Parry, C. H. H. (1848-1918)

[rauschwerk]

...Professor Jeremy Dibble (who appears to be the 'go to' expert on the composer.)

And why not, given that he has written a biography of Parry and is a leading authority on British music of the 19th and 20th centuries?

[Nick Armstrong]

I had no idea that Jeremy Thorpe lived just along the road from me, in Orme Square.... ... ditto Parry's piano teacher...

[Serial_Apologist]

I had no idea that Jeremy Thorpe lived just along the road from me, in Orme Square.... ... ditto Parry's piano teacher...

Am I right in thinking a certain Tony Blair also has a property in said square?

[vinteuil]

Am I right in thinking a certain Tony Blair also has a property in said square?

... you mean in addition to his gaff in Connaught Square a little further east? -

https://www.theguardian.com/money/gallery/2016/mar/14/the-blairs-property-empire-in-pictures

.

[Serial_Apologist]

... you mean in addition to his gaff in Connaught Square a little further east? -

https://www.theguardian.com/money/gallery/2016/mar/14/the-blairs-property-empire-in-pictures

.

That was the residence I was thinking of...

[hmvman]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011g941

(No mention of Prof Dibble in the list of Credits, though.)

Thanks for the link, ferney. I'd forgotten it was a John Bridcut film. Jeremy Dibble wasn't, as I'd thought, a co-presenter but one of the experts interviewed by the prince about Parry: https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=12149

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

- and it looks as if we're getting the entire Second Symphony today.

Just "the first two movements" it turned out.

I feel that the symphonic movements have been the best things played so far in these two programmes, and that ahinton's reservations are being illustrated far more persuasively than any suggestion of a "neglected master"; I'm not at all sure that there is enough material strong enough to sustain a five-hour-long "retrospective" in this way.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just "the first two movements" it turned out.

I feel that the symphonic movements have been the best things played so far in these two programmes, and that ahinton's reservations are being illustrated far more persuasively than any suggestion of a "neglected master"; I'm not at all sure that there is enough material strong enough to sustain a five-hour-long "retrospective" in this way.

It is all very craftsmanlike, to praise with faint damnation; but I think one has to comment on the remarkableness of someone in England, before the 1880s, getting "into" Wagner so early on, when the latter's influence - however muted - had not really started to impact on composers elsewhere, Bruckner excepted perhaps, even on the Continent.

[Pabmusic]

My own thoughts on Parry are that he was an exceptionally gifted composer, but one who almost never saw his own skills as important beyond allowing him to fulfill obligations to others. Wasn't it Elgar who said something like "If Parry had been less of a gentleman he would have achieved more" - meaning that if he hadn't been so willing to accept commissions from Birmingham, Leeds, the Three Choirs, etc., or do favours for people, he might have been able to concentrate on what he wanted to write? I've written before of how Parry would write quite literally a bar or two between lectures.

He was a seriously busy man, too. Remember that he wasn't even Professor of Composition at the RCM (that was Stanford). Parry was Professor of Musical History before he became Director. As well as holding the Chair of Music at Oxford.

Hie style nevertheless is quite distinctive. I feel Gerald Finzi's melodic 'cut' is from Parry. Also the Waltonian 'Crown Imperial' style (but not the Elgarian P & C style - except maybe no. 4). In fact, you can make a case that Parry succeeded in combining Wagner and Meyerbeer (how Wagner would have loved that!) to produce that very "British" Dambusters sound. It comes naturally from Parry's own 'voice'.

He's at his worst in the religious oratorios. 'Judith' was the first, for Birmingham, and Parry told the committee he didn't want a religious subject, but they insisted. Parry then tried to suppress it, even throwing the music out of a window when a young singer announced she would perform something from it! These are the works that were usually very hurried indeed. Remember that he died "in harness", so he never enjoyed a time when composition came into the foreground. Take the composition of Jerusalem (which wasn't called that at the time). Robert Bridges & Walford Davies approached him in late February 1916, asking if he'd write something for the "Fight for Right" concert at the end of March. Bridges suggested the Blake stanzas, but Parry said no because the cause was too political (raising money for propaganda, and to lobby the Government not to seek peace with Germany). Parry referred them to George Butterworth - and they did speak to Sir Alexander but learned that George was already in France. Then Parry gave them the score (voice & organ) which he'd written in a day, saying "Here's a tune - do what you like with it". I suspect that many of his works were written in similar haste. I have a copy of a score of a piece for massed winds called "To finish the frolic if it will do" - something to close an event at the RCM. It ends with Auld Lang Syne emerging from the chaos.

Somehow I doubt whether Parry saw his compositions as a whole as being a 'legacy'. He was a tremendously gifted and enthusiastic man, whose principal musical concerns were with helping, and generating a similar enthusiasm in, others.

[LMcD]

I think it's right that Parry be chosen as CoTW on the occasion of the centenary of his death, if only to offer people a basis on which to form an opinion - positive or negative - of his work. I must confess that I found my attention wandering during the 2 movements from the String Quintet.
Interestingly, Donald MacLeod said that the 2nd symphony sounded less English than the 1st, whereas Simon Heffer said that the 5th was the only one that didn't sound German.

[BBMmk2]

I’ve said elsewhere, that it’s a pity that composers such as Parry, only see the light of day occasions such as these.

[ardcarp]

Interestingly, Donald MacLeod said that the 2nd symphony sounded less English than the 1st, whereas Simon Heffer said that the 5th was the only one that didn't sound German.

Yes, I wondered about that . I really only know Parry's choral work, but thought what I heard of the 2nd certainly worked things out in a so-called 'Germanic' way. I'll be interested to hear the 5th.

My [Pab's,] own thoughts on Parry are that he was an exceptionally gifted composer, but one who almost never saw his own skills as important beyond allowing him to fulfill obligations to others. Wasn't it Elgar who said something like "If Parry had been less of a gentleman he would have achieved more"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... I think one has to comment on the remarkableness of someone in England, before the 1880s, getting "into" Wagner so early on, when the latter's influence - however muted - had not really started to impact on composers elsewhere, Bruckner excepted perhaps, even on the Continent.

Indeed- but the "influence" is very "muted", isn't it: for all my best endeavours, I couldn't hear very much of it in the excerpts from either the Quintet or the Symphony broadcast yesterday (both written after Wagner's death). Brahms by the bucketload, but Wagner ... ?

Pabs' #54 is the model of balanced, fair, and insightful criticism that we've come to expect from him. But it does make me wonder again about the wisdom of devoting an entire week of hour-long programmes to his work - particularly in this chronological sequence. Had I not known Parry's best Music already (and known that the really good stuff is yet to come) I would have given up on him by the end of yesterday's programme.

[Barbirollians]

I’ve said elsewhere, that it’s a pity that composers such as Parry, only see the light of day occasions such as these.

Yes but without COTW many of them would not see the light of day at all . I have to admit to finding Parry not the most thrilling of composers and my attention tends to wander a bit too .

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed- but the "influence" is very "muted", isn't it: for all my best endeavours, I couldn't hear very much of it in the excerpts from either the Quintet or the Symphony broadcast yesterday (both written after Wagner's death). Brahms by the bucketload, but Wagner ... ?

Pabs' #54 is the model of balanced, fair, and insightful criticism that we've come to expect from him. But it does make me wonder again about the wisdom of devoting an entire week of hour-long programmes to his work - particularly in this chronological sequence. Had I not known Parry's best Music already (and known that the really good stuff is yet to come) I would have given up on him by the end of yesterday's programme.

Well to my ears "Blest Pair of Syrens" sounds thoroughly Wagnerian in its harmonic gesturings, in that Elgar-anticipatory way we are clearly (from this week) mistaken as taking to be "The Parry style" Sir Edward made his own most familiar hallmark to stalwart patriots, and which I feel Havergal Brian rather selfconsciously emulated intermittently right through to the end; but also Vaughan Williams, up to and including his "Sea Symphony", John Ireland (of all people, one might think!) in "These Things Shall Be" from as late as 1937, and on in lighter vein to Eric Coates's "London March", and the Dambusters and other pastiche examples found in 1960s films, where it assumes the character of parody - cardboard stiff upper lips FO types in musical cardboard bowler hats etc. I don't hear anything of the modal in Parry that anticipates those mood characteristics that I have always loved in early 20th century English composers, even or perhaps especially where it combined with Delian chromatic harmonic substitutions in a number of composers not totally ascribing to the RVW/Holst neo-modal aesthetic (kind of post Arts & Crafts Voysey musical equivalents), eg Scott, Bax, middle period Bridge, Howells, Moeran, Warlock, Lambert WW2 film scores, the later Bush (A), Rubbra even. The latter - as opposed, obviously, to the ceremonial former - would go on to feed idiomatically into English jazz in the 1960s, where it might not have been expected (much of Dankworth, eg the Shakespeare settings; Stan Tracey's "Under Milk Wood"; Michael Garrick compositions, especially his religious/choral plus jazz settings, also the poetry and Norma Winstone's unselfconsciously un-American renderings). Interesting that Pabs sites Finzi in a continuum from Parry - Pabsy clearly knows Finzi inside-out, so I really have no basis from which to disagree - but I always hear him as somewhere between the gentler side of Elgar (the early "Serenade for Strings") and the Vaughan Williams that sounds more indebted there than to Ravel that is heard in the "Folk Song Suite" and "Dives and Lazarus". But this whole subject of aetology with regard to English music in that period is one of the things that makes it so fascinating and less clear-cut than music from the same period (say 1890 to 1950) in France, Germany or Italy, say. Composers were, as we say in the jazz world "checking each other out".