at the National Centre for Early Music, based in a medieval church in York. The chamber opera, based on the life of Pope Clement VI, was commissioned by BBC Radio 3, which will broadcast the piece next month.

Her new score uses contemporary music together with 14th century French music. She didn't know a lot about medieval music before embarking on the project, studying it to get a feel for the style.

"It's difficult but hugely enjoyable," she says. "Some of the medieval music is very beautiful. I spent a long time getting to know it and singing it myself. Once I was in that song world, I could write it."

She loves what she calls "the dreaming up stage", where she works with the librettist to shape the drama. She likes rehearsals too as the piece is made and comes to life.

The daughter of composer Elizabeth Maconchy, LeFanu has pursued the dual careers of teaching and composing. "When I was a small child I wanted to be a playwright and gradually that turned into being a composer. My mother never pushed it. She knew it was a very tough life and that unless you had an extraordinary urge, you shouldn't do it," she explains.

"Composing has always come first but that doesn't mean teaching, which I've always loved, gets short shrift. When you compose you are alone. It's a solitary thing." She likes to sing out loud while composing, although reckons she has a composer's voice rather than a performer's voice. "You have to understand the voice, so you sing. It's important to have a feeling of being a singer or actor, and I've always enjoyed being involved with theatre."

She spent much of her career in London before becoming head of music at York University. She enjoyed the move, finding Yorkshire very welcoming and the city a real musical community.

After eight years as head, she stepped down to just teach in the music department. "I love what I'm doing. It's a very special city and university which makes for a very rewarding job," she says.

Light Passing has a libretto by John Edmonds and is directed by Cathy Denford, who worked with LeFanu in 1998 on the children's opera, The Green Children.

One of the attractions of the project for LeFanu was that the life of Pope Clement VI, who was noted for his tolerance and patronage of the arts, had not been portrayed before. "Although it's set in the Middle Ages, his story deals with things we have to deal with today. He was preaching tolerance and dealing with religious fundamentalism," she says.

The production features baritone, Nicholas Folwell, as Clement, alongside singers and instrumentalists from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra's contemporary Ensemble 10/10, harpist Lucy Wakeford and percussionist Damien Harron. Clement as a boy is being played by Christopher Lakin, a chorister at York Minster, and another Minster chorister, Benedict Rowe, will play the altar boy.

l Light Passing is being performed at the National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, from October 28 to 30, tickets (01904) 658338, and will be broadcast on Radio 3 on November 27.

Published: 23/10/2004