Musical talents that never quite made it....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

HS is entitled to his personal view as he properly puts it . The fact that fhgl likes works such as that PMD piece that he directed us to on YT ( albeit without warning us what it sounded like ) is equally a personal view as much as it is presented as the correct view .

Oh, Barbie! If I responded to all of HS' "personal views", I'd end up with writers' cramp - it's almost a given that his views of Music and mine are in parallel universes. But that wasn't the point here: he claimed that Richard Rodney Bennett, Susan Bradshaw and Cornelius Cardew were members of the "Manchester School" - they weren't. He got his facts wrong: as wrong as anyone whose "personal view" was "properly put" that JMW Turner was a member of the Second Viennese School who wrote Hamlet whilst commissioning Tristan und Isolde from Sibelius. It's not a "correct view" that these facts are erroneous - it's accurate knowledge: Bennett, Bradshaw & Cardew were disqualified from being members of the "Manchester Group" by the pernickety technicality that they had no connection with Manchester (where Ogdon, Goehr, Howarth, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies studied).

As for Alma Redemptoris Mater - it was chosen not as a piece that I "like", but because HS alluded to it in his post. The fact (not "personal view") that this work is still being performed 55 years after HS' involvement in it -and by the young Musicians for whom HS so cares - is sufficient riposte to HS's "personal view" of it.

[Richard Barrett]

I also played works by Luigo Nono and Elizabeth McConchy(?) at Dartington.

I know it was a long time ago but a few seconds with Google would have enabled you to get their names right, although I suppose, given your aversion to a large proportion of the music composed during your own lifetime, you might not think they deserve their names being right.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The people that I named were all there (As was John McCabe, Malcolm Williamson and, of course, William Glock)

But they were not "included in the membership" of the "Manchester School" as you stated in the post from which you kindly quote.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No, with any luck we're beyond the age of thinking of composers as "towering giants"!

Call me old-fashioned, but I disagree (and with Dave2002): Music that has the power to astonish, awaken, delight and make the listener feel simultaneously humble and magnificently grateful to be alive is still being written, and that's my criteria for a work of "towering genius". I named 15 such figures (all of them living) on the "8 Composers you can't live without" Thread.

[MrGongGong]

But they were not "included in the membership" of the "Manchester School" as you stated in the post from which you kindly quote.

I have done several performances in Budapest
Ligetil was there, as was Bartok, Liszt , Alvin Lucier, Xenakis et at (but not at the same time)
SO I am now a "member" of the "group"

(I also used to live at Dartington so that makes me part of that one as well .... and i've been to Manchester so I was in the Smiths and am also part of New Order and the Halle .....)

[ahinton]

But they were not "included in the membership" of the "Manchester School" as you stated in the post from which you kindly quote.

Perhaps he was thinking of the Second Manchester School, about which - as Peter Schickele once observed about P D Q Bach - "little , but not little enough, is known".

The sorely missed Richard Rodney Bennett spent the last 30+ years of his life in New York, but I'm not aware that he wrote any New York Counterpoint...

[MrGongGong]

The sorely missed Richard Rodney Bennett spent the last 30+ years of his life in New York, but I'm not aware that he wrote any New York Counterpoint...

Maybe not but he was a member (Using HS definitions ........) of Talking Heads must have been, he was there at the same time

[Boilk]

The term Manchester School may have stuck (thank you once again musical academia) but is rather misleading compared to, say, the Second Viennese School where there was at least a shared new musical ideology. Weren't Goehr, PMD and Birtwistle simply in the same place at the same time with little time for the likes of building on the achievements of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten, instead relishing the latest developments going on in Europe? I find the term 'Darmstadt School' also inappropriate, but perhaps slightly more credible in that it was a centre of musical pilgrimage famed for its forward-looking ethos.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The term Manchester School may have stuck (thank you once again musical academia) but is rather misleading

Whilst we await "musical academia", I think you've got this right: "School" was a journalistic convenience (which is why I think HS used the inverted commas) - Birtwistle, Davies, Goehr, Howarth and Goehr put on about half-a-dozen concerts under the banner "New Music, Manchester Group" - it was only after their sole London concert that they started being referred to as a "School". At this time, Birtwistle was the Clarinettist of the ensemble - he kept his compositions to himself, although he did consult RVW later whilst a student at the Royal Academy in London. Maybe they talked about Mediaeval and Renaissance English Music?

Weren't Goehr, PMD and Birtwistle simply in the same place at the same time with little time for the likes of building on the achievements of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten, instead relishing the latest developments going on in Europe?

Yes; from an interview from 1995:
Q:Tell us about the Manchester School. Was it a "school"? What did you have in common?

HB: Well I think we rejected the English thing. But somebody like Ogdon for instance was into Sorabji, Balakirev, and what's his name, Medtner..

I find the term 'Darmstadt School' also inappropriate, but perhaps slightly more credible in that it was a centre of musical pilgrimage famed for its forward-looking ethos.

I think (judging from recent articles in Tempo) that the preferred term is now "Darmstadt Schools" - which accommodates the "inappropriations" more accurately.

[salymap]

I think there was a similar thing at Dartington, where various people like Brian Jordan and Ian Kellam were sometimes part ofthe 'in Group' or School
there

[Richard Barrett]

Music that has the power to astonish, awaken, delight and make the listener feel simultaneously humble and magnificently grateful to be alive is still being written, and that's my criteria for a work of "towering genius".

I have no problem with such criteria for musical works. On the other hand I don't see why that makes their composers in any way "towering". It's the music that's important, surely - composers are no better or worse, or more or less towering than anyone else (apart from Simon Bainbridge ).

[Richard Barrett]

I was in the Smiths and am also part of New Order and the Halle ...

Now that is an impressive CV. I on the other hand have been a member of Chas & Dave, Focus and Einstürzende Neubauten.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I have no problem with such criteria for musical works. On the other hand I don't see why that makes their composers in any way "towering". It's the music that's important, surely - composers are no better or worse, or more or less towering than anyone else (apart from Simon Bainbridge ).

Oh, yes: I was using "composer" to refer to the work rather than the individual, as I think Dave was, too. Remarkably few creators of the "towering" works of Art from the past are particularly interesting or attractive individuals. (It's all very different nowadays, of course )

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Now that is an impressive CV. I on the other hand have been a member of Chas & Dave, Focus and Einstürzende Neubauten.

It's come as a shock to me that I was a member of Blancmange. I'd prefer to be thought of as a member of Elision. (I do fold Music Stands and put them in transit vans very well.)

[ahinton]

Yes; from an interview from 1995:
Q:Tell us about the Manchester School. Was it a "school"? What did you have in common?

HB: Well I think we rejected the English thing. But somebody like Ogdon for instance was into Sorabji, Balakirev, and what's his name, Medtner..

Hmmm - I didn't know about Balakirev and Medtner being any part of "the English thing" (despite Medtner's settling in England for the last years of his life, albeit not in Manchester).