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

[Serial_Apologist]

There seems to be an assumption that compositions which ( whether intended to or not ) seem to alienate an otherwise open-minded lover of music are of themselves and unarguably superior to music that seeks to explore soundscapes that tread more familiar paths.

Those paths that have nevertheless themselves become familiarised were once, you might wish to acknoweldge, unfamiliar, and, as such, subject to reactionary condemnation. Varese had something pertinent to say about this phenomenon.

[ahinton]

Those paths that have nevertheless themselves become familiarised were once, you might wish to acknoweldge, unfamiliar, and, as such, subject to reactionary condemnation. Varese had something pertinent to say about this phenomenon.

Of course. One has only to consider the last five Beethoven quartets to realise this, although there are many other like examples, not least among which is the critical condemnation of one particular work at its première as containing much which is ugly, inharmonious and poorly conceived, which could not have given especial pleasure to its piano soloist who happened also to be its composer, Chopin.

[Serial_Apologist]

Of course. One has only to consider the last five Beethoven quartets to realise this, although there are many other like examples, not least among which is the critical condemnation of one particular work at its première as containing much which is ugly, inharmonious and poorly conceived, which could not have given especial pleasure to its piano soloist who happened also to be its composer, Chopin.

Yes - and from this morning's COTW it seems that poor Scriabin's early and very Chopinesque piano pieces were condemned by attempting-to-be-opinion-forming commentators of that time as "devil's music", "ensaring" and so forth. But my point was directed at those who take Richard to task by imputing motives they refrain from spelling out, when themselves laying claim in terms of acceptability through familiarity to what their equivalents of an earlier era would have condemned, since it was not yet familiar. If Richard was promoting some "line" maybe I could understand.

[ahinton]

Yes - and from this morning's COTW it seems that poor Scriabin's early and very Chopinesque piano pieces were condemned by attempting-to-be-opinion-forming commentators of that time as "devil's music", "ensaring" and so forth. But my point was directed at those who take Richard to task by imputing motives they refrain from spelling out, when themselves laying claim in terms of acceptability through familiarity to what their equivalents of an earlier era would have condemned, since it was not yet familiar. If Richard was promoting some "line" maybe I could understand.

Quite. Some elucidation (if that's the right word) from one such wouldn't come amiss, methinks...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Quite. Some elucidation (if that's the right word) from one such wouldn't come amiss, methinks...

Indeed - and perhaps some indication from clive and Barbi (who are so ready to suggest that RB and I lack "open-mindedness") that they have actually listened to Matthews' Eighth!

[ahinton]

Indeed - and perhaps some indication from clive and Barbi (who are so ready to suggest that RB and I lack "open-mindedness") that they have actually listened to Matthews' Eighth!

Yes, that wouldn't come amiss either!

Mind you (pace one of the Proms threads), "parochial" is one thing" whereas "domesticated" is quite another! Different Matthews, admittedly, yet somehow I imagine Philip Clark being less than unwilling also to describe this one thus!

[Barbirollians]

Indeed - and perhaps some indication from clive and Barbi (who are so ready to suggest that RB and I lack "open-mindedness") that they have actually listened to Matthews' Eighth!

I have listened to it - whilst expressed in a musical language others regard as old fashioned I thought it had interesting things to say . I have only had the chance to listen to it once . What I do not agree with in Richard's postings is the implicit suggestion that the music is poor not because of intrinsic nature but because of its lack of reference to or influence by works since 1950 .

He is perfectly entitled not to like it for that reason if he wishes to but it seems a strange reason to judge a work for its lack of references or influences .

[Richard Barrett]

What I do not agree with in Richard's postings is the implicit suggestion that the music is poor not because of intrinsic nature but because of its lack of reference to or influence by works since 1950

Leaving aside what "intrinsic nature' might mean when applied to a culturally and historically defined phenomenon like music, I did several times make the point, which perhaps you didn't notice, or didn't believe, or didn't understand, that I thought questions of taste are less interesting to discuss than what a piece like this says about the cultural and historical situation we are in, that is to say when a piece of music that seemingly denies the existence of any musical developments in the last sixty or more years is not only viewed as not unusual (such a thing certainly would have been unusual in Mozart's time, or in Beethoven's, for example), but also as somehow not implicitly expressing a pessimism about the present and future of music. The sense of denial I've been mentioning is not in any way a lack of "references and influences" as you claim I believe, but an all too clear negative influence. This is as far as I'm concerned "what the music has to say" and I find it an enervating and depressing message.

[Barbirollians]

Leaving aside what "intrinsic nature' might mean when applied to a culturally and historically defined phenomenon like music, I did several times make the point, which perhaps you didn't notice, or didn't believe, or didn't understand, that I thought questions of taste are less interesting to discuss than what a piece like this says about the cultural and historical situation we are in, that is to say when a piece of music that seemingly denies the existence of any musical developments in the last sixty or more years is not only viewed as not unusual (such a thing certainly would have been unusual in Mozart's time, or in Beethoven's, for example), but also as somehow not implicitly expressing a pessimism about the present and future of music. The sense of denial I've been mentioning is not in any way a lack of "references and influences" as you claim I believe, but an all too clear negative influence. This is as far as I'm concerned "what the music has to say" and I find it an enervating and depressing message.

Ah - the Wagnerian criticism of Brahms . Is there not room both for musical conservatives ( as much as I despise the term and the party named after it ) perhaps better said to be traditionalists and progressives ? Why must one be negative and the other positive ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And you are perfectly entitled to so disagree with him for that reason if you so wish, of course - but can you name any work that you love, that you regard as one of the masterpieces of Music, or even that you simply "quite like" that was written in an idiom of sixty years (or more) earlier than it was composed? Can you imagine Tchaikovsky writing in a manner that could be confused with Spohr? Schubert with JC Bach? RVW with Stanford?

You have mentioned Brahms - he was highly critical of Liszt, but his Music doesn't stay in the same place as Schumann's (and that was closer than sixty years to Brahms) but hears and absorbs Wagner: the opening of the First Symphony - take away the pedal C and you have something that could be from Tristan - it's that pedal that says "This is how I do it"; just as the Tippett Third takes what Tippett needs from Boulez. No composer worth his/her salt has ever closed his/her ears to what's happening around him/her with as much grim determination as Matthews has done in his Eighth Symphony. And with results that even his admirers have suggested aren't as impressive as some of his other works.

It is this stuffing his fingers in his ears and going "nahnahnahna-Nahnah" that strikes me as sad. There is so much work out there that is much more positive, that has the wit and grace and vigour that this work so sadly lacks.

[Richard Barrett]

Is there not room both for musical conservatives (as much as I despise the term and the party named after it ) perhaps better said to be traditionalists and progressives ?

You still aren't listening, are you? I am not talking about what there is or isn't "room for". There ought to be room for artists to exercise freedom in whatever way they wish (in so far as it doesn't harm others). It is after all one of the few areas in which people are able to exercise the freedom of their imaginations, and in so doing activate and encourage the imaginations of their audiences. This music however doesn't do that for me. It willingly immerses itself in the illusion of a past that never really existed. That surely is a central aspect of its "message", otherwise why would someone write such a thing? And I can't help seeing that as sad, as well as conservative.

[ahinton]

And you are perfectly entitled to so disagree with him for that reason if you so wish, of course - but can you name any work that you love, that you regard as one of the masterpieces of Music, or even that you simply "quite like" that was written in an idiom of sixty years (or more) earlier than it was composed? Can you imagine Tchaikovsky writing in a manner that could be confused with Spohr? Schubert with JC Bach? RVW with Stanford?

Whilst of course I take your point (albeit not addressed directly to me!), one difference here seems to be that, at least in the cases of all but the last two composers whom you mention, the stylistic variety and diversity on offer at the time was nowhere near as great as it is today; it is that very diversity that prompts me to ponder on whether if might be argued that works are less capable of being "of their time" than was the case when the "time" of a work would have been rather more readily identifiable. Stanford was writing at the same time as Bartók, Varèse, Ornstein, Schönberg, Fauré, Webern, Mosolov, Scriabin, Medtner, Sorabji et al - already a wide variety of approaches to composition - but what we have nowadays is a far greater diversity still. For this reason, I don't for example regard any one of those four English composers born in 1943 - Ferneyhough, Bryars, Matthews and Holloway - as being any more or less "of their time" or even "responding to / reflecting their time" than any of the others. Furthermore, the performance styles for music of the past didn't used to be as varied as has become the case since the HIPP movement got going.

You have mentioned Brahms - he was highly critical of Liszt, but his Music doesn't stay in the same place as Schumann's (and that was closer than sixty years to Brahms) but hears and absorbs Wagner: the opening of the First Symphony - take away the pedal C and you have something that could be from Tristan - it's that pedal that says "This is how I do it"; just as the Tippett Third takes what Tippett needs from Boulez. No composer worth his/her salt has ever closed his/her ears to what's happening around him/her with as much grim determination as Matthews has done in his Eighth Symphony. And with results that even his admirers have suggested aren't as impressive as some of his other works.

It is this stuffing his fingers in his ears and going "nahnahnahna-Nahnah" that strikes me as sad.

Your reference to the opening of Brahms 1 is fascinating! I'd never thought of that.

Whatever Tippett 3 takes from Boulez (and I have to admit to disliking the piece intensely, though not because of that!), by the end of the decade in which he completed it he was - at least for some people - letting himself be suspectible to a certain mamount of personal musicla nostalgia in his Triple Concerto, with which I have no particular problem.

I just do not hear in Matthews 8 irrefutable evidence of the closing of his ears to what's going on around him - still less him "stuffing his fingers in his ears and going "nahnahnahna-Nahnah"" (and if that's what you hear, it does seem a little surprising that you managed to enjoy it nevertheless!). Also, I don't think it unreasonable to say that no composer's works can all be equally impressive!

[ahinton]

You still aren't listening, are you? I am not talking about what there is or isn't "room for". There ought to be room for artists to exercise freedom in whatever way they wish (in so far as it doesn't harm others). It is after all one of the few areas in which people are able to exercise the freedom of their imaginations, and in so doing activate and encourage the imaginations of their audiences.

Absolutely right.

This music however doesn't do that for me. It willingly immerses itself in the illusion of a past that never really existed. That surely is a central aspect of its "message", otherwise why would someone write such a thing? And I can't help seeing that as sad, as well as conservative.

No, it doesn't do it for you - which is fine because what you hear is an immersion on the composer's part in an illusion of a past that never really existed - but we don't all hear it that way or get such an impression from it. Again, you hear suich things as a central aspect of its "message", but others seem not to (by which I don't mean "all others", of course!). And as for conservative - how can anyone "conserve" - or even try to "conserve" - something that's illusory and never really existed? I agree that it would indeed be sad if all this were the case, but I just can't see/hear it that way and, given what's been written hee about it, I've even had another listen and deliverately tried to, without success; I hope to goodness that such aural myopia on my part (if indeed that's what it is) doesn't arise from my doing similar kinds of thing to those that you identify here (for, if so, it would be high time to stop and go switch on the shredder)...

[P. G. Tipps]

Ah - the Wagnerian criticism of Brahms . Is there not room both for musical conservatives ( as much as I despise the term and the party named after it ) perhaps better said to be traditionalists and progressives ? Why must one be negative and the other positive ?

Leaving petty politics aside, I'm sure you speak for many music-lovers and have hit the nail well and truly on the head.

It is those on the other side of this argument about poor D. Matthews Eighth Symphony (which I rather enjoyed) who appear to be the real 'reactionaries' here?!

[ahinton]

Leaving petty politics aside, I'm sure you speak for many music-lovers and have hit the nail well and truly on the head.

It is those on the other side of this argument about poor D. Matthews Eighth Symphony (which I rather enjoyed) who appear to be the real 'reactionaries' here?!

I don't know what nail that is or indeed which marteau was used by which maître to hit it with, but what irks me is the taking of "sides" in the first place - entrenched positions, that is - when it ought to be plainly obvious that no two people are or will ever be able to listen to Matthews 8 or Pli selon pli or Don Giovanni or Vanity with the same ears, as I'm now getting rather tired of saying...