Hear and Now - Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Festival 2011 - 16th July 2011

[hackneyvi]

Deleted.

[hackneyvi]

From your posts, you are giving music a very deep level of analysis, and so it does not surprise me it may take a time to embed in your psyche if, as I understand it, you are a relative newcomer to this type of music.

I've made attempts to listen to contemporary music, on and off, for 20 years and more but, somehow, now, I can enjoy and want to hear the new. But I really can't analyse music, Ob, because I don't have the necessary experience or the tools from any substantial musical education.

I find that I reject almost every piece of contemporary music I hear because it's not the same as the last one that I liked (I am aware of the absurdity of this; it may be a family characteristic). Knowing this, I have to reject my own rejection. Then, just try to open my ears wide and let them catch something of the shape or the deduced intentions of the music, something of its substance.

I can listen without getting a numb bum or getting fidgety to pretty much any piece now. But actually hearing what's played can be hard, either parts or the whole.

If you don't have a musical attention and memory to therefore hold on to some of the music or some or your reactions to it as it pours past, it's like swimming or sitting at low eye-level in a fast, wide river; it's possible to have a sense of moving quickly and continuously through the same moment because you have little perspective on the change in position.

[Serial_Apologist]

Deleted.

ditto

[hackneyvi]

ditto

Are you feeling self-conscious, too, SA. Now that I know the the composer might be reading, I can't work out what I feel.

[Serial_Apologist]

Are you feeling self-conscious, too, SA. Now that I know the the composer might be reading, I can't work out what I feel.

Sad thing is, the iPlayer of that particular H&N seems to have gone before I had the chance. Never mind, I'm sure I'll catch up on her in due course.

S-A

[hackneyvi]

A third listen to Caught in Treetops. A fortnight on and I've got my own ears back.

How athletic, balletic, gymnastic the opening solo is, how much lightness and flight there feels to be coming from how much strength. How gorgeously blended amongst the instruments the music is. How instrumental rather than interruptive the percussion is (favourite moment is a knocking on a dry tom drum of some sort while the violin rings a long two-note; it has something of a spirit about it). How insects hover through at one point. How it has the self-possession to close. Graceful, dignified, loving silversmithery.

[hackneyvi]

Ignore this. It was last year.

Caught in Treetops being performed at Birmingham in November as part of a Mark Anthony Turnage 50th birthday concert. Quite a programme.

http://www.compositiontoday.com/concerts/5890.asp