LCMF 2; H&N, Sat 2/2/10; 10:15pm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Note the later starting time - Carmen from the Met taking three-and-three-quarter hours.

Kate Molleson presents three works performed by the LCMF Orchestra, conducted by Jack Sheen, in a concert given on 15th December in Ambica P3 at the University of Westminster.

Chaya Czernowin (b1957): Day One: On the Face of the Deep (2017, UK premiere)

Elaine Mitchener (b1962): b r e a d t h b r e a t h (2018, World premiere / LCMF commission)

Neil Luck (b1965): Regretfully Yours, Ongoing (2018, World premiere / LCMF commission)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002c85

Czernowin is a terrific composer whose work is far, far too rarely broadcast in the UK - and I know very little of Mitchener or Luck's Music, so this will be a welcome opportunity for me to catch up.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This concert featured the inaugaral appearance of the LCMF Orchestra. Its "manifesto":

Proposition for a 21st-century orchestra – to a new ecology

1. Orchestral composition is BROKEN. The same composers are being commissioned to write in the same old idioms. Change is needed;

2. Composers who've never written for the orchestra, including improvisers and electronic producers, are NOT to be feared. Commissioning them will be our priority;

3. Artists are NOT to be feared. The orchestra is a socio-economic OBJECT and ARTEFACT as much as a music-making machine, and its potential as a medium for conceptual interrogation is untapped. We will commission orchestral works from artists;

4. It shouldn’t need to be said but gender equality is an AESTHETIC IMPERATIVE. Many of the most original musical developments of the last century have come from the likes of Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Alice Coltrane, Galina Ustvolskaya, Meredith Monk. To ignore female composers, then, is not just an injustice but also an aesthetic DISASTER;

5. Diversity of ethnicity is an AESTHETIC IMPERATIVE on the same grounds;

6. Publishing houses are a CARTEL, who have held back music's progress in this country for years. Our priority will be commissioning those who haven't been published;

7. Anniversaries are for LAZY programmers;

8. Talk of 'acoustics' is a TYRANNY and a SHAM, used to entrench conservative forms;

9. Architecture is our FRIEND, space an aesthetically LIBERATING force;

10. Art, film, dance and performance are NOT there to be used by orchestras, to prop them up. We engage with other art forms as EQUALS. Entanglement and tentacularity will be our guiding principle, the octopus our teacher;

11. Talk is an ART. It must NOT be used to patronisingly explain a work that is about to happen;

12a. RESPECT audiences. Realise that they are normal, curious human beings, who, like you and me, do not enjoy being spoon-fed or talked down to;
12b. Audiences are not there to be improved. LCMF Orchestra will not make you a better person, nor does it aim to

All the right words - and in the right order - I hope they succeed in their ambitions.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/dec/13/orchestras-start-living-more-dangerously-igor-toronyi-lalic-lcmf

[teamsaint]

Stying courtesy of the daily express ?

I suppose it would be wrong to suggest that the people they are likely to engage with as an audience, don’t like being talked down to or spoon fed.

Ah......


( No doubt the intention and execution of their work is well up to the demanding standards they set themselves.)


And, reading the article, talking from the podium doesn’t have to be based on the assumption that the audience is dumb. It is just a means of communication that needs handling carefully.

[Serial_Apologist]

At least they talk of improVISERS, instead of musicians wearing face protection when sparks fly.

[Richard Barrett]

The same composers are being commissioned to write in the same old idioms.

This strikes me as a "manifesto" containing much hot air and little content... I hope this nebulous idea of the music they want to play doesn't end up having the same sort of character - apart from people like Chaya Czernowin who is an experienced orchestral composer, signed to a major publisher, with a professorship at a prestigious university etc. etc. Of course they could have just said "we intend to commission and play interesting music by interesting composers" but that doesn't tick enough boxes these days. [sigh]

[Maclintick]

This strikes me as a "manifesto" containing much hot air and little content... I hope this nebulous idea of the music they want to play doesn't end up having the same sort of character - apart from people like Chaya Czernowin who is an experienced orchestral composer, signed to a major publisher, with a professorship at a prestigious university etc. etc. Of course they could have just said "we intend to commission and play interesting music by interesting composers" but that doesn't tick enough boxes these days. [sigh]

Agreed. If one can comment on each of their precisely-enumerated artistic principles without being denounced as (a) demonstrably an apparatchik of "The System", or another meaningless buzz-wordy appellation, or (b) deficient in another indefinably off-message way...Here goes..
(1) Where is there any evidence that this is so ?
(2) Fair enough. Let's hear these creators, by all means.
(3) Sorry -- "conceptual interrogation" sounds like b*****ks
(4) Agreed -- but Saariaho, Unsuk Chin, Gubaidulina, among many others, are quite successful...Gender is thankfully not as debilitating as in the past -- even the recent past.
(5) Agreed
(6) Good luck with that.
(7)Agreed, to a large extent.
(8) Whatever.Presumably acoustics are irrelevant in the type of music you're trying to promote ?
(9)Possibly...?
(10)"Tenticularity" ? You're 'avin' a laff ?"
(11) Basically agreed
(12) Oh dear...

[Richard Barrett]

(1) Where is there any evidence that this is so ?

Maybe there is. I do think the majority of orchestral music being written now is constrained by a choice of composers with a "proven track record" who will tend to have this because they don't push envelopes too much and/or because their work is considered to fit in the company of works from the "established repertoire". Certainly the same few names turn up year after year in Proms programming, for example, as has often been remarked on this forum. So, assuming that indeed "change is needed" as their first point concludes, the question is whether this change is actually going to be facilitated by setting up yet another orchestra - or on the other hand accepting that writing music for orchestra is no longer a priority for more innovative-minded composers, not because they don't have the opportunity to write for orchestra but rather because the orchestra as a medium doesn't offer the possibilities that other musical media do. All in all it's a bit weird also that the choice of Chaya Czernowin would seem to go against most of the principles they so loudly proclaim, whereas for example what Ilan Volkov is doing with the BBCSSO often seems to fulfil them much more thoroughly without making such a song and dance about it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Proms immediately came to my mind when I read Maclintick's question.

But after hearing this week's programme, I don't think that the "cartel" of "lazy" "same-olds" will be losing much sleep.

[Richard Barrett]

after hearing this week's programme, I don't think that the "cartel" of "lazy" "same-olds" will be losing much sleep.

... which is only to be expected when one's "concept" has such a negative cast and makes so little reference to actual music.

[edashtav]

This strikes me as a "manifesto" containing much hot air and little content... I hope this nebulous idea of the music they want to play doesn't end up having the same sort of character - apart from people like Chaya Czernowin who is an experienced orchestral composer, signed to a major publisher, with a professorship at a prestigious university etc. etc. Of course they could have just said "we intend to commission and play interesting music by interesting composers" but that doesn't tick enough boxes these days. [sigh]

However jejune and windy this proto-manifesto appears, it dies strike me as a good idea to set out with a set of aims. Many orchestras in Britain have grown like Topsy without clear direction. Newer ensembles are a little better I think, and I, for one, value the work of the London Sinfonietta which has nailed its colours to a mast for fifty years:

"The London Sinfonietta is one of the UK’s most distinctive, pioneering and adventurous music organisations with a renowned world-wide reputation and critical recognition. We have earned this position over nearly 50 years as we championed some of the most finely crafted, progressive, avant-garde, experimental ensemble and electronic music of the latter 20th and 21st centuries."

The new orchestra's vision declares it to be a Child of its Time and its language is awfully 2017 [ "Aesthetic Imperative" ]. Such language will seem dated and Old Hat in twenty years time.

[MrGongGong]

The Proms immediately came to my mind when I read Maclintick's question.

Yup

And I don't have any problem with most of the rest
At least these folks are actually trying to DO something different

Replacing the old "usual suspects" with new "usual suspects" in the name of "innovation" is all to common these days.

[Richard Barrett]

At least these folks are actually trying to DO something different

Forming an orchestra, you mean?

[MrGongGong]

Forming an orchestra, you mean?

I've been ranting a bit about the "O" word recently
BUT, I think it's a bit like the "Song = Muisc = Song" thing and a lost battle

So here are a few of my favourite Orchestras

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBPWyU8mLw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ9mC7Ccbus real Folk music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7RGcvaXo9A

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

ok this one is an "ensemble" but by any other name ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpBxL4WExWc

[Boilk]

Proposition for a 21st-century orchestra – to a new ecology

1. Orchestral composition is BROKEN. The same composers are being commissioned to write in the same old idioms. Change is needed;

Yes - and you can start moving into the present century by ditching antiquated technology and advocating orchestras/ensembles comprised of contemporary instruments. There is something rather contrived about straight jacketing centuries-old technology (violins, cellos, flutes, trumpets, etc.) into new modes of expression.

Everything is to be modernised except broadly speaking, the medium. That's like calling for a total rethink in the visual arts, just so long as the medium is still oil on canvas, or wood engraving!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There is something rather contrived about straight jacketing centuries-old technology (violins, cellos, flutes, trumpets, etc.) into new modes of expression.

Voices?