Prom 46 (16.8.12): Vaughan Williams – Symphonies Nos. 4, 5 & 6

[heliocentric]

Personally I am not so interested in whether a composer is conventional or radical in his or her musical language

I'm not particularly interested in that in and of itself (nor for that matter in whether a composer is British or not!) and I don't think I implied that I was; I was really just suggesting that the "sheer variety" alluded to by Suffolkcoastal might look less like that when placed in a wider context. Having said that, one of the things I do look for in music is the possibility of expanding one's idea of what music can be and can do, which suggests a more radical approach although it doesn't demand it - music can relate to a tradition in many ways, from thoughtlessly regurgitating it to illuminating it from a completely new direction.

But why is it so important for a composer, rather than a piece of music, for example, to have "a recognisably individual style"?

[aeolium]

thoughtlessly regurgitating it

I don't think any of the composers mentioned here was guilty of that.

why is it so important for a composer, rather than a piece of music, for example, to have "a recognisably individual style"?

Perhaps it isn't for many people, but it is for me. It is an essential quality of the music that it is an expression of the character, the mind, the personality of its composer, and the whole oeuvre of the composer presents a fuller picture of that personality than just one work.

[french frank]

Having said that, one of the things I do look for in music is the possibility of expanding one's idea of what music can be and can do

That's interesting in suggesting that a composer looks for - or wants - something different from another composer's piece of music compared with someone who has no thoughts of composing. I listen to a piece of music for what it is (and a performance, sometimes, for what it might be but isn't).

But why is it so important for a composer, rather than a piece of music, for example, to have "a recognisably individual style"?

It's a good philosophical question ... I'm sure there's an answer - though 'It has tended to be so in many fields of the arts' may not be it.

[Lateralthinking1]

2 is my favourite but I'm still learning. I also like 8 among others. The latter may or may not be a symphony. As for a recognisably individual style, it was argued on BBC4 that 6 was the first not to be signed off by Holst and that it shows. I think I would argue that individuality is less important when a composer can be placed firmly in an individual movement. The move towards pastoralism was a response by many to the German accusation that British classical music had no roots but it was RVW who led the way.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As for a recognisably individual style, it was argued on BBC4 that 6 was the first not to be signed off by Holst and that it shows.

?

Holst died in 1934, the year in which RVW started writing the Fourth Symphony.

[Lateralthinking1]

?

Holst died in 1934, the year in which RVW started writing the Fourth Symphony.

My mistake then - it was 4 - and yes I recall now, three died in 1934.

The main point still applies - that he looked up to Holst for quite some time to the extent of needing his endorsement. That had implications on the music - one third of the symphonies if not five ninths!

[Ferretfancy]

No, you're not alone. I love 8. The one I dislike is the Sea Symphony.

Roehre

The Sea Symphony looks back to Victorian Oratorio in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Just as a footnote, when the first LP recording appeared with Boult conducting the LPO back in about 1952, Gilbert Briggs of Wharfedale Wireless Works decided to carry out a small experiment, He teamed up with Quad, and they placed a battery of Wharfedale loudspeakers on the platform of the Royal Festival Hall driven by Quad amplifiers, using the Decca recording and some chamber works with some live musicians on stage for comparison. It was claimed that when that famous opening began, audience members could not tell that it was a recording!

We have all become rather more sophisticated listeners since then !

[Roehre]

The Sea Symphony looks back to Victorian Oratorio in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable.

That makes two of us then, FF. It's that annotation (I don't like Elgar's Apostles, Kingdom, Gerontius, or for that matter Mendelssohn's Eliah, either) which this music causes to let me feel not comfortable.

[Flosshilde]

That makes two of us then, FF. It's that annotation (I don't like Elgar's Apostles, Kingdom, Gerontius, or for that matter Mendelssohn's Eliah, either) which this music causes to let me feel not comfortable.

"annotation"?


The First might look back to the 19th century oratorios (although I would dispute that), but it certainly doesn't look back to their dreadful religiosity in its use of Walt Witman's life affirming poetry. It was the only VW I really listened to (plus The Lark Ascending) until I went to the BBCSSO performances last season.

[heliocentric]

That's interesting in suggesting that a composer looks for - or wants - something different from another composer's piece of music compared with someone who has no thoughts of composing. I listen to a piece of music for what it is

I think I would say that the kind of listening I'm talking about is in some way an act of composition whether or not the listener is actually involved in making music themselves.

Aeolium: I wasn't accusing any of the composers you mentioned as "thoughtlessly regurgitating" a tradition, I was using that as one extreme of how an artist can relate to tradition. I'm sure we can all think of examples! But - I wonder about judging music according to whether it's "an expression of the character, the mind, the personality of its composer". Isn't that somewhat limiting? The relation between an artist and his/her work doesn't need to be as simple as that; it can involve complex and/or hidden factors that a listener might have no access to. Certainly a "body of work" can have a collective identity and significance; but what about when you don't know who the composer is? or if there are several composers (as in various forms of musical improvisation)? or if a group of more or less anonymous composers is consciously working in the same style (as in "ars subtilior" of the 14th century)?

[heliocentric]

"annotation"?

"Connotation" I think.

[Serial_Apologist]

The First might look back to the 19th century oratorios (although I would dispute that), but it certainly doesn't look back to their dreadful religiosity in its use of Walt Witman's life affirming poetry. It was the only VW I really listened to (plus The Lark Ascending) until I went to the BBCSSO performances last season.

I largely concur with the following quote:

"Vaughan Williams claimed late in life that the Sea Symphony owed a good deal to the language of Holst's The Mystic Trumpeter. There are moments, such as the modal tune that occurs at the mention of Adam and Eve in the Finale, that bring Holst to mind, but the emotional impact of this last great apprentice piece, willed into existence over six years, is far removed from the world that Holst had entered at this time in the Rig Veda Hymns and Savitri, his first fully characteristic works. In setting large extracts from Whitman's Passage to India in the symphony's Finale, a text larger than those used for the first three movements combined, Vaughan Williams set himself an almost impossible structural task. The choice of words was obviously significant for the composer as they demand a grandeur that the most sure-footed of composers would have found difficult to sustain. The explanation for this is revealed at the movement's climax with the words:

Finally shall come a poet worthy of that name,
The true son of god shall come singing his songs.

This is perhaps the most passionate music Vaughan Williams ever wrote and, in its overwhelming statement of humanist values, it is a culmination of his pre-Tallis Fantasia work. To any one with a knowledge of Vaughan Williams' preoccupations over the previous twenty years the message could not be clearer".

(Holst and Vaughan Williams: Radical Pastoral, Paul Herrington, in Music and the Politics of Culture, Ed. Christopher Norris, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1989, PP 115-116)

[Roehre]

"Connotation" I think.

Oops, yes, of course.

[FoxyTheCat]

I disliked the Sea Symphony for a long while, and even now I'm not sure if I can stick it all the way through.

However, the opening is absolutely splendid, which has caused me to revisit this from time to time. Possibly worth all of us persevering with this one. Also number 9 I find tough, and I find 3 bearable rather than enjoyable, but maybe I need to give it more time.

Well like it or not we are very likely to be getting it in a future Prom if Andrew Manze realises his mission.

The Sea Symphony is a very popular work with Choral Societies here and the USA.

I used not to like it but then it clicked, it is perhaps too long (but Mahler 8 is a comparable piece). I think Haitink's version the best
but to be fully appreciated it needs to be heard in the concert hall. The piece is full of sublime moments , for example listen to "O thou transcendent"
in the final movement it is IMHO overpowering.

No 8 is a little gem and has a very exciting ending which in each live performance I have attended, had the audience enthralled and cheering at the end.

To not enjoy No. 3 is perhaps to misunderstand it's origins, maybe a pity he applied the "Pastoral" epithet for it is now recognized as a deep meditation on WW1
a quasi requiem for those who fell on the Somme.

No.9 is difficult and needs repeated hearing, but again IMHO it is a masterpiece and definitely not a valedictory or a reworking of past themes but an exploration in
to unknown regions .....and what an ending!

Just some thoughts. RVW symphonies are all very different to one another and it's understandable that some can't love them all.

FtC

[Serial_Apologist]

On this question of the importance of a composer's individual voice, I'm not sure which came first: the stress placed on individuality, or our (or at least my) love of trying to identify the composer of a previously unheard work through the music. It seems we frame the issue in the context of "Western individualism" - the requirement for a composer to "be" him or herself, rather than an anonymous "eclectic". Do we thereby do "individuality" a disservice? What if all music of a given period were to sound the same - or were supposed to sound the same? We would be horrified.

Surely, the issue of "personality" - whether we know of/about the composer in question, or wish to, is largely an involuntary attraction? We listen to music by Richard Strauss, Max Reger and Schoenberg, and hear the extent to which their respective assumptions of aspects of post-Wagnerian harmony foreshadowed the great crisis in tonality followed through by Schoenberg and his pupils, and in the case of Strauss, (and for that matter Schmidt, Pfitzner, Zemlinsky, and a host of "lesser" Late Romantics), was never completely expunged from their subsequent musics. I cite this group of late representatives of the Austro-German Romantic tradition only partly out of convenience for the fact that they highlight the issue of personality rather obviously as I see it, because each one represented an attitude to a very strong, culturally heavily enmbaggaged tradition, from which composers outwith that tradition (Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Prokofiev, Stravinsky) had to disentangle themselves from its perceived orthodoxies by looking to indigenous sources in order to inspire their own personal artistic development.

In a roundabout way, even before considerations of the "value" of independence of utterance, we pick up, as it were, on a composer's having his or her own voice, through our own knowledge of, or wish to know about, that composer's way of composing, and maybe, dependent upon the listener, how it relates to that composer's place within his or her musical tradition(s), and the times in and through which they lived, I would think.