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

[ahinton]

I don't think that's what anyone is doing. You say it's a work of art and not a manifesto, but a work of art is always to some extent a manifesto, and if the (in this case) composer ignores the fact then it becomes an involuntary manifesto, in this case for a negative, limited and wholly pessimistic view of what the possibilities of music are in the early 21st century. The only way DM is prepared or able to make his musical statement is by saying "no" to the entire evolution of musical thinking in the past almost-century. It seems to me that it's only in the present era that a composer can do that and still have listeners take his/her work seriously, that a work which shows such characteristics can pass for "contemporary music", and surely this says nothing good about present-day culture, whether one likes this music or not.

You make him sound like an enemy of the people - almost...

[Barbirollians]

I don't think that's what anyone is doing. You say it's a work of art and not a manifesto, but a work of art is always to some extent a manifesto, and if the (in this case) composer ignores the fact then it becomes an involuntary manifesto, in this case for a negative, limited and wholly pessimistic view of what the possibilities of music are in the early 21st century. The only way DM is prepared or able to make his musical statement is by saying "no" to the entire evolution of musical thinking in the past almost-century. It seems to me that it's only in the present era that a composer can do that and still have listeners take his/her work seriously, that a work which shows such characteristics can pass for "contemporary music", and surely this says nothing good about present-day culture, whether one likes this music or not.

Reads like musical totalitarianism - if you compose in a manner not like that accepted by modernist thinking you are reactionary and worthless . Same point as made by Wagner's disciples about Brahms ?

[Richard Barrett]

if you compose in a manner not like that accepted by modernist thinking you are reactionary and worthless

Where exactly did I say any of those things?

I don't know what you mean by "modernist thinking" but it isn't a phrase I've used; in fact I purposely cited a number of composers who are working in non-"modernist" idioms in a way which acknowledges the musical evolutions that Matthews ignores. Clearly Matthews' symphony couldn't be described as worthless since several contributors to this thread have described hearing it as an enriching experience. My point was that it's evidence of certain (yes, reactionary) tendencies in both music and culture more generally which I don't think can easily be denied, and which, as FG has eloquently said, evince a somewhat pessimistic outlook.

Please read my posts and don't put words in my mouth. Thank you.

[Richard Barrett]

'modern music' as three farts and a raspberry

An elegant and profound formulation to be sure.

[Beef Oven!]

An elegant and profound formulation to be sure.

I deleted my post so as not to entertain Barbirollians on this. Now your quote makes it look like they are my words!!!

To be sure, Barbirollians described modern music as three farts and a raspberry, NOT ME!

[Richard Barrett]

Tired old chestnuts disparaging modern music at the Proms are being rolled out even earlier than usual this year...

[Beef Oven!]

An elegant and profound formulation to be sure.

Indeed. Barbirollians referred to 'modern music' on the Proms thread as 'three farts and a raspberry'. It should be no surprise that he should become hysterical on reading your post on here. Totalitarianism? Hmm.

[jayne lee wilson]

Which "sunsets"? With which materials? Using which colours? Making use of technology or not? Displaying the paintings where? We differ again, Jayne - you talk of generalities (sunsets), I need specifics. Your discussion of Matthews' output is generous in its descriptive communication of the emotional impact it has had on you (with which I wouldn't dream of arguing) but less communicative of what Musical features that demonstrate its originality and refute what I hear as its (pleasant, competently-written) negatively reactionary nature: sticking "In Memoriam" on the cover of the score won't alter the notes.

Seeing that you have introduced paintings, I'll mention Hockney. By no means a "conceptual" Artist, he's a self-proclaimed "representational"Artist - but he doesn't ape conservative styles of sixty years ago. Instead, he moves with each decade to renew and refreshen his work, relishing the opportunities offered to him from each development in technology - the exuberance that Matthews seemed to require from composers leaps from Hockney's work and writings. Hockney shows that traditionalist ways of communication can still afford the imaginative Artist new means of expressive content. Matthews doesn't.

Good grief...if you read my original review of the 8th, you might begin to understand my use of metaphorical language ("sunsets"...i.e late reflective works coming after an intense series of adventurous ones....) about it in relation to the rest of the cycle, never mind what might follow. As for specifics, for heaven's sake fhg, you've hardly mentioned ONE other David Matthews work...all you've done is hang heavy musico-philosophical judgements upon Symphony No.8 from a particularly demanding aesthetic point of view. It hasn't been in the world long, you know, or received a good-sounding, disciplined, polished and freely expressive recording. Doesn't that matter? Would it sound the same to any of us in a year's time, off a beautiful Chandos or Dutton CD?
And to describe it as expressing (in ANY context) "a pessimistic "world view" that offers nothing of hope or optimism" is a bizarre misrepresentation, an emotional
misreading, forced from an abstract aesthetic position.

Nor did you get my point about giving a music-lover's reaction to it, a very relativist, generous-spirited outlook, which can admire and enjoy Unsuk Chin, Saariaho AND David Matthews. Does that seem puzzling to you - should the experience of Saariaho put me off the Matthews, or...what?
Asking about the "musical features that demonstrate its originality" is misplaced too. Musically untrained, I can scarcely expect to reveal to you something which you've missed. But if I did, could it really make a difference to your emotional reaction? I find Matthews' 3rd Symphony an intensely involving experience on both emotional and structural levels; as new and exciting for me as other "Symphonies in One Movement" like Holmboe's 7th or Norgard's 2nd. Evidently, you don't. I guess the gulf is wide. I don't see how it could be bridged by technical information.

Suppose you told me which of those features you thought I was missing in the music of Ades or Ferneyhough, two composers I can't find any response to myself - do you think it would change my response radically, or emotionally?
If I say I do indeed hear "traditionalist ways of communication [that] can still afford the imaginative Artist new means of expressive content" in those intricate, one-movement structures of the first 3 or other Matthews Symphonies (specifics which I did indeed mention earlier), is it even worth you trying to persuade me I shouldn't...?
I can't think of anything that sounds quite like the Matthews' 2nd or the 6th ("pleasant & competently-written" doesn't quite cut it with them)...and I find the 5th a more concise, better-organised artwork than Schnittke's oft-played and vaunted 4/5. But I'm not sure that's why I respond to them so much.

As for renaming a symphony In Memoriam, or hearing it in a new contextual relation to later works... Those at the premiere of the Shostakovich 9th might have been angry or baffled, or thought of it very differently after experiencing 10 or 11... and No.12 doesn't "betray" or "repudiate" the earlier works either, whether you know the circumstances of its composition or not.

[Richard Barrett]

hardly mentioned ONE other David Matthews work...

I know this wasn't a response to anything I said, but why is that so important? - we are talking about this 8th symphony and generalising from it. Speaking for myself I've never knowingly heard anything else by DM.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

if you read my original review of the 8th

I did - it was thence I got the idea that you thought the Eighth was a lesser work than other works by Matthews, about which you have had far more to say than the Eighth itself.

you might begin to understand my use of metaphorical language ("sunsets"...i.e late reflective works coming after an intense series of adventurous ones....) about it in relation to the rest of the cycle, never mind what might follow.

I did understand what you wrote - whether that communicated what you meant is perhaps another matter.

As for specifics, for heaven's sake fhg, you've hardly mentioned ONE other David Matthews work

No - for the reason that this was the work that you and ahinton had raised my expectations so high, and this was the work that was performed in the concert last week. The notion that you have suggested in one of your earlier posts (which I have also read) that a listener can only understand one work in the context of other works by the same composer is mistaken.

...all you've done is hang heavy musico-philosophical judgements upon Symphony No.8 from a particularly demanding aesthetic point of view.

Yes - MY "particularly demanding aesthetic viewpoint", the one with which I approach all Art. You frequently give the impression that all viewpoints other than your own are invalid - it is one of the less attractive aspects of your otherwise revealing posts. Matthews' Eighth does not meet the demands I make of a work of Art - treat it as my loss, if you will. But I think you might extend a little of the generosity you demand of me to ... well, me: I was the first person to comment on the work itself and in not exactly unfavourable terms. It was some hours after that post (and a further discursion into Proms speculation - including some from myself) before anyone else commented on it. I was not "angered" or "baffled" by the Eighth, just deeply disappointed that it didn't provide the experience that you and ahinton had prepared me for, and deeply saddened that there is a composer with such a high profile who finds nothing to celebrate (and much to deprecate) in the work of any of his contemporaries.

to describe it as expressing (in ANY context) "a pessimistic "world view" that offers nothing of hope or optimism" is a bizarre misrepresentation, an emotional
misreading, forced from an abstract aesthetic position.

No it isn't - read what I've written with the open mind you demand of me.

Nor did you get my point about giving a music-lover's reaction to it, a very relativist, generous-spirited outlook, which can admire and enjoy Unsuk Chin, Saariaho AND David Matthews.

Oh, I got it, all right - don't mistake "disagreement" with "misunderstanding".

Asking about the "musical features that demonstrate its originality" is misplaced too. Musically untrained, I can scarcely expect to reveal to you something which you've missed. But if I did, could it really make a difference to your emotional reaction?

How can comments on Musical features be "misplaced" in a discussion about a piece of Music? If a poem or novel is discussed, is a discussion of language "misplaced"? "Misplaced" to talk about an Artist's brushwork, composition and iconography in a discussion about a painting? As to my "emotional reaction" - probably not; but it would at least raise my opinion of the composer/writer/Artist's abilities and make me wish to work harder to "reach" what they were communicating. There is so very much more to the Arts than an "emotional response" - my "heavy musico-philosophical judgements" and "abstract aesthetic position" enables me to swim in a multitude of cooperating and conflicting intellectual, aesthetic, sensual AND emotional demands that a worthwhile work of Art demands of me. As a Music-lover and as a human being who is all-too aware of the fragility of life and who defiantly wishes - and defiantly works - to experience everything positive that Art and life has to offer.

My "emotional" response to the Matthews Eighth was "not bad, very pleasant in parts" - but to limit my aesthetic reactions to a merely "emotional" is to limit my whole life, and that I will not do. Sonate; que me veux tu? - that I give it my total (intellectual, sensual, just, aesthetic and emotional) attention. What do I want of it? That it tells me what I don't already know - AND KEEPS ON TELLING ME!

[Beef Oven!]

If a listener can only understand a work in the context of other works by the same composer, then contemporary music can't be understood. Listening to music is therefore an historical activity that can only be entered into in hindsight. That might work for many in this forum, but it doesn't work for me. I think Jayne's wrong on this.

[ahinton]

The two main issues that seem to exercise a few people here are that of (a) the symphony and its relevance and viability in recent times (b) looking forwards/backwards in the context of responding or otherwise to one’s own time.

OK, so is the symphony largely a relic of the past and, if so, (a) when did it become one and (b) why have so many hundreds of composers continued subsequently to write them? – indeed, should they even have done so and are most of them placing undue and unwarranted emphasis on embracing a bygone age in so doing? If it reached its effective dénouement with Mahler, by which time it ws coming to outlive its usefulness, what was it that persuaded composers including Webern, Schönberg, Stravinsky and Carter to write them between the much-vaunted 1908 and Boulez’s harsh berating of Dutilleux for having written one more than four decades later?

Although something of a side-issue here, Stravinsky (who wrote several) and Carter (who wrote two) didn't number them all, for whatever reasons – but why on earth would Carter, who spent so much time and effort in trying to develop his musical persona on the way to what he referred to as his maturity (and which others of us will likely assume him to have achieved long before he himself did!), decide to write one as he approached the age of 90, not having written one for well over half a century?

Should Gerhard, Sessions, Henze and Lutosławski have thought twice about continuing with symphonic writing in the latter half of the past century and Maxwell Davies, Matthews and others in the present one?

The very nature of the symphony had already undergone immense changes from Haydn to Mahler and, since then, works have been written that could have been called symphonies but to which their composers decided to give other names – Petrassi with no symphonies (as far as I know) but eight concerti for orchestra and Holloway with only one symphony but five concerti for orchestra – do such composers worry or have reservations about using the term "symphony"?

As to the direction in which a composer is said to look in his/her work, did Matthews look either forwards, backwards or even sideways in his latest symphony? Not to my ears, though evidently backwards to some others' ears. Can anyone ever hope broadly agree on how a composer might or might not respond to his/her time in this work or that - ore even on his/her duty as a composer to make some credible attempt at doing so? Should a composer always seek – and be seen – to reflect his/her time in each work and, when so doing, wouldn’t that presume the response to or reflection of bad (negative) times and well as good (positive)? Should at least some composers consider writing fewer works in order to minimise the risk of saying – or being perceived as having said – the same or similar things twice?

In the first half of the 1920s, Sorabji well and truly established his reputation in his own country as an outlandish modernist nutcase with works such his his Piano Concerto No. 5, Piano Quintet No. 1, Piano Sonatas 2 & 3 and Organ Symphony No. 1 (all of which were published at the time although only one of them performed) and few of his fellow composers in England regarded him as other than outrageous (Walton, of all people, being one exception); nevertheless, it was he who expressed a view that a piece that's oh so modern this week will risk being oh so passé next week.

Whilst I accept that one would not need to listen to great quantities of David Matthews' works (and he is quite prolific) in order to assess one's response to just one of them, judging jonly that one harshly without ever having heard more than one hundred of his others could nevertheless be argued to suggest at the very least a risk of possible imbalance, even if further listening were first to be approached in the manner of "surely his stuff's not all like that, is it?".

I think that none of the above readily admits of hard and fast answers because no two pairs of ears will ever hear the same work in quite the same way or have the same expectations of or derive the same things from it. This is therefore not at all about divisiveness between some members here being right on one side of the fence and others being wrong on the other side but about different ones expressing widely differing responses to their very different hearings one work, which I would hope and like to think is by no means the same thing.

[ahinton]

If a listener can only understand a work in the context of other works by the same composer, then contemporary music can't be understood. Listening to music is therefore an historical activity that can only be entered into in hindsight. That might work for many in this forum, but it doesn't work for me. I think Jayne's wrong on this.

I think that, in principle, this is fair enough insofar as it goes, but when a composer risks being dismissed altogether - and/or a desire to hear no more of his/her work is established - on the back of a single listening to just one of them, there can be a problem, methinks and, in such circumstances, Jayne has a point, I believe.

[Beef Oven!]

I think that, in principle, this is far enough as far as it goes, but when a composer risks being dismissed altogether - and/or a desire to hear no more of his/her work is established - on the back of a single listening to just one of them, there can be a problem, methinks and, in such circumstances, Jayne has a point, I believe.

Two different things.

[ahinton]

Two different things.

Exactly but, as I suggested, the one can give rise to the other.