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

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps slightly strange this thread, in that even with all the differing viewpoints, I feel I can agree with almost everybody (although sometimes people seem to be talking about slightly different points when conversing, which leaves plenty of latitude for both to be right ...). Contemporary as a descriptor clearly has plenty of room for different people to set up camp around it and belong.

However, when artistic impulse or expression is stifled by external influence such as corporate control, and one observes a cultural stagnation that for example suits business rather than culture, I think it is even more important that there is music that pushes against this. Much as I'm glad that David Matthews wrote his 8th Symphony, clearly it is not such a piece of music (and I don't think it needs to be).
It's a sign of a healthy culture that current assumptions/status quos are challenged and tested and broken free of, this is how science works and enhances our lives after all (not without pressures from its own corporations of course). But some things in science remain constant (with a few refinements) and relevant, and if impulses are genuine, I think in a sense the same is possible in art - one can still fashion new creations using old frameworks.

The question of an artist's motivation is an important one, and it's difficult not seeing it as having a political dimension, whether conscious or not. But I think it's about reception as well as about creation.
The example of pop music given upthread, can show very well the stultifying effect of corporatisation on an art form, with a stylistic groundhog day appearing to be in quasi operation in the mainstream. Though to the young people enjoying it, it's all new, and that gives it vitality for them. Nursery rhymes stay the same too, and are no doubt every bit as magical to each new generation. I think if one listens with the enthusiasm and intelligence of say (if I may?) Jayne Lee Wilson for example, all sorts of music can be vital, current and meaningful, it's not just about the creator.

I broadly agree. And while you are not saying this, it would obviously be terrible were some aesthetic Taleban come to power that banned whistlable tunes. But while Schoenberg predicted people would one day be whistling his tunes in the street (the main theme from his piano concerto is quite a challenge but worth a try, memorable as it is to the ear), nobody here has been advocating one form of musical expression over any other. What has been emphasised by this side of the table has been the need to proclaim the new and conversely criticise its absence when so much that is backward-looking about present-day politics and the artistic modes attaching to them is so much at the root of today's problems in the world. For one thing, without advancement civilisation as represented by its arts is stuck, and what gets stuck has a nasty tendency to go into reverse when left unchecked and unchallenged.

[Richard Barrett]

it's not just about the creator.

It's not even about the creator in fact. All the protestations that David Matthews or whoever can "write what he likes" are beside the point. Of course a creative musician can write what he/she likes. Not that this should be taken for granted of course. And it's maybe worth remarking that the kind of retrospective style David Matthews is working in is actually rather comparable to the kinds of artistic styles enforced on artists by the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Might that not be a reason to think twice about what one's own music might be a symptom of - that is to say, about the fact that it's the kind of thing that used in Cold War days to be pejoratively described as "officially sanctioned music" if it had emerged from the USSR? The question of reception is, as you say, at least as important - the question of what art should be in society (including when the listener is solitary, as in Jayne's "one-to-one confrontation").

Something that sums up my feelings about this, much better than I could, is this lecture by Alain Badiou (this is especially for you, S_A, I hope you can take the time to watch it and/or read the transcript). I find it highly inspiring as well as enlightening.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's not even about the creator in fact. All the protestations that David Matthews or whoever can "write what he likes" are beside the point. Of course a creative musician can write what he/she likes. Not that this should be taken for granted of course. And it's maybe worth remarking that the kind of retrospective style David Matthews is working in is actually rather comparable to the kinds of artistic styles enforced on artists by the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Might that not be a reason to think twice about what one's own music might be a symptom of - that is to say, about the fact that it's the kind of thing that used in Cold War days to be pejoratively described as "officially sanctioned music" if it had emerged from the USSR? The question of reception is, as you say, at least as important - the question of what art should be in society (including when the listener is solitary, as in Jayne's "one-to-one confrontation").

Something that sums up my feelings about this, much better than I could, is this lecture by Alain Badiou (this is especially for you, S_A, I hope you can take the time to watch it and/or read the transcript). I find it highly inspiring as well as enlightening.

?

There seem to be a few of them, RB.

[Richard Barrett]

?

There seem to be a few of them, RB.

Oops, in my excitement I forgot the link http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=1580

[Serial_Apologist]

Oops, in my excitement I forgot the link http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=1580

Many thanks Richard - I'll look at that later.

[eighthobstruction]

Oops, in my excitement I forgot the link http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=1580

....Gosh, what some people get up to during their weekends....

[ahinton]

It's not even about the creator in fact. All the protestations that David Matthews or whoever can "write what he likes" are beside the point. Of course a creative musician can write what he/she likes. Not that this should be taken for granted of course. And it's maybe worth remarking that the kind of retrospective style David Matthews is working in is actually rather comparable to the kinds of artistic styles enforced on artists by the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

Er - hang on a minute - much as we all know of what you write here, has anyone sought to enforce David Matthews to write as he does? Do you believe that there is some kind of political régime at work here that seeks to encourage him (and perhaps others) that if they don't conform more or less to a certain way of writing, then success of any kind, public or otherwise, that they might otherwise attract might risk being denied to them?

DM8 is in no sense a product of such totalitarianism, real or imagined - unless you have a credible argument to demonstrate that it is so...

[ahinton]

Oops, in my excitement I forgot the link http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=1580

Be all this as it may or may not, does the paucity of reference to music in the transcript of this have any particular significance, do you think?...

[Ian]

However, when artistic impulse or expression is stifled by external influence such as corporate control, and one observes a cultural stagnation that for example suits business rather than culture, I think it is even more important that there is music that pushes against this. Much as I'm glad that David Matthews wrote his 8th Symphony, clearly it is not such a piece of music (and I don't think it needs to be).

Whether or not DM’s 8th pushes against ‘corporate control’, though, is not a question that can be answered by simply looking at the score, or listening to the music with an innocent ear.

The corporation doing the controlling here is the BBC (as is nearly always the case regarding new orchestral music in the UK) It might well be that this symphony falls quite neatly within the boundaries of what is currently acceptable to the BBC commissioners, and, as a consequence DM is vulnerable to accusations of acquiescing to corporate control. But putting aside the question to what extent that has always been the case for David Matthews, the problem is that any music that pushes against those corporate boundaries, in any direction, or even lie entirely outside those boundaries, is going to find it much harder to gain a hearing.

However, what has changed over the years is the sort of new music acceptable to the BBC. When I started listening to R3 in the late 60s commissions were, on average, significantly more atonal/modern than they are now. Not exclusively, to be sure (although the more tonal offerings tended to be from older more established figures that couldn’t necessarily be ignored as much as I suspected the [would-be] opinion formers would have liked). At that time there was huge resistance from the listening public towards this new music, but the BBC was still in a place where it commanded huge respect from a significantly more deferential public. Consequently arguments such as ‘this is great music, don’t worry dear audience, we know what we’re doing and you will soon come to see that we are right‘ were taken at face value. Over the years, however, a less deferential public and the realization that, in the main, audiences were not learning to love this modern music, made the BBC arguments much less credible and very gradually the shape of commissioning has changed - if only in an attempt to meet the public half-way.

I interpret this development as a (very powerful) corporation relinquishing power - not retaining or enhancing power as would suit the empire-builders within the corporation.

[Richard Barrett]

Over the years, however, a less deferential public and the realization that, in the main, audiences were not learning to love this modern music, made the BBC arguments much less credible

That's a very common opinion but I don't think it's the whole story by any means. Since the 1980s in particular, as I've said before, the whole of culture has shifted from an emphasis on innovation and exploration to an emphasis on retrenchment, retrospection and homogeneity - not only in the BBC's commissioning policy and its relation to what audiences are presumed to want, not even only in the area of contemporary concert music, but also for example in pop music; and this phenomenon of course runs in parallel with the resurgence of the right, globalisation, the neoliberal "consensus" and so on. Nowadays commercial success, "bums on seats" so to speak, is regarded as a measure of artistic excellence in a way that it never was in the 1960s and 70s; not only that but this is widely viewed as a positive development which in my view it most certainly isn't.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think Ian oversimplifies the BBC by conceiving of it as some kind of monolith.

Think Open University. Anomalous though the institution always was in seeking to inculcate Enlightenment values in the masses, and notwithstanding its partialness, during its pre-audience figures comparison days it did offer space for presenting the modern arts and supporting genuinely new music. It was in that period that a consensus became possible between old-time conservative insisters on maintaining "standards" and those of liberal or left persuasion wanting education in such standards and their underpinning knowledge spread beyond the privileged to the working population as a whole, in the belief that Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson's "white heat of technological change" coupled to a continuing mixed economy would gradualistically bring in shortened working hours and a concomitant leisure culture.

Given the Transatlantic alliance, I believe the thrust for this probably followed in delayed as well as diluted form America's post-war championing of the New to show the Ruskies that freedom really meant Freedom. This was naive thinking, maybe, but for a time it pre-empted the commercial imperative held back until Radio 1 was established in 1967, effectively before commercialism's hegemonic hold on taste-formation had yet become total. But this was not to be: the mixed economy would come to be judged counterproductive to Britain amid the globalised competition stakes, and the Heseltineian wing of the ruling class deemed commercial desiderata would have to take a far greater determining role in working class cultural shaping than had once been considered appropriate.

Hence we now find ourselves at a stage in its ideological transformation where the BBC doesn't know where or even if its remaining Reithian values retain any validity in terms of success now measured by different criteria, paced by the commercial sector, from those once permeating university education values, once the privilege of the few. Meanwhle from opposite premises, right and left find ourselves sometimes united on this forum against "dumbing down" on Radio 3 and in culture in general.

PS: Richard has I see reached similar conclusions in #490

[ahinton]

That's a very common opinion but I don't think it's the whole story by any means. Since the 1980s in particular, as I've said before, the whole of culture has shifted from an emphasis on innovation and exploration to an emphasis on retrenchment, retrospection and homogeneity - not only in the BBC's commissioning policy and its relation to what audiences are presumed to want, not even only in the area of contemporary concert music, but also for example in pop music; and this phenomenon of course runs in parallel with the resurgence of the right, globalisation, the neoliberal "consensus" and so on. Nowadays commercial success, "bums on seats" so to speak, is regarded as a measure of artistic excellence in a way that it never was in the 1960s and 70s; not only that but this is widely viewed as a positive development which in my view it most certainly isn't.

OK - and, in principle, I'm not about to doubt it any more than I am to applaud it - but do you really believe that David Matthews writes as he does (and indeed since he has done from a little before 1970, for that matter) purely because he's found it somehow convenient to buy into this hook, line and s(t)inker? Anyway, as far as the "bums on seats" aspect of this is concerned, you have yourself correctly identified occasions on which music that certainly falls outwith this kind of thing has still managed to attract plenty of bums on plenty of seats, so I'm not even sure in any case that this agenda, insofar as it might be promoted by whomsoever, can actually be guaranteed always to work in its own favour and against the kind of music that clearly falls outside it.

[Beef Oven!]

OK - and, in principle, I'm not about to doubt it any more than I am to applaud it - but do you really believe that David Matthews writes as he does (and indeed since he has done from a little before 1970, for that matter) purely because he's found it somehow convenient to buy into this hook, line and s(t)inker? Anyway, as far as the "bums on seats" aspect of this is concerned, you have yourself correctly identified occasions on which music that certainly falls outwith this kind of thing has still managed to attract plenty of bums on plenty of seats, so I'm not even sure in any case that this agenda, insofar as it might be promoted by whomsoever, can actually be guaranteed always to work in its own favour and against the kind of music that clearly falls outside it.

ahinton: "I even edited it for you at 21:27, please reply"

RB: "It's not that easy, hinty"

[ahinton]

ahinton: "I even edited it for you at 21:27, please reply"

Er - what? I edited my post #492 @ 21.27 for the benefit of no one member in particular and because of errors that I had committed therein; what if anything might be your issue with that?

RB: "It's not that easy, hinty"

What if anything is this supposed to mean?

And what has the owner / player of a Stuart grand to do with David Matthews' Eighth Symhony?

So many questions - so little time...

[jayne lee wilson]

I think it means there's a drunken bovine at the screen... hooves do have their limitations, and animals tend to think in pictures....