Harrison Birtwistle 80

[Richard Barrett]

possibly more in the style of the Busch/Serkin recordings of the Brandenburgs if his recordings of Dumbarton Oaks are anything to go by

I expect so, yes, because his own recordings of the neoclassical pieces tend to be somewhat foursquare in rhythm and articulation compared to the last forty years or so of historically-informed performance of baroque music.

Blotto, regarding your thoughts about whether music is "about the instruments", I guess I would say it can be but that I hadn't really thought of putting Birtwistle in this category! However, since he was himself originally a clarinettist I would imagine that his use of this instrument might well be more "personal" in some ways than when he's writing for other instruments.

[ahinton]

Blotto, regarding your thoughts about whether music is "about the instruments", I guess I would say it can be but that I hadn't really thought of putting Birtwistle in this category! However, since he was himself originally a clarinettist I would imagine that his use of this instrument might well be more "personal" in some ways than when he's writing for other instruments.

An intriguing and understandable thought but would you think to ascribe the same to Tony Payne because he was also one?

[Blotto]

Dear f,

Apologies for the late response to your eloquent post. I've been taking my time to listen to the music - Triumph of Time especially - with your points and notes in mind. Do you find that you can overdose on music and just become progressively more deaf to it. Some music has to be well out of my ears before there's room for it to enter them again.

The first thing I'd say is that some of the remarks of mine you were responding are perhaps slightly 'out-of-date'. My ears are a little opened. I was replying to Richard B's puzzlement at a listener finding Birtwistle difficult and, to a degree, standing in and firm for the audience of baffled listeners which so recently included/which still includes myself.

... I find it difficult to relate your description of the Music to my experience of it - I don't find it "formless-seeming", or "shapeless and without any direction" ... the course of the Music follows its own logic and it moves in very definite directions.

There are three essential structural "markers" that recur; exact repetition ... ; the continually changing melodic line ... ; and "block" material, recurring like a Rondo episode ...

In parallel with these structural "markers", Birtwistle also uses his own "take" on the "Montage" technique ... in the manner of a cinematic "cut" ... And, because this is Music, Birtwistle goes one better and is able to present two or three different "scenes" simultaneously as well as in sequence:

So your main paragraph:

Blotto: "So, the form is elusive and the style can be unpleasant. In that regard, it's difficult ..

I begin to hear the funeral songs in Triumph of Time. Once the music begins to separate in the ears, the chorale is very easy to appreciate and enjoy as a sort of pause or ceremony at the end of the procession. Along with the creaks and jolts of the cart, I feel I hear compassion in that Cor Anglais melody, which reappears on other instruments later on, I believe. I think it might provoke laughter but Tippett is my 'standard' of modern music; it's humanly pleasurable, interesting, satisfying. Some of the music of ToT - like the chorale - is no more challenging and even has similarities particularly to later Tippett, as has been noted. There's common ground in, even perhaps some dialogue between HB and Tippett's 3rd and 4th symphonies.

It strikes me now that the speed of the music is another element one has to adjust to; very slow speed can blur action in an unfamiliar way to the blur of fast speeds; the movement can seem to be no more than ceaseless, graduated but inconsequential depositions, something plodding on softly without paying much attention to its environment (and when I think about it, that environment is, I suppose, the attending mind of the listener). An image which comes to mind about the main bulk of ToT is of someone slowly and silently drilling seeds; one sees the action of the music and perhaps the intention in it but the results are, for a long time, more implied than observed.

I'd come back at this point to the fundamental material. When the musical elements, sometimes very irregular and wandering-seeming, are given out so slowly and quite undemonstratively, noticing and grasping what is important can be almost impossible. Longer exposure (with a bit of sign-posting and advice!) begins to accustom me to the dialect of the music and the manner in which it's spoken - pitches, tones, dynamics, gestures - but enquiring and acquiring all of the linguistics requires an initial confidence that the music isn't gibberish to begin with. To many people, it will never explain itself in any way and so the enquiries can never come.

But I come back again to the question of whether music's availability creates a spurious sense of it as comprehensible to all. There's such a resistance to class - which education is seen as an aspect of - that the idea anything is not equally suitable to everyone, that anything may not be appreciated by all is regarded as despicable. But we wouldn't be surprised that someone without O-level maths is unequipped to grasp differential calculus because the construction and function of calculus have their basis in that preliminary knowledge. Why then should we allow that contemporary music, with all of its tools and techniques, forms and purposes can be appreciated satisfactorily and simply for "what it is"?

... well, the same can be said about Gotterdammerung, can't it?

I'm sure you're right, I don't know Wagner, at all. It's suggested that listeners to late romantic music would find little difficulty with HB. I very rarely listen to romantic music after Mendelssohn and tend to jump over the period to the inter-war period and beyond. However, I have been looking into Schoenberg a little and found, for example, his 4th string quartet surprisingly listenable, if not actually really pleasurable which is probably a consequence of opening my ears to the challenge of HB.

Birtwistle's Music comes from a tradition that demands repeated listening in order to "follow" it ...

The difficult question there, though, is how does the listener then come to follow music which requires repeated listening when it's very rarely played? How do most listeners ever hear it in the first place, let alone often enough to become acquainted or familiar?

I think, though, on reflection that broadcast and on-line media may have so disseminated much music that one thinks of music as having been democratised when, in truth, much of it hasn't been. Plenty of music lacks the prominence or proximity to be found. A great deal of Beethoven will be freely-given and easily found cheaply in quite short periods of time whilst Birtwistle's is premium rate music, scarce and only offered freely now and again. I think much modern and contemporary music is for an audience of highly-sophisticated listeners who, on a single listen, can adjust to and grasp - can hear! - complex and unfamiliar music, take pleasure and interest in it or not, and make some kind of judgement of its merit.

I would class myself as an ordinary, broadly intelligent, middle brow listener; I've exposed myself to the modern and the contemporary with limitedly positive results. I have simply found a great deal of the contemporary speechless; at a single listen, I rarely grasp the substance, the intention or the meaning and I rarely hear 'loveliness', in which quality I'd include the ugly-lovely that I begin to hear in HB.

To get to this point, I've had to sit within earshot of contemporary music for 25 years, ears as opened as their bafflement or incomprehension will allow. Why has it been so hard? And if it's so hard for a listener with blind faith, it may be impossible for someone without that.

How much contemporary music thinks about the listener? HB's does, I know, because the rather thin conversational book I'm racing through tells me this repeatedly; HB is constantly concerned that whatever is played can be heard - that generally the number of lines or the texture have a clear and balanced sound. But - again - coming back to the shape of the fundamental material, it's so unfamiliar that the building blocks of this concertedly audible texture aren't comprehensible to the listener at the outset.

Does modern and contemporary music put self-expression above all else, including communication? Is the music the agent of its own downfall, is it engineered unpopularity?

But, if you're a composer ... exploring and communicating the full spectrum of human thought and feeling ... you want to present these new ways of expression with others ... no matter how few of them there are, and no matter how misunderstood or disliked it is by "the larger number of listeners".

What is the value of expressing the full spectrum of thought and feeling? And does music do that? Does Birtwistle's?

If I listen to Beethoven, I hear a great range of feeling very clearly - sobriety, striving, reflection, tenderness, humour, questioning, excitement, joy. Hearing the 5th symphony at the RAH the other week, all these qualities and emotions are shown and spoken with great clarity and purpose. Now, Birtwistle's grim treadmills, what value is there in their 'lessons'? I don't say there isn't any but just ask, "What?" Striving, tenderness, humour, excitement, joy - are they also present?

And, with luck (and as is happening with Birtwistle's Music) what you do reaches out to larger numbers of people, who become increasingly aware of the unique and valuable beauty that this Music - and only this Music - has to offer.

Well, its reach is creeping, slow as a stain, over me. :)

PS: I would like to comeback to Triumph of Time because it's beginning to become interesting. I hadn't noticed the saxophone until you pointed it out, though it's more prominent in the Boulez than the Howarth to my ears and, perversely, the Cor Anglais tune and its later appearances seemed stable. I listened to the Boulez and Howarth recordings back-to-back last night and the Howarth again this morning. The landscape analogies are interesting. I've begun to get a sense of the shape of the piece but it's a bit like trying to get the entire contour of a hill while you're walking on it, never having seen it from a distance. That's easier for the geographer than the ordinary walker who'll need new skills to do it.

[Blotto]

Can anyone tell or guess whether the sound quality of this video can be improved? The cog-wheel is the usual means of adjusting quality on Youtube but clicking on the available options achieves no change that I can hear.

It's the 2009 Proms performance of a part of Mask of Orpheus which seems to be a distinctly visual opera and video performance seems restricted to this one video.

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/WHa2-I3OHV8

Thanks.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'd like to draw attention to tomorrow afternoon's proms Saturday Matinee at Cadogan Hall, containing as it does early Birtwistle, a rare treat in the form of "Verses for Ensembles"; "Dinah's and Nick's Love Song" - possibly his nearest piece to being a pop tune; and 1970's "Meridian", a work I found far more accessible in the conventional sense than anything else I had heard up to that point. For those remaining doubters, it could be your entry point, too!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It strikes me now that the speed of the music is another element one has to adjust to; very slow speed can blur action in an unfamiliar way to the blur of fast speeds; the movement can seem to be no more than ceaseless, graduated but inconsequential depositions, something plodding on softly without paying much attention to its environment (and when I think about it, that environment is, I suppose, the attending mind of the listener). An image which comes to mind about the main bulk of ToT is of someone slowly and silently drilling seeds; one sees the action of the music and perhaps the intention in it but the results are, for a long time, more implied than observed.

Yes, that's correct, I think - do you regard this as a crtiticism? Unlike some of the Romantic composers who spelt everything out (often several times) Birtwistle is closer in attitude to the Classical use of suggestion and allowing listeners to fill in detail for themselves (those curtailed First Group repeats in Recapitulations, for example, with their "well, we've heard this before a couple of times, we don't need to hear it again - which only works, of course, if the Exposition Repeat is played) - or those stand-up comedians who lead their audience to a joke's punchline but don't deliver it, letting the audience work it out for themselves (Dave Allen was superb at this).

Birtwistle's timing is a relative thing - for anyone used to the great cumulative adagios of Bruckner or Mahler, the pace of events isn't anything new (even if the harmonies are). And anyone coming from Morton Feldman might regard Birtwistle's time spans as impatient. I don't know how it "might seem" for others - if it does appear "inconsequential", I'd have to ask them what they mean by that word; what are they expecting to happen to create "consequences" and what sort of "consequences" do they not hear in this Music?

I'd come back at this point to the fundamental material. When the musical elements, sometimes very irregular and wandering-seeming, are given out so slowly and quite undemonstratively, noticing and grasping what is important can be almost impossible. Longer exposure (with a bit of sign-posting and advice!) begins to accustom me to the dialect of the music and the manner in which it's spoken - pitches, tones, dynamics, gestures - but enquiring and acquiring all of the linguistics requires an initial confidence that the music isn't gibberish to begin with. To many people, it will never explain itself in any way and so the enquiries can never come.

Does it have to "explain itself"? Does any Music do this? Is it the responsibility of composers to concern their Music with audiences who demand, if not "instant" then at least "iminent" gratification? If a listener has the attitude, "I want Music that's like the Music that I already like; anything else is gibberish", then why should s/he waste their time with Music that doesn't do this? Why should I waste my time trying to convince him/her otherwise? Why should a composer adjust their Music to fit such an attitude, when there is so very much more out there that already does.

But I come back again to the question of whether music's availability creates a spurious sense of it as comprehensible to all.

"Spurious"? "Comprehensible to all?" No - no Music is this. And "understanding" and "enjoying" don't necessarily go together. I don't "comprehend" Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Harp & Viola, but I adore it - especially for its mercurial ability to slip from under my thumb just as I think I'm about to pin it down. I "understand" Messiaen's Music, and love to analyse it, seeing how all the cogs fit together. I just don't at all like the sound of most of it. There will be many people who never "get" Birtwistle's Music; that's not the problem, I think - the problem is that many people think that their dislike of such Music means that it is dislikeable - or, more accurately, because they don't get it, it's "rubbish".

There's such a resistance to class - which education is seen as an aspect of - that the idea anything is not equally suitable to everyone, that anything may not be appreciated by all is regarded as despicable. But we wouldn't be surprised that someone without O-level maths is unequipped to grasp differential calculus because the construction and function of calculus have their basis in that preliminary knowledge. Why then should we allow that contemporary music, with all of its tools and techniques, forms and purposes can be appreciated satisfactorily and simply for "what it is"?

Because that's how some of us get it. We find the sound world beguiling and exciting; we love the tartness of the semitones, the interweaving or the rhythmic patterns and the harmonic shifts these create. Discovery of how these effects are created comes later - just as it does for any Music worth listening to - for those of us who like pulling it apart. For others, it's just a matter of hearing new connections, developments, narratives every time we hear them. That's why we listen to it again and again and again ... And some of us (including Birtwistle himself) are from non-privileged social backgrounds who love this stuff: and many from wealthier backgrounds loathe it and prefer Gesualdo or Chopin or Coltrane or Gilbert & Sullivan or Feldman or Barry Manilow or Rachmaninoff. It's not a class issue; it is an "education" issue, but in the wider sense of that word - not in the sense that you have to be taught to like such Music by someone else telling you how you must listen to it.

The difficult question there, though, is how does the listener then come to follow music which requires repeated listening when it's very rarely played? How do most listeners ever hear it in the first place, let alone often enough to become acquainted or familiar?

An important question - but this is not a modern problem: in the Nineteenth Century, how did the vast majority of listeners come to follow Brahms' Symphonies? (Or Bruckner's?) If they were suitably proficient pianists, they could learn them from playing reductions - but with no recordings or broadcasts, listeners were dependent on visiting orchestras or performers to access the Music. Books might have been available to those who could afford them (and later from Public Libraries). I don't think Brahms' Music needs any fewer hearings to be "understood" than does Birtwistle's - and many of Brahms' contemporaries found his Music as repellent as their counterparts so find Birtwistle's.

I think, though, on reflection that broadcast and on-line media may have so disseminated much music that one thinks of music as having been democratised when, in truth, much of it hasn't been. Plenty of music lacks the prominence or proximity to be found. A great deal of Beethoven will be freely-given and easily found cheaply in quite short periods of time whilst Birtwistle's is premium rate music, scarce and only offered freely now and again. I think much modern and contemporary music is for an audience of highly-sophisticated listeners who, on a single listen, can adjust to and grasp - can hear! - complex and unfamiliar music, take pleasure and interest in it or not, and make some kind of judgement of its merit.

This is probably true - as it was (?is?) of Palestrina, or The Art of Fugue, or Mozart (and his letters take pride in assuring his father that, for all its surface attraction to the general public, only "true connoisseurs" could really appreciateit) or Beethoven's last String Quartets. And Birtwistle's Music is readily available on youTube (as is that of Ferneyhough, Radelescu, Scelsi, Babbitt etc etc etc ... together with documentary discussion of the Music and access to scores. We all today have greater access to the Music being produced today than any generation before ours. The problem is lack of awareness of who (performers as well as composers) is producing it - we can't search for Joanna Baille if nobody's ever told us about her.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I would class myself as an ordinary, broadly intelligent, middle brow listener; I've exposed myself to the modern and the contemporary with limitedly positive results. I have simply found a great deal of the contemporary speechless; at a single listen, I rarely grasp the substance, the intention or the meaning and I rarely hear 'loveliness', in which quality I'd include the ugly-lovely that I begin to hear in HB.

To get to this point, I've had to sit within earshot of contemporary music for 25 years, ears as opened as their bafflement or incomprehension will allow. Why has it been so hard? And if it's so hard for a listener with blind faith, it may be impossible for someone without that.

I think my attitude to this enormous problem is to encourage anyone who shows an interest to just keep listening; get used to the sounds, start to hear the "narrative", recognize the tunes. The same as I do if someone expresses an interest in Haydn. Does it matter that there are people who resent being required to undertake active listening? Does it matter to you, Blotto; aren't the discoveries you're making sufficient for the day? Isn't the knowledge that you'll hear even more the next time you listen more important?

How much contemporary music thinks about the listener? HB's does, I know, because the rather thin conversational book I'm racing through tells me this repeatedly; HB is constantly concerned that whatever is played can be heard - that generally the number of lines or the texture have a clear and balanced sound. But - again - coming back to the shape of the fundamental material, it's so unfamiliar that the building blocks of this concertedly audible texture aren't comprehensible to the listener at the outset.

Some things take time, some things reward effort. There are people whose lifestyles preclude such endeavour, others whose attitudes to Music resent even the attitude of a composer who makes such demands. It's not for them - or, at least, not yet. Maybe it'll be different for them tomorrow - probably not; there's tons of other stuff that they will enjoy and find "meaning"/value in.

Does modern and contemporary music put self-expression above all else, including communication?

I don't have a clue what this means.

Is the music the agent of its own downfall, is it engineered unpopularity?

What "downfall"? Birtwistle's Music is fantastic stuff - amongst the very best ever written. If widespread popularity is a/the criterion of "success", then the only Music of value is from the popular markets - the sales of a new set of Beethoven Violin Sonatas will be laughable in comparison with those of Lady Gaga's next album. Has Beethoven "downfallen"? A new recording of Marais consort Music: "engineered unpopularity". If we accept Musics from the Werstern Classical Traditions as being a minority taste, why worry that Ferneyhough (or whoever) is on the fringe of this minority. Enough people revel in it, he gets performances, his Music sells ... why worry that it isn't reaching the top of the "Classical Charts"?

What is the value of expressing the full spectrum of thought and feeling?

Depends what you mean by "value" - but I would say that this is the precise "function" (or "purpose" or "meaning") of Art.

And does music do that?

It can.

Does Birtwistle's?

Yes.

If I listen to Beethoven, I hear a great range of feeling very clearly - sobriety, striving, reflection, tenderness, humour, questioning, excitement, joy. Hearing the 5th symphony at the RAH the other week, all these qualities and emotions are shown and spoken with great clarity and purpose.

So, have you had this reaction since you were a babe in arms, or did you get familiar with it through listening to it a lot? Do you have exactly the same responses to it now that you've always had, or do you discover new facets and responses with each hearing?

Now, Birtwistle's grim treadmills, what value is there in their 'lessons'? I don't say there isn't any but just ask, "What?" Striving, tenderness, humour, excitement, joy - are they also present?

Yes - you yourself have heard the comedy in Carmen Arcadiae and it's there in The Second Mrs Kong and Punch & Judy; "striving"? What else does one do on a "treadmill"? Tenderness - oh, yes! All over the show - delicate woodwind melismas, gentle glitters from the harp or vibraphone, string sighs. "Excitement" - all over the show: fanfares, accumulations of polyphony, rhythmic overlapping pushing the Music forward.

[Richard Barrett]

It's mostly a question of familiarity, isn't it? - not just with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony itself but also with its context, because even if you were hearing it now for the first time there would be elements you'd recognise as familiar from other music you'd have heard. With Birtwistle (for example) that's less the case, obviously. The discussion here seems to hinge on whether that fact makes the music difficult to appreciate. For some people it does seem to; but for others including myself there's no necessary difficulty at all in encountering music in an unfamiliar idiom, indeed this feature can serve as an attraction. If someone says to me "listen to this, it's like nothing else you've ever heard!" that's going to get me more enthusiastic than if they'd said "listen to this, it will remind you of other music you know and love!"

[Roehre]

It's mostly a question of familiarity, isn't it? .... The discussion here seems to hinge on whether that fact makes the music difficult to appreciate. For some people it does seem to; but for others including myself there's no necessary difficulty at all in encountering music in an unfamiliar idiom, indeed this feature can serve as an attraction. If someone says to me "listen to this, it's like nothing else you've ever heard!" that's going to get me more enthusiastic than if they'd said "listen to this, it will remind you of other music you know and love!"

For me it works exactly that way

[Serial_Apologist]

For me it works exactly that way

For me, sometimes. There either has to be something of immediate interest and/or attraction, or the kind of trust engendered by previous works I have heard by a given composer, if I am not to be thrown by non-referential idiomatic newness.

[Quarky]

My musical background, and approach to HB, is diametrically opposite to Blotto's, with the notion that any sound of whatever nature, may be worth savouring and have value.

For instance the Kazoo-like instrument in the first part of Punch and Judy - London Sinfonietta were really letting it rip! A great caucophony!

Or the Saxophone in Panic, as played in CD Review yesterday. A weird sound by Classical standards, but for someone accustomed to Dolphy, Coltrane, it seemed quite a reasonable invitation for the listener to get involved.

[Richard Barrett]

And here perhaps a few words from John Cage, who would have been 102 last week:

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

[Serial_Apologist]

And here perhaps a few words from John Cage, who would have been 102 last week:

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

And there was a lovely quote from Elliott Carter from a R3 broadcast from the late 1980s - words to the effect, "I can never figure out why people are afraid of new musical ideas. They are, after all, the ideas of their own times". Lots of Carter quotes. I must dig out that D90: it would be fun to transcribe some of the comments which he, Maxwell Davies, Boulez and Goehr came up with for the forum, though it might take time!

[Roehre]

And there was a lovely quote from Elliott Carter from a R3 broadcast from the late 1980s - words to the effect, "I can never figure out why people are afraid of new musical ideas. They are, after all, the ideas of their own times". Lots of Carter quotes. I must dig out that D90: it would be fun to transcribe some of the comments which he, Maxwell Davies, Boulez and Goehr came up with for the forum, though it might take time!

THAT would be great

[Serial_Apologist]

And there was a lovely quote from Elliott Carter from a R3 broadcast from the late 1980s - words to the effect, "I can never figure out why people are afraid of new musical ideas. They are, after all, the ideas of their own times". Lots of Carter quotes. I must dig out that D90: it would be fun to transcribe some of the comments which he, Maxwell Davies, Boulez and Goehr came up with for the forum, though it might take time!

I have 9 transcribed handwritten sheets of these taped 1987 interviews, which I shall try and start to post on here tomorrow, though I have a lot on, or more likely Monday.