Whitacre, Eric (b 1970)

[Ian]

So, if somebody put a gun to your head, you would still refuse to write, say, a piece using the techniques of "Integrated Serialism"?

Not at all, I have written a fair bit of serial music - on one occasion I was paid to do so for a TV sig tune - although it was a documentary about ‘the arts’ - I seem to remember they wanted it to sound ‘pretentious’

back in the 70s I even experimented with my own take (afaik) on serialism by composing in two parts were no interval between the parts could be repeated until all 12 have been heard.

I'm a sucker for Fugues - and much enjoyed this one, Ian, thank you. (The Prelude was a bit noodly-doodly for my taste, but that's just me.) Have you heard Alistair's String Quintet? Superb fugal writing there.

Thanks, I will look out Alistair's Quintet. The prelude, btw, is really a tidied up improvisation, so on reflection I'm not sure Prelude is the right term. I'm happy with it all the same.

[Ian]

The purpose of your post, Ian, isn't entirely clear to me (my dimness, no doubt) - is it that EW, in addition to his "popular" publications, is also producing works that are more "demanding" and/or "challenging" of the listener? If so, could links to recordings of these works be provided, please.

The only purpose was to challenge the oft-repeated claim that Beethoven’s success only came much later after his death. A claim that is often used (or at least used to be used) to explain to contemporary audiences why it is important to program a lot of new music that hardly anyone likes. It had nothing to do with EW.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The only purpose was to challenge the oft-repeated claim that Beethoven’s success only came much later after his death. A claim that is often used (or at least used to be used) to explain to contemporary audiences why it is important to program a lot of new music that hardly anyone likes. It had nothing to do with EW.

- that became clear in #150. I'm not entirely sure that Beethoven himself would have regarded not earning as much as he'd hoped as being "very successful" - and the reception history of the Eroica (to say nothing of that of the late Piano Sonatas, or the reputation of the last String Quartets) suggests otherwise, also. Unlike Rossini, for example, there was no way that concert receipts (even with publishing deals) would have given Beethoven financial security. Accounts from later in the Century, by enthusiasts such as Berlioz show that, beyond his small audience of enthusiastic connoisseurs, there wasn't much enthusiasm for the larger works - and even later in the century, the phenomenally popular Dickens can refer to Beethoven's Music in satirical terms that he takes as read that his wide audience will share (the same type of language that Kingsley Amis expects his readers to chortle about Peter Racine Fricker, and Early Music enthusiasts).

Beyond the "freak show" aspect of seeing Beethoven at a public performance, there is much evidence that the Music he was writing at that time was generally regarded as the eccentric product of someone who couldn't hear what he was doing.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

back in the 70s I even experimented with my own take (afaik) on serialism by composing in two parts were no interval between the parts could be repeated until all 12 have been heard.

Good Lord! So did I ten years or so later! I'd been studying the Ives Fourth Symphony and "detected" similar rotations of intervals in the opening bars - including you can repeat an Interval immediately, but not again until the others have appeared. This allowed for chromatic and whole-note scales, chains of diminished sevenths and augmented triads. Eventually I reduced the number of intervals appearing to sections of a piece, so that the whole lot would appear only during the course of an entire work.

Happy Days.

[Richard Barrett]

Happy Days.

Apropos: http://www.instituteofcomposing.org/...-fractal-sets/

(we're a long way from Kansas, as Dorothy would say)

[Ian]

Happy Days.

One Happy day c1978 (when I was a postgraduate composition student) and one was on the look out for any way to out avant-garde the next man I suggested a sort of conceptual work in which the audience members could not cough before every one else in the audience had coughed. This was dismissed as being totally impractical until I pointed out that the audience was almost certainly likely to be smaller group than the performers and that they would mainly be other composers - who potentially could be relied upon to co-operate in such a ground-breaking event. For some reason they all thought I was taking the piss.

[Serial_Apologist]

One Happy day c1978 (when I was a postgraduate composition student) and one was on the look out for any way to out avant-garde the next man I suggested a sort of conceptual work in which the audience members could not cough before every one else in the audience had coughed. This was dismissed as being totally impractical until I pointed out that the audience was almost certainly likely to be smaller group than the performers and that they would mainly be other composers - who potentially could be relied upon to co-operate in such a ground-breaking event. For some reason they all thought I was taking the piss.

The bass player/composer Daryl Runswick once told me that he had been commissioned to compose a work for the London Sinfonietta, in which he was either the, or a double bass player. This was in the early 1970s, and he chose to formalize the work according to integral serial procedures. He described the piece to me as being of Ferneyhoughian complexity. The commissioners turned the piece down - Daryl was of the view that the piece expected would have been of an entirely different kind, coming from "a good jazz man" - and the episode took him many years from which to recover his creative self-confidence, which really didn't happen until he joined Electric Phoenix as a vocalist and composer, around 1984.

[Richard Barrett]

One Happy day c1978 (when I was a postgraduate composition student) and one was on the look out for any way to out avant-garde the next man I suggested a sort of conceptual work in which the audience members could not cough before every one else in the audience had coughed. This was dismissed as being totally impractical until I pointed out that the audience was almost certainly likely to be smaller group than the performers and that they would mainly be other composers - who potentially could be relied upon to co-operate in such a ground-breaking event. For some reason they all thought I was taking the piss.

Laugh? I nearly did.