Unheard British symphonies

[Lordgeous]

Richard Rodney Bennett???

[Serial_Apologist]

Richard Rodney Bennett???

Admittedly the first two, which I got to know in the late '60s, proved one of my stepping stones into the world of 12-tone and atonal music more generally, rather undermining my spartan advocacy of jumping straightaway into the deep end, but like quite a lot of RRB's serial music - especially after the promise of such early works as the Calendar, and Aubade of 1964, they now ironically seem too obviously formulaic - something that never occurs to me when listening to Goehr's two. I still nevertheless get annoyed at the public apology he made for using a 12-tone row as the basis for much of the Third, while self-exculpating over the claim of the "magic" resolution at its conclusion - if that was the word he used in a radio interview - when the foregoing music was imv some of his warmest and best using the method.

[ahinton]

Yes, but does a Catalan composer strictly count as British, even though constrained to escape Spain to France and then to settle in Cambridge? Surely his cultural grounding was very much Catalan?

True - a piano pupil of Granados in his youth, at that - but this opens up a whole barrel of worms unless one disqualifies certain composers (including Gerhard) as "British" solely on the grounds that they were not born in Britain like Handel, Delius, van Dieren as distinct from, say, Holst but settled in Britain...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Delius? Yorkshireman!

[Serial_Apologist]

True - a piano pupil of Granados in his youth, at that - but this opens up a whole barrel of worms unless one disqualifies certain composers (including Gerhard) as "British" solely on the grounds that they were not born in Britain like Handel, Delius, van Dieren as distinct from, say, Holst but settled in Britain...

And of course the same could be said in mention of Egon Wellesz, whose symphonies, written later in his career, are also well worth attention. Some of them are (or were) available on youtube.

While at it, in connection, I found this among my book shelves:

"One characteristic of the English genius is its capacity to absorb foreign influences, whether artistic or political, into its own system and to convert foreign settlers into Englishmen. Handel is the classic instance in music. Delius is another and the names of Holst and Finzi, the second English to the core, indicate how, after a generation or two, alien blood has been absorbed. The same process is evident not only in the case of Seiber, but even in a more mature musician like Egon Wellesz, who has composed an English comic opera, Incognito, based on a story by Congreve and a number of settings of English poetry, and in Franz Reizenstein, a pupil of Hindemith, who came to England in 1934 at the age of twenty-three. Reizenstein's cantata, Voices in the Night (1951), is a remarkable witness to his sensitive response to English poetic imagery and metres - the text is an anthology ranging from Campian and Charles Corton to Christopher Hassall who arranged it - and to his ability to compose in the great tradition of English choral music without losing his own individuality ...". (Music in Great Britain after 1945[/I], Dyneley Hussey, in Twentieth Century Music: A symposium (1960), Ed. Rollo Myers. John Calder, London, P.189).

[ahinton]

Delius? Yorkshireman!

Somehow I didn't think that I'd have either to wait long for that response or wonder whence it might come!

[Bryn]

Delius? Yorkshireman!

Nobody's perfect.

[vinteuil]

Delius? Yorkshireman!

... I've always thought that our Fritz Theodor, Dutch Westphalian tho' he surely was, was really more American/French than anything.


.

[Maclintick]

Franz Reizenstein, a pupil of Hindemith, who came to England in 1934 at the age of twenty-three. Reizenstein's cantata, Voices in the Night (1951), is a remarkable witness to his sensitive response to English poetic imagery and metres

...as are his sublime "Variations on The Lambeth Walk"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q9FJSh3RSY

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... I've always thought that our Fritz Theodor, Dutch Westphalian tho' he surely was, was really more American/French than anything.

Nah - born in Bradford, Yorkshire - couldn't wait to get out - left at the age of 22, and never set foot in the place again.

Typical Yorkshireman.

[vinteuil]

Nah - born in Bradford, Yorkshire - couldn't wait to get out - left at the age of 22, and never set foot in the place again.

Typical Yorkshireman.

... God's own country not good enough for him?

Typical Yorkshireman...

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[Serial_Apologist]

...as are his sublime "Variations on The Lambeth Walk"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q9FJSh3RSY

I thought they were by someone called Franz Rise & Shine.

[Lordgeous]

Admittedly the first two, which I got to know in the late '60s, proved one of my stepping stones into the world of 12-tone and atonal music more generally, rather undermining my spartan advocacy of jumping straightaway into the deep end, but like quite a lot of RRB's serial music - especially after the promise of such early works as the Calendar, and Aubade of 1964, they now ironically seem too obviously formulaic - something that never occurs to me when listening to Goehr's two. I still nevertheless get annoyed at the public apology he made for using a 12-tone row as the basis for much of the Third, while self-exculpating over the claim of the "magic" resolution at its conclusion - if that was the word he used in a radio interview - when the foregoing music was imv some of his warmest and best using the method.

I'm glad you mentioned his Aubade which I've always loved. (Mind you, I was a pupil of his at the time and attended rehearsals and the first performance which I think was conducted by John Carewe. If memory serves me right it was a Prom in which Sargent conducted the classical works and Carewe the "Modern"!

[Wychwood]

Robin Orr -- the first of his three symphonies:

https://youtu.be/0FcBlU8xDY4

[Serial_Apologist]

... God's own country not good enough for him?

Typical Yorkshireman...

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Oh I don't know about that. He was buried in Surey, after all.