BCMG, H&N, Sat 23/06/17; 22:00 - midnight

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Given the (very welcome) appearance of contemporary Music in the mainstream evening schedules recently, I find it a bit odd that "Radio 3's primary contemporary music programme" this week features work that is 105 years old by a composer who died nearly half-a-century ago, but there you go.

Besides Stravinsky's 2 Balmont Poems and 3 Japanese Lyrics, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Oliver Knussen perform the three Chorales from a Toyshop (the First written in 1967 to celebrate Stravinsky's 85th Birthday, the Third a World Premiere) by Harrison Birtwistle (b1935), two works by Jo Kondo (b1947), Tree Line by Toru Takemitsu (who died, it is shocking to remember, twenty-one years ago), and the World Premiere of O Hototogisu - fragment of a Japonisme by Knussen himself - who was 65 a fortnight ago.

No reason why this programme could not have featured on Radio 3 in Concert - and, whilst it will be interesting for me to see if I finally discover something by Kondo that grabs my attention and won't let go, far more interesting and "H&N-Proper" will be Tidesongs, a collaboration by composer/performers Hanna Tuulikki and Lucy Duncombe: Music for multi-layered voice and vocal processing, inspired by the tidal languages of the East Coast from Shetland to Suffolk and by the poetry of Alec Finlay, which has been enjoying performances in Hull as part of "Somewhere Becoming Sea" and at "FLOERS" in Dunbar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08vy6jb

[MrGongGong]

Highly recommended
BCMG are one of the greatest ensembles we have in the UK
and Jo Kondo's music is always worth a listen

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

BCMG are one of the greatest ensembles we have in the UK

I agree - although I can't remember having heard them in ages. I also had to look up to see if BEAST is still active - glad to see it is, and even had a Festival recently ("BEAST Feast" ) which I hope will feature on H&N in due course.

Jo Kondo's music is always worth a listen

Oh, yes - so many people whose opinion I respect rate it very highly, and I keep listening whenever I have the opportunity. I just don't like it. Yet.

[Neil]

Since you mention Jo Kondo, nearly 70 now, take the opening of this piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D4xpYXMMTk It just reminded me of what I've been thinking recently.
To me, for the first couple of minutes, which is all I have listened to, the tonic minor triad is a presence which is returned to again and again. In general, my impression is that tonality in one guise or another appears to be very much alive among young composers also, these days; those who are not using electronics and microtones, that is.

I throw off this very casual (and probably thoughtless, ignorant, ill-advised and just plain wrong!) remark after listening, irregularly, to Hear and Now, etc. in recent times. And also, because I've just been listening to a piece, which I had tape recorded, that was played in Glasgow at the fairly recent Tectonics festival and guess what... basically a long and very slow elaboration of a minor triad with some variety thrown in.
Slow, contemplative, minor triads, often with almost static harmony, are the hot favourites, it seems, practically never major ones. Incidentally, same goes for Glass and friends. A piece starts off with a minor triad, and a lively rhythm and you know right away it will be doomed to continue relentlessly till it has driven you insane. But that's another story...

Maybe Margaret Kitchin had a point when asked about new music in her last years? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ob...rs-857677.html

[Richard Barrett]

Jo Kondo: I encountered him and his music for the first time in Darmstadt in the 1980s. I always enjoy it, I must say. This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJHP460T20U

sort of begins where 1940s Cage leaves off.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In general, my impression is that tonality in one guise or another appears to be very much alive among young composers also, these days

A bit of a "get out of jail free" card that statement, Neil? Can a prolonged minor triad really be called "Tonality in one guise"? I don't recognize it as such - "Tonality" (-in all its guises from the Seventeenth Century (at least) until the mid-Twentieth - was "a" very elaborate process. I don't hear the appearance of familiar triads in serial work (such as is found in Berg and some British and American composers) as being "Tonal" (any more than the appearance of Twelve note material in Mozart or Liszt - or Bartok or Walton - makes them "Serial"). It would be more accurate to describe at least some of the "guises" as "Modal", wouldn't it? (Which would account for the lack of Major Triads that you observe, too.)

those who are not using electronics and microtones, that is.

Well, that's quite a number of composers - not to mention sound artists who also use utensils and tools not usually associated with "Music-making" to create Music. There is an astonishing variety of Musics and Music-making going on "among young composers these days" - and not a few of their older contemporaries. The wonderful Ms Kitchin may have thought that "the golden age" was over - and maybe it is for a pianist - but, as always, another one has only just begun.

[Richard Barrett]

Maybe Margaret Kitchin had a point when asked about new music in her last years?

No she didn't.

Here's another intriguing Jo Kondo piece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rb8CaAToGU

[Neil]

[QUOTE= "I don't hear the appearance of familiar triads in serial work (such as is found in Berg and some British and American composers) as being "Tonal"./QUOTE]

Nor do I, but in any case Berg and Carter, for example, belong to long past generations now. I was really referring to very recent music I've been listening to, mostly names I'd never heard of because they're so young. As for the modes, basically, those that were usable all hover around a tonal centre in spite of having a flat 7th. Maybe I should just have said 'tonal-centric music'.

Here's a speculative question which no-one need bother to answer - totally irrelevant to this thread - sorry! - but still... I wonder what piano concertos young aspiring pianists will be playing in the final of their "Young Musician" competitions (or equivalent) in 50 to 100 years' time. Still harking back to Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, etc. Really?? Surely not, all these years later! But what then? The Birtwhistle concerto, or maybe Maderna or Lutoslawski? Or what about Beat Furrer's concerto? Somehow, I don't think so. It's extremely likely the piano will still be as popular as ever and these pianists will need something to show off their talent. But I think they'll struggle to find anything suitable for them from the latter half of the 20th C. onwards.

(Can't get the hang of quoting, but not to worry)

[Richard Barrett]

I wonder what piano concertos young aspiring pianists will be playing in the final of their "Young Musician" competitions (or equivalent) in 50 to 100 years' time. Still harking back to Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, etc. Really?? Surely not, all these years later! But what then? The Birtwistle concerto, or maybe Maderna or Lutoslawski and more? Somehow, I don't think so. It's extremely likely the piano will still be as popular as ever and these pianists will need something to show off their talent. But I think they'll struggle to find anything suitable from the latter half of the 20th C. onwards.

It's not the pianists who decide what's played in the final anyway, but it isn't just young pianists who have an extremely restricted repertoire of concertos - their elders in general show them a pretty bad example in this regard. I would imagine that Rachmaninov et al. will still form the basis of the repertoire for this kind of event (if this kind of event still goes on) in 50 years' time. There are examples in other cultures, like the No theatre or Gagaku music of Japan, where a particular form of art becomes petrified at a certain point in time, after which its canon isn't added to and it's retained in a museum-like form for centuries while the rest of the world moves on. If the people programming "Young Musician" - type events were serious about renewing the repertoire they would commission new works for the finals.

[Neil]

Yes, you're right, Richard. They would need to commission new works.

But I think we all know that a concerto such as that of Beat Furrer (2007), for example, is just never going to be popular with either pianists or a typical audience for an event like this. You'd need to have a 'popular' composer, maybe a 'Jonathan Dove' or 'Eric Whitacre' or 'John Adams' type of composer writing concertos, for it to work.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"I don't hear the appearance of familiar triads in serial work (such as is found in Berg and some British and American composers) as being "Tonal".

Nor do I, but in any case Berg and Carter, for example, belong to long past generations now. I was really referring to very recent music I've been listening to, mostly names I'd never heard of because they're so young.

Ah - I meant the process of "Tonality": you referred to long-held minor triads, sustained throughout an entire piece - I would say that this is not an example of "Tonality" (any more than the appearance of Triads in older, non-tonal works makes those works "Tonal" either).

As for the modes, basically, those that were usable all hover around a tonal centre in spite of having a flat 7th.

Are there any "unusable" Modes? And, of course, many Modes have "sharpened"/"raised" sevenths - five of Messiaen's seven modes of limited transposition, for example. (And what is the "tonal centre" around which symmetrical modes such as the Whole-tone and Octotonic "hover"?)

Maybe I should just have said 'tonal-centric music'.

... like a mode, you mean? But if you had used the expression, I wonder what the point of your initial post is meant to be? That a lot young composers "these days", tonally-centric Music is very much alive? Well ... yes ... But was it any different in Ms Kitchin's "golden age"?

I think that what has changed from the period about which she speaks is that there is no longer the simplistic idea of a single "grand narrative" of Music History: composers (some of them), performers (ditto), and listeners (ditto) are keen to explore very different types of expression/communication between works - familiar Triads can be used in a work, not as a "resurgence of Tonality", but as a challenge - what can be done with these "sound objects" that have little or nothing to do Tonality? With a work like Richard Glover's Logical Harmonies, entire aspects of musical practices that would have been familiar to composers two hundred years ago (triads, canonic texture, rhythm, metre) but reassembled in ways that would have been unrecognizable to those composers - it uses features from Tonal(ity) practice, but it isn't "Tonal".

And, of course (because this is as it has always been), once somebody does something successfully, other people (particularly young composers, adapting and expanding their expressive vocabulary) try to replicate this, with varying degrees of success: Hear & Now regularly takes risks with the "quality" of the works it broadcasts - these programmes (the sort I wish it would exclusively present, leaving the "safer" repertoire, such as the BCMG concert on tonight's programme to the mainstream evening and afternoon schedules) present an overview of the many different types of Music composition and performance that is going on today. As well as those working with microtones, electronics, ambient recordings, other "non-Musical" sound generators, theatrical performance, multi-media, etc etc etc ... yes, there will be Music that makes a variety of uses of elements of former Musical practices, such as minor triads.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As for the "lack" of Concertos from contemporary composers - where to start?

Orchestras: Without adequate funding, orchestras cannot afford rehearsal times for "more adventurous" repertoire of any sort (not just new works) - nor often to programme unfamiliar repertoire that will not draw in a decent-sized orchestra (witness the paucity of responses on this very Forum, which consists of people hungry for "off-the-beaten-track" repertoire, to a broadcast of Tippett's Piano Concerto last week). Add to those restrictions, the problem of rehearing with a soloist, and the disincentives become depressing.

Performers: as Richard has said, the accessibility of students to living composers and their work is very restricted. Only those performers who are already interested choose establishments whose teaching staff include other performers who are already involved in such repertory.

Composers: "writing" a "Concerto" suggests an engagement with aesthetics of performance (the individual struggling against and defeating the collective) that many creative Musicians would - at the very least - question. And with many "jobbing" orchestral Musicians hostile to New Music, there is little incentive (beyond the commission fee) for composers to put themselves through the depressing rigours of insufficient rehearsals and inadequate performances - especially when there are smaller individuals and groups who are much more enthusiastic at preparing and presenting their work. Besides, what Richard achieved in his Blattwerk for 'cello and electronics makes all subsequent "concertos" redundant. Many of the very best composers don't "need" orchestras, and most orchestras don't want these composers - so the orchestral concert repertoire gets ossified in the period c1800-1950.

Yes, Eric Whitacre, Ludovico Dreimercedes, and Nigel Hess will continue to supply substitute "modern" Concertos - but for goodness' sake ... !!!

[Richard Barrett]

there is no longer the simplistic idea of a single "grand narrative" of Music History

One can overstate that idea though, given that RVW's Antarctic Symphony is contemporaneous with Stockhausen's Gruppen.

I don't think a concerto for soloist and orchestra needs to be "about" an individual struggling against a collective. Plenty of examples aren't - all the solo/orchestra pieces by Lachenmann for a start - nor do I think it's necessary to hear for example Beethoven or Berg or many others in that way. It's a particular kind of distribution of musical resources. Personally I would be very interested in writing such a thing, although it would have to have a guaranteed number of performances to make it worthwhile learning for the soloist, which is really only possible with famous soloists and established mainstream composers.

[Bryn]

"I don't think a concerto for soloist and orchestra needs to be "about" an individual struggling against a collective. Plenty of examples aren't - ... " That linked to, for instance.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One can overstate that idea though, given that RVW's Antarctic Symphony is contemporaneous with Stockhausen's Gruppen.

But wouldn't those who share Margaret Kitchin's idea of a "Golden Age" regard the RVW as not part of the "single grand narrative"? I know Boulez in a 70th birthday interview on R3 claimed that RVW was a more "serious" composer than his mid-Century French contemporaries (which was why I was taken in by the Boulez/VPO recording of the 4th & 6th Symphonies April Fools' joke) but I think that's as far as he ever got to "appreciating" RVW's work.

I don't think a concerto for soloist and orchestra needs to be "about" an individual struggling against a collective. Plenty of examples aren't - all the solo/orchestra pieces by Lachenmann for a start - nor do I think it's necessary to hear for example Beethoven or Berg or many others in that way. It's a particular kind of distribution of musical resources.

No - I don't either; but I think the (British) performers and audiences who would make a Concerto "popular"/"suitable" (to use Neil's terminology) still do. To cite again the Tippett Piano Concerto - a wonderfully lyrical and aurally beguiling work, and one of my personal favourites - or his Triple Concerto; if they cannot "win" the wider audience/performer base (that would go to/play a Prokofiev Concerto, for example) what chance Lachenmann or Furrer or their younger colleagues?

Personally I would be very interested in writing such a thing, although it would have to have a guaranteed number of performances to make it worthwhile learning for the soloist, which is really only possible with famous soloists and established mainstream composers.

Yes - I'd be very interested in hearing a work that shot clean out of the water my theory that Blattwerk has made "The Concerto" genre totally redundant. But the obstacles ... don't seem to match those that (unless I've mistaken what he means) Neil was suggesting.