Ruth Gipps (1921-1999)

[vinteuil]

Maybe I should have included an irony emoji in that!

Patriotism is such a mixed bag, isn't it! What does one mean by saying one loves ones own country? The things I do love about this country (which so often comes appended with "of ours", when as Marx and others have so succintly summed it up, it isn't OUR country) - not so much its indigenous people to be honest, but its language, its amazingly varied landscapes, geology, architecture, music, and its contribution to radical thought - are the same things I would love were Italy, Germany or France to be my home. The parallels between French painting and music are as resonant in me in imagination as when I was there sucking up the ambience and spirit of that land.

... nicely put. When I was interviewed for MI6 they wanted to find out what if anything it was that I 'loved' about my country - and I wasn't able to come up with anything less vague than what you put forward there. All of which I feel, and feel deeply. It clearly didn't satisfy them. I was not accepted.

.

[Serial_Apologist]

... nicely put. When I was interviewed for MI6 they wanted to find out what if anything it was that I 'loved' about my country - and I wasn't able to come up with anything less vague than what you put forward there. All of which I feel, and feel deeply. It clearly didn't satisfy them. I was not accepted.

.

Although this is a bit of a long shot, I'm reminded there by a moment in Lindsay Anderson's 1973 film "O Lucky Man", my favourite movie, in which the hapless Travis character played by Malcolm MacDowell, is caught by military personnel trying to peer into a high security site to which he has been sent as one of a list of clients of the coffee brand for which he is being fast-forwarded as the replacement of his missing predecessor, who has increasingly evidently been involved in criminal, possibly spying activities... and Travis's misguided past (see the film "If", but is this the sequel??) might be catching up with him. He is strong-armed, bound and blindfolded, to a room deep inside the plant, which turns out to be a nuclear establishment, and interrogated, strapped to a chair, by two civil service-looking types, and subject to electric shocks to his genitals for answering wrongly. One of the questions one of the interrogators asks him is, "Do you place loyalty over obedience? Think very carefully before answering". While the Travis character struggles for the right answer, a fire alarm goes off; the two besuited men quickly pack their briefcases and depart, followed by the uniformed guard on the door. Silence... then the tea lady enters, and says "They always leave such a mess!" before unstrapping the prisoner, who makes quick his escape. Wonderful stuff!

[gurnemanz]

Although this is a bit of a long shot, I'm reminded there by a moment in Lindsay Anderson's 1973 film "O Lucky Man", my favourite movie, in which the hapless Travis character played by Malcolm MacDowell, is caught by military personnel trying to peer into a high security site to which he has been sent as one of a list of clients of the coffee brand for which he is being fast-forwarded as the replacement of his missing predecessor, who has increasingly evidently been involved in criminal, possibly spying activities... and Travis's misguided past (see the film "If", but is this the sequel??) might be catching up with him. He is strong-armed, bound and blindfolded, to a room deep inside the plant, which turns out to be a nuclear establishment, and interrogated, strapped to a chair, by two civil service-looking types, and subject to electric shocks to his genitals for answering wrongly. One of the questions one of the interrogators asks him is, "Do you place loyalty over obedience? Think very carefully before answering". While the Travis character struggles for the right answer, a fire alarm goes off; the two besuited men quickly pack their briefcases and depart, followed by the uniformed guard on the door. Silence... then the tea lady enters, and says "They always leave such a mess!" before unstrapping the prisoner, who makes quick his escape. Wonderful stuff!

Thanks for the reminder. The image of Dandy Nichols as the tea lady in question came back to me across the decades.

[Richard Barrett]

... nicely put. When I was interviewed for MI6 they wanted to find out what if anything it was that I 'loved' about my country

Did they mean the UK or the USSR?

[ardcarp]

Yes and also a pupil of Gordon Jacob

...

...who according to Tuesday's CotW told Ruth Gipps something along the lines of "don't use an instrument [in your orchestration] unless you really need it." Hmmm.

GJ was a great teacher and author of that slim volume Orchestral Technique which, if you're writing for orchestra, has all the usable ranges and ways of writing for most instruments. Did you know, for instance, know that the celesta was a transposing instrument? (It sounds an octave higher than written.) GJ's book is just what one needs for that sort of thing.

However, he was something of a conservative in the sense that he knew how to make something sound 'good' in the conventional sense when writing for orchestra. This is not necessarily what a composer wants to do. Writing a unison passage for french horn and oboe might not be everyone's cup of tea, but could hit the spot if a wacky effect is wanted.

BTW Gordon Jacob was not just an arranger. He had quite an impressive output as a composer. But as with Ruth Gipps, he was just 'out of his time'.

Am enjoying this week's CotW in any case!

[Ein Heldenleben]

...

...who according to Tuesday's CotW told Ruth Gipps something along the lines of "don't use an instrument [in your orchestration] unless you really need it." Hmmm.

GJ was a great teacher and author of that slim volume Orchestral Technique which, if you're writing for orchestra, has all the usable ranges and ways of writing for most instruments. Did you know, for instance, know that the celesta was a transposing instrument? (It sounds an octave higher than written.) GJ's book is just what one needs for that sort of thing.

However, he was something of a conservative in the sense that he knew how to make something sound 'good' in the conventional sense when writing for orchestra. This is not necessarily what a composer wants to do. Writing a unison passage for french horn and oboe might not be everyone's cup of tea, but could hit the spot if a wacky effect is wanted.

BTW Gordon Jacob was not just an arranger. He had quite an impressive output as a composer. But as with Ruth Gipps, he was just 'out of his time'.

Am enjoying this week's CotW in any case!

When Gordon Jacob got the Composer of the Week “accolade” he had to share it with Joseph Horowitz . I would have thought either could have filled a week.
BTW does anyone agree that Ruth spent a bit too long as a student ? After a while isn’t it counter-productive ?

[Serial_Apologist]

When Gordon Jacob got the Composer of the Week “accolade” he had to share it with Joseph Horowitz . I would have thought either could have filled a week.
BTW does anyone agree that Ruth spent a bit too long as a student ? After a while isn’t it counter-productive ?

Eleven years in Messiaen's case - though admittedly he entered the Conservatoire at age 11. Maybe it depends on what age one starts.

[Vox Humana]

What a thoroughly depressing discussion this has turned out to be. I was hoping to find some enlightenment here, not a peacock lek. I am totally nonplussed as to why anyone should think it irrelevant for the BBC to tell us what a composer’s views about contemporary music were. Heaven protect us from actually understanding the composer! Since those were her views, as her daughter-in-law has made clear, why should the BBC blurb suppress them? Pardon me if I’ve missed a point somewhere.

I have been thoroughly enjoying these programmes and am delighted that Wid’s music is beginning to receive recognition. I suppose it’s inevitable that some people still have negative reactions to what they perceive as her ‘old fashioned’ idiom. That was always one of the problems she faced, so it’s not surprising that it still is. However, that will only continue to be an issue for as long as her music is pigeon-holed in this way. Sooner or (more probably) later the chronological comparisons will cease to be important enough to hamper appreciation of her music. On the evidence of these programmes, much of it seems to me equal to anything else written in the English pastoral tradition—and it has stylistic individuality, particularly in the chromatic side-steps of which she was so fond. If her output is a little uneven, well, what composer’s isn’t? She had a real understanding of orchestral instruments and an imagination for sonorities that came from her wide experience.

[Bryn]

When Gordon Jacob got the Composer of the Week “accolade” he had to share it with Joseph Horowitz . I would have thought either could have filled a week.
BTW does anyone agree that Ruth spent a bit too long as a student ? After a while isn’t it counter-productive ?

Does one ever stop being a student?

[Nick Armstrong]

I have been thoroughly enjoying these programmes.

So have I! Fascinating and the series has spurred me to investigate her symphonies in particular

[Vox Humana]

So have I! Fascinating and the series has spurred me to investigate her symphonies in particular

Me too! There was some lovely orchestration in the 4th symphony, I thought. I see a spate of CD buying looming.

[Nick Armstrong]

Me too! There was some lovely orchestration in the 4th symphony, I thought. I see a spate of CD buying looming.

Happily the Rumon Gamba recording of 2 & 4 is on Qobuz so I shall start there.

The other music to grab me so far: Seascape for double wind quintet, and the remarkable horn concerto - David Pyatt dazzling.... I shall be re-listening to that plus the rest of this enticing Lyrita recording (also on Qobuz):

[Vox Humana]

[oddoneout]

Happily the Rumon Gamba recording of 2 & 4 is on Qobuz so I shall start there.

The other music to grab me so far: Seascape for double wind quintet, and the remarkable horn concerto - David Pyatt dazzling.... I shall be re-listening to that plus the rest of this enticing Lyrita recording (also on Qobuz):

I had to stop what I was doing when the horn concerto came on. I'm not in a position to judge the merits as a composition(I liked it) but golly! the playing - hat's enough reason to listen.

[Serial_Apologist]

Having reached yesterday, I was increasingly of the feeling that this is music of a rather narrow emotional and idiomatic range four bars of this followed by a modulation up a minor third or down a major one, then four bars to another modulation, just about managing to curcumvent banality, but, if not exactly predictable, all rather "so what?", when so much of such stuff had been so much more engagingly and energetically done by earlier English composers such as Moeran. The odd thing is one keeps hearing reminders of these types of harmonic/melodic continuity in jazz since the 1970s - I myself endlessly improvise using them at the piano for purely therapeutic purposes, and to be frank there are diminishing returns, as in her later music - and I'm surprised jazz commentators rarely mention this: the Ireland/Bridge influence on jazz harmony we should be proud of!

In jazz the harmonic changes, when combined with the sorts of rhythmic and metric layering, and spontaneous interactivity with a soloist making use of this up front, present an everyday user-friendly way of thinking beyond tonic/dominant post 50s pop banality - even a potential step into the zones of extended freed up harmonic thinking that Bridge and even Bax to an extent embraced, but not much beyond passing bitonality à la RVW Pastoral Symphony, which Ms Gibbs shrank back from as perhaps too troubling to her neat and tidy view of musical domesticity. Quite a defensive personality, for all her gifts, and maybe ascribable to the way women of her generation were still treated in the music profession back then.