Tunes for Tyrants with Suzy Klein...

[eighthobstruction]

....very interesting prog ref Ayn Rand this lunch hour....http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b097c1fr ....her family in St Petersburg in 1917, and had their pharmacy business and petite bourgeoise lives
closed down by local Bulsheviks....

[Pabmusic]

I haven't been able to hear any of this, but has it been noted that Walter Leigh actually responded to a Nazi request for new music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (to replace Mendelssohn) by writing some? It's recorded on Lyrita

[ardcarp]

I only know Walter Leigh as composer of the Concertino for harpsichord (it works quite well on the piano too) and strings. I was pointed towards it by a couple of old guys who had been Kings Choral Scholars and had known Leigh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAF90oIe4Fw

This from Wiki:

"Walter Leigh (22 June 1905 – 12 June 1942) was an English composer. Leigh is most famous for his Concertino for harpsichord and string orchestra, written in 1934. Other famous works include the overture Agincourt and The Frogs of Aristophanes for chorus and orchestra. He wrote music for documentary films and there is an unfinished sketch for a symphony.

Walter Leigh was born in Wimbledon. His first teacher was Harold Darke, with whom he worked from the age of eight until he was seventeen. He went to Christ's College, Cambridge, studying composition with Cyril Rootham and graduating in 1926. For two years thereafter, he studied composition under Paul Hindemith at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik.

In 1930, Leigh declined a teaching job and set about earning a living by accepting small commissions and becoming increasingly involved with the theatre. With V. C. Clinton-Baddeley he wrote a pantomime for the Festival Theatre at Cambridge, and two comic operas, the second of which, Jolly Roger, ran for six months at the Savoy Theatre in London, with a cast headed by George Robey. He composed an elaborate score for Basil Wright's documentary film The Song of Ceylon and the concert overture Agincourt, commissioned by the BBC in celebration of King George V's Silver Jubilee. The Harpsichord Concertino is one of a number of chamber works of the period: an elegant and concise work, more French than German in its spare-noted neo-classicism, the keyboard writing showing signs of Ravel's influence.

For the Cambridge production of The Frogs in 1936, Leigh produced another score precision-made for the occasion. The music for A Midsummer Night's Dream was written for open-air schools performance at Weimar in 1936; it is scored for flute, clarinet, trumpet, strings and harpsichord. Music for String Orchestra is a work written sympathetically for amateurs in four movements: Adagio - Vivo - Lento - Allegro. The only other major commission Leigh undertook before the outbreak of war was to produce the music for Farjeon's intimate revue, Nine Sharp (1938).

He was a composer who thrived on limitations and who needed the right external stimulus if he was to produce the best work that it was in him to do. He was a craftsman-composer of a sort commoner in the 18th century than the 20th century. Almost all his music was written for immediate use; like Haydn, he would not have dreamed of fulfilling a commission without ascertaining the probable capabilities of his performers; he could turn to any number of different idioms according to the needs of the occasion.

An obituary in The Times credits Leigh as being "the first British composer to undertake a complete study of the many problems relating to the sound-track in the production of films", and cites the score for The Song of Ceylon as "a classic example of the creative use of music and sound in relation to the visuals on the screen."[1]

The majority of the orchestral and chamber works have been recorded on the Lyrita and Dutton Epoch labels. The piano music and some art songs were recorded on the Tremula label. The Harpsichord Concertino was recorded by Kathleen Long in 1946 using a piano.

In 1941, during the Second World War, he joined the British Army and served as a trooper with the Royal Armoured Corps, 4th Queen's Own Hussars. He was killed in action near Tobruk, Libya in 1942, just before his 37th birthday, leaving a widow, Marion, and three children, Julian, Veronica and Andrew, who had been sent to Canada to escape the London Blitz."

I guess his premature death not only deprived us of a talented ...though not avant garde... English voice, but the manner of it exonerates him from any suggestion of being a Nazi sympathiser. Possibly his connection with Hindemith led to the MSND commission?

Edit: He [Paul Hindemith] was an internationally recognised composer but in Nazi Germany his music was seen as being too experimental and decadent. Hitler banned his music from being played in concert halls while Goebbels stated that Hindemith was an “atonal noisemaker”.

[Lat-Literal]

Local folk music traditions were actually encouraged under Stalin, for opportunistic reasons - the Armenian composer Khatachurian the probably being the best known example in the west. Interviewed in the early 1960s, the English composer Alan Bush spelt out the then-current rationale for Soviet nationalism - "socialism in one country" - in contradistinction (from the uncritical Communist Party Defense of the Soviet Union angle) with fascist ideals of art being required to be an expression of nationhood:

"Art is the expression of an individual, but an individual incorporates within himself the feelings and ideals of the society around him. In fact the greatest artists are those who sum up in their work the most general feelings and ideals of the largest numbers of people. But the artist is, after all, a person born in a particular country with a special culture, a language and a way of life, that is most particularly his own. This fact conditions him from the moment he is born until the time he begins to create art. Marxism teaches that this fact should be accepted by the artist, in fact that he should glory in it and attempt to work out his ideas within the framework of that culture which is most particularly his own. This idea is not peculiar to Marxism alone: Vaughan Williams and many other composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have accepted the idea that national characteristics inherent in art should be brought out. This is something fundamental to great artists and not a narrow doctrine in any way.

"The fascist believes that one nationalism is foreordained to be superior and to suppress other nationalisms. Marxism teaches the exact oppostie of this. Each national culture has its own contribution to make regardless of its size or degree of cultural development. What they are all striving to reflect through their art is fundamentally the same - the experiences of human life; these experiences are, however, different in every national grouping and at different periods of history"*.

Of course it goes without saying that Marxism teaches no such thing!

(Murray Shafer British Composers in Interview (1963) Faber and Faber, London, PP57-58)

Thank you for your comments which are informative. I can only respond with one of my characteristic rambles. First, it was salymap who first introduced me to Alan Bush - and, as it happens, the unrelated Geoffrey Bush who she mentioned in the same sentence. Subsequently, possibly several years later, a poster described one of these two as being "the good Bush" or words to that effect. It might have been you, S-A. I am not sure. Essentially the comment was about the music although there was also a political connotation. I have never quite decided who "the good Bush" is although I have investigated the music and political positions of each several times. Opinion that might clarify this matter would be welcomed.

Next, there is a fairly strong strand of academic thinking which suggests that while Marxism is a theory and even a philosophy, fascism never has been and it is historically a bit of a haphazard mish-mash. I don't have an especial view on that particular matter but I throw it out as something that might be contemplated. Rather like the first observations on the Bushes, it is no more than a quaint aside. This is particularly true given that I sought to draw clear links between the regimes which had an impact on Shostakovich and Strauss.

Thirdly, and in defence of folk music in classical music and elsewhere, I doubt whether the new music which emerged in many ways as individual comment against it should denote that what it was opposing was or had to be in essence a polar opposite. Rather like veganism, naturism, and to make reference to an earlier poster's comments, the supposed empowering of women, folk music can be spun in a myriad of ways. In political terms, it might well represent pure nationhood with an imposed emphasis on social interaction. Equally, it can be about grassroots organization which is in sync or at odds with societal structure, in absolute defiance or just turning on to something other, tuning in and dropping out.

Fourthly, my own leaning is towards folk music as an extension of nature that either excludes human beings or requires humans to work with and in it, subservient to its greater universal power. That position could be described as political but it is also a not unique individual take on political management whether it pertains to one country or the wider sphere.

From this perspective, RVW is endlessly fascinating. Some will choose to hear the green fields of England below little fluffy clouds, all of it bathed in the most comforting and even cosiest of lights. I would suggest that he himself - a system man with some socialist leanings - often had more than a few socio-political points to make, albeit mild. Personally, I can take on board each of those things but at his best he describes the land for me ostensibly as land which is to say that while it is of this country it just happens to be of this country. And while the music of, say, a Birtwistle and similar composers, is very different and far more rugged, I'd hear them in many regards as singing from the same hymn sheet, so to speak.

[Pabmusic]

Ardcarp - I'm not suggesting Leigh was a Nazi sympathiser (I've no idea). He certainly lived in Berlin in the 1920s and I guess was a Germanophile. I'm sure he was just delighted to be asked to write the music.

My underlying point, though, is that we're very fond of judging the past (and especially people's motives) by our modern 'comic-book' notions. Black hats vs white hats. As if we know so well, anyway.

Still, there's one thing the Wiki article didn't say - Leigh died in a 'friendly fire' incident when an RAF Spitfire attacked British armoured column. Perhaps the pilot knew something.

(And the Concertino is lovely - I've conducted it twice. Piano soloist both times.) The title says: Concertino für Cembalo (oder Klavier) und Streichorchester and it's dedicated Für Herrn und Frau Hilmar Höckner. And it's a British publication. A Germanophile, as I said.

[Lat-Literal]

"Polovtsian Dances" this morning on R3 Breakfast............can't help but think that "O Fortuna" borrowed from it!

[ardcarp]

Ardcarp - I'm not suggesting Leigh was a Nazi sympathiser (I've no idea). He certainly lived in Berlin in the 1920s and I guess was a Germanophile. I'm sure he was just delighted to be asked to write the music.

My underlying point, though, is that we're very fond of judging the past (and especially people's motives) by our modern 'comic-book' notions. Black hats vs white hats. As if we know so well, anyway.

Still, there's one thing the Wiki article didn't say - Leigh died in a 'friendly fire' incident when an RAF Spitfire attacked British armoured column. Perhaps the pilot knew something.

(And the Concertino is lovely - I've conducted it twice. Piano soloist both times.) The title says: Concertino für Cembalo (oder Klavier) und Streichorchester and it's dedicated Für Herrn und Frau Hilmar Höckner. And it's a British publication. A Germanophile, as I said.

I didn't mean to suggest you were stating categorically that our Walter was a Nazi sympatiser. Your 'black hats versus white' view of the past is well made. It was perfectly acceptable (in Cambridge fr example) to have communist sympathies without...or in ignorance of... the Stalinist baggage. I too have both conducted the Concertino twice (snap) and also played it twice as soloist once on harpsichord and once on piano. It's not that difficult! It's probably heresy to say that I think it works better on the piano, both in balance and in warmth of sound...which seems to complement the sometimes 'English pastoral' string writing.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Polovtsian Dances" this morning on R3 Breakfast............can't help but think that "O Fortuna" borrowed from it!

[Ferretfancy]

I had a colleague, slightly older than me, who did his National Service in Germany. This would have been about 1950. Near the barracks was a small cafe which was much used by the troops, and in the corner was a dusty old juke box. The boys soon found that one of the numbered items was the Horst Wessel song, so they fed the machine change and sat back to watch the reaction of the locals. Wicked but understandable !

As for Carmina Burana, surely it belongs to that select group of pieces that most of us have been known to listen to when we needed something totally undemanding but catchy, political connotations or not. For my money, Orff's Der Mond is a more obviously fascist sounding piece, especially in Sawallisch's EMI recording ( complete with thunderbolt)

[Pabmusic]

I didn't mean to suggest you were stating categorically that our Walter was a Nazi sympatiser. Your 'black hats versus white' view of the past is well made. It was perfectly acceptable (in Cambridge fr example) to have communist sympathies without...or in ignorance of... the Stalinist baggage. I too have both conducted the Concertino twice (snap) and also played it twice as soloist once on harpsichord and once on piano. It's not that difficult! It's probably heresy to say that I think it works better on the piano, both in balance and in warmth of sound...which seems to complement the sometimes 'English pastoral' string writing.

I miss conducting.

[pastoralguy]

Final part tonite and a lot of information about the Nazis and their bastardisation of music. Actually, it was really too much for a one hour programme since Stalin and DSCH could have taken a series of their own. Very moving interview with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch who described playing for the monster that was Joseph Mengele.

An interesting subject that probably deserved more than 3 one hour programmes.

[Richard Tarleton]

Final part tonite and a lot of information about the Nazis and their bastardisation of music. Actually, it was really too much for a one hour programme since Stalin and DSCH could have taken a series of their own. Very moving interview with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch who described playing for the monster that was Joseph Mengele.

An interesting subject that probably deserved more than 3 one hour programmes.

My sentiments entirely pg. Having started the DSCH story with Lady Macbeth and the 5th Symphony in an earlier episode, the story of the 7th Symphony and the siege of Leningrad could have done with telling.

The pub scene with SK and sundry old gits singing "We'll meet again" was frankly embarrassing. I don't think they were even doing it ironically. Who on earth were they? And we got SK singing and playing - is there no end to the woman's talents? But yes, an informative programme, and the interview was very moving.

[pastoralguy]

Alas, no sign of her fur hat last nite.

Perhaps it'll encourage the BBC bods to do a follow up. Then again, maybe not...

[Lat-Literal]

Another good episode - the latter half which I have seen. I haven't seen the first of the three yet but I watched the whole of the second. Some of it was very troubling. The use of music in the concentration camps. I turned the sound down at one point because I didn't want to have that link with Die Winterreise placed in my head. A number of questions arose. Overall, is she very anti Wagner? If so, is that wholly fair? I recognise that this thought is a "here we go again" one. As for Tippett, a strong case was put forward - the value of freedom of expression - but I still um and ah as to be a pacifist when faced with fascism can seem to me rather like caving in. I wasn't entirely sure about the conclusion that music is untouchable. Of course, it can be reclaimed. But in using music to their own ends surely the Nazis did touch music. But that is a quibble. I comprehend what was being conveyed.

A footnote: there are very, very few German composers of any note who were born between 1875 and 1925. I don't think I have ever seen this point mentioned and perhaps many people are simply not aware of it. I just wonder whether there had been something of a cultural vacuum which helped the sinister to seize music along with almost everything else?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A footnote: there are very, very few German composers of any note who were born between 1875 and 1925. I don't think I have ever seen this point mentioned and perhaps many people are simply not aware of it. I just wonder whether there had been something of a cultural vacuum which helped the sinister to seize music along with almost everything else?

Why start at 1875, Lats? I'm sure I must be missing some obvious names, but I would say that "there are very, very few German composers of note born after 1835" - Strauss, ... err ... Humperdinck ... err ... em ... Pfitzner ... pfff ... arggh ... eeeh ... Delius - (sound of desperate barrel scraping ... fade to end . . .


Austrians, on the other hand: dozens of 'em born between 1840 and 1925!