If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
"Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes."
I don't know anyone who said that about RVW 5.
However, Peter Warlock did write that RVW's style was "like a cow looking over a gate" (but Warlock was no more by the time of the 5th symphony). Constant Lambert is sometimes credited with the "cow+gate" quote, but it was Warlock. Here's something Lambert said about RVW's style (referring to A Pastoral Symphony): " a particular type of grey, reflective, English-landscape mood [that] outweighed the exigencies of symphonic form".
However, Peter Warlock did write that RVW's style was "like a cow looking over a gate" (but Warlock was no more by the time of the 5th symphony). Constant Lambert is sometimes credited with the "cow+gate" quote, but it was Warlock. Here's something Lambert said about RVW's style (referring to A Pastoral Symphony): " a particular type of grey, reflective, English-landscape mood [that] outweighed the exigencies of symphonic form".
Actually, it was none of those - it was Philip Heseltine.
Actually, it was none of those - it was Philip Heseltine.
You can see where Brian Sewell got it from....
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
"Is there such a thing as feminine music? I don't think so. You don't read Shakespeare as a woman or a man, you read him as a human being. I suppose 'masculine' is supposed to mean strong and decisive and 'feminine' weak and charming. But I don't find that necessarily holds true of either sex".
Aspects of this and related subjects have recently been discussed elsewhere in this forum, as you know. I would have said this myself had someone - Susan McClary? - not said it first (wrote he, hedging his bets!)...
Aspects of this and related subjects have recently been discussed elsewhere in this forum, as you know. I would have said this myself had someone - Susan McClary? - not said it first (wrote he, hedging his bets!)...
I think S_A's quotation is older: possibly Elisabeth Lutyens in a more polite mood than when she said "I'll let you call me a 'woman composer' when you start calling Britten a 'Homosexual' one!"
But I suspect that there's a cunning twist in S_A's puzzle, and it's possibly a bloke: you didn't say it yourself on the relevant Thread, did you? That would be lovely!
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
Comment