From Enigma to a prime minister's apology: the story of 'A Man From The Future', Pet Shop Boys' 'musical memorial' to Alan Turing
A work written in 2012–13 and premiered at the BBC Proms in 2014 finally becomes an album this Friday, in eight tracks that tell the life of the mathematician persecuted for being gay.
Foto: Divulgação/Parlophone via Classic PopPet Shop Boys release 'A Man From The Future' this Friday (Oct. 9) via Parlophone — but the record's story began more than a decade ago. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe created the work in 2012 and 2013 with Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing's biographer and author of 'Alan Turing: The Enigma'. The goal, in the duo's words, was to make 'a musical memorial' to the mathematician who helped break German codes in World War II and is considered one of the fathers of computing.
The piece premiered in July 2014 at a late-night BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall, with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers. That night, actress Juliet Stevenson narrated Hodges' text, Tennant sang in the choir and Lowe manned the electronics. The eight sections trace Turing's life from Cambridge to Bletchley Park and through his 1952 conviction for 'gross indecency', when, to avoid prison, he accepted hormone injections that caused him severe physical and mental distress. Turing died in 1954.
For the album, the duo reworked everything with more electronics. Sven Helbig, who co-produces the record, rewrote the orchestration for eight strings, played by the Manchester Camerata Octet, and boys from the Manchester Grammar School choir sing on four tracks. Stevenson returns as narrator, now with text adapted from Hodges' book and extended by him and Tennant. The work had its world premiere on BBC Radio 6 Music and Radio 3 last Sunday (Oct. 4) and a listening event on Wednesday (Oct. 8) at IWM North in Manchester.
The tracklist runs 'Natural wonders every child should know', 'He dreamed of machines', 'The Enigma', 'Other ranks', 'The memory and the control', 'The trial', 'Only in his death' and 'A man from the future'. The closing track carries the project's political weight: it includes the official apology made by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 and the posthumous royal pardon granted to Turing in 2013 — a reminder, as the text already said at the 2014 premiere, of the many men convicted for being gay who were never pardoned.
