Doreen Carwithen (1922-2003)

[Serial_Apologist]

Someone whose unusual surname (stress on second syllable) started appearing in programmes during the past year or so, but of whom I admit to never having previously heard.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001f5s2

It opens with an arresting theme tune I for one don't recognise!

[crb11]

They played her Bishop Rock Overture in the Proms this year (with the VW Sea Symphony) which I thought was well worth programming. A tone poem vaguely in the style of Bax but with clearly her own distinctive voice. (Plus a string quartet in another Prom which I was less taken by.) She was completely new to me as well. I caught bits of today's programme but couldn't listen to much - what I heard encouraged me to want to hear the rest.

[smittims]

Pupil of, and later married to, William Alwyn (he of many scores to British black-and-white films and fien symphonies). She also wrote film music, quartets, etc. I like her music .

[Serial_Apologist]

Pupil of, and later married to, William Alwyn (he of many scores to British black-and-white films and fien symphonies). She also wrote film music, quartets, etc. I like her music .

There's great conviction and integrity in what we heard of her music this morning. That and the previous generation of English composers were disparaged by many of their contemporaries as insular and written off by the post-1950 generation who claimed Bartok then the Second Viennese School on whom to base their conceptions. But in reality the pastoral/post-pastoral school or more accurately aesthetic they represented allowed for a huge amount of individuality - I'm with Payne in seeing no qualitative cause for divided loyalties - one can equally love and appreciate Schoenberg and Vaughan Williams as equal parts of the rich fabric of 20th century music. Personally I would place her higher than Alwyn, whose music, however well crafted, often tended to be anonymous and anodyne, which certainly could not be said of the string quartet music and piano concerto. And what outstanding performances and recordings!

[teamsaint]

Pupil of, and later married to, William Alwyn (he of many scores to British black-and-white films and fien symphonies). She also wrote film music, quartets, etc. I like her music .

The quartets are very good.
So good that I need to go back to them and remind myself of their virtues…..

[mikealdren]

I played her Bishop Rock Overture recently, definitely worth a listen.

[smittims]

Yes, I too feel her music has more individual flavour and 'tang' than Alwyn's.

Interesting to see Schoenberg and Vaughan Williams mentioned together. Although I've always loved both their musics, and they were contemporaries for all Schoenberg's 77 years, I've yet to come across any mention of either in the other's correspondence. Yet VW undoubtedly listened to Schoenberg, attending the 1912 premiere of the Five Pieces, and there's a passage in the finale of his F minor symphony which sounds a bit like a corrresponding passage in the finale of the Variations, op. 31, the British premiere of whihc was given by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who premeiered the VW symphony 4 years later. I'm sure VW listened to that Schoenberg piece too.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, I too feel her music has more individual flavour and 'tang' than Alwyn's.

Interesting to see Schoenberg and Vaughan Williams mentioned together. Although I've always loved both their musics, and they were contemporaries for all Schoenberg's 77 years, I've yet to come across any mention of either in the other's correspondence. Yet VW undoubtedly listened to Schoenberg, attending the 1912 premiere of the Five Pieces, and there's a passage in the finale of his F minor symphony which sounds a bit like a corrresponding passage in the finale of the Variations, op. 31, the British premiere of whihc was given by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who premeiered the VW symphony 4 years later. I'm sure VW listened to that Schoenberg piece too.

The reality that they were from opposed aesthetics can split loyalties, and did for those of a previous generation from whose writings my own and other's appreciation and love of 20th century music derived in the 1960s, alongside avid Radio 3 listening to the whole range of what was on offer. His friend Holst is said to have always had Schoenberg's Op 16 orchestral pieces beside him while composing.

[smittims]

Indeed, as is now well-known, 'The Planets' was originally entitled 'Seven Pieces for large Orchestra', with no actual mention of the planets by name, and the influence of Schoenberg's op. 16 is clear, I think, in 'Venus' and Neptune' at least. That is not to say that the work as a whole is probably the most original written in Britain at that time, not least in its structural use of melody and harmony.

[Master Jacques]

RVW disliked Schoenberg's music, personally, and he was particularly critical of his influence on young British composers, especially after World War 2.

I'm curious smittims to read your comment that Holst "is said to have had Schoenberg's Op.16 orchestral pieces beside him while composing". Who said this? And was it perhaps intended as a joke?

I miss any influence of that work in The Planets, which seems to me reliant on Russian models, from Rimsky, Borodin and Mussorgsky, rather than anything Germanic. Wasn't that Holst's point, to break firmly away from Berlin and Vienna? But I'm open and intrigued to hear your thoughts on how 'Venus' and 'Neptune' might use Schoenbergian techniques.

[Master Jacques]

To answer my own question (rather than waste smittims' time!) I read that Imogen Holst (1985) refers simply to her father's having heard the 1912 London premiere of Schoenberg's Op.16, and also Stravinsky's Firebird at the same period. She makes the point that the latter certainly influenced his orchestrations during work on The Planets. But this is the book's only reference to Schoenberg, whose Op.16 was also performed here in 1914, with the composer himself conducting. Arnold Bax (incidentally) gave a recital of Schoenberg's piano music during that visit, about which the composer was highly complimentary.

I don't have the revised 2008 edition of her book: perhaps she expands on this reference there with information about buying the pocket score of the Schoenberg. I can well go along with the idea, that Holst might have felt that if Schoenberg could use such a monster orchestra, then so could he!

[smittims]

Hi, MasterJaques, I don't think it was I who said Holst had a pocket score of Schoenberg's op. 16. I think I read such a remark here but now I can't find it, so I can't say who said it! Sorry.

I've always felt passages in the second and third pieces of op.16 presage 'Venus' and 'Neptune'. For instance, bars 207 - 213 of Schoenberg's second piece (that's 2 after 11 to 4 after 12) surely lie behind the passage from figure VII to the end of 'Venus' , and the whole of the third piece is very like 'Neptune' in its static character. And the way the climaxes of the fourth piece and 'Uranus' are built up suggest influence to me.

As I said, I'm not seeking to diminish the originality of 'the Planets' merely that Holst was inspired by Schoenberg's example of a set of pieces for large orchestra. There was of course a vogue for large orchestras in the years before 1914 with works by Stravinsky, Scriabin, and Strauss causing a sensation at London concerts.

[Master Jacques]

Thank you smittims, much appreciated: I will certainly listen with these examples in mind, next time I am getting my astrological fix from Holst. There is no doubting the furore caused by Op.16's London world premiere (boos and laughter) or its follow up under the composer two years later (polite and sustained applause). What a difference a couple of years could make in those days!

[Serial_Apologist]

Thank you smittims, much appreciated: I will certainly listen with these examples in mind, next time I am getting my astrological fix from Holst. There is no doubting the furore caused by Op.16's London world premiere (boos and laughter) or its follow up under the composer two years later (polite and sustained applause). What a difference a couple of years could make in those days!

I am the culprit on the Schoenberg score Holst is said to have had beside him while composing, though I can't now remember my own source - probably the COTW that was devoted to both Holst and Vaughan Williams, which I recorded. Just to add that there are a number of places in the two movements from "The Planets" smittims mentions where Holst appears to use Schoenberg's device in "Farben" from Op. 16 of seemlessly transitioning from one sonority to another on a sustained pitch.

[smittims]

Ha, ha, thanks, S-A.

The opening of 'Saturn' is also a bit like 'Farben'.

The similarities between the two works sound to me like fleeting memories derived from having heard the Schoenberg once (though Holst may also have got into Henry Wood's rehearsals) rather than from looking at a score. It's just possible Holst could have had a score of the Five Pieces in 1914; according to Rufer it as published in 1912. I've never seen a copy of that first version; my Peters ed. 'revised version for large orchestra ' is dated 1922.