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

[ahinton]

How ignorant of Barbirolli.

I wasn't aware of the source of that quote until now - or indeed even that it actually was one. How very ignorant indeed, especially, as Richard points out, "given his outstanding abilities as a musician". A side issue though it may be, it's always struck me that this particular use of the word "raspberry" is quite strange, given how beautiful a fruit it is.

[ahinton]

I'm sure that if I understood Derrida I would agree; maybe it's a sign of my own nostalgia that I still find myself stuck around the issue of why it is that the great modernist art movements of before 1975 (roughly) have become reduced to a handful of individuals left still bravely pursuing their meaningful aims and the ideals underpinning them in times when (for the first time in my lifetime, and I'm nearly 70) one sees the ugly re-emergence of fundamentalisms in all sorts of areas apart from the scientific, and, rather in the same way that the "centre" of mainstream politics is way to the right of what it was in the 1950s/60s, composers of concert music are having to re-position themselves according to some taste consensus dictated by concert planners and recording producers to be consdered artistically valid.

Interesting thoughts indeed, but do you believe that this is something to which David Matthews has fallen victim or somehow felt obliged to buy into and this is why his music is written as it is? I perceive no evidence of this, actually.

On the one hand I can't believe the wealth and range of resources once available to the modern composer have become exhausted

Then don't. They haven't!

[ahinton]

I certainly don't believe they are - quite the opposite in many ways. Personally I draw a great deal of optimism from the feeling I increasingly have, with advancing years, of there being so much to do, and to discover, and so little time. Especially given what you call the "ugly re-emergence of fundamentalisms", with which the piece of music ostensibly under discussion is if not directly connected then at least not entirely disconnected.

Should this be read as an implication that David Matthews - at least in this one work under discussion - reveals himself as some particular kind of "fundamentalist" or that at least he is prepared to condone and is not unprepared to be a part of such "fundamentalism"? As I suggested in response to S_A above, I remain to be persuaded that David Matthews writes as he does purely because he's somehow allowed himself - or been persuaded - to buy into the notion that this "ugly re-emergence of fundamentalisms" determines that it's the done thing at the moment (and he's been composing continuously since before 1970); I believe on the other hand that he writes as he does because that's the way he feels moved to write rather than because he thinks that it's what's expected of him.

[french frank]

why it is that the great modernist art movements of before 1975 (roughly) have become reduced to a handful of individuals left still bravely pursuing their meaningful aims and the ideals underpinning them [ … ] I can't believe the wealth and range of resources once available to the modern composer have become exhausted

To clarify what Richard has been arguing in such a clear and cogent way:

Does your inclusion of 'bravely' and 'meaningful' (not that I'm intending to dispute them) lead to the position that writing a symphony for a symphony orchestra is no longer an interesting exercise? [Is there a 'Yes' or 'No' answer?] Or can it still be done in a 'brave' and 'meaningful' way?

[Roehre]

This puts it much more comprehensively, thanks!

Edit: One thing howerver that always strikes me is the coincidence that the acceleration in the complexification process really took place after the establishment of capitalism, though for detail one would also have to take account of the concomitant (and resulting) weakening of interrelationships between church, state, business and art.

Ars subtilior, polyphonists, Gesualdo perhaps?

[Barbirollians]

What a shining wit he must have been. It's saddening to hear he could come out with such ignorant nonsense, given his outstanding abilities as a musician, but of course he isn't alone in that.

Regarding intertextuality, Jayne, I did write a couple of pages back: "There is a level of understanding of an artist's work which can only be gained by a broad and sustained engagement with it." In other words I was by no means "denying ... the importance of the context of Matthews' other orchestral works", at least in principle. But I also said that if that's the only way to appreciate a given piece there must surely be something lacking in it. Anyway, as I keep saying, discussions of taste are a side-issue here as far as I'm concerned. It's easy to say that one likes or dislikes some piece of music, and nobody has any right to claim that one should or shouldn't like it. I'm interested, as I've said, in wider issues of music and culture, although of course these always exist in some kind of symbiotic relationship with one's tastes.

Then again there was a great deal of dire music written in the 1960s so he may well have had a very good point for all you or I know .

[Serial_Apologist]

Ars subtilior, polyphonists, Gesualdo perhaps?

Ummm... I'm quite embarrassed now at my having spouted off on a subject yesterday about which I really mustr admit to scant knowledge, when there are people on this forum like doversoul with far greater knowledge about early music than I. Both the Netherlands and Italy were to the forefront of the early establishment of capitalism in its early mercantile forms, and I was - admittedly now - presuming some coincidence, either anticipatory, concurrent or pursuant upon any associated changes in the arts and music in particular, that might account for the complex polyphonic forms'e emergence from the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There's Machaut and the Isorhythmic Motet in the 14th Century and Dunstable and his younger contemporaries, too in early 15th Century England. There is still a correlation between wealth and intricacy/complexity. But I don't think there's evidence of a "straight line": compare the polyphony of Palestrina and the opening of Monteverdi's Orfeo; the Art of Fugue and Style Galant; Beethoven's Bb String Quartet and The Barber of Seville; Parsifal and The Nutcracker; Erwartung and Les Mammelles du Tiresias; Gruppen and Clapping Music. It seems that Artists (or at least those interested in making new Art) react against their immediate predecessors - a movement culminating in elaborate complexity is met by a "return to simplicity" (which then begins its own growth of expression). Prog and Punk, too!

[Roehre]

Then again there was a great deal of dire music written in the 1960s so he may well have had a very good point for all you or I know .

There is/has been written a mess of dire music all the time I am sure.
And-at the other hand- wasn't it CM von Weber who said about Beethoven's 7th "this is the non-plus-ultra of madness. B is rife for the mad house" or similar expressions?

[Richard Barrett]

Then again there was a great deal of dire music written in the 1960s so he may well have had a very good point for all you or I know .

Of course, a great deal of dire music has always come into existence, as Roehre points out - on the other hand a great deal of highly original and aesthetically challenging music was written in the 1960s and I would bet that this was what Barbirolli had in mind, in other words less a good point than a blind spot.

Regarding S_A's suggestion, it's nevertheless true that most of the "old complexities" - ars subtilior and the Gesualdo circle for example - represented a very small minority of the composers active at the time, in a way that wasn't so true of the examples he originally brought up. Perhaps.

[Richard Barrett]

met by a "return to simplicity"

But I wonder why it's always referred to as a "return" to simplicity? couldn't it be just as easily said that the development of a simplicity is met by a "return to complexity"? - who is to say which is more... fundamental?

[Serial_Apologist]

To clarify what Richard has been arguing in such a clear and cogent way:

Does your inclusion of 'bravely' and 'meaningful' (not that I'm intending to dispute them) lead to the position that writing a symphony for a symphony orchestra is no longer an interesting exercise? [Is there a 'Yes' or 'No' answer?] Or can it still be done in a 'brave' and 'meaningful' way?

I really don't know.

I keep thinking, maybe MrGG will come up with the clincher that confounds the most skeptical among us!

[ahinton]

But I wonder why it's always referred to as a "return" to simplicity? couldn't it be just as easily said that the development of a simplicity is met by a "return to complexity"? - who is to say which is more... fundamental?

Good point - and, as neither is, "change" would seem more appropriate than "return".

[ahinton]

I really don't know.

I think that it can and that there is evidence in support of such a belief, though I cannot imagine trying one meself...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But I wonder why it's always referred to as a "return" to simplicity? couldn't it be just as easily said that the development of a simplicity is met by a "return to complexity"? - who is to say which is more... fundamental?

Dunno - it always is, though, isn't it? Perhaps because (in previous Centuries, at any rate) that was the order of events: a process of elaboration which reaches a point where younger artists feel it cannot be taken any further (or aren't interested in trying to do so) and create a new type of Music radically reduced in means from what has immediately preceded it? From the late 20th Century, there are concurrent rather than consecutive strands, so that Ferneyhough developed his language(s) from the basis of European Integral Serialism at around the same time that Reich and others created Minimalism in reaction to it.

I should also make clear that the important thing is that each (for want of an alternate phrase) variation of a "new simplicity" is different from anything that has appeared before - it isn't a "return" to older styles of simplicity; not even the neo-Classicism of Poulenc and others does this in the 1920s.