CE New College, Oxford May 22nd 2013

[Simon]

The Dove Descending is a fully-fledged and beautiful work ...

Fully-fledged maybe. Beautiful - not in a million years. You can construct some kind of defence for it on several grounds, should you so wish, FHG, but most certainly not on that one by any measure! Still, it was over quite quickly...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My reaction on seeing the programme was 'Yay - a serial piece on Choral Evensong!'

My response, too, mopsus.

[DracoM]

At this end of the tiring academic year, still amazingly alert and musical. Didn't much care for the Stravinsky as a piece, but very interesting to hear it sung that well and apparently idiomatically. If it could have won me over, that performance would have done.

Love the Leighton, always have, glowingly sung.

The Britten - well......a few reservations. Liked the pace plus overall variations in tempi, ensembles brimming with energy. I think I'd have been a bit scared as Jeffrey if I'd had that forthright and stunningly virtuosic love and awe addressed at me, affording a very interesting comparison between that particular style and the one we heard in Nigel Short's prog on Sunday. Tenor a tad exposed? It's a fiend, of course, and nowehre to hide in accompaniment - virtually recit throughout.

Totally agree with ardcarp over organ playing - a model. In that close acoustic, not easy to get balance right, but that was about as good as you'd get.

Very professional, very organised, very musical. Thanks, NCO.

[ardcarp]

Hmm. If I may raise a niggle about this, ardy: The Dove Descending is a fully-fledged and beautiful work by a Serial master who had been using serial techniques for ten years, and who would continue to do so for the rest of his composing career. All his "experimenting" was done in the privacy of his sketchbooks; everything he published was the masterpiece that resulted from these experiments.

Ferney. I bow to your knowledge of Stravinsky. My point was that the 'difficult listening' aspect of The Dove may have deterred some, on hearing it at the start of CE, from sticking with the broadcast.

Mopsus. Yes I have sung the Ridout 12-note canticles. This must have been in the 1970s at a guess. Where have they been since?

Draco. Jeffrey (!) Yes, the same thought leaped to my mind; the very timid and 'Kingsy' treble from the Ledger recording we heard on The Choir and the fully fledged soloist we heard from NCO. My comment that BB would have liked it is based on the probability that he preferred gutsy treble singing (think Hahessy) to the refined cathedral sound typical of his day. The tenor was, I think, struggling with voice fatigue, and I thought he coped bravely after a slight wobble. Under normal circumstances one shouldn't need to try too hard in that 'Language of flowers' solo...it should just flow out without too much pushing.

[Miles Coverdale]

Has anyone ever done Ridout's 'Twelve-note' canticles or the Elizabeth Lutyens set?

I recall singing the Ridout at Guildford some years ago (mid 90s). Mind you, I don't think one can call a series of four triads which happen to use all twelve notes of the chromatic scale 'serial'.

[ardcarp]

I feel the need to waffle a bit about Stravinsky and serialism. I gather he felt some sort of need to fiddle with serialism 'cos of the zeitgeist. I have to say though as a person who was privileged to be alive at the same time as this giant of music, and as a huge admirer, I know him for the three great ballets, Pulcinella, The Soldiers Tale, Les Noces, Renard, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, The Mass, Symphony in C....need I go on? After his meeting with Robert Craft, he apparently used some form of serialism in many of his later works; but one has to admit that these do not grab the public attention in the same way (well not mine anyway).

This might amuse:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2008/nov/20/stravinsky-modernist-schoenberg

Your turn, Ferney.

[mopsus]

I was a little sorry that in Wagner Week we didn't get one of the two hymns from the EH set to music by Wagner, though 'O King most high' would really have been appropriate to the previous week.

I believe that the rules of serial composition allow you to pile up your notes into chords, but I'm willing to be corrected about the Ridout, which I don't really know. A few years ago there was an organ voluntary one quite often heard which had what sounded like a 12-note theme, but I don't think I ever knew who wrote it. I'd recognise it if I heard it again, though.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Your turn, Ferney.

- eye thangyew!

Stravinsky had a lifelong and intense dislike of the angst which he found in the work of the Second Viennese School, and, together with a misunderstanding of what "Serialism" actually meant, (illustrtated by comments along the lines of "why should I use twelve notes when seven are quite enough for me" - an obvious deceptive tactic; his work emerges from the eight note features of the Octotonic scales) this kept him away from the Method until he met Milton Babbitt and Robert Craft. When they pointed out that "12-Note Serialism" is essentially a way of working with intervals (more so than pitches) his creative juices were fired (I'd rather not persue the mixed metaphor there!) and, ascending, broke the air!

After The Rake's Progress, Stravinsky experienced an intense period of writers' block that was only broken by his discoveries of the potentials for his Music that Serial methods offered; but they weren't a completely new development in his work - there are ways of working with harmony in his Mass and in Orpheus that show that he was already beginning to think in ways that easily accommodated Serialism. Just as Pulcinella - written whilst he was still working on Les Noces - prefigures the "Neo-Classical" works of the '20s - '40s. He hadn't felt any kind of need to fiddle with Neo-Classicism 'cos of the Cocteau-led zeitgeist when he wrote the Octet or Oedipus Rex - he merely responded to what was going on around him, and showed how it could be done better!

Stravinsky doesn't just "apparently use[] some form of Serialism in many of his later works": he is a Great Serial Composer, developing new ways of handling Music that astonished even Babbitt. Only ("only"???!!) his death prevented even more works.

And, no; these masterpieces "do not grab the public attention in the same way" - but then the larger public isn't exposed to this Music as often, and they don't care to be grabbed by anything after The Rite. The Ode doesn't feature often on Breakfast nor Persephone on Desert Island Discs. Doesn't stop them from being wonderful works of Art. Nor does the neglect of Movements or the "Aldous Huxley Variations" have any bearing on the sheer, glorious achievement of these life-affirming masterpieces.

[ardcarp]

Well, Ferney, we are having a Stravinsky seminar. We'll get ff moving all our posts if we carry on like this. I have to say that personally I don't see Igor as

a Great Serial Composer

and I wonder how many do? But my love for his music goes well beyond The Rite, and encompasses the neo-classical works (or whatever you want to call them) of the 20s - 40s. I forgot to mention the violin concerto in my list earlier...there's a great recording by Hilary Hahn, BTW. Oh and Dumbarton Oaks, and...stop, stop.

[DracoM]

Symphonies of Wind Instruments........
..................sorry, am I butting in?

[ardcarp]

No....join the party. (But see post #21)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, Ferney, we are having a Stravinsky seminar. We'll get ff moving all our posts if we carry on like this. I have to say that personally I don't see Igor as

a Great Serial Composer

and I wonder how many do? But my love for his music goes well beyond The Rite, and encompasses the neo-classical works (or whatever you want to call them) of the 20s - 40s. I forgot to mention the violin concerto in my list earlier...there's a great recording by Hilary Hahn, BTW. Oh and Dumbarton Oaks, and...stop, stop.

Oh, yes; when I referred to the "larger public", I wasn't including those of us who love Jeu des Cartes, Danses Concertantes, the Violin Concerto etc etc*. Nor do I wish to say that Stravinsky was always "a Great Serial Composer" - but that, as the works written in his last two decades were "great" and "serial", and as he composed them, he takes his place with the Three As, Lutyens, Dallapiccola, Babbitt, Gerhard etc as "a Great Serial Composer".

As for who might share this view, I have to say that I've not read any Musician (who's been published, in case Simon wishes to jump in! ) who disagrees with it. The composer of the Sonata for Two Pianos wasn't a Serial Composer, but then, neither was the composer of Erwartung.

* = or the wonderful Symphonies of Wind Instruments, DracoM - which just might be my favourite piece by this composer.

[ardcarp]

I met Luigi once. (Dallapiccola that is. Apropos of nothing apart from name-dropping!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I met Luigi once. (Dallapiccola that is. Apropos of nothing apart from name-dropping!)

As names go, that's in the top rank of "droppables", ardy!