The Not-the-Proms Digression

[ahinton]

Jane Hair in Heckmondwike

But, unlike that Beau Thai, it still appears to be surviving - not Hair today, gorn tomorrow, as in...

[french frank]

We've come a long way from David Matthews' 8th symphony I mean the thread topic (still, some digressions are more diverting than others, I guess)...

Um, but that wasn't the thread topic anyway. Not this thread.

This is the General Discussion about the Proms

[Bryn]

In a village not far from where I once lived, there was a restaurant called Beau Thai; unsurprisingly, it didn't last very long.

And Eddie Prevost's "Matchless Recordings" is based at his home in Matching Tye, Essex.

[vinteuil]

OT diversion RE: Dictionaries

... a selection of words that have been taken out of the Oxford Junior Dictionary

... a reminder of that saddest of characters, Cinoc in Perec's la Vie Mode d' Emploi -

https://classicalbookworm.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/cinoc-the-word-killer/

[ahinton]

Um, but that wasn't the thread topic anyway. Not this thread.

This is the General Discussion about the Proms

That's exactly what I meant and why I wrote "I mean the thread topic" (not having the facility here to do a strikethrough of "David Matthews' 8th Symphony" which I would otherwise have done); I only wrote that at all having written the same in the thread that IS on David Matthews' 8th Symphony because that one had likewise strayed far from its topic. Sorry if I made that insufficiently clear!

[Ferretfancy]

Such as (he abusively suggested)?


And how many "second performances" did (to be specific) Bach's BWV 48 or Haydn's Symphony #27 receive in the seventy years after their first performances, Ferretf?

Still, very good to hear that you've followed the performance history of every new work you've heard in the last seventy years. I'm greatly and humbly impressed.

Surely one reason for the comparative neglect of Haydn 27 is simply that he provided 104 to choose from, and much other wonderful music as well. Nowadays composers tend to have a rather lower productivity, perhaps because they feel the need to be significant instead of aiming to please. Of course there are exceptions, John Adams springs to mind.

No doubt there are others, but one recent example of a composer whose music has really entered the repertory is Lutoslawki. His music shares with Haydn and Mozart a sense of intellectual challenge with a measure of approachability. It hasn't taken seventy years either.

I have a lot of sympathy for musicians who naturally wish to break new ground, but if their work needs to last it will have to attract more than a coterie audience

Some argue that there's no real need for concert halls to survive. All music will be ephemeral and be available by streaming online. Let's just chuck it way when we are bored with it and commission some more. Luckily I won't be here to witness the change.

[Richard Barrett]

Surely one reason for the comparative neglect of Haydn 27 is simply that he provided 104 to choose from

Although at the time when no.27 was premiered I believe the number was more like, er, 27. (edit: actually fewer - HC Robbins Landon tells us that is was actually one of his earliest: its number was assigned at the time of its first publication, in 1907, almost 150 years after it was written!) Plus, as you are no doubt aware, Haydn's orchestral music was written and performed for an extremely "coterie audience" for most of his life. You'll also be aware that the kind of arguments you're making were exactly those used to extol Telemann and Graupner over the complex and obscure JS Bach in the early 18th century.

How about some evidence for your assertion that new pieces don't get second performances? And how many performances does a piece of music need before it's deemed to have "entered the repertoire"? or does it depend on where the performances are, and by whom?

Nowadays composers tend to have a rather lower productivity, perhaps because they feel the need to be significant instead of aiming to please.

And how about your evidence for this? Speaking for myself once more, my worklist contains 120 or so items. Is that evidence of a felt need to be significant, of or an aim to please? or is this perhaps more baseless flailing on your part?

I don't mean to be rude, but really, you seem to be talking out of an orifice not designed for that purpose.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Surely one reason for the comparative neglect of Haydn 27 is simply that he provided 104 to choose from, and much other wonderful music as well.

Not when he wrote #27. And don't call me Surely.

No doubt there are others, but one recent example of a composer whose music has really entered the repertory is Lutoslawki. His music shares with Haydn and Mozart a sense of intellectual challenge with a measure of approachability. It hasn't taken seventy years either.

"Recent"??? He's been dead (alas) twenty-one years!

I have a lot of sympathy for musicians who naturally wish to break new ground, but if their work needs to last it will have to attract more than a coterie audience.

"Last"? If there are performers to perform it? Does Alkan have only a "coterie" audience? Compared with audiences for stadium rock groups, doesn't Bruckner have a "coterie" audience? An audience is an audience.

Some argue that there's no real need for concert halls to survive. All music will be ephemeral and be available by streaming online. Let's just chuck it way when we are bored with it and commission some more. Luckily I won't be here to witness the change.

I've always found it terribly sad when people have used this sort of tagline - life is incredibly precious and our time here is infinitisimally short. I for one hope that you around for a lot longer, Ferretf, revelling in whatever Music you most enjoy. I doubt that streaming will mean the end of public performance, mainly because so many of the forward-looking Musicians whose work I follow are working so optimistically to ensure its continuation. They seem to be creating a much more optimistic and enthusiastic view of the future for me (and my fellow coterienistas) than alternative Musicians have provided for you - which might perhaps give you pause in your fondness for dismissing their work.

[MrGongGong]

And Eddie Prevost's "Matchless Recordings" is based at his home in Matching Tye, Essex.

The composer Jane Wells used to live in Wells Next-the-sea

[ahinton]

If this is a Not the Proms Digression thread, does that mean that it's allowed to Digress from Not the Proms and discuss the Proms here?

OK, I'll get me coat (and me forum P45, probably)...

[Ferretfancy]

Not when he wrote #27. And don't call me Surely.


"Recent"??? He's been dead (alas) twenty-one years!


"Last"? If there are performers to perform it? Does Alkan have only a "coterie" audience? Compared with audiences for stadium rock groups, doesn't Bruckner have a "coterie" audience? An audience is an audience.


I've always found it terribly sad when people have used this sort of tagline - life is incredibly precious and our time here is infinitisimally short. I for one hope that you around for a lot longer, Ferretf, revelling in whatever Music you most enjoy. I doubt that streaming will mean the end of public performance, mainly because so many of the forward-looking Musicians whose work I follow are working so optimistically to ensure its continuation. They seem to be creating a much more optimistic and enthusiastic view of the future for me (and my fellow coterienistas) than alternative Musicians have provided for you - which might perhaps give you pause in your fondness for dismissing their work.

Richard Barrett in message 244 wishes to label me as a vocalising latter day Petomaine, well fine. I have no fondness for dismissing anybody's work, but I feel that audiences for it might be larger if there was some degree of approachability in what they produce. You no doubt could say that we are no longer baffled by Schoenberg, but after many years of advocacy by experts, some people still are, and the man himself said that there's plenty of music yet to be written in E major.

Music for me is a vital part of my experience, but as a non musician I cannot be immersed in it at such depth as many artists can. I accept that, but in my listening time I'm afraid I'm more likely to choose music which does not require specialist knowledge to appreciate, even after repeated attempts . Sad isn't it ? Nevertheless the responsibility to reach out to me lies with the composer and performer, who of course have the right to expect me to travel with them as far as effort and time allow.

[MrGongGong]

I'm afraid I'm more likely to choose music which does not require specialist knowledge to appreciate, even after repeated attempts ..

So I guess you don't like Mozart then?

I struggle to think of a music that needs "specialist knowledge" to appreciate?

Not that there's anything wrong with "specialist knowledge".

[Richard Barrett]

Well, this is supposed to be about the Proms, and this whole exchange about the supposed failings of certain musics (which have nowhere actually been defined) seems to have issued forth from Barbirollians' response to my remark that the programme consisted of "slim pickings as usual". I wasn't intending this to refer specifically to the musical area I'm involved in. What I had in mind was something more like the situation made eloquently clear by Demetrius' statistics: how much of the programme yet again is taken up by a "core repertoire" which is even smaller than I'd suspected. That this evinces a long-term failure of the imagination in programming this concert series should surely be uncontroversial.

And yet we're treated (earlier than usual this year, as I said) to the usual unprovoked, ill-informed and ill-tempered diatribes against contemporary composition. It strikes me that if (see the aforementioned post by Demetrius) things like The Planets, Le Sacre, Daphnis et Chloé and the Symphonie fantastique took it in turns, instead of all of them being performed almost every year (and I love all of them, be it said), there would be a lot more room for some of the other things that I and plenty of others would prefer, without in any way threatening the centrality of the sacred core repertoire. To me that doesn't seem like asking very much. Some of that space could even be given over to second performances of recent works!

[subcontrabass]

and the man himself said that there's plenty of music yet to be written in E major.

The quote is usually given as "C major".

[Richard Barrett]

music which does not require specialist knowledge to appreciate

An example of which would be...?

And I see you make no attempt to address my request for you to back up your assertions with something, anything, that might make them look like other than ignorant bluster.

And in fact an enormous amount of pop music is in E major, for obvious reasons.