Hear and Now - Eotvos / Stroppa / Boulez / Stockhausen - Sunday 11.07.11 @ 10.30 pm

[Guest]

Tom Service presents a concert from the 2011 Aldeburgh Festival, recorded last month, which explores the movement of sound in space, featuring three composers connected with IRCAM, the Parisian centre of avant-garde music and research.

Tom is joined to discuss the works by the London Sinfonietta's Chief Executive, Andrew Burke (and Tom will probably be asked if he'd like to become a Sinfonietta Pioneer or if he'd to leave his home to the Sinfonietta when he dies. Of course, Andrew Burke may choose just to rattle a can at him).

Anyway, the pieces to be played on Sunday are:

Peter Eotvos - SCHILLER: energische Schonheit (UK premiere)

Marco Stroppa - From Needle's Eye (UK premiere)

Pierre Boulez - ...explosante-fixe ...

London Sinfonietta - Peter Eötvös conductor

Michael Cox solo flute
Byron Fulcher solo trombone
EXAUDI vocal ensemble
Sound Intermedia
Andrew Gerzso IRCAM computer music designer
Jérémie Henrot IRCAM Sound engineer

Stockhausen - Jubilaeum

BBC Symphony Orchestra - Oliver Knussen.

[arcades]

I'm looking forward to hearing Marco Stroppa's 'From Needle's Eye'; from what I've heard he's an interesting composer - very precisely heard and calculated sonorities/timbres which don't give the impression of existing just for the sake of being interesting sounds but carry an argumentative and emotional force.

Thanks for the heads up :).

[hackneyvi]

I'm looking forward to hearing Marco Stroppa's 'From Needle's Eye'; from what I've heard he's an interesting composer - very precisely heard and calculated sonorities/timbres which don't give the impression of existing just for the sake of being interesting sounds but carry an argumentative and emotional force.

Thanks for the heads up :).

I've not heard of Stroppa before so having a concise and positive comment on his music is welcome. I tend to benefit from some 'hook' when approaching the unfamiliar.

I'm slightly excited by the Boulez. I'm crawling my way through a (short!) article by PB called "Schoenberg is dead" from 1969 but it's giving me a small insight into both composers. I'll be interested to listen to his piece because the inference I draw from the article is that each piece of Boulez's music will be completely free of any organising precedent.

[Serial_Apologist]

From memory, Explosante-fixe is not quite as explosante as its title implies...

[hackneyvi]

I see that the Southbank Centre are putting on a weekend of Boulez - 30th September to 2nd October.

I 'know' that Boulez is a modern great but then Mahler and Brahms are great and I find one thin and the other stodgy. Is Boulez music 'knowable'? I think he's a composer somehow who I expect to be hostile to me - though his intense, almost poetic language of argument in the 'Schoenberg is dead' article does make me feel he's reasonable, even if he's probably passionately unapproachable.

PS: Also, John Cage Night on 13th September. Heard a tiny piece of Cage (End from 'Living Room Music') at the Schott place last week which greatly endeared Cage to me. Amongst the instruments were 2 rolled up magazines.

All at QEH, South Bank centre.

[3rd Viennese School]

Wasn't this on Saturday? If so, missed it again! I was in a very noisy pub in London Bridge after watching Mrs. 3rd Viennese School play in a concert in the docklands.
What was the Boulez and Stockhausen like?

3VS

[Serial_Apologist]

Wasn't this on Saturday? If so, missed it again! I was in a very noisy pub in London Bridge after watching Mrs. 3rd Viennese School play in a concert in the docklands.
What was the Boulez and Stockhausen like?

3VS

Hard to describe Boulez's music, isn't it? Will successive flute arabesques wrapped around and woven through close complementary textures do? If you know the piece "Memoriale", dedicated to the late Bruno Maderna, you'll have a general idea. And the Stockhausen, from 1977, was similar in style to the eventual outcome of the 1974 piece "Inori": heavy, staggered Messiaen-like brass chords in ponderous succession, string glissandi all the while.

S-A

[Sydney Grew]

. . . Heard a tiny piece of Cage (End from 'Living Room Music') at the Schott place last week which greatly endeared Cage to me. Amongst the instruments were 2 rolled up magazines.

We are not endeared.

[ahinton]

We are not endeared.

Although I myself confess to being no admirer of Cage, it nevertheless seems pertinent to respons that the importance (if any) of your statement above is undoubtedly predicated upon and proportionate to the likelihood that neither / none of you was present at Schott's last week to listen to the work concerned.

[hackneyvi]

Although I myself confess to being no admirer of Cage ...

This may not be a recommendation but the percussion for End from 'Living Room Music' put me in mind of 'The Flowers of Romance' by Public Image, one of my very favourite records. And one which I now realise links in to much of the music that's presently appealing to me.

Here's the track from early 1981. I think this may be the longer, album version which runs to all of 2' 53". Has quite a Cage-y brevity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBaQOdsTAKo

Wonderful lyric and delivery.

Now in the summer
I could be happy or in distress
Depending on the company

On the veranda
Talk of the future or reminisce
Behind the dialogue
We're in a mess

Whatever I intended
I sent you flowers
You wanted chocolates instead

The flowers of romance

I've got binoculars
On top of boxhill
I could be Nero
Fly the eagle and start all over again

I can't depend on these so called friends
It's a pity you need to defend
I'll take the furniture and start all over again

[Quarky]

I see that the Southbank Centre are putting on a weekend of Boulez - 30th September to 2nd October.

I 'know' that Boulez is a modern great but then Mahler and Brahms are great and I find one thin and the other stodgy. Is Boulez music 'knowable'? I think he's a composer somehow who I expect to be hostile to me - though his intense, almost poetic language of argument in the 'Schoenberg is dead' article does make me feel he's reasonable, even if he's probably passionately unapproachable.

Must try to attend Boulez weekend. I find myself enjoying Boulez far more than Schoenberg - mainly because of the absence of late-romantic sourness. They may be both extremely serious composers, but this is not so apparent in Boulez' style.

[Boilk]

I've not heard of Stroppa before so having a concise and positive comment on his music is welcome. I tend to benefit from some 'hook' when approaching the unfamiliar.

I'm slightly excited by the Boulez. I'm crawling my way through a (short!) article by PB called "Schoenberg is dead" from 1969 but it's giving me a small insight into both composers.

Well, it probably won't be long before there's an article entitled "Boulez is dead" - athough he's effectively been dead as an innovative composer for years. What iritates me is the extent to which musical establishments outside of France have allowed the Boulez myth to eclipse his French contemporaries. Far more French-sounding to my ears are what has been accomplished by the Music Concrète and Acousmatic composers and the so-called Spectralists. Boulez by comparison seems a bit of an anomoly who was preoccupied with wanting to reinvent music. As with Bernstein, I think the huge conducting skills have advantageously impacted the wider perception of the composer.

Stroppa's large scale Traietoria (piano and electronics) from years back was a truly major accomplishment. Can't remember where I saw this, possibly the QEH. I was less grabbed by Needle's Eye, but a live performance is probably needed.

[heliocentric]

What irritates me is the extent to which musical establishments outside of France have allowed the Boulez myth to eclipse his French contemporaries.

That's true, although on the other hand one shouldn't underestimate the wide and long-lasting effect that some of his (mostly earlier) work had: Le marteau sans maître, to name one example, on the kind of textures, instrumentation, forms, word-setting and so on which many composers took up and developed in different directions after the mid-1950s (whether you like that sort of thing or not). Still I'd agree with those who say his compositional work has seriously stagnated in the meantime (ie. almost everything he's written since Eclat-multiples seems to me an increasingly pedantic examination of the same matters), and that his ambition and skill in putting himself in positions of power in French culture and elsewhere has on balance probably had more negative than positive effects. Like Oddball, though, I still prefer listening to Boulez than listening to Schoenberg.