COTW 4-6/12/17: 21st Century Opera

[Serial_Apologist]

What do people think?

This weeks topic is giving us some amazing music, as well as a few pretty awful offerings. My problem is not as much with opera as such, but with making specific genres subjects for COTW, beginning with the week that was devoted to Bebop jazz. Much as I appreciated the publicity on behalf of a musical medium deserving of as much exposure as it can get in culturally impoverished times, I started having doubts of the composer portrait being extended to entire categories of music, especially when composers more than worthy of consideration are forever ignored. I appreciate that shrinkage of much of Radio 3 to the exclusion of intelligent broadcasting limits the headings under which such subjects can be granted consideration; but surely the solution is to stop further dumbing down to make main listening time space available.

I'd like to hear others' thoughts.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think it's an excellent idea to use so popular a programme as CotW to enable "the wider audience" to hear the Music of Dillon, Ferneyhough, Sciarrino, Goebbels, Boesmans, Neuwirth and other composers whose work (or even names) may not be well-known to them. To hear these Musics before the late-night "ghetto" of H&N is something that Wright would never have allowed, and is further evidence of the slow reversal of the lower expectations of the audience process inaugurated by Kenyon and exacerbated by Wright. Just as with the "Soviet Music" week, R3 is offering Music that no other broadcaster would dare transmit - a matter for celebration on the Forum.

I understand your point that perhaps the focus on a "composer" (or a "school" of similar-minded composers) is lessened in such features - and I would certainly welcome a parallel/complementary series ("Genre of the Week", perhaps?) not to mention these composers getting a week-long CotW ot their own (Ferneyhough is 75 next year - that would be a neat pretext); but Donald Macleod's expert handling of the presentation and Paul Griffith's concise and informative commentary ensures that this week receives the maximum public attention that it deserves and is likely to get. I think that that outweighs any reservations about how suitable the topic is for the CotW format.

[doversoul1]

I think it is an excellent idea. I’d feel too daunting to listen to an entire work by any of these composers even though I feel quite curious. A very good way of making use of bleeding chunks.

[Richard Barrett]

I find "21st century opera" an odd-sounding concept to say the least.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I find "21st century opera" an odd-sounding concept to say the least.

Well, they're using the word in a very loose sense (just as they do when talking about singspiels and Musikdramas and Monteverdi's Orfeo). Some of the works featured use structures and conventions in ways not dissimilar to "traditional" Operas, but in others (Dillon's, Sciarrino, Ferneyhough) the whole concept of a theatre "action" presented through Music is reconsidered and renewed.

[underthecountertenor]

I think it's an excellent idea to use so popular a programme as CotW to enable "the wider audience" to hear the Music of Dillon, Ferneyhough, Sciarrino, Goebbels, Boesmans, Neuwirth and other composers whose work (or even names) may not be well-known to them. To hear these Musics before the late-night "ghetto" of H&N is something that Wright would never have allowed, and is further evidence of the slow reversal of the lower expectations of the audience process inaugurated by Kenyon and exacerbated by Wright. Just as with the "Soviet Music" week, R3 is offering Music that no other broadcaster would dare transmit - a matter for celebration on the Forum.

I understand your point that perhaps the focus on a "composer" (or a "school" of similar-minded composers) is lessened in such features - and I would certainly welcome a parallel/complementary series ("Genre of the Week", perhaps?) not to mention these composers getting a week-long CotW ot their own (Ferneyhough is 75 next year - that would be a neat pretext); but Donald Macleod's expert handling of the presentation and Paul Griffith's concise and informative commentary ensures that this week receives the maximum public attention that it deserves and is likely to get. I think that that outweighs any reservations about how suitable the topic is for the CotW format.

I agree with every word of this. I also enjoy the conversation format, which also worked very well with Pappano on Puccini a couple of months ago.

[Serial_Apologist]

I must admit that I didn't "get" the Sciarrino excerpts played today; however I was impressed by the Adès, notwithstanding their obvious hommages to Ligeti's "Le Grand Macabre": Ligeti's inspiration of this composer was in any case mentioned towards the end of the programme. I've often accused Adès of composing musical entremets; and he hasn't been too popular on this forum, I think. Time for a value reassessment of this composer, maybe?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've often accused Adès of composing musical entremets; and he hasn't been too popular on this forum, I think. Time for a value reassessment of this composer, maybe?

Well - Britten-derivative, lazy, safe writing: "new Music" for people who don't like New Music and who want stuff that sounds like what they're used to; that'd be my "value reassessment", S_A.

Sciarrino, on the other hand, is a fantastic composer - the originality and integrity of his Music perhaps being a cause of your not "getting it" first time?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Other viewpoints are welcome, of course.

[underthecountertenor]

Well - Britten-derivative, lazy, safe writing: "new Music" for people who don't like New Music and who want stuff that sounds like what they're used to; that'd be my "value reassessment", S_A.

Sciarrino, on the other hand, is a fantastic composer - the originality and integrity of his Music perhaps being a cause of your not "getting it" first time?

I would not be quite as harsh on Adès as that, but agree that Sciarrino is a fantastic composer whose stage works I rate far more highly than Adés's. He is also shamefully neglected in this country. His Luci Mie Traditrici (The Killing Flower) took my breath away when Music Theatre Wales put it on at the Linbury a few years ago.

[Barbirollians]

Isn't that a rather prescriptive view of " New Music" fhgl - that it cannot sound like old music at all .

That would seem to put the whole of neo-classicism into the 20th century dustbin for a start.

Who is to decide what is acceptable " new music " ? -

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Luci Mie Traditrici (The Killing Flower) took my breath away when Music Theatre Wales put it on at the Linbury a few years ago.

- I was gutted when that didn't come anywhere near me (PLEASE, nobody now point out that it had a week's run in the Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds - that would just be too cruel!) - MTW used to visit the Huddersfield Festival; no longer

Interesting that they chose the English translation of the German re-titling of the work.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Who is to decide what is acceptable " new music " ? -

Me!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

(But does Dumbarton Oaks "sound like" a Baroque Concerto Grosso to you?)

[Richard Barrett]

Isn't that a rather prescriptive view of " New Music" fhgl - that it cannot sound like old music at all.

The clue to answering this question is in the word "new" I think.