Britten

[Serial_Apologist]

Britten loved Mozart's music. I don't think he much liked Beethoven's, in later life at any rate.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ah, but haven't you heard them talking? They are choc-full of passionate intensity, against every 'ism' you could name and then some. It's just that this passionate intensity stops at the titles, and as you amusingly put it, is resolutely excluded from their actual compositions, which don't say boo to a goose.

Which is why, for me, jazz and free improv have come to embody much of the finest of 20th century's progress in musical thought, there being such wealth of richness and sophistication from Debussy to Dillon remaining to be absorbed, and will I believe continue to be, academic courses funded by the bank of mum and dad or pitching for a sit in on the bandstand.

Perhaps the current political turmoil might put some lead back in their collective pencil.

Quite a lot of the themes being taken up by the 2025 twenty-fivers exhibit current concerns, especially environmental ones, as can be seen from the titles of many new commissions. The question is, who from their own generation seems likely to gain anything in terms of being informed or inspired by their compositional responses, when so many commercialising genres such as hip-hop serve more easily relatable avenues?

[Ein Heldenleben]

"Knowing the right people" emphatically did not apply to young Ben Britten, the dentist's son who'd attracted the notice of such weird outsiders as Bridge and Ireland. Thus his lifelong tension between wanting to be the establishment's darling and remaining a marginal outsider. His talent was utterly outstanding - the greatest teenage composer England had known since Sullivan.

that Op 5 Holiday Suite for Piano just played is a full on masterpiece.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Ah, but haven't you heard them talking? They are choc-full of passionate intensity, against every 'ism' you could name and then some. It's just that this passionate intensity stops at the titles, and as you amusingly put it, is resolutely excluded from their actual compositions, which don't say boo to a goose.

Perhaps the current political turmoil might put some lead back in their collective pencil.

I would have to make exceptions like Ades and Macmillan who have usually something interesting to say - particularly when the latter is drawn on contemporary Scotland.

[Master Jacques]

Quite a lot of the themes being taken up by the 2025 twenty-fivers exhibit current concerns, especially environmental ones, as can be seen from the titles of many new commissions.

Indeed so, but these titles are more about reflecting social concerns (the 'isms') than about larger political questions, which are ostentatiously avoided. The music itself has about as much socio-political involvement as Ronald Binge's Sailing By, without the tunes.

My "hope" is that current - and extremely startling - frontal attacks on the world order, democracy and truth might shake young composers out of their complacency, the feeling that "all is well, and all manner of thing is well" which pervades their entitled work. Like Ein Heldenleben, I make exceptions for those two elder statesmen, Macmillan and Ades.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Indeed so, but these titles are more about reflecting social concerns (the 'isms') than about larger political questions, which are ostentatiously avoided. The music itself has about as much socio-political involvement as Ronald Binge's Sailing By, without the tunes.

My "hope" is that current - and extremely startling - frontal attacks on the world order, democracy and truth might shake young composers out of their complacency, the feeling that "all is well, and all manner of thing is well" which pervades their entitled work. Like Ein Heldenleben, I make exceptions for those two elder statesmen, Macmillan and Ades.

“All shall be well…”
Those lines were written or re creatively deployed in darker times than these . Are there any artists up to our times? Perhaps the fracturing of the old order will throw up a genius .Or is that cliched thinking?

[Beresford]

Ah, but haven't you heard them talking? They are choc-full of passionate intensity, against every 'ism' you could name and then some. It's just that this passionate intensity stops at the titles, and as you amusingly put it, is resolutely excluded from their actual compositions, which don't say boo to a goose.
Perhaps the current political turmoil might put some lead back in their collective pencil.

The only British composers to win the von Siemens prize ("Nobel prize of classical music") since Britten are Harrison Birtwhistle, Brian Ferneyhough, Rebecca Saunders, and George Benjamin. All of them have plenty of lead in the pencil, in my view, eg "Us Dead Talk Love" by Saunders. Probably true of her first opera, Lash, first performance due this June in Berlin.
But would any of them they make the 25 for 2025? Perhaps that is why they departed these shores (maybe not Birtwhistle?), and why they don't see R3 as the "Home of Classical Music".
I don't get the impression that any of the Siemens winners are driven primarily by political views.

I quite like the 25, from what I have heard so far - but they are the product of our time, and our social values perhaps, so maybe a bit parochial. And they struggle to make a living, like Britten.

[eighthobstruction]

The music itself has about as much socio-political involvement as Ronald Binge's Sailing By, without the tunes.

....well he didn't sail by , he sailed away....

[pastoralguy]

A friend once characterised Britten’s music as appealing mainly to those in social class A1.

[Master Jacques]

The only British composers to win the von Siemens prize ("Nobel prize of classical music") since Britten are Harrison Birtwhistle, Brian Ferneyhough, Rebecca Saunders, and George Benjamin. All of them have plenty of lead in the pencil, in my view, eg "Us Dead Talk Love" by Saunders. Probably true of her first opera, Lash, first performance due this June in Berlin.
But would any of them they make the 25 for 2025? Perhaps that is why they departed these shores (maybe not Birtwhistle?), and why they don't see R3 as the "Home of Classical Music".
I don't get the impression that any of the Siemens winners are driven primarily by political views.

I quite like the 25, from what I have heard so far - but they are the product of our time, and our social values perhaps, so maybe a bit parochial. And they struggle to make a living, like Britten.

Interesting thoughts Beresford, thank you.

They do indeed make a curious quartet: Birtwistle lived with his wife and family in Wiltshire, Benjamin lives with his husband in London. But you're right of course about Saunders and Ferneyhough, neither of whom have much to do with their country of birth. Opinions will differ as to their standing, but there is no doubt that all four are the real deal, and none of them (living or dead!) would have touched 25 for 2025 with the proverbial bargepole. Birtwistle was most definitely fuelled by his politics, just as surely as northern playwrights of his time; Benjamin can be depressingly right-on, especially when "crimped" by his opera librettist; but Saunders and Ferneyhough are refreshingly above the battle, working in "pure" aesthetics which make political statements in themselves.

Music can never escape politics, of course. Unless it's prepared to embrace blind antiquarianism - the curious retro-fantasies of Ian Venables, for example, which seek to eradicate all British life since the 1920s.

[smittims]

Britten's music was more ostensibly politically-involved earlier, perhaps inevitably in the 'thirties. Later , in morning dress showing the Queen Mother around the Maltings, etc. he tended to distance himself from his left-wing, Audenesque period. I don't think this was hypocrisy, merely a sign that (like some other creative artists, Webern for instance) he was a little naive in worldly ways and wondered where he stood in the world .

As with John Ireland, I think his sexuality was the main-spring in much of his creative essence , but also shows a limitation: he was often criticised for overdoing the 'destruction of innocence' and I think he was hurt by the suggestion that he could not create a romantic female role in opera. I gather he did attempt twice to plan an Anna Karenina, but it came to nothing.

[Master Jacques]

As with John Ireland, I think his sexuality was the main-spring in much of his creative essence ...

This is said about Britten, by commentators looking for an easy "key" to creativity. I've never myself been convinced that his strong homosexual orientation was responsible for anything much over and above a handful of coded messages in the operas and large vocal works, which are presented so blatantly as almost to feel puckishly pasted-on. Socially, psychologically and politically, Britten's works are very straightforward in effect. There is nothing closeted about them.

To take the obvious, oft-cited example, Peter Grimes works because of the protagonist's positioning as an outsider, a man soured by other people's reactions to him, to the degree that he finds relationships of any kind difficult. The opera resonates in an infinite number of ways around that axis, of which LGBT is only one. The opera is certainly not defined by that particular aspect.

As so often in Britten, we're struck by the opera's refusal to engage with sexuality, rather than its embrace of it. Sex in Britten tends to be lurking just beyond the horizon, rather than examined in full view. The Rape of Lucretia is about all power, social norms and jealousy, not the sexual act itself. Billy Budd is not victimised by Claggart in order to "kill the thing he loves", but to kill the moral force he hates. Quint's physical relations with Miles in The Turn of the Screw are of course raised only in a single, dark hint from Mrs Grose. We have to wait for Death in Venice to find the focus squarely on sexual love, and even there the examination of male-male sexuality is much more muted than in Thomas Mann.

In the case of Ireland, it's impossible to dissect his very personal complex of sexual drives, homo and hetero, and even harder to pin anything down in the music. It's surely more fruitful to concentrate on the dark, intense, egotistic atavism and sense of intersecting ancient worlds which he drank in from the work of Arthur Machen. Now that really does fuel the music, in a most disturbing way.

[Beresford]

Thanks for the corrections, Master J.
The brief for "20 for 2025" commissions was "inspired by 25 significant events which have defined the first quarter of the 2000s", so no reflections on Life in general, or, God forbid, requiems, or even the family dramas of births, deaths, love, distancing, etc. that mean so much to most of us. But this is not meant as an apology for the compositions. Something here makes me think of Bach's coffee cantatas.
Now I will have to look up Ian Venables, and Arthur Machen. Somehow I am not looking forward to doing so, but I will pluck up courage after a coffee and a cantata.

[Ein Heldenleben]

This is said about Britten, by commentators looking for an easy "key" to creativity. I've never myself been convinced that his strong homosexual orientation was responsible for anything much over and above a handful of coded messages in the operas and large vocal works, which are presented so blatantly as almost to feel puckishly pasted-on. Socially, psychologically and politically, Britten's works are very straightforward in effect. There is nothing closeted about them.

To take the obvious, oft-cited example, Peter Grimes works because of the protagonist's positioning as an outsider, a man soured by other people's reactions to him, to the degree that he finds relationships of any kind difficult. The opera resonates in an infinite number of ways around that axis, of which LGBT is only one. The opera is certainly not defined by that particular aspect.

As so often in Britten, we're struck by the opera's refusal to engage with sexuality, rather than its embrace of it. Sex in Britten tends to be lurking just beyond the horizon, rather than examined in full view. The Rape of Lucretia is about all power, social norms and jealousy, not the sexual act itself. Billy Budd is not victimised by Claggart in order to "kill the thing he loves", but to kill the moral force he hates. Quint's physical relations with Miles in The Turn of the Screw are of course raised only in a single, dark hint from Mrs Grose. We have to wait for Death in Venice to find the focus squarely on sexual love, and even there the examination of male-male sexuality is much more muted than in Thomas Mann.

In the case of Ireland, it's impossible to dissect his very personal complex of sexual drives, homo and hetero, and even harder to pin anything down in the music. It's surely more fruitful to concentrate on the dark, intense, egotistic atavism and sense of intersecting ancient worlds which he drank in from the work of Arthur Machen. Now that really does fuel the music, in a most disturbing way.

Excellent analysis MJ. It’s a trap that John Bridcut’s films fall into (and indeed Ken Ruseell’s ) - seeing too much of a composer’s work in terms of their sexuality. I suppose it’s great box office but Vaughan Williams’ sex life is tedious stuff and tells us zero about him creatively . Pretty much all great artists are outsiders in one way or another - but generally through their extraordinary artistic talents.
John Ireland though is an interesting example . I believe he deliberately rewrote the piano part of his piano concerto to make it unplayable by its first performer - one of his (many) lovers he’d broken up with. A really mean trick that.

[vinteuil]

Now I will have to look up ... Arthur Machen. Somehow I am not looking forward to doing so, but I will pluck up courage after a coffee and a cantata.

... o, he is a very particular voice, and worth getting to know (if not too deeply... ). His episodic horror novel The Three Impostors is quite exceptional, and really got to me - you will, I think, enjoy it - but you will feel very unclean when you get to the end...