A nice way to begin a thread on a figure who has played an important role in British composition since the 1950s might be if I link to an interview from 2014 in which he talked at length about his father, Walter Goehr, a pupil of Schoenberg, and about the emigre composers, many of them Jewish, who escaped persecution and discrimination to settle in this country in the 1930s, teaching or in other ways exerting strong influences on postwar British music. They included Matyas Seiber and Roberto Gerhardt. Goehr goes on to mention the influence of Hanns Eisler on the young Michael Tippett; also the vital role played by his father in establishing the interest in this country in performing Monteverdi; and he gives the flavour of musical life and changes under William Glock.
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What Goehr records, do you have, SA? What pieces of his can you recommend?
Weirdly I have a book of his writings but I don't think I've ever listened to any of his music. -
OK, in chronological order of composition then:Originally posted by Joseph K View Post
1952 - Piano Sonata (dedicated to Prokofiev)*
1956 - Cappricio, for piano
1963 - Little Symphony (dedicated to Walter Goehr)*
1964 - Three Pieces for Piano
1966 - Piano Trio
1967 - String Quartet No. 2*
1967 - Suite (from Opera): Arden Must Die
1970 - Symphony in One Movement
1972 - Piano Concerto*
1974 - Metamorphosis/Dance, for orchestra*
1976 - Psalm 4, for women's voices, viola & organ*
1979/85 - Behold the Sun, for soprano and chamber orchestra*
1980 - Sinfonia, Op. 42
1980 - Two Studies, for Orchestra
1988 - Eve Dreams in Paradise
1990 - Variations on a Bach Sarabande, for brass band
1992 - ... in real time, for piano.
1992 - Cantata: The Death of Moses*
2008 - Since Brass, nor Stone, for string quartet and percussion
One important work which I do not have is Naboth's Vineyard, a cantata from the early 1970s.
These are all on cassettes, taken off broadcasts over a long period of time, I'm afraid; also a number of interviews and interview excerpts from the late 1980s on, including discussions about composition with George Benjamin and others. But I've asterisked what for me are the more important works.Comment
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There are several works on Youtube, including the String Quartet No 3:
I went to the premiere run of his opera about King Lear, A Promised End. There were some sarcastic comments about the title, I recall, but I enjoyed it very much.It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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The first work I ever heard Bernard Haitink conduct live was the Little Symphony in Manchester in 1978. The only other Goehr piece I've knowingly heard is Eve Dreams in Paradise which I think was a CBSO/Rattle commission and is probably the recording on SA's cassette."The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
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I am very fond of the Little Symphony - whose opening chorale motto Birtwistle called one of the most perfect statements in all music on his own Desert Island Discs, by the way. I tend to prefer the best of the 12-tone period works to the later neo-modal post 1970s style, which becomes narrower harmonically, more predictable and arguably over-consolidated in the later music, much as I respect Goehr and the lineage he represents. I don't know what he would have to say about my description of the Second String Quartet as being Schoenberg's Fifth!Originally posted by Petrushka View Post
Thanks to ff for the link to the Third string quartet, which I must listen to this afternoon.Comment
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Thanks for the suggestions.
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If I had to come up with an example of what for me would be the most turgid, colourless and unattractive music of the 20th century, the name of Alexander Goehr would spring uncontrollably to mind. I find the ideas behind his pieces promising, especially the larger scale ones, but when I actually hear them everything seems lethally dull and inconsequential. There are very few composers of serious music whose work I dislike as much as Goehr. I don't say this to be a thread-spoiler but I would very much like to hear what people find compelling about his work. Whatever it is, it has evaded me completely.Comment
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Jonathan Powell is not on here as far as I am aware but if you havre other means to contact him why not ask him?Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostComment
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I have held back since my view of what I have heard of his has generated a similarly negative experience. Just what is it we are failing to latch onto?Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostComment
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Apologies for disagreeing.... Many years ago I had the delightful experience of playing, under Goehr's baton, some of his chamber works in various concerts in the North of England. These were: 'Shadowplay' and 'Suite, Op.11' ( I forget the exact instrumentation of the latter, but as I recall, it included flute, clarinet, horn, violin and cello). Less 'turgid' pieces would be hard to imagine! Goehr extracted as much 'colour' from the restrained scoring as possible and even now I remember some ear-worms from those works. Also, a few years later I played, on a world tour by the E.C.O. his Piano Concerto ( Daniel Barenboim, playing from memory!).Originally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
Then , in 1980, I played with the ECO in the first performance of his Sinfonia Op.42 in the RFH, conducted by Barenboim. An incredibly strong and 'engaging' work as I recall. In that piece he originally wrote some very physically demanding high register horn parts.... in the rehearsal at the Henry Wood Hall ( the day before) I asked him if he could possibly make them slightly less 'difficult'; he smiled, nodded and said, 'yes of course'. On the very day of the R.F. H. concert ( a BBC broadcast) I was dumbfounded to see that the only changes he had made to the horn parts were to reduce the sustained high register passages ( OK) but replace them with quite a lot of 'active' and florid triplets and semiquavers, still in the high register! Hmm... we did our best ' on the night' but it wasn't quite what I had expected.
Moral of the story: as a performer, when talking to a composer, 'keep your mouth shut' and just 'get on with it' as best you can. 'Frying pan' and 'Fire' come to mind.
Last edited by Tony Halstead; 10-07-21, 17:02.Comment
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I was careful to emphasise that the response I was talking about was personal, and there's no need to apologise for having had a different experience from mine! - although the view from behind the music stand does often afford a kind of insight that only listening doesn't so readily yield. I remember a clarinettist friend once recounting an experience she had playing second or third clarinet in a production of Rosenkavalier and playing a passage somewhere which was quite intricately thematic but which would probably never be heard except by the other clarinettists, which gave her the impression that it had only been put there for their pleasure. Not that one could imagine Alexander Goehr doing a comparable thing, of course.Originally posted by Tony Halstead View PostComment
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Sandy is a lovely man with whom to have a Brief Encounter during an interval in a concert rammed full of new compositions.Originally posted by Bryn View Post
Some of his earlier music can be grey and rather earnest.
For instance, my favourite ‘goto’ CD over the last year contains two scintillating later scores: ‘When Adam Fell’ for full orchestra (2011) and the multi-movement, near-concerto for piano and chamber orchestra, ‘Marching to Carcassone’’ (2002). Both became instant earworms for me, and snatches of them are haunting my brain as I write. The meat in that CD sandwich is provided by ‘Pastorals’ (1965) for full orchestra which is definitely tough , and even after countless hearings, on the indigestible side.
Perhaps, the professor has relaxed with age and writes for himself rather than to impress.Comment
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I decided to give 'When Adam Fell' a listen. I think it's ok, nothing to write home about... the opening gesture is something, but the rest is a bit much of a muchness. I shall try an earlier score later...Comment
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