TWENTY - SEVEN HEAVENS: INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD CAUSTON, COMPOSER OF THE EUYO'S COMMISSION TO CELEBRATE THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPICS

The EUYO is commissioning - for the very first time since the orchestra was founded - a new work to celebrate the London Olympics, as part of the PRS for Music Foundation's New Music 20x12 programme (there are twenty commissions in total, each lasting 12 minutes, and all of which will be performed during the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad). The EUYO has invited Richard Causton - "one of the finest of the new generation of British composers" (Tim Ashley, The Guardian) - to write a concerto for orchestra. The EUYO gratefully acknowledges the support of the RVW Trust and the Britten-Pears Foundation.

Richard joined the EUYO for a few days to get a feel for the orchestra and try out some of his ideas. We caught up with him to find out how he was getting on.

"It's very exciting to be part of this because to start with, the twenty commissions cover all sorts of different kinds of music - there's jazz, a string quartet, folk music, Asian music and some orchestral music as well; and I think it's very fitting to celebrate the Olympics in this way, with a great diversity of different kinds of music.

Obviously the Olympic Games are an international event and it's particularly nice that the orchestra that I'm writing for is an international orchestra. Most orchestras and ensembles have a geographic anchor: there's the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, etc, which have roots very definitely in those cities to which they belong; whereas the EUYO belongs to the whole European continent and as such it's a wonderful mix of nationalities - which I think is very exciting.

Obviously the mix of nationalities in this orchestra doesn't quite reflect the mix of nationalities in the Olympics, but probably the age group of the players in this orchestra is quite close to the age group of the athletes taking part in the Games. I see a real link there - between the striving of the athlete and the striving of the musician and the artist to achieve as close to perfection as is humanly possible.

The piece I'm writing has as its working title Twenty-Seven Heavens. This idea is taken from a poem by William Blake - Jerusalem, Emanation of the Giant Albion - which was an enormous work that he was engaged with for about twenty years until near the end of his life, and there are wonderful things in it. To start with, it refers to all sorts of areas of London - including Stratford, Hackney, Bow - places in East London which are very close to where the Olympics are taking place. But there's also this ongoing poetic idea (which comes from an earlier work) of the twenty-seven heavens, which are kind of levels of obscurity which the individual has to penetrate to realise the vision of Eternity. It so happens that there are twenty-seven nationalities represented in this orchestra (according to the twenty-seven nations states of the European Union), so it fitted together very nicely. I also very much like the kind of Libertarian outlook of the poem and the incredible compassion in it, which is next door to the most extraordinary kinds of imaginative imagery. Blake's imagination is very psychedelic - as you can see from his pictures as well - and the colour and intensity in the poem give me lots to work with in terms of instrumental colour and sound colour in the new piece that I'm writing.

I'm still very early on with the new piece. I'm sort of taking soundings - it's a reserch period, if you like. I'm listening to the orchestra, getting a feel for how they work and doing some basic work on the kind of harmony that I want to use, the kind of instrumental combinations I want to use and so on. The bulk of the piece is going to be written in the next twelve months and then this time next year - in spring 2012 - I hope to be able to workshop some sections with the orchestra in rehearsal, get some feedback from the players, and see how things go.

Writing for orchestra is an absolute thrill, not just because of the number of people involved, but because of the variety of different colours that are available.

There are so many instruments and when you consider that one player might play three instruments - e.g. a flute player might play piccolo and alto flute as well as the flute itself - there's an infinity of different colours that you can get. But there's also this sense of an orchestra as a very big team - bigger than any individual Olympic team in any particular sport (you don't have groups of 140 people very often!) and there's something very exciting when an orchestra plays grandness and people coming together I think there's something unioque and very special about orchestral music.

Orchestral music is very challenging to write, not least because one or two seconds of music might include several hundred notes. I mean: there will probably be forty or fifty different parts in this piece for all the different instruments. The score, if you can imagine it vertically, is very big. The music might be going very fast, but to write it is a little bit like doing cartoon animation: the amount of work that goes into every single second of the finished piece is enormous. So it's a very big job, and one has to take great care not to get sidetracked by the thickness, the density of the music, and to make sure that it flows in time in a natural way.

I want to write a celebratory piece: the Olympics are a wonderful event which one wants to celebrate! But on the other hand, to write one which is merely a glorified fanfare would, I think, be a waste of an opportunity. The piece - whilst being celebratory - has to be honest and it has to... allow for some kind of psychological complexity, maybe having more than one dimension. Otherwise, it are great pieces which have been written as celebrations, but which are nevertheless varied and have all sorts of different expression in them. So I hope to be able to write something which, whilst fulfilling the brief of being a celebration - which is very important - will nevertheless still be interesting to listen to in five years' time, ten years' time, and so on.

New Music 20x12 is an independent commissioning programme initiated by Jillian Barker and David Cohen, and delivered by PRS for Music Foundation in partnership with the BBC, The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, and NMC Recordings. Special thanks to the RVW Trust for making this New Music 20x12 commission possible.

New Music 20x12 is generously supported by the following committed patrons and funders: Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, John S. Cohen Foundation, PRS for Music Foundation, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Arts Council of Wales, Columbia Foundation Fund of the Capital Community Foundation, Incorporated Society of Musicians, Musicians Benevolent Fund, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, RVW Trust, Charlotte and Dennis Stevenson, Tolkien Trust, The Leche Trust, The Bliss Trust, Finzi Trust, the Worshipful Company of Musicians, Lilian Slowe, John and Ann Tusa, John Wates Charitable Trust, Richard Walduck, Honeymead Arts Trust, and Sir Anthony Cleaver.

New Music 20x12 is a UK wide programme which consists of twenty outstanding new works, each lasting 12 minutes, commissioned to feature centre stage of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. New Music 20x12 commissions will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and tour the UK, enabling as many people as possible to enjoy excellent new music as part of our celebrations of the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

These commissions are full of the energy, hope and excitement that will emanate from across the Cultural Olympiad and the Games themselves. They are inspired by the dynamism of Olympic and Paralympic sports, the passion of human endeavour so central to the Games, and the once in a lifetime opportunity of creating a musical work contributing to a global celebration.