David Matthews SYMPHONY NO. 8 First Performance 17/04/15

[ahinton]

Yes I mean that I "find the melodic shapes too heavily dominated by the underlying harmony " and that the harmonic movement itself, or any other parameter that might be in operation is not interesting enough to compensate it

Thank you for this; that's what I thought you meant but I wanted to ensure that I'd not gotten the wrong end of the stick.

By transcend I guess I mean that one has a strong sense of a horizontal line as an independent entity.

Again, that's rather what I'd assumed but, in so doing, I wonder why the notion that a horizontal line should exist independently from any harmonic underpinning (when it has any) be regarded as some kind of virtue or necessity? Surely that has its place in certain contexts and not in others, rather than applying across the board? One could argue that there are places in, for example, Bach, Chopin and Mahler where melody and harmony appear to be relatively independent of one another and ample examples in the same composers' work where the two are more mutually dependent.

[hedgehog]

I wonder why the notion that a horizontal line should exist independently from any harmonic underpinning (when it has any) be regarded as some kind of virtue or necessity? Surely that has its place in certain contexts and not in others, rather than applying across the board? One could argue that there are places in, for example, Bach, Chopin and Mahler where melody and harmony appear to be relatively independent of one another and ample examples in the same composers' work where the two are more mutually dependent.

No it's not a question of this being a virtue or a necessity, but when I feel that something is distinctly lacking and that I feel the melody is wanting to have a function but it isn't functioning, but also that that lack of function isn't an intention of the music (and this music is fairly clear in what area it is trying to operate) then I do question it.

I'll stop here ahinton.

[ahinton]

No it's not a question of this being a virtue or a necessity, but when I feel that something is distinctly lacking and that I feel the melody is wanting to have a function but it isn't functioning, but also that that lack of function isn't an intention of the music (and this music is fairly clear in what area it is trying to operate) then I do question it.

I'll stop here ahinton.

OK! I think I now understand where you're coming from on this, even though I happen to hear it differently (as you'll already have gathered!)...

[Serial_Apologist]

OK! I think I now understand where you're coming from on this, even though I happen to hear it differently (as you'll already have gathered!)...

I would surmise Charles Ives's music to be more to hedgehog's taste.

Personally I love it when middle parts move independently of what conventionally is being heard as the or a main melodic line, and in such a way as to circumvent moves towards cadential resolution - as happens from time to time in complex contrapuntal passages in Mahler, and in Schoenberg's music of around the time of the First Chamber Symphony. The music at such points has become so chromatic that what key, or even whereabouts one is in relation to any downbeat, otherwise acting as a pivot in listener orientation, has become ambiguous, and the extension of such practice to the point where either every "part" assumes the melodic role or not, depending on whether of not the composer wants to highlight primacy in one part over another by means of dynamic emphasis or instrumentation; but in the former case any sense or "directionality" is suspended placing one in "timelessness" according to governing principles being suspended until they are re-instated by means of some sort of re-convergence. Or so it might have seemed to first-night hearers of Wagner's "Tristan", though today, conditioned as of course we are by experiential discontinuities or interruptions to more episodic listening, we note relative cadential resolutions taking place throughout "Tristan", whereas the harmonic resolutions in the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony themselves come as something of a shock when listening again to the work in the light of the music which this composer went straight on to compose.

Those of us who've managed to acclimatise ourselves to post-tonal musics have to remind ourselves that many people sincerely devoted to most eras of music find it hard to stomach atonality, conditioned as they are by 400 + years of major-minor diatonic procedures with their attendant metrical and rhythmic conventions not to know that these only came about in the latter stages of the European Renaissance, before which the nearest antecedents to the "classical" concert situation was probably listening in churches to devotional music in which areas of harmonic stability werer much less defined by clearcut rhythmic or metrical signpostings and benchmarks that happened subsequently, bringing the listening experience more in line with attendance to the moment as advocated in spiritual traditions centred on meditational practice focussed on present-centred awareness: mindfulness.

Ironically one of Schoenberg's emerging concerns was in re-integrating the vertical, i.e. the harmonic, with the melodic, the horizontal, and in the process he subtly re-introduced conventions such as cadential resolutions in order to demonstrate his continuity with tradition, claimed by others as having been breached in the abandonment of return to the tonic. All Schoenberg and others following similar paths were really doing was shifting the goalposts; in the end it is only the frame that defines the outer limits of the picture, and the truth that any picture is one person's angle being given expression aligns the identification with the act, and the act with whether or not it can be identified with as proclaiming what we hold in common, conventions permitting that such is what art is for, as opposed to getting me to part with some of my money, and rather than where that act is aimed.

If we hold that ideal in mind we loosen our grip on the need for tidy, dominant-into-tonic endings in which everyone lived happily ever after until the next recession came along!

[ahinton]

I would surmise Charles Ives's music to be more to hedgehog's taste.

Personally I love it when middle parts move independently of what conventionally is being heard as the or a main melodic line, and in such a way as to circumvent moves towards cadential resolution - as happens from time to time in complex contrapuntal passages in Mahler, and in Schoenberg's music of around the time of the First Chamber Symphony. The music at such points has become so chromatic that what key, or even whereabouts one is in relation to any downbeat, otherwise acting as a pivot in listener orientation, has become ambiguous, and the extension of such practice to the point where either every "part" assumes the melodic role or not, depending on whether of not the composer wants to highlight primacy in one part over another by means of dynamic emphasis or instrumentation; but in the former case any sense or "directionality" is suspended placing one in "timelessness" according to governing principles being suspended until they are re-instated by means of some sort of re-convergence. Or so it might have seemed to first-night hearers of Wagner's "Tristan", though today, conditioned as of course we are by experiential discontinuities or interruptions to more episodic listening, we note relative cadential resolutions taking place throughout "Tristan", whereas the harmonic resolutions in the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony themselves come as something of a shock when listening again to the work in the light of the music which this composer went straight on to compose.

Those of us who've managed to acclimatise ourselves to post-tonal musics have to remind ourselves that many people sincerely devoted to most eras of music find it hard to stomach atonality, conditioned as they are by 400 + years of major-minor diatonic procedures with their attendant metrical and rhythmic conventions not to know that these only came about in the latter stages of the European Renaissance, before which the nearest antecedents to the "classical" concert situation was probably listening in churches to devotional music in which areas of harmonic stability werer much less defined by clearcut rhythmic or metrical signpostings and benchmarks that happened subsequently, bringing the listening experience more in line with attendance to the moment as advocated in spiritual traditions centred on meditational practice focussed on present-centred awareness: mindfulness.

Ironically one of Schoenberg's emerging concerns was in re-integrating the vertical, i.e. the harmonic, with the melodic, the horizontal, and in the process he subtly re-introduced conventions such as cadential resolutions in order to demonstrate his continuity with tradition, claimed by others as having been breached in the abandonment of return to the tonic. All Schoenberg and others following similar paths were really doing was shifting the goalposts; in the end it is only the frame that defines the outer limits of the picture, and the truth that any picture is one person's angle being given expression aligns the identification with the act, and the act with whether or not it can be identified with as proclaiming what we hold in common, conventions permitting that such is what art is for, as opposed to getting me to part with some of my money, and rather than where that act is aimed.

If we hold that ideal in mind we loosen our grip on the need for tidy, dominant-into-tonic endings in which everyone lived happily ever after until the next recession came along!

A typically perceptive, intelligent and thought-provoking piece from you for which very many thanks indeed.

Your examples from Mahler and Schönberg actually bolster such argument as I have here, though, in that the cut and thrust of all that you describe in works such as the latter's seminal First Chamber Symphony embraces both the independence of melodic line from other musical constituents as well as the confluence thereof and, I think, it is with this constant shifting-sands conflict between the independence and coming together of these things that Schönberg in particular empowered his music of that period; in that First Chamber Symphony, the impact of these almost simultaneous disjunctures and conjunctures is somehow exacerbated by the very fact that, as this is no longer an orchestral symphony nor a piece of intimate chamber music, yet another layer of conflict is added to the whole, to marvellous effect.

[Richard Barrett]

Those of us who've managed to acclimatise ourselves to post-tonal musics have to remind ourselves that many people sincerely devoted to most eras of music find it hard to stomach atonality, conditioned as they are by 400 + years of major-minor diatonic procedures with their attendant metrical and rhythmic conventions not to know that these only came about in the latter stages of the European Renaissance

Quite. But I don't think that the issue with Matthews is tonality/atonality but one of what I previously described as denial. There are many composers working today in a tonal syntactic framework whose work nevertheless emanates an awareness of it "relativity" in the context of twentieth-century developments - not just much music that comes under the "minimalist" heading but also off the top of my head names like Bent Sørensen, David Del Tredici, Kaija Saariaho, Howard Skempton maybe... whereas what you call "the need for tidy, dominant-into-tonic endings in which everyone lived happily ever after" irritates the hell out of me, it's musical conservatism in every sense.

[ahinton]

Quite. But I don't think that the issue with Matthews is tonality/atonality but one of what I previously described as denial.

OK, but in what exactly in his music do you find that this manifests itself? It doesn't strike me that he writes as he does as some kind of conscious or even subconscious reaction against different kinds of music and obviously he is well aware of many other kinds, so I remain somewhat puzzled as to the particular form that you feel this "denial" takes in his music.

There are many composers working today in a tonal syntactic framework whose work nevertheless emanates an awareness of it "relativity" in the context of twentieth-century developments - not just much music that comes under the "minimalist" heading but also off the top of my head names like Bent Sørensen, David Del Tredici, Kaija Saariaho, Howard Skempton maybe... whereas what you call "the need for tidy, dominant-into-tonic endings in which everyone lived happily ever after" irritates the hell out of me, it's musical conservatism in every sense.

Sure, but there's precious little of that kind of thing in Matthews, is there? I don't say that he never has recouse to such things, of course, but they're not the kinds of thing that I would readily associate with the ways in which he thinks musically.

[Serial_Apologist]

Quite. But I don't think that the issue with Matthews is tonality/atonality but one of what I previously described as denial. There are many composers working today in a tonal syntactic framework whose work nevertheless emanates an awareness of it "relativity" in the context of twentieth-century developments - not just much music that comes under the "minimalist" heading but also off the top of my head names like Bent Sørensen, David Del Tredici, Kaija Saariaho, Howard Skempton maybe... whereas what you call "the need for tidy, dominant-into-tonic endings in which everyone lived happily ever after" irritates the hell out of me, it's musical conservatism in every sense.

I agree - finding it strange that so resourceful a modernist working broadly in early Ligeti's slipstream as Kaija has kind of given up on that soundworld. A composer-friend of mine said that his feeling was that A Goehr's return to what he himself agreed to be a more tonal soundworld, was "political". Edwin Roxburgh who was present in the room didn't disagree, and it might have been helpful had one of them elaborated!

BTW I think Elizabeth Lutyens would have strongly identified with your closing comment!

[Richard Barrett]

I agree - finding it strange that so resourceful a modernist working broadly in early Ligeti's slipstream as Kaija has kind of given up on that soundworld.

Of course here are plenty of composers who have backtracked from a more "modernist" outlook (often as if it were some kind of ill-fitting school uniform they were supposedly forced to wear before they reached "maturity"!), but at least in her case it seems more to me like a shift in emphasis, retaining things like electronic sound-transformations and microtonality, but in a different harmonic/textural context. On the other hand I can't say I'm so keen on her recent work, with some exceptions like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU_G-EGWRsw

[ahinton]

I agree - finding it strange that so resourceful a modernist working broadly in early Ligeti's slipstream as Kaija has kind of given up on that soundworld. A composer-friend of mine said that his feeling was that A Goehr's return to what he himself agreed to be a more tonal soundworld, was "political". Edwin Roxburgh who was present in the room didn't disagree, and it might have been helpful had one of them elaborated!

I cannot speak for the motivations of either Saariaho or Goehr in this context, but the latter case, if true, would indeed be sad (assuming that one knows what it was supposed to mean); yes, some elaboration would indeed have been welcome there! There are other such cases - Rochberg is just one example. The only valid reason for a composer to move in different directions like this is an inner motivation to do so that cannot in all conscience be denied (sorry to raise "denial" again, but...)

BTW I think Elizabeth Lutyens would have strongly identified with your closing comment!

I don't doubt that she would, though quite whereabouts in her cheek her tonuge might have been when doing so might remain open to question, especially given that I recall a Welsh composer years ago having a red ring drawn around one chord in a piece that he'd shown to her when seeking her advice and the words "dull tonal references" written above it when its context was a passage of rapid semiquavers for string trio (I think) in which at one point the notes G#, E and B just happened to coincide(!)...

[Serial_Apologist]

Of course here are plenty of composers who have backtracked from a more "modernist" outlook (often as if it were some kind of ill-fitting school uniform they were supposedly forced to wear before they reached "maturity"!), but at least in her case it seems more to me like a shift in emphasis, retaining things like electronic sound-transformations and microtonality, but in a different harmonic/textural context. On the other hand I can't say I'm so keen on her recent work, with some exceptions like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU_G-EGWRsw

Thanks for finding that link Richard - beautiful music.

The position confronting the radical composer who wishes today to "expand the bounds of the permissible in the empire of sound" may not be so different from what it was for much of the 20th century. Then as now there were reactionaries unaccepting of advances; radicals usually allegedly rejecting previous models; and mainstreamers such as Honegger taking from both sides of the divide. I am somewhere in the middle ground of the listenership, a position from which to luxuriate which also includes people I would strongly disagree with, who are unable/unwilling to experience further than Britten, whose middle ground position looked forwards in its selective dependence on the 1920s and 1930s equivalents of todays radicals.

There are reputations to be made in the mainstream arts establishments if one times things right. I guess this is what my composer-friend meant when referring to "political" moves.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/apr/16/contemporary-music-guide-magnus-lindberg

[jayne lee wilson]

Quite. But I don't think that the issue with Matthews is tonality/atonality but one of what I previously described as denial. There are many composers working today in a tonal syntactic framework whose work nevertheless emanates an awareness of it "relativity" in the context of twentieth-century developments - not just much music that comes under the "minimalist" heading but also off the top of my head names like Bent Sørensen, David Del Tredici, Kaija Saariaho, Howard Skempton maybe... whereas what you call "the need for tidy, dominant-into-tonic endings in which everyone lived happily ever after" irritates the hell out of me, it's musical conservatism in every sense.

The cliff-hanger ending (after a tango-for-a-scherzo) of David Matthews' 4th? The weirdly violent disruption in the 5th's first movement, Concerto/Grosso clashing with Symphony reminding you of Schnittke 4/5? (But a tighter, more cogent piece than the Schnittke with greater variety of mood); as for the 2nd and 6th, I find them such physically and emotionally confrontational (and ambiguous) works they're a challenge to get to the end of. As for the 3rd, yes, it ends calmly but - first, I can't see what has to be so "conservative" about that; and second, the one-movement structure is so rich, eventful and complex as to offset any thought of emotional complacency or "denial". Among many features it contains a minuet which is designedly undanceable, and a continually interrupted anti-sonata again of a strikingly ambiguous emotional valency.

There was a time, having musically grown up with the Glock/Boulez proms and much new music associated with that ethos, when I would have assented to a sneer someone once made towards Robert Simpson "doesn't he write tonal symphonies!?" Composers as diverse as Max Davies, Colin Matthews and Lutoslawski made me wonder what lies beyond Boulez, Birtwistle etc., but above all I missed hearing new symphonies. As David Matthews points out in the note to 2 & 6, the symphony in England didn't really get started till the 20th century anyway, so it has had a rich life here while almost dying out in Germany or Austria...

It may be both an advantage and a disadvantage being a mere music-lover, as distinct from a creator with more focussed desires and energies. We live among a mass of recorded data - "All time is eternally present" - in 2015, and all music seems to be present too; too much, too available, too cheap....
But what matters most to this mere musiclover is finding new music to explore; and just now I need music that has enough of the past, as well as the present or the future, to keep my emotional interest; that relates to the symphonic tradition to sound and feel, subjectively - meaningful.

(Of the composers you mention: I didn't enjoy what little I've heard of Del Tredici; huge fan of Saariaho - but prefer the earlier less "neo-tonal" works like Lichtbogen, Du Cristal, Solar etc.)

[Richard Barrett]

But what matters most to this mere musiclover is finding new music to explore; and just now I need music that has enough of the past, as

Well Jayne, I was only talking about DM's 8th, I don't know the others. And I take your point of course, apart from to say I wouldn't refer to "mere" musiclovers! I would have more to say about your thoughtful post, but it will have to wait a day or two owing to other commitments.

[ahinton]

The cliff-hanger ending (after a tango-for-a-scherzo) of David Matthews' 4th? The weirdly violent disruption in the 5th's first movement, Concerto/Grosso clashing with Symphony reminding you of Schnittke 4/5? (But a tighter, more cogent piece than the Schnittke with greater variety of mood); as for the 2nd and 6th, I find them such physically and emotionally confrontational (and ambiguous) works they're a challenge to get to the end of. As for the 3rd, yes, it ends calmly but - first, I can't see what has to be so "conservative" about that; and second, the one-movement structure is so rich, eventful and complex as to offset any thought of emotional complacency or "denial". Among many features it contains a minuet which is designedly undanceable, and an continually interrupted anti-sonata again of a strikingly ambiguous emotional valency.

There was a time, having musically grown up with the Glock/Boulez proms and much new music associated with that ethos, when I would have assented to a sneer someone once made towards Robert Simpson "doesn't he write tonal symphonies!?" Composers as diverse as Max Davies, Colin Matthews and Lutoslawski made me wonder what lies beyond Boulez, Birtwistle etc., but above all I missed hearing new symphonies. As David Matthews points out in the note to 2 & 6, the symphony in England didn't really get started till the 20th century anyway, so it has had a rich life here while almost dying out in Germany or Austria...

It may be both an advantage and a disadvantage being a mere music-lover, as distinct from a creator with more focussed desires and energies. We live among a mass of recorded data - "All time is eternally present" - in 2015, and all music seems to be present too; too much, too available, too cheap....
But what matters most to this mere musiclover is finding new music to explore; and just now I need music that has enough of the past, as well as the present or the future, to keep my emotional interest; that relates to the symphonic tradition to sound and feel, subjectively - meaningful.

(Of the composers you mention: I didn't enjoy what little I've heard of Del Tredici; huge fan of Saariaho - but prefer the earlier less "neo-tonal" works like Lichtbogen, Du Cristal, Solar etc.)

Thank you, Jayne, for this intense and thought provoking post!

[Roehre]

Thank you, Jayne, for this intense and thought provoking post!

Seconded