Choral Music for John Piper

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What a helpful response to an interesting thread. Look how clever you are!

I do - regularly. However, in response to your own invaluable post, could you please explain how Bernstein and Stravinsky fit the "profile" ardy suggested in his post; I fear I'm not clever enough.

[ardcarp]

Allow me.

In any event, Bernstein had grappled, as Stravinsky, and even Copland did years earlier, with the challenge of 12-tone music during a period of withdrawal as a composer in the early 1960's and had returned to his essentially tonal heritage.

Article from Critic's Notebook:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/22/arts/critic-s-notebook-when-bernstein-saw-the-future.html?mcubz=0

IIRC, Stavinsky began 'toying' with serialism during the composition of the ballet Agon. However, there's also this:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/763889?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[jean]

Thank you for all the interesting ideas so far. If this project gets anywhere, I will be sure to let you know. But surely the equation of abstraction in the visual arts with serialism in music only works insofar as both were breaks with conventions of the past? As to their content, most music has always been abstract, and most visual art has until recently always been representational.

Interesting that [Piper] toyed with the abstract in the interwar years before moving back to the representational. One wonders if a composer who did likewise (for 'the abstract' read serialism) might chime in...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Allow me.
Article from Critic's Notebook:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/22/arts/critic-s-notebook-when-bernstein-saw-the-future.html?mcubz=0

IIRC, Stavinsky began 'toying' with serialism during the composition of the ballet Agon. However, there's also this:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/763889?...n_tab_contents

Sorry, ardy - but you've misunderstood. Stravinsky started using serial procedures in his works more or less as soon as Schoenberg died; this was when he was in his 70s and used Serialism throughout the rest of his life (rather than any "moving back to representationalism"). The Straus article you link to confirms this (hence the inverted commas around "'mistakes'"). Bernstein's "grapplings" resulted in some twelve-note themes in his Kaddish Symphony, but the work isn't "serial" (and those "grapplings" are as "representational" as anything one could imagine).


But this is perhaps testing the digestive systems of those who dislike such "cleverness", so as sop to them I would suggest the work of Piper's contemporaries William Walton (who worked with the Sitwells at Renishaw Hall, which Piper painted at Osbert's invitation - does WW feature in OS's autobiography, which Piper illustrated, does anyone know?) and Arthur Bliss (who, like Piper had a brother who was killed in the First World War - and who, according to WIKI, in the post-war years ... quickly became known as an unconventional and modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music - which neatly fits ardy's suggestion

Sadly, I cannot find any small-scale choral work by Pembrokeshire composer, Daniel Jones.

[Pulcinella]

Lowering the tone, does Schwanda the bagpiper have any choruses in it?
I think I've only ever heard the overture!

(Excuse the pre-First Night of the Proms euphoria here. Even prepared to cope with KD 'presenting' on TV!)

[ardcarp]

I would suggest the work of Piper's contemporaries William Walton (who worked with the Sitwells at Renishaw Hall, which Piper painted at Osbert's invitation - does WW feature in OS's autobiography, which Piper illustrated, does anyone know?) and Arthur Bliss (who, like Piper had a brother who was killed in the First World War - and who, according to WIKI, in the post-war years ... quickly became known as an unconventional and modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music -

Excellent idea. Now if the concert's going to have an instrumental component, Facade just cries out for inclusion. I'll volunteer as one of the narrators!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Excellent idea. Now if the concert's going to have an instrumental component, Facade just cries out for inclusion. I'll volunteer as one of the narrators!

Yer on! (I'll do the Dame Edith narrations. I have my own megaphone.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Lowering the tone, does Schwanda the bagpiper have any choruses in it?
I think I've only ever heard the overture!

I've only ever heard the dance movement from it - one of those annoying earworms.

Less frivolously, Dutch composer Wilem Pijper was a contemporary for much of JP's life. Don't know his Music, and can't find a youTube video of any of his works for chorus, alas.

[jean]

... Now if the concert's going to have an instrumental component, Facade just cries out for inclusion. I'll volunteer as one of the narrators!

I'm afraid that if it happens at all, it will be much more modest than that...though if anyone wanted to volunteer for more than just the narrations, who knows?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm afraid that if it happens at all, it will be much more modest than that...though if anyone wanted to volunteer for more than just the narrations, who knows?

Well - I can serve coffee as well ...(simultaneously if need be).

[Pulcinella]

I think I've only ever heard the overture!

I've only ever heard the dance movement from it ......

You are right: Polka, not Overture!

[Caussade]

The opportunity has arisen for the devising of a programme of choral music to accompany the opening of an exhibition of works by John Piper.

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/john-piper

All suggestions gratefully received.

There's magnificent Piper glass - and I think some ceramics - in the chapel of Robinson College Cambridge which I think was finished c 1977. You could extrapolate a (tenuous) connection to people like Robin Holloway, Alexander Goehr, Hugh Wood., Robin Orr..and the current Fellow in Music, Jeremy Thurlow, is a very fine composer who may well have written some choral music.

[DracoM]

Does anyone know when we get info on what IS chosen?

[jean]

I will keep you informed.

[Despina dello Stagno]

All suggestions gratefully received.

I would like to search out and engage a conductor with the surname Wether. ["Bell" Wether mayhap. But not Bill Withers. In his current situation that would be too fanciful.]
I should then like to engage a bagpiper of proven inability, to contribute intrachoral interpolations.

Then when the bagpiper failed to perform to a reasonable standard, all the members of the audience, jointly and severally, could beard the conductor and say: "You seem to have had very bad luck with your piper, Mr Wether."