New Roberto Gerhard book

[MrGongGong]

HI Monty at Huddersfield has just posted a link to this

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472402813

which some of you might be interested in

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Excellent news! Many thanks, MrGG

Pity about the price! Ashgate have consistently produced excellent books on Music, but because they often deal with subjects away from what is considered "the mainstream", they have to charge top prices. This one will need some saving-up for.

[MrGongGong]

Excellent news! Many thanks, MrGG

Pity about the price! Ashgate have consistently produced excellent books on Music, but because they often deal with subjects away from what is considered "the mainstream", they have to charge top prices. This one will need some saving-up for.

I know it's very pricey indeed and (given my recent volvo clutch drama ) out of my price range in the foreseeable future

(I managed to wangle a free copy of a previous Ashgate publication by writing a review ............. so might be worth a punt ?)

[Beef Oven]

Can I borrow it after you've read it? Is there an iPad or Kindle version?

Can't really afford it in post Thatcher's Britain.

[Serial_Apologist]

HI Monty at Huddersfield has just posted a link to this

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472402813

which some of you might be interested in

Gor blige - what a price! I think I'll stick by the few Gerhard recordings in my possession for info.

"In a questionnaire I was once invited to answer, there was one question which read something like this: 'If, prior to the performance of a work of yours, you were given the opportunity of addressing the audience, what would you like to say?' My answer was: 'Not a word'" !!! (Roberto Gerhard, from The Composer and His Audience, in Twentieth Century Music, Ed Rollo H Myers, Calder, London, 1960, P 52)

That said by the man I would nominate over Bernt Aloys Zimmermann as the grandfather of the post WW2 avant-garde, (with greatest respects to the late BA Zimmermann). Thereafter said composer had in fact a great deal to say about the need for the likes of himself to grab the attention of the listener and not let it go or risk artistic failure:

"Once again we are up against the fallacy that music can be explained; that more knowledge about how a piece is made will lead to a better understanding of the music. But it is evident that knowledge - here as in other fields - does not necessarily lead to understanding. The danger is, on the contrary, that more and more knowledge may lead to less and less understanding, particularly where the layman is concerned. Paradoxically, understanding must come first. One must have grasped intuitively the heart of the matter before the factual bits of knowledge can ever begin to make sense. And this holds god for all of us, listener, critic, and composer alike. It is a case of strict one-way traffic. The direction is from the centre of an intuitive understaning outwards to the factual data, never the other way round". (Ibid, PP 57-58).

There is so much wealth of insight and wisdom in this little chapter, from pages of a book sadly decimated by many years of over-reading, that at age 15 it started me on the very different "spiritual path" that I have followed to some degree or other ever since, and I would love to share more of it, except that more pressing issues are before us for discussion right now.

[Richard Barrett]

I must read that. I mean the book you're quoting from, S_A, but I would like to read the new one too.

Mind you, I don't know that I agree with Gerhard's categorical "never the other way round". Of course he said that at a time when more composers than nowadays (although it's still quite rife) were under the impression that knowing how a composition was written was the same thing as understanding what it actually is, and therefore that a description of the composition process was often substituted for some more helpful way of introducing unfamiliar music to an audience. But still, that kind of knowledge can sometimes be interesting and stimulating.

So (as if to prove his point, now I think of it) I don't know very much about Gerhard but I haven't heard a piece of his I didn't like. I find the combination of tensile and disciplined structure with amazingly variegated colour very attractive.

[Tapiola]

I haven't heard a piece of his [Gerhard's] I didn't like. I find the combination of tensile and disciplined structure with amazingly variegated colour very attractive.

Richard,

I couldn't have put it better myself (though I only know Symphonies 1,3, The Plague).

And thanks to Mr GG for the heads-up. Not that I'll be able to afford it any time this decade

[teamsaint]

Richard,

I couldn't have put it better myself (though I only know Symphonies 1,3, The Plague).

And thanks to Mr GG for the heads-up. Not that I'll be able to afford it any time this decade

about 3 p a day will do it, Tappy.

[Boilk]

I know it's very pricey indeed and (given my recent volvo clutch drama ) out of my price range in the foreseeable future

I think a prompt to a major music library (e.g. London's Barbican) wouldn't go amiss, and then people can queue to borrow.

...Or is it possible for non-students to borrow from university libraries these days?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Richard, I couldn't have put it better myself

(though I only know Symphonies 1,3, The Plague).

There was a superb series of CDs from the '90s by Auvide Montaigne which isn't available these days - second-hand copies of which are available, but at prices that make the new book look cheap!

I'd recommend the two other symphonies (on more reasonably-priced CHANDOS releases) and the String Quartets (1 & 2 on a mid-price METIER CD, played by the Kreutzer Quartet; or a new complete pair of CDs from AEON by the Ardittis: the latter available from the Tax dodgers in a very cheap [£5.99 for two discs] MP3 download.)

And thanks to Mr GG for the heads-up. Not that I'll be able to afford it any time this decade

I'm going to pester every local library to get it. (It worked with The Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg ... but not until after I'd bought my own copy!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'd recommend ... the String Quartets (1 & 2 on a mid-price METIER CD, played by the Kreutzer Quartet; or a new complete pair of CDs from AEON by the Ardittis: the latter available from the Tax dodgers in a very cheap [£5.99 for two discs] MP3 download.)

Gerhard, as any fule kno, published only the two S4tets that are featured on the METIER CD; the AEON adds the Chaconne for solo violin, but is still only a single CD.

Sorry.

[Richard Barrett]

There was a superb series of CDs from the '90s by Auvide Montaigne which isn't available these days - second-hand copies of which are available, but at prices that make the new book look cheap!

I'd recommend the two other symphonies (on more reasonably-priced CHANDOS releases)

The performances and recordings on the Chandos CDs are generally superior to the Montaigne ones, I think, with the exception of the Third Symphony where Matthias Bamert or the Chandos engineers decided on an apologetic attitude towards the electronic sounds by making them far too quiet relative to the orchestra (though not quite as bad as Boulez leaving them out altogether in Varèse's Déserts).

[Julien Sorel]

... the String Quartets (1 & 2 ... from AEON by the Ardittis

The second quartet I've listened to half a dozen times since getting the CD - superb, and with a terseness that implies so much on the surface. I think that makes some sense. The first seems less interesting to me, but the disc is well worth getting to know.

[Pianoman]

I would tend to agree that the second quartet is the more interesting work, though the first has those wonderfully unique little Gerhard 'thumbprints' that make his music so listenable. The Chaconne was new to me but well worth getting to know.

I attended some of the first Gerhard Symposium out of which the book 'grew' but it is a pity it's quite do dear - of course Hudd Uni library will immediately get a copy so I will be first in line...

[Serial_Apologist]

I must read that. I mean the book you're quoting from, S_A, but I would like to read the new one too.

Mind you, I don't know that I agree with Gerhard's categorical "never the other way round". Of course he said that at a time when more composers than nowadays (although it's still quite rife) were under the impression that knowing how a composition was written was the same thing as understanding what it actually is, and therefore that a description of the composition process was often substituted for some more helpful way of introducing unfamiliar music to an audience. But still, that kind of knowledge can sometimes be interesting and stimulating.

So (as if to prove his point, now I think of it) I don't know very much about Gerhard but I haven't heard a piece of his I didn't like. I find the combination of tensile and disciplined structure with amazingly variegated colour very attractive.

Hmmm, Richard; I bought my copy of that book, (Twentieth Century Music - A Symposium is actually the full title), in Foyles, probably around 1965. Decent copies (ie not as in the case of mine falling to pieces) would probably exist in the top music colleges, but whether you'd still find one elsewhere I doubt - which is a pity if true, as it offers a superb window onto ideas about music at the time - chapters by Blom, Goldbeck, Hodeir, Adorno, del Mar, Jacobs, Sternfelt, Searle (Humphrey), Ohana, Fussl, Collaer, Rostand, Vlad, Simpson, Hussey, Layton, Fremiot and Fraser.