Moral Maze - British Places : Better Represented By Classical Music Than Other Forms

[Lat-Literal]

Mozart in Paris, Prague or on Jupiter? Haydn in Paris and London? ...and no Holst didn't go to.......
RVW did have the Westminster Carillon on his Sym 2!

Britain preferably, cloughie.

I am a bit surprised by this outcome - when I posted the thread it wasn't with any obvious agenda - I thought it would lean towards pop/rock re urban but not as comprehensively.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not too sure where we are now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwZBOYwZRI4

Actually, I think I know where I would like us to be. I'd like classical music on cities and towns outside London.

Leaving out the various "Cheltenham" Symphonies, there are the "Canterbury" Symphonies (#16, & #17) and the "Chichester" Symphonies (#'s 19, 24, & 27) by John Marsh. This is from #24:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMsBNg9iV0

... but, like the Haydn & Mozart examples Cloughie mentions (and Haydn's "Oxford") none of these were meant to convey a sense of the place for which they were written - the Haydn "London" Symphony quotes a Croatin folk song in the Finale!

I can't find online recordings of Anthony Burgess' Manchester Overture.

[Richard Tarleton]

What this discussion tells me is that where the composer's inspiration comes from, and what the listener hears, are two quite different things. If composers kept their inspiration to themselves, and simply gave their works opus numbers, the synaesthesists might hear and see all sorts of things, others might just hear...music, but not many would get these geographical associations. Suggestion is a powerful thing.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What this discussion tells me is that where the composer's inspiration comes from, and what the listener hears, are two quite different things. If composers kept their inspiration to themselves, and simply gave their works opus numbers, the synaesthesists might hear and see all sorts of things, others might just hear...music, but not many would get these geographical associations. Suggestion is a powerful thing.

- and I wonder what kind of "landscape" is heard by those who haven't been to the specific location named in the composition/programme note? ("Where" is "heard"/evoked in Tippett's The Rose Lake by listeners who've never been to Senegal? Or which forest by Tapiola for those who have never been to Finland? Are specific geographical associations heard, or is it a generic idea ("African lake", "big Forest") originating in such listeners' experience - so that the Rose Lake becomes Buttermere, or the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park?

[MrGongGong]

- and I wonder what kind of "landscape" is heard by those who haven't been to the specific location named in the composition/programme note?

Suggestion is a powerful thing
as Penderecki would tell you after renaming 8'37"

To be told that a chap went to Anglesey to produce music for a Welsh myth. One might listen to it and say "yes, it is obvious he went there". Whether the woman who produces music from a photograph is at any disadvantage I don't know but in respect to her I have never heard anyone say about a piece of music that it sounded like it was only based on a photo.

I don't think the processes of composition are necessarily intended to be indicative of specific things to an audience
and the music of the person I know who uses photographs of unvisited places isn't necessarily intended to sound like it was based on a photo.
The piece I've just finished making has all sorts of processes (mostly electronic but some involving asking around 100 people a question and recording their one-word answers) which were useful in the making but not essential to the listening.

[french frank]

I'd like classical music on cities and towns outside London.

Has M. Vinteuil mentioned Portsmouth Point ?

[Stanfordian]

Arthur Butterworth's score 'Kendal Clock' (Tinnitis Aurium Kendaliensis 1189–1989) for carillon, Op. 84 (1989).
A short piece based on the Kendal Town Hall clock commissioned to mark the 800th Anniversary of Kendal's Charter.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Suggestion is a powerful thing
as Penderecki would tell you after renaming 8'37"

[Pulcinella]

Actually, I think I know where I would like us to be. I'd like classical music on cities and towns outside London.

Lots of choral music is written for specific choirs/places; not sure if those fit your bill.
(The Howells canticle settings are perhaps prime examples but there have been many others, mass settings too.)

[BBMmk2]

There's also brass band and concert band works to look at!

[teamsaint]

What this discussion tells me is that where the composer's inspiration comes from, and what the listener hears, are two quite different things. If composers kept their inspiration to themselves, and simply gave their works opus numbers, the synaesthesists might hear and see all sorts of things, others might just hear...music, but not many would get these geographical associations. Suggestion is a powerful thing.

Suggestion is a powerful thing. But I think that there are two angles here that are rather different.
First, since as you say, suggestion is powerful,I don't really understand any desire ( I'm not saying you are suggesting this) to separate the words that a composer feels are an integral part of the whole, from the music. There is an understanding there that very often we (try to) understand music in terms of the spoken or written word, and not in some "purely" musical way or langauge. Spoken or written Language is the way we very often transmit some thought about music.

Secondly, the point about ways in which listeners listen, the critical approach used, is vital, but perhaps not that often addressed. The discussion of politics and programme work around the Turnage piece at the Proms the other night might be a case in point. What the listener brings to the experience is all important, and there are many ways to approach music, or literature, or art.

[Richard Barrett]

Suggestion is a powerful thing. But I think that there are two angles here that are rather different.
First, since as you say, suggestion is powerful,I don't really understand any desire ( I'm not saying you are suggesting this) to separate the words that a composer feels are an integral part of the whole, from the music. There is an understanding there that very often we (try to) understand music in terms of the spoken or written word, and not in some "purely" musical way or langauge. Spoken or written Language is the way we very often transmit some thought about music.

Secondly, the point about ways in which listeners listen, the critical approach used, is vital, but perhaps not that often addressed. The discussion of politics and programme work around the Turnage piece at the Proms the other night might be a case in point. What the listener brings to the experience is all important, and there are many ways to approach music, or literature, or art.

These are all good points. I'm reminded of Peter Ablinger's player-piano piece A Letter from Schoenberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsXovEWBGo - the first time I heard it, without the subtitles, it sounded to me like a more or less random swirl of very rapid piano sounds. With the subtitles you hear the words so clearly it's impossible to imagine not having done so. The title of a piece of music (as in the Penderecki example) is very potent in this regard. Returning to music supposedly evocative of place, would one honestly be able to hear what La Mer is "about" without knowing its title? Really? How?

[ahinton]

From memory, for Margaret Thatcher on DID the piece of music in question evoked returning from the Falklands War.

Not too sure where we are now.

"We are where we are", aren't we? (whatever that means).

As you were...

[ahinton]

Returning to music supposedly evocative of place, would one honestly be able to hear what La Mer is "about" without knowing its title? Really? How?

Of course not - and, perhaps, if it were possible to do this, someone might ask why its composer wanted it to be evocative of Eastbourne...

[Sir Velo]

its composer wanted it to be evocative of Eastbourne...

I don't think he did he?

More likely was his inspiration, not the place of composition!