H&N, Sat 27/8/16; 10:00pm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This one should be part of the mainstream broadcasting schedules - Colin Matthews isn't really H&N material.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07qbh33

Still - answers at least one of those regular "How many performances do the Proms Premieres get after the Proms"-type queries that pepper the Forum around this time of year.

[Bryn]

This one should be part of the mainstream broadcasting schedules - Colin Matthews isn't really H&N material.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07qbh33

Still - answers at least one of those regular "How many performances do the Proms Premieres get after the Proms"-type queries that pepper the Forum around this time of year.

Well at least we also get Glass and Nyman who clearly are both really H&N material.

Next week's programme includes stuff from the "Principal Sound" weekend at St. John's, Smith Square earlier this year. However, despite the weekend being built around the work of Morton Feldman, none of his works are to be included. Bizarre!

[jayne lee wilson]

It might seem an odd view of the rubric for a programme called "Hear & Now" devoted to "Contemporary Music" that would seek to exclude the work of a 70-year old composer on the grounds that it fails to conform to any undefined or subjective notion of what is "contemporary", perhaps especially given that neither Colin Matthews' Violin Concerto or his Broken Symmetry can be easily categorised, the former showing a quicksilver elusiveness of form and mood, the latter a dauntingly moto-perpetuo contrapuntal complexity, allied to an almost rebarbatively challenging, shape-shifting mechanistic energy.
Unless of course, the suggestion that this music belongs in the "mainstream" implies that such works have already become classics...(whether modern or not).
But whatever your view of where they may "belong", they'll certainly reward your closest attention...

Threnody and Broken Symmetry were originally conceived as the 2nd and 3rd movements of the large scale work Renewal (Intrada - Threnody - Broken Symmetry - Renewal). http://www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/renewal-2446. The stillness and density of Threnody, and the quiet, contemplative nature of Renewal, would certainly place the big orchestral scherzo in a very different light! On another level one may relate Broken Symmetry to the tradition including Dukas' Sorcerers' Apprentice, or the Berlioz Queen Mab or Will o' the Wisp interludes. A more recent example of such intense rhythmic obsession would be Louis Andriessen's De Snelheid.

Track listing for Broken Symmetry, taken from the DG recording:

Broken Symmetry (1991-92)
17. 1. Allegro (Introduction I)
0:22
18. 2. (Introduction II)
0:33
19. 3. (Trio 1: Threnody)
0:49
20. 4. Tempo giusto (Scherzo 1)
3:09
21. 5. (Trio 2: Parody)
1:28
22. 6. Vigoroso (Scherzo 2)
2:44
23. 7. Spettrale (Trio 3: Monody)
1:16
24. 8. Sostenuto ma agitato (Scherzo 3)
2:18
25. 9. Subito sostenuto (Centre)
1:11
26. 10. Feroce (Scherzo & Trio 4)
2:59
27. 11. Molto vigoroso (Scherzo & Trio 5)
1:21
28. 12. Pesante (Scherzo & Trio 6)
1:08
29. 13. Molto vivo (Stretto)
1:18
30. 14. (Coda)
0:58
London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen

The Scherzo & Trios 4, 5 and 6 sections are reverse-order recapitulations of Trios and Scherzos 1,2 and 3, but broken up and distorted, cutting across each other. (And "Centre" is anything but a still point in this rapidly spinning world....)

[Beef Oven!]

I’m with ferney on this. Whilst Colin’s sound-world is more H&N-ischer than Nyman and Glass, a quick look at my CD collection for example, reveals nothing more contemporary than 1991/2 (Broken Symmetry). I’m sure he’s written music more recently than that, but isn’t H&N more about music that's now as well as here? Now strikes me as a reasonably objective notion.

The rest of the music on my CDs is earlier: Sun Dance; Fourth Sonata; Fifth Sonata; Cello Concerto (might have more, but I’ve only had a quick look).

Regarding Andreessen’s Snelheid, he finished writing that 33 years ago and Mrs Oven and I attended a performance of it in London over 25 years ago, so it definitely doesn’t qualify as H&N. It’s more There & Then!

[Richard Barrett]

The trouble is that "Hear and Now" has to take on board a vast amount of stuff that (apparently) there's no room for elsewhere in the schedules. Nyman and Glass (and Andriessen) in their different ways have, at least at some point in their lives, made music capable of expanding a listener's idea of what music is and what it can do, which I don't think could be claimed for Matthews even by the most enthusiastic listeners to his music. What that might imply in terms of how "contemporary" or otherwise it might be is another question, but if "Here and Now" is supposed to have some kind of identity as a programme, sorry, a show, this perhaps ought to involve some kind of editorial policy, such as the late lamented "Mixing It" had. Or, to put it another way (rhetorical question alert), if Matthews is material for Here and Now why not Finnissy for Composer of the Week?

[jayne lee wilson]

I’m with ferney on this. Whilst Colin’s sound-world is more H&N-ischer than Nyman and Glass, a quick look at my CD collection for example, reveals nothing more contemporary than 1991/2 (Broken Symmetry). I’m sure he’s written music more recently than that, but isn’t H&N more about music that's now as well as here? Now strikes me as a reasonably objective notion.

The rest of the music on my CDs is earlier: Sun Dance; Fourth Sonata; Fifth Sonata; Cello Concerto (might have more, but I’ve only had a quick look).

Regarding Andreessen’s Snelheid, he finished writing that 33 years ago and Mrs Oven and I attended a performance of it in London over 25 years ago, so it definitely doesn’t qualify as H&N. It’s more There & Then!

The "now" of the Colin Matthews programme would be the 2009 Violin Concerto, released this year on NMC. At least this work has been performed several times since its premiere - apart from one or two R3 repeats, Threnody and Broken Symmetry weren't played at all after the initial few performances in the mid-90s until this very concert, and of the Renewal sequence (just two performances years ago) only the Symmetry has been recorded. So they've hardly found a place in the "mainstream" have they?

The discography of albums devoted entirely to Colin Matthews' work is not large (don't be misled by shorter works scattered across anthologies), and there's always the problem of a single recording taken as representative of a work & the possibility of a second being remote. The Knussen DG reading sounds - precise, as you'd expect but - to me a little too careful, perhaps unsurprisingly a little tentative in the face of its ferocious complexity. It could do with sharper, bolder projection in more immediate sound. I think the same goes for the Josefowicz' 2010 Proms Violin Concerto on NMC too.
So where do you put performances of them? A chopped-up afternoon slot seems depressingly low-profile...

Maybe Hear & Now should have guest editors - sorry, curators - every few weeks.

Updated list of Compositions :

http://www.fabermusic.com/composers/colin-matthews/works

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Or, to put it another way (rhetorical question alert), if Matthews is material for Here and Now why not Finnissy for Composer of the Week?

Well, quite.

Listening to these Matthews works, I still do not see what reason there is for shunting them into this late-night, "specialist" slot: there was nothing here that a "classical Music lover" who appreciates/enjoys - say - Lutoslawski (whose work has featured in Afternoon on 3, for goodness' sake!) would be upset by.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Having extreme difficulty working out which is the more clichéd and cheesily predictable in Icarus at the Edge of Time: Glass' Music (which sounds like a very feeble composer trying to copy early Glass) or Brian Greene's story and prose (which sounds like a fourteen-year-old doing a "Science Fiction" exercise for his GSCE Creative Writing course). (The narrator's lisp isn't helping me take it more seriously.)

[jayne lee wilson]

Well, quite.

Listening to these Matthews works, I still do not see what reason there is for shunting them into this late-night, "specialist" slot: there was nothing here that a "classical Music lover" who appreciates/enjoys - say - Lutoslawski (whose work has featured in Afternoon on 3, for goodness' sake!) would be upset by.

Yes, but which Lutoslawski? This theoretical "classical musiclover" might well get - Concerto for Orchestra, Musique Funèbre, or (even) Symphony No.3. But Preludes and Fugue, Livre Pour Orchestre, 2nd Symphony? All offer very different challenges to the so-called "classical music-loving" ear.

And which musiclover anyway. In my first undergraduate year as a tyro literary theorist, I used the phrase "average reader" - perhaps a little superciliously. My relativistically-inclined, English-traditional ex-Cambs Leavisite but (unusually) Structuralist and Deconstructivist- aware tutor wrote in the margin - "there ain't no such animal".

So I think that having Finnissy as Composer of the Week, and Colin Matthews as a segment of Hear & Now, can only be A-G-T - a very good & healthy thing indeed. You never know which Mozartian or avantgarde musiclover might, unexpectedly, pick it up.
...Especially since far too many Proms this season have followed the tired-out pattern of - New Work, not too challenging, not too much longer than 20 minutes, in Part One; worn-out classical symphonic warhorse why-bother-to-even-switch-on-for-the-new-work-anyway, in Part Two.

A "specialist" late-night slot surely guarantees that no-one will discover "something they didn't know they wanted", so Finnissy or whoever will be effectively preaching to the converted, thus not challenging anyone at all.
Returning to the Lutoslawski example, some hypothetical musiclover, classical or not, may well respond readily to the gorgeous, lush neo-spiritual-minimalism of the Colin Matthews' Threnody (first chance I ever had to hear it since Renewal's premiere!), but find Broken Symmetry almost, as I said - rebarbatively unseductive. Which surely is part of the missed (because unplayed...!) point of the Renewal sequence - an almost irreconcilable contrast. Then imagine what follows this metallic-machine-music scherzo - "Renewal" itself, a hushed, slow, contemplative, choral fade-out...

You really can't easily categorise that - as a complete work. So there it remains, unplayed, unrecorded, as the Proms programming and the specialist avantgardegraveyard slot continues...

[ahinton]

Yes, but which Lutoslawski? This theoretical "classical musiclover" might well get - Concerto for Orchestra, Musique Funèbre, or (even) Symphony No.3. But Preludes and Fugue, Livre Pour Orchestre, 2nd Symphony? All offer very different challenges to the so-called "classical music-loving" ear.

And which musiclover anyway. In my first undergraduate year as a tyro literary theorist, I used the phrase "average reader" - perhaps a little superciliously. My relativistically-inclined, English-traditional ex-Cambs Leavisite but (unusually) Structuralist and Deconstructivist- aware tutor wrote in the margin - "there ain't no such animal".

So I think that having Finnissy as Composer of the Week, and Colin Matthews as a segment of Hear & Now, can only be A-G-T - a very good & healthy thing indeed. You never know which Mozartian or avantgarde musiclover might, unexpectedly, pick it up.
...Especially since far too many Proms this season have followed the tired-out pattern of - New Work, not too challenging, not too much longer than 20 minutes, in Part One; worn-out classical symphonic warhorse why-bother-to-even-switch-on-for-the-new-work-anyway, in Part Two.

A "specialist" late-night slot surely guarantees that no-one will discover "something they didn't know they wanted", so Finnissy or whoever will be effectively preaching to the converted, thus not challenging anyone at all.
Returning to the Lutoslawski example, some hypothetical musiclover, classical or not, may well respond readily to the gorgeous, lush neo-spiritual-minimalism of the Colin Matthews' Threnody (first chance I ever had to hear it since Renewal's premiere!), but find Broken Symmetry almost, as I said - rebarbatively unseductive. Which surely is part of the missed (because unplayed...!) point of the Renewal sequence - an almost irreconcilable contrast. Then imagine what follows this metallic-machine-music scherzo - "Renewal" itself, a hushed, slow, contemplative, choral fade-out...

You really can't easily categorise that - as a complete work. So there it remains, unplayed, unrecorded, as the Proms programming and the specialist avantgardegraveyard slot continues...

Very well said in every particular.

It seems that there are, however, those who have only to see the surname Matthews with either Colin or David in front of it to find an excuse to express reservations or worse and who might in some cases be more concerned to doubt the appropriateness of having either composer's work included in H&N than to suggest where else they believe that it might better be aired; one may idly speculate on why that could be, if one has nothing better to do...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It seems that there are, however, those who have only to see the surname Matthews with either Colin or David in front of it to find an excuse to express reservations or worse and who might in some cases be more concerned to doubt the appropriateness of having either composer's work included in H&N than to suggest where else they believe that it might better be aired; one may idly speculate on why that could be, if one has nothing better to do...

There may well be "those", but none of them have posted so far on this Thread. Nor is there any need for anyone to "speculate" ("idly" or vigorously) why I (being with BeefO the only one to express any such thought on this Thread) have not suggested where else it might better be aired as I did precisely this in my OP (this "should be part of mainstream broadcasting") and in #7 (which mentioned Afternoon on 3).

Another "one" might equally speculate why it is that there are some who claim to be admirers of the surname Matthews who seem to think that Colin of that ilk should be kept away from mainstream, wider audiences. With "friends" like that, who needs anemones?

[ahinton]

There may well be "those", but none of them have posted so far on this Thread. Nor is there any need for anyone to "speculate" ("idly" or vigorously) why I (being with BeefO the only one to express any such thought on this Thread) have not suggested where else it might better be aired as I did precisely this in my OP (this "should be part of mainstream broadcasting") and in #7 (which mentioned Afternoon on 3).

Another "one" might equally speculate why it is that there are some who claim to be admirers of the surname Matthews who seem to think that Colin of that ilk should be kept away from mainstream, wider audiences. With "friends" like that, who needs anemones?

!!! - or enemas...

I think that the problem arises in part because of the very notion/concept of "mainstream broadcasting" and the risk that acceptance of its rightful existence be divisive; shunting certain music into an H&N slot and other music into Afternoon on 3, for example, might seem to some as suggestive of factionalising. Finnissy as CotW? Indeed; why ever not? The prospect that CotW be regarded as more "mainstream" (with comparatively larger expected audience figures) and H&N more "specialist" (with comparatively smaller ones) surely does neither any particular favours? OK, H&N by its very nature can't air music by composers who died more than × years ago because that's not its brief, but that doesn't in itself mean that it should be expected to adopt some kind of exclusivity as to what it broadcasts by living or recently deceased composers; giving one or other Matthews air time therein on occasion would seem to create an impression of greater rather than lesser diversity in the broadcasting of new and recent music, I would have thought (but then what do I know?!)...

[ahinton]

The "now" of the Colin Matthews programme would be the

very fact that he's still with us and still composing, if you'll pardon my seeming to be over-simplistic in my interpretation of the programme title! In other words, I don't really get why his work should be seen as any less H&Nish than that of any other composer writing today; "Here and Now" means "Hear and Now" (although, unlike something else beginning with a B, it does at least mean something!)...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

very fact that he's still with us and still composing, if you'll pardon my seeming to be over-simplistic in my interpretation of the programme title! In other words, I don't really get why his work should be seen as any less H&Nish than that of any other composer writing today; "Here and Now" means "Hear and Now" (although, unlike something else beginning with a B, it does at least mean something!)...

But all those comments about Colin Matthews could equally apply to Peterisks Vasks whose work would certainly not upset anyone tuning in to ClassicFM's "Smooth Classics" - or, indeed, to Karl Jenkins (seeing that you mention "something else beginning with a B"). Nobody raised any objections a month or so ago when I suggested that Vasks works weren't really H&N material - just as I would presume that nobody would see it as objectionable to regard Jenkins are not suited to the programme? Matthews' Music is significantly better than that of those two - but mentioning them in the same breath does show that a literal interpretation of the programme title, if not "over-simplistic", might lead to some over-simplistic programming!

[ahinton]

Karl Jenkins (seeing that you mention "something else beginning with a B")

Nice one! (I had in mind the absurd and by now quite incredibly tiresome "Brexit means Brexit", as I'm sure you realise, but yours represents a considerable improvement!)...

But is one of H&N's purposes to "upset" listeners? and, if so, which ones, how and why? Maybe its producer/s should try a split one with music by Hespos and Stevenson...