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

[ahinton]

Well, it was! But the difference is that in Haydn's time creative musicians had no choice but to be beholden to princes or bishops, or the commercial theatre, as in Handel's London. With the French Revolution and its aftermath came the idea that artists could, might eventually, be free from such subservience, or at least that it was now possible to express the possibility of such freedom. You can't uninvent that! - you can only ignore or deny it... or of course embrace it.

But did this fact of patronages of one kind and another wholly undermine the value - or, more importantly, compromise the creative independence - of Haydn or Handel? One might call into question (in the particular context of this thread) whether Haydn, had he independent means sufficient to enable him to function as a composer without having to depend upon such patronage, would have packed in writing all those symphonies and done his own thing instead, unlike David Matthews who, regardless of his sources of income as a composer, might go on to write a further 96 symphonies if he lives long enough?

[Ian]

Except of course that they didn't.

I’m not so sure, I’m only old enough to have experienced, first hand, the tail end of the orthodoxy that DM alludes to. In any case, the point is that the alleged orthodoxy was at least real to DM - something he felt he had to react against. Perhaps he didn’t need to bother!

[ahinton]

I’m not so sure, I’m only old enough to have experienced, first hand, the tail end of the orthodoxy that DM alludes to. In any case, the point is that the alleged orthodoxy was at least real to DM - something he felt he had to react against. Perhaps he didn’t need to bother!

But I do not believe - and cannot perceive - that DM "reacted against" anything in his 8th symphony, preferring instead to write the symphony that he wanted to write; it's hardly a perceptibel "reaction against", for example, his very different close contemporaries and compatriots Gavin Bryars and Brian Ferneyhough, is it?! So I don't think that he has so "bothered".

[Serial_Apologist]

A fantastic contribution, aeolium, but you'll not be surprised to hear that I disagree with some of your points

I don't think there is anything unusual about composers writing in a conservative style, or that it is something that has happened disproportionately in the modern age. Isn't it the case that most composers, at any historical period, have written in a conservative style, that is, within the idiom prevailing at that time and even looking back to an earlier style? The composers who have created something genuinely new and style-changing are literally exceptional, although they stand out to us now because they have become part of the canon. And the reason for the dominance of the conservative style at any period is the predominantly conservative taste of the audience. At the same time, there is often a time-lag between the composition of ground-breaking works and their public acceptance: the Grosse Fuge, hardly entering the repertoire of string quartets for the best part of a century; the hostile reception and slow public acceptance of Mahler symphonies; the widespread antipathy, even to this day, to atonal works of the 2nd Viennese school. And look at the conservatism of concert programmes nowadays.

I think it is the concert programming that is more of an influence on conservative public tastes than your idea of a consensus (if not majority) of composers at any given time not being radicals.

It's not difficult to think of works that consciously evoke or mimic an earlier style, even by composers who have otherwise written in a new and individual way and who have changed the musical language in some way: L'Enfance du Christ; the Holberg suite; the Classical Sympony; the Ancient Airs and Dances; Pulcinella. And there are works which seem to deny or ignore earlier musical revolutions, e.g. that of the 12-tone system, and yet retain a highly expressive personal style. I'm thinking for instance of Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, written in 1943 at the time of an existential struggle, yet a work containing echoes of the C19 serenades (particularly those with horns) and perhaps the Mahler of the Knaben Wunderhorn. Was that a work of denial, or was it, by setting poems of English writers of different centuries, honouring writers who had contributed to the civilization that was under threat?

This may put me at odds with those I've been agreeing with here, but I personally would not include Britten amongst 20th century composers of conservative bent; to me there is more in his music that acknowledges, (for me in odd and often contradictory ways), the revolutions wrought by Mahler, schoenberg, Berg and Stravinsky than there is of Stockhausen et al in David Matthews.

But I think that the power of the conservative aesthetic, or of the retrospective style, goes beyond the works of individual composers and is an essential part of the way European culture has developed. Certainly there have been the ground-breaking artists and thinkers, but there has to be ground before it can be broken. How many artistic styles depend upon looking back: the neoclassical in architecture, painting and music; the romantic period's rediscovery of medievalism with the neo-Gothic and Arthurian myth; even the Renaissance with its rediscovery of the ancient world and its intense interest in Hellenic models? Doesn't this suggest that at any period in history there is a tension between the conservative and the avant-garde, that retrospection is at least as much a part of cultural identity as curiosity and innovation? When one talks about having a response to one's time, I think that means having a response to the past as well, because the past is always with us (as, sadly, is all too apparent in some countries). Surely this is particularly true of traditional cultures where there is oral, not written, transmission of music; here, the preservation of musical tradition is intensely bound up with cultural identity.

There is an argument that music is the last form of artistic expression to "join in" the movements of change already affecting painting and literature. Why this has nearly always been the case is unsure to me - has it anything to do with the ambivalence innate in musical as opposed to literary or visual imagery?

The written transmission of music in the western tradition is intimately tied up with property rights pertaining to composition peculiar to the division of labour and consumption under capitalism. The oral returned in jazz, reflecting in part a marginalised status culture, and the transmission of jazz has constantly had to vie between its use as background accessory (this tonal stuff - wallpaper music, eh?!) and a communitarian focus, wherever it has rooted.

As to whether a modern work is expressive of capitalist realism, that to me is about as meaningful as saying that Haydn's work is expressive of aristocratic feudalism and subservience to Catholic hierarchy, or that Schumann's piano music was a sop to the bourgeoisie's desire for private entertainment: it says nothing about the work's craft or its power to affect people. And there doesn't seem to me to be any necessary association between the degree of a composer's musical originality and his political ideas. The highly original Haydn was notably conservative politically, repelled by the revolutionary assault on aristocracy, a supporter of the Habsburg empire and a pious Catholic. Schoenberg the musical radical was the same man who said at the outbreak of WW1 "Now we will teach [the French and Russian composers] to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God." Conversely, Alan Bush who was a committed Communist and some of whose works were premiered in the GDR was musically conservative (at least from the works of his I have heard, and from critical reputation). And Ethel Smyth, imprisoned for her suffragette activities, was though an accomplished composer not by any means radical in style: the chamber music of hers that I have heard is essentially Brahmsian in style.

Idiom is as much an unconscious reflection in some artists and composers as it is a conscious response in others. Think of Wagner! or Debussy!! or Lord Berners!!! One does not, as a socialist, slate the bourgeois composer for the insincerity and class traitorship of his or her idiomatic radicalism, but explains that the more leisure time afforded the rich permits the space to think, and to feel! Bush represents a different aspect to this - a bourgeois himself Lenin would have approved of for siding with the revolution, as too, unfortunately, would Stalin, given the illusions Bush maintained in the socialist character of the Soviet Union and the Communist parties worldwide from the Third Period onwards.

I don't think there is anything wrong about conservatism in art. On the one hand it can provide a bedrock of style from which the avant-garde artists can depart. On the other it can serve that audience, which may represent the majority in any age, which cannot assimilate the avant-garde without the elapse of a significant period of time.

Well in the 1960s The New was welcomed apart from by the Old Fogeydom many of us saw as our parents' hallmark: think Sergeant Pepper, early Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Berio's Sinfonia. As someone with comparatively conservative tastes myself - I would think of Prokofiev as well as Britten as being modernist - I agree. What I believe we all need to prevent spiritual and political stultification and regression, though, is the challenge of the New.

[Ian]

He is certainly strongly connected to the realities of our time is he not.

It's a postcode lottery.

[Ian]

But I do not believe - and cannot perceive - that DM "reacted against" anything in his 8th symphony, preferring instead to write the symphony that he wanted to write; it's hardly a perceptibel "reaction against", for example, his very different close contemporaries and compatriots Gavin Bryars and Brian Ferneyhough, is it?! So I don't think that he has so "bothered".

I'm sure you're right regarding his 8th. I was thinking more of the young fledging DM trying to square what he wanted/could do within the context of the expectations of the market (which for him, at that time, would have been the BBC, the Arts Council and other institutions)

[Bryn]

But I do not believe - and cannot perceive - that DM "reacted against" anything in his 8th symphony, preferring instead to write the symphony that he wanted to write; it's hardly a perceptibel "reaction against", for example, his very different close contemporaries and compatriots Gavin Bryars and Brian Ferneyhough, is it?! So I don't think that he has so "bothered".

Ah, and an aspect of Gavin Bryars's 'reaction against' was the most wonderful realisation of Stockhausen's Plus Minus I have ever had the pleasure to hear/witness. It was given by John Tilbury in the Purcell Room during one of his "The Contemporary Pianist" series of concerts in 1969. In that version, the + elements consisted of arrangements of Victorian Music Hall numbers and the like (including a delightful rendition of Tiptoe Through the Tulips, Tiny Tim style), while the - elements comprised other works by KS (no not that KS, Karlheinz Stockhausen). The next day John Tilbury and Cornelius Cardew were off to Paris to perform a different version involving cap bombs and other representations of Imperialism and the struggle against it.

[ahinton]

other works by KS (no not that KS, Karlheinz Stockhausen)

No, I didn't assume that you meant Karol Szymanowski!

Fascinating post, though!

[ahinton]

I'm sure you're right regarding his 8th. I was thinking more of the young fledging DM trying to square what he wanted/could do within the context of the expectations of the market (which for him, at that time, would have been the BBC, the Arts Council and other institutions)

I don't know if what DM was aiming to do in the 60s and early 70s particularly embraced the question of what he thought might be expected of him either, actually, even though the matter of finding his own voice might have proved somewhat more problematic for him then than it could possibly have done, say, 30 years earlier; don;t take my word for this, though - I'm only making an assumption here.

[ahinton]

It's a postcode lottery.

But not one whose jackpot has been won by David Matthews, surely?...

[Ian]

One of the complaints against DM is that he is representative of a contemporary orthodoxy that is in denial regarding all true and proper contemporary modes of expression. For example, on more than one occasion I have seen fgh challenge members to come with examples of significant composers who wrote in a style that could be mistaken for a composer working 50 - 100 years previously.

On the surface this seems reasonable, however, what renders the challenge irrelevant is the fact that in our present reality people born in the same year on the same street can be brought up with, and/or develop an interest in, completely different musical realities. This was nowhere near the case (for example) in Haydn’s time. So although it’s true that Haydn’s music does not sound as if it was written 100 years before it actually was, that is equally true of all of his contemporaries irrespective of their talent. What’s more, the vast bulk of the music listening public weren’t even listening to old music and Haydn’s music was obviously clearly and understandably related to contemporary popular music.

If it were the case nowadays that the listening public were listening too and clamoring for nothing but the latest cutting-edge whatever it would indeed seem odd for any composer to deny that reality. But the reality is that’s not the reality!

It’s not enough for the avant-garde merely to come up with ‘x’ and then self-proclaim its importance to the extent that anything that ignores ‘x’ is irrelevant. It’s not enough merely to ‘challenge‘ - you have to convince as well.

[clive heath]

.......from S-A earlier today:

And it makes me wonder: is this what the modernist composers ostracised, persecuted and half-starved under one form or another of Stalinism from the 1930s to the 1960s for writing music "incomprehensible" to the masses, and those who died in Nazi concentration camps for being Jewish and composing "degenerate" music, would have wanted from today's much-vaunted "freedom"?

I would have hoped that however any musician lived and died he or she would wish for other musicians the freedom to do their own thing without any emotional baggage landed on them for not kowtowing to some perceived preferential ( or even reverential to their own memory) style. My uncle's wife, Magda, escaped Vienna in the 30s to Canada and thence to California. She was listening to her beloved Mozart on her dying day. Her ashes are in a Wiltshire graveyard. Do you think she would sympathise with your strictures?

The thing is that what brings us together here is so much larger than what divides us that your contribution above seems to erect a barrier. Maybe its just me , sorry.

[Ian]

I don't know if what DM was aiming to do in the 60s and early 70s particularly embraced the question of what he thought might be expected of him either, actually, even though the matter of finding his own voice might have proved somewhat more problematic for him then than it could possibly have done, say, 30 years earlier; don;t take my word for this, though - I'm only making an assumption here.

Sorry, I realise that I didn't mean to use the term 'react' - I meant 'response' (in the context of either being a symptom or a response). All I know is that DM goes out of his way to thank those that gave him confidence to do what he actually wanted to do in the face of (presumably) what he considered to be an established orthodoxy.

[Richard Barrett]

If it were the case nowadays that the listening public were listening to and clamouring for nothing but the latest cutting-edge whatever it would indeed seem odd for any composer to deny that reality. But the reality is that’s not the reality!

It’s not enough for the avant-garde merely to come up with ‘x’ and then self-proclaim its importance to the extent that anything that ignores ‘x’ is irrelevant.

Who is this "avant-garde" you're talking about? what is this "x" they "self-proclaim" as important? who is "the listening public" and what in fact are they "clamouring for"? and how much does that matter? What we've been talking about is the implications of composers writing music like Matthews' 8th symphony in 2015. As you yourself admit, in previous times people didn't listen to non-contemporary music, nor did composers write what sounded like non-contemporary music. Now both of those things happen. The questions that have been under discussion here is why? and what does this mean? Nothing to do with some imagined avant-garde orthodoxy of the late twentieth century, nothing to do with claiming that some "x" is the only important thing.

[Serial_Apologist]

One of the complaints against DM is that he is representative of a contemporary orthodoxy that is in denial regarding all true and proper contemporary modes of expression. For example, on more than one occasion I have seen fgh challenge members to come with examples of significant composers who wrote in a style that could be mistaken for a composer working 50 - 100 years previously.

On the surface this seems reasonable, however, what renders the challenge irrelevant is the fact that in our present reality people born in the same year on the same street can be brought up with, and/or develop an interest in, completely different musical realities. This was nowhere near the case (for example) in Haydn’s time. So although it’s true that Haydn’s music does not sound as if it was written 100 years before it actually was, that is equally true of all of his contemporaries irrespective of their talent. What’s more, the vast bulk of the music listening public weren’t even listening to old music and Haydn’s music was obviously clearly and understandably related to contemporary popular music.

If it were the case nowadays that the listening public were listening too and clamoring for nothing but the latest cutting-edge whatever it would indeed seem odd for any composer to deny that reality. But the reality is that’s not the reality!

It’s not enough for the avant-garde merely to come up with ‘x’ and then self-proclaim its importance to the extent that anything that ignores ‘x’ is irrelevant. It’s not enough merely to ‘challenge‘ you have to convince as well.

The Soft Machine was certainly composing and performing music which related to contemporary popular music while being innovative in ways that could never have been envisaged 50 or 60 years previously.

Lots of my ordinary, non-music specialising friends enjoyed, and some even got stoned listening to it! Many years later, the Softs' bass player Hugh Hopper, sadly no longer with us, complained not without some justification that interviewers still constantly referred to those years, representing, in relative sales terms, success because Columbia was among the majors promoting artists on its then roster (including Terry Riley) whose names, along with PR from the popular periodical Melody Maker, were being kept alive in the rock-listening concert-going public. What rapidly changed after about 1973 was the attitudes of such majors towards relatively experimental musics that had previously been associated with alternative youth lifestyles; the music had two alternatives: either to go even further "out", following its own self-defined cutting edges in ways somewhat analogous to what had happened in the first 2 decades of 20th century classical music and to jazz in the 1960s, forming self-promotional cooperatives and independant record labels, or head in a direction of greater theatricality and spectacle. By the time Punk Rock supplanted the latter popularising trend with a return to deliberately crude basics mainstream pop had gone through every conceivable sartorial change of fashion, but with little to show in terms of advancing musical idiom apart from profits to the music industry. And this, I would argue, is virtually unprecedented, and bespeaks a capitalist culture in decline.

The issue we are discussing here is no longer, I believe, one of commissioned product for the concert hall needing to conform to mainstream or avant-garde desiderata, but of saleable product constituting a large part of what you describe the contemporary composer as needing, apparently uncritically, or at any rate willy-nilly, to take account of.