Only just caught the ending of today's programme, as I wanted to watch the lunchtime news. What I was hearing sounded more Copland than Lennon and McCartney, as stated in RT.
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Well..... any views???
EG: "I could write music like this with a few lessons in orchestration and how to calculate time values, and Vaughan Williams, Bartok & co. in my record collection"? -
If what you were hearing was the Concerto for Orchestra, I'd not be surprised. I'm not familiar with JH's other music apart from that and City Scape, so have downloaded for future listening.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostComment
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That impression of her music was only based on the first of the programmes - since when the reference library has extended quite a bit further. In a way it's interesting to observe the championing of Ms Higdon by musical establishments (including Radio 3!) as commentary on the state of contemporary music and its relationship to how it is perceived "where it matters" (apparently). I am reminded of a discussion between members of a composers panel assembled by Radio 3 to take views on "the contemporary scene" back in 1989 for the Huddersfield New Music Festival - or rather the one broadcast concert I am lucky to have taped, along with the discussion, as it provides some useful historical background. There was much controversy around that time when Minimalism was acquiring a second generation of adherents following the more conservative recent turns of the likes of Steve Reich relating to whether innovation had any future, or was this merely a replication of the nostalgia of which Boulez had accused an earlier generation for not fully following through on the radical implications of atonality and serialism. The compositions considered were by John Buller, Michael Torke and Steven Albert, and the composers in the discussion group were Anthony Gilbert, David Bedford, James Dillon, Christopher Fox and Stephen Montague, chaired by Richard Steinitz. The main target of criticism, the cantata "Into Eclipse" by Stephen Albert, was pretty brutally pulled apart, citing its various stylistic clichés - Gilbert even describing it as would be typical of one of his second year students, others more emolliently exemplifying its parade of known knowns as to be expected by one raised and musically formally educated in the American provinces, namely backwaters far from the metropolitan centres where creative innovatory stuff still happened, and I was reminded of all this in listening to Higdon talking about her influences and inspirations, though, given them, I am still surprised to find myself listening to music that could have easily been composed seventy years ago and not back then treated with equivalent adulation by the publicity machine, promoters, and presumably critics, one being Donald Macleod. Does this imply mainstream audiences are at last catching up on mid C20 mainstream eclecticism? Maybe I shouldn't be worried and just knuckle down to the blandishments - Jennifer Higdon is I'm sure a pleasant enough person, though I am not detecting much in her opinions and loves beyond The Usual Suspects - nature, emotions, community etc., to warrant her outstandingness. I really, really hope she is not being proffered preferential treatment for being a woman composer!!!Originally posted by EnemyoftheStoat View PostComment
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I see you studied at the Rumsfeld School of Musicology. I think innovation in music in the 21st century is going to depend increasingly on new ways of making music, using technology, collaboration including of an improvisational kind, a wider range of conceptual departure points (Eisler: "people who only know about music don't know about that either") and so on. Anything else has little and decreasing relevance I think. The phenomenon of people like Jennifer Higdon, who indeed by all accounts is a fine person, derives from a view of musical composition as being a career, rather than anything more rarefied (and valuable), returning in a way to an 18th century craft-centred situation, but without the organic relationship between the music and the society from which it emerged. It fulfils a niche in American corporate-oriented culture.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostComment
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Originally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
I am sure that is absolutely right.I think innovation in music in the 21st century is going to depend increasingly on new ways of making music, using technology, collaboration including of an improvisational kind, a wider range of conceptual departure points (Eisler: "people who only know about music don't know about that either") and so on. Anything else has little and decreasing relevance I think. The phenomenon of people like Jennifer Higdon, who indeed by all accounts is a fine person, derives from a view of musical composition as being a career, rather than anything more rarefied (and valuable), returning in a way to an 18th century craft-centred situation, but without the organic relationship between the music and the society from which it emerged. It fulfils a niche in American corporate-oriented culture.
It's not that I have anything against Ms Higton's music per se - it's just that my feelings about it are similar to those I have about young jazz musicians who insist on playing styles of jazz that are 60, 80, 100 years old, and sometimes are given to making some big point about so doing. That's fine for a septuarian jazz musician who grew up in an earlier era, that of his or her youth, or an ageing composer. The best of that kind of music was in its time, at that time - it can be found on recordings. While I will go and see a local band play proficient hard bop in my local jazz pub, I am unlikely however to find the BBCSO performing there!Comment
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