BBCSSO/Volkov szymanowski/lutoslawski 17/01/13 19:30 HRS

[jayne lee wilson]

"Radio loudspeakers"? Hmm...?
Only my portables have speakers in them. Wasn't listening on the radio anyway...
The speakers I use (Harbeth C7s) don't dry out the RAH, RFH, Barbican etc... God, give us some credit for listening experience, pur-lease...

RobLeD., I did say "as broadcast" (i.e, as engineered for R3, just to spell it out) - oh wait a minute, I already told you that...

"Self-critical" "self-doubting"... this is splitting hairs in a VERY cold climate. And it's "utterly silly" of you fhg, to be so aggressive. What is the Yeats' Poem you quote about, if not profound self-doubt?
Glad I spent this evening in the Berlin DCH. Away from HERE.

Good night gentlemen, good night sweet gentlemen, good night, good night...

[Flosshilde]

Don't you know, fhg, that you disagree with Jayne at your peril?

Sitting in the hall I couldn't say if the acoustic was dry or wet. I'm not sure what a dry acoustic is?

(I did notice once that the wallpaper on the end wall above the stage was looking a trifle damp)

[ahinton]

The Cage "revelation" was strong enough in Lutoslawski's estimation for him to make statements essentially identical to the one BobtheDevil quotes in #11 on four separate talks I heard him give in the early 1980s: Aldeburgh (at the Britten/Pears School for Advanced Music Studies) in November 1980; Glasgow (at the Musica Nova Festival) in 1981; the Royal Festival Hall at a pre-concert talk in 1983; and a pre-Prom talk in 1985. At the Glasgow event, I questioned him specifically on the nature of the Cage influence, and he pulled me up kindly but firmly to insist it wasn't an "influence" as such, but a revelation of a completely different way of constructing his own Music - a way out of the impasse he reached after the success of the Musique Funebre. To hear the Postlude followed by the Jeux Venitiens, he said, is to hear exactly how this new way of thinking about composition rejuvenated his creativity. In all four talks, he made the point that he wrote to Cage to thank him in the highest possible terms for his "help".

In the same way that it's not too "utterly silly" to claim that World War One changed RVW's "entire outlook", I don't think that the commentator's off-the-sheet remark is so offensive, although JLW's "decisively" is more accurate.

As to Lutoslawski being a "self-doubting" composer, it certainly didn't seem that way to the young composers whose work he would discuss with them, or to the performers of his Music, who were quickly, relentlessly but kindly shown how to correct any inaccuracies (the Brodsky Quartet were essentially shown how to perform - and not just Lutoslawski's Music! - after an intense afternoon's session with him at Aldeburgh). As a composer, always "self-questioning, "self-appraising, self-critical - but "self-doubting"? "Utterly silly"!

Lots of excellent sense here, for which very many thanks! And also thank you very much for sharing something of your encounter with WL and all else here. I wish that I had met him; he is one of the composers working during my lifetime who occupied and continues to occupy a position at the top of the tree in terms of earning my respect and admiration. Indeed, I was so upset to hear of his death in 1994 that the course of a particular section of a piano work of mine had suddenly to be rethought in order to absorb a kind of commemoration not so much his death per se but my of my sheer shock at it and the immediate need to mark him and his passing (this takes the form of three successive variations in a 51-variation passacaglia on a 12-note theme, the first two of which superimposes material from his Concerto for Orchestra upon the prevailing material and the third of which seeks to reflect him by taking some measures from the Sarabande from the theme and variations from Szymanowski's Second Piano Sonata and similarly superimposing them).

WL's thanks to Cage is indeed most moving - and I do not doubt what motivated it - but let's not kid ourselves (as I'm quite sure that you and Jayne don't!) that the "example" (rather than "influence") did more than to help him breathe the air of a planet that might in some sense have been an "other" one but which still depended upon a particularly Polish and thoroughly individual and personal manner of expression of which WL was already a Master and remained such until his untimely death.

[ahinton]

Don't you know, fhg, that you disagree with Jayne at your peril?

Wouldn't we all (if and when we do so)?! - but I don't think that fhg has actually done this, as I hope my response to his and (by implication) Jayne's excellent posts illustrates.

[Sir Velo]

a 51-variation passacaglia on a 12-note theme

One of your pithier efforts?

[french frank]

Thanks for all these comments on the actual performance. I've chosen to highlight this concert in our 'Now iPlaying' box on the basis of all the plaudits, and hope to use those quick links to listen.

[Flosshilde]

Wouldn't we all (if and when we do so)?! - but I don't think that fhg has actually done this, as I hope my response to his and (by implication) Jayne's excellent posts illustrates.

I thought as I typed it that 'disagree' was probably not quite right - perhaps 'query' or 'question' might be better.

[amateur51]

I've enjoyed reading all the contributions to this thread and I've promised myself that I'll listen to the concert.

By the by, there's a related concert coming up at the Royal Festival Hall as part of its current The Rest Is Noise festival ...

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/music/classical/tickets/philharmonia-orchestra-63639

[BBMmk2]

I've enjoyed reading all the contributions to this thread and I've promised myself that I'll listen to the concert.

By the by, there's a related concert coming up at the Royal Festival Hall as part of its current The Rest Is Noise festival ...

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/fin...rchestra-63639

Oh that is another concert to get to at all costs!! What a great programme!! If only, if only!!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Self-critical" "self-doubting"... this is splitting hairs in a VERY cold climate.

"Splitting hairs" - ahh! Back in the day ...

In the past fortnight, I have received two comments to this effect: aeolium says "he is over-fussy", jlw says "you split hairs" - the first person singular of this irregular verb is, of course, "I am meticulously precise in my utterences"!

But in this case, I think there is a huge difference between "self-criticism" and "self-doubt": the former is necessary to creative endeavours as it enables someone to get rid of material that doesn't precisely communicate what it is they're saying. A self-critical composer knows exactly what s/he is saying and rewrites continuously to get those ideas across as unambiguously as the piece demands. A self-doubting one can't produce anything at all - they doubt the worth of what they're saying (or, as usually, "trying to say"), doubt their own worthiness to proffer anything to themselves, let alone the outside world.

And it's "utterly silly" of you fhg, to be so aggressive.

Did you really find #13 "aggressive" (let alone "so aggressive")? I was trying to communicate my profound disagreement with you in as courteous way as I could. Good job I deleted my pithier, bisyllabic initial response. This would have been rude, so self-critically, I didn't send it and rewrote a lengthier response. Their was no doubt in my mind that your comment was invalid.

What is the Yeats' Poem you quote about, if not profound self-doubt?

"Yeats" & "Self-doubt". Hmm. "Graham Norton" & "Scrum half".

It's about self-criticism; about the need for Artists to ignore the siren-songs of friends and admirers (far more destructive than criticism to creativity) and to heed the nagging voice of conscience that urges them onto the next work, that refuses to be satisfied with past achievements and to go on to even greater heights. There is no "self-doubt" (let alone "profound self-doubt") that he, Yeats, can do this - just an ironically resigned determination to get on with the work.

Good night gentlemen, good night sweet gentlemen, good night, good night...

"You! Hypocrite lectrice! - Ma semblable - ma soeur!"

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Ma.

[Flosshilde]

But in this case, I think there is a huge difference between "self-criticism" and "self-doubt": the former is necessary to creative endeavours as it enables someone to get rid of material that doesn't precisely communicate what it is they're saying. A self-critical composer knows exactly what s/he is saying and rewrites continuously to get those ideas across as unambiguously as the piece demands. A self-doubting one can't produce anything at all - they doubt the worth of what they're saying (or, as usually, "trying to say"), doubt their own worthiness to proffer anything to themselves, let alone the outside world.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ma.

What's your mother got to do with it?

[jayne lee wilson]

"Splitting hairs" - ahh! Back in the day ...

In the past fortnight, I have received two comments to this effect: aeolium says "he is over-fussy", jlw says "you split hairs" - the first person singular of this irregular verb is, of course, "I am meticulously precise in my utterences"!

But in this case, I think there is a huge difference between "self-criticism" and "self-doubt": the former is necessary to creative endeavours as it enables someone to get rid of material that doesn't precisely communicate what it is they're saying. A self-critical composer knows exactly what s/he is saying and rewrites continuously to get those ideas across as unambiguously as the piece demands. A self-doubting one can't produce anything at all - they doubt the worth of what they're saying (or, as usually, "trying to say"), doubt their own worthiness to proffer anything to themselves, let alone the outside world.


Did you really find #13 "aggressive" (let alone "so aggressive")? I was trying to communicate my profound disagreement with you in as courteous way as I could. Good job I deleted my pithier, bisyllabic initial response. This would have been rude, so self-critically, I didn't send it and rewrote a lengthier response. Their was no doubt in my mind that your comment was invalid.


"Yeats" & "Self-doubt". Hmm. "Graham Norton" & "Scrum half".

It's about self-criticism; about the need for Artists to ignore the siren-songs of friends and admirers (far more destructive than criticism to creativity) and to heed the nagging voice of conscience that urges them onto the next work, that refuses to be satisfied with past achievements and to go on to even greater heights. There is no "self-doubt" (let alone "profound self-doubt") that he, Yeats, can do this - just an ironically resigned determination to get on with the work.



"You! Hypocrite lectrice! - Ma semblable - ma soeur!"

To get the daft stuff out of the way - it was that "utterly silly" of yours, as a judgement on me, that I found unpleasantly aggressive. After being told recently that I should be "ashamed" of a "disgraceful" review, or that my comments were "more suitable to a cheese-tasting", I'm possibly a little thin-skinned (though mea culpa to that generally...). After doing so once a few years ago and always regretting it, I would never now use such insults as comment on other contributors. Where does it get you? An insult is an attempt to SHUT YOU UP.

Can't see how your Waste Land adaptation answers my Hamlet one, but let's move on...

I think you're too categorical about the terms in question (self-doubting/self-critical).
How can you be critical of your own work if you don't have doubts about it?
Bruckner is only the most obvious and painful example of something which haunts so many creators, the worry that all they have done may be worthless, forgotten by the future. (Surely even more true of post-war composers, with the fragmentation of means and open ends, the constant arguments about valid compositional methods, from the serialism, the "new complexity", to the current fad for the "accessible").
And that is how I read Yeats' "What then?", as a self-questioning at the deepest level. In Ozymandias, Shelley's "look on my works ye mighty, and despair" isn't just about a ruin: it's a symbol of what may become of any achievement, however beautiful, proud or magnificent it was. An image of the hubris that may afflict even the most self-conscious achiever. I think that is what haunts the "great artist" in the refrain, "what then?"....his own voice is asking, "Would it have been worth it, after all?"

Or take this, from "An Irish Airman foresees his Death":

"I balanced all, brought all to mind
The years to come seemed waste of breath;
A waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death."

An image of living intensely in the NOW, exact opposite of Great Works of Art, poems to be long-crafted and long remembered. Yeats would have been very aware of the use of "breath", the voice of the bard, to mean poetic creation. Perhaps the very act, the ecstasy of creating, is worth more than any works left behind.
Or:

"I grow old among dreams,
A weather-worn, marble Triton
Among the streams"

Yeats believed in all sorts of mythological nonsense; those "dreams" must have seemed worn out themselves as he aged; and his greatest lines - the ones we admire most now - are the stoniest, the hardest and yes, the most doubting, of himself, his world and his beliefs. The "terrible beauty", the "great beast" which slouches towards Bethlehem to be born", "too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart..." images of waste and destruction, not preservation.

Especially since the time of Modernism, a work of art has always seemed a comment on what precedes it, especially within a given artist's oeuvre. That tension in Lutoslawski between the violence, the physical experience of disintegration in Livre or Mi-Parti, or the loose, orbiting fragments of the 2nd Symphony's 1st section, then the fading of its end; and the attempt to form meaningfully resolved structures like the 3rd Symphony,or narrative "Chains" in the classically laid-out Piano Concerto; isn't this conflict the classic modern dilemma - the undermining DOUBT that meaning can be found at all, whatever your creative choices or impulses?

I think that is why some of us enjoy it - because it seems thrillingly, uncomfortably, true.
(Apart, of course, from the sheer, meaningless, sonic thrill...)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

To get the daft stuff out of the way - it was that "utterly silly" of yours, as a judgement on me, that I found unpleasantly aggressive.

But, jayne, it wasn't "a judgement of you" - how could it possibly be when I don't know you, and why should I wish to "judge" you or anyone on a public conversation forum? What would be the point? And have I really come across on this Forum as someone who thinks it is his right to "judge" anyone personally? This possibility I find distressing. The phrase "utterly silly" comes from ahinton's first posting - a comment I had already said I found a little harsh, and was hijacking it as a substitute for "nonsense", which was the "pithier, bisyllabic response" to your suggestion that Lutoslawski was "self-doubting". Everything I know about the man and his Music contradicts this suggestion.

I think you're too categorical about the terms in question (self-doubting/self-critical).
How can you be critical of your own work if you don't have doubts about it?

I thought I'd explained my reasoning for this earlier - when Beethoven made all those scratchings out and re-writings of his work as he composed, I don't think it was because he "doubted" their value: I think he was absolutely certain that they weren't doing the job they needed to do. He'd try out an idea, this would fail, so he'd try another, and fail again - but fail better! And continue until, unlike Beckett's characters, he got it right. He'd never any doubt that he couldn't achieve what he set out to do - he'd never any doubt when his sketches were wrong - and he'd never any doubt when he'd got it right. (Well, perhaps in the case of the Grosse Fuge as the finale of the Bb S4tet.) Bruckner is a different case: his re-writings were the result of his works' failure to achieve the public acclaim he knew they were worth. Following the advice of his friends (always more damaging than critics), he tried to adjust the works to make them more pallatable to contemporary audiences, but always keeping the originals safe "for future generations" - because he knew that these originals were worthy of a future audience.

I would also suggest that Ozymandias is about the superiority of Art: the tyrant lies in crumbles, but these crumbles, the work of a forgotten Artist, are the only relics of the tyrant: the Art remains, the tyrant known only from that Art. I don't read any "self-doubt" in the poem. And my own reading of What then? remains more upbeat (Plato's ghost "sings" the refrain, after all): more "What next" than your suggestion of "So What?" (although Miles made an Artistic statement of that!) - not farewell but fare forward.

Which reminds me; are you sure you were referring to Hamlet?