Hear and Now - tonight (Sat 15 June)

[ahinton]

Actually I think Sydney Grew might not.

And well you may think thus; indeed, from what he writes on this subject (assuming that it can be taken at face "value"), I might well find myself somewhat hard pressed to figure out in which century he lives or thinks that he lives...

[Sydney Grew]

Dragging the thread back from the "whom" to the "what", and in particular to the "Hear Now" programme in question: in a recent thread elsewhere about Polybius (which Mr. Hinton at least will have seen) the valued member kleines c (some time contributor to the B.B.C. message board) recently drew attention to a book by Norman Davies entitled Europe: A History. Therein,

"Norman concludes '... In the post-war era, popular songs headed the tide of American culture - good, bad, indifferent - which was to sweep over Europe. The transatlantic sound of Anglo-American songs was destined for dominance. But it is well to remember that in many parts of Europe, in Naples, in Warsaw, in Paris, and in Moscow, the native idioms preserved their excellence.'"

The function of the ululant style of American "pop music" since around 1955, with its "guitars" and "drums" has been as a kind of Pied Piper for the unmusical of Britain, and of course the Corporation - who bear responsibility for this "Hear Now" programme - has been one of the prime movers in that insidious process. Now, in our brave new twenty-first century, there is hardly a news bulletin without reference to some aspect of the world of "guitars" and "drums."

"There can surely be no one," wrote Polybius, "so indifferent or apathetic that he would not want to know how, and thanks to what system of government, almost the whole inhabited world, in not quite fifty-three years fell under the sway of a single power - Rome." He was a Greek of course, born into the political aristocracy of Megalopolis; and in 168 B.C. he was one of more than a thousand leading Greeks transported to Rome in a political purge, but kept thereafter under a not too unpleasant régime of house arrest.

Let us then a little adapt Polybius to present circumstances: "There can surely be no one so indifferent or apathetic that he would not wish to know how, and thanks to what system of government, almost the whole inhabited world, in not quite fifty-three years (1955 to 2008) fell under the sway of a single power - the American states." But the difference is that now a majority of people ARE indifferent and apathetic about this point.

It is evident, then, that the primary function of the "guitar" and "drums" - not only the words but also the sounds - is to act as a corrective trigger for the "brain-washed" who might be having doubts. They tap their little feet and clap their little hands and are happy again!

[Bryn]

Re. #5, the full programme is now available via the iPlayer 'Listen Again' facility.

Re. guitar and drums. It will be known to all here, surely, that Pierre Boulez's most popular work, Le marteau sans maître, employs both the guitar and small drums, and indeed that one of the performers in the Bryars work 1,2,1-2-3-4, Cornelius Cardew, learned to play the guitar specifically to play it in the first BBC Third Programme Invitation Concert broadcast of the Boulez work, directed by John Carewe. Presumably Anton Stingl was on available.

[ahinton]

Re. #5, the full programme is now available via the iPlayer 'Listen Again' facility.

Re. guitar and drums. It will be known to all here, surely, that Pierre Boulez's most popular work, Le marteau sans maître, employs both the guitar and small drums, and indeed that one of the performers in the Bryars work 1,2,1-2-3-4, Cornelius Cardew, learned to play the guitar specifically to play it in the first BBC Third Programme Invitation Concert broadcast of the Boulez work, directed by John Carewe. Presumably Anton Stingl was on available.

Indeed - but then the very histories of drums of one kind and another and the guitar, its relations and its forebears are many centuries long and America, both before and after independence, is hardly an especially significant, let alone instigating, force in these; Mr Grew's remarks on them are accordingly as selective and prejudicial as they appear.

[Richard Barrett]

Re. guitar and drums.

I think there's a lot to be said about how musical vernaculars and "art music" have informed and intertwined with each other over the centuries, from at least the early Middle Ages onwards - in a sense the entire musical history of western Europe can trace its origins to the infection of Gregorian chant with elements from contemporary dance and song. So to view the way that vernacular musics and instruments have become woven into compositional thinking in the second half of the twentieth century as somehow new and disturbing is quite nonsensical, if amusingly provocative.

I don't mind admitting that I played guitar in punk-rock settings before I ever seriously wrote a note on a stave, and that this remains a central formative experience whose longterm effects (no doubt to the disdain of such as Sydney Grew, but I seem to have managed somehow by paying little attention to such opinions for the past thirty-odd years) are I think quite tangible. I think that contemporary composition really needs to resist the application of the word "classical" and all its connotations to what we are doing now, which is no more "classical" than for example the paintings of Gerhard Richter who as far as I'm aware isn't normally saddled with that epithet. Why should anything that creative musicians do now have any connection with "when a great composer sits down to write a symphony"? Of course there will always be musical conservatives whose work might fit such an anachronistic vision, and one of the most fascinating things about contemporary music in the early 21st century is how diverse it is, but when elements of that diversity start describing one another as "unmusical" that fascination can sour somewhat.

[ahinton]

I think there's a lot to be said about how musical vernaculars and "art music" have informed and intertwined with each other over the centuries, from at least the early Middle Ages onwards - in a sense the entire musical history of western Europe can trace its origins to the infection of Gregorian chant with elements from contemporary dance and song. So to view the way that vernacular musics and instruments have become woven into compositional thinking in the second half of the twentieth century as somehow new and disturbing is quite nonsensical, if amusingly provocative.

Indeed - but I would worry about it only if it were taken seriously by more than a handful of people and I remain to be convinced that it is so.

I don't mind admitting that I played guitar in punk-rock settings before I ever seriously wrote a note on a stave, and that this remains a central formative experience whose longterm effects (no doubt to the disdain of such as Sydney Grew, but I seem to have managed somehow by paying little attention to such opinions for the past thirty-odd years) are I think quite tangible.

Why indeed should you mind admitting this?!

I think that contemporary composition really needs to resist the application of the word "classical" and all its connotations to what we are doing now, which is no more "classical" than for example the paintings of Gerhard Richter who as far as I'm aware isn't normally saddled with that epithet.

It is indeed a pain in wherever one has one's worst pains; I only ever use it with both reluctance and inverted commas around it. Even "art music" is far from the most enlightening and helpful substitute for it, to my mind.

Why should anything that creative musicians do now have any connection with "when a great composer sits down to write a symphony"? Of course there will always be musical conservatives whose work might fit such an anachronistic vision, and one of the most fascinating things about contemporary music in the early 21st century is how diverse it is, but when elements of that diversity start describing one another as "unmusical" that fascination can sour somewhat.

Whilst there are still plenty of composers who write symphonies, I doubt that any of them would stop to give attention to the notion or meaning of "when a great composer sits down to write a symphony" because their abiding concern would surely be to write their own.

Yes, the diversity that you mention is indeed fascinating and has been since well before the dawn of the present century, too; however, the prospect of one faction insulting another within the world of musical creation is indeed as unwelcome as the very notion of factionalisation itself within that world - each to their own, every time, surely?

I'm not even convinced that it's necessarily all about "conservatives" either; Brian Ferneyhough doesn't "sit down to write symphonies" but then nor does Anthony Payne (well, not his own, anyway). You don't write them either, but then neither do I. Henze wrote ten but Lachenmann and Hespos have each written none. David Matthews does; Colin Matthews doesn't. Peter Maxwell Davies wrote none until he was in his mid-40s and he's now working on his 10th. Elgar wrote none until he was 50 and then, having composed two large ones in relatively rapid succession, he abandoned the medium for more than two decades. And so on and so on, proving beyond question that this strange notion of "when a great composer sits down to write a symphony" carries little if any useful meaning or value.

[Richard Barrett]

Regarding the programme supposedly under discussion: I thought (as expected) Grisey's Périodes was the most interesting thing, the Bryars is a nice idea but I could imagine a much more interesting realisation of it (which sounded like how I remember the LP recording, about which I had the same opinion, but since I don't have it any more I couldn't check - anyone else?).