The 2016 Proms Season: what are your thoughts?

[Demetrius]

I think the fact that you are using terms like "tonal" and "atonal" suggests the fundamental difference in my expectations and enthusiasms, Demetrius - and I think that the BBC share your outdated (I mean this literally, without wishing to be aggressive or offensive) bifurcation. I remember a few years ago, when Roger Redgate asked Roger Wright on an open Forum about that year's Proms where all the "cutting edge" Music was, Wright responded with "I don't understand - we've got Music by Harrison Birtwistle!" That's the problem - the Proms bods don't know any Music beyond New Music Manchester, and seek - thinking that they're being "ever-so daring" by commissioning a few works that sound like watered-down Birtwistle. Or half-digested John Adams.

There are dozens of composers throughout Europe and the Americas who are producing work that can neither adequately be described as "Tonal" nor "Atonal". Is Jurg Frey, Victor Ulmann or any of the Wandelweiser collective "Atonal"? Or in what way "Tonal"? Aaron Cassidy? Salvatore Sciarrino? Alexander Schubert? Bernard Lang? How would you describe the pitch language of Finnissy's Above Earth's Shadow, which I've posted on the "Hear & Now" Thread? In what way is that "atonal"? In what way "tonal"? Is this piece by Richard |Glover "Tonal"? Why/not?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KQygxhjWME

Things have moved on - the Proms haven't. Instead of the times when New Music excited heated arguments, we're now in a situation closer to that of the '40s and '50s, where the newest ideas were desperately ignored in favour of the safe, the predictable, the familiar.

Where is the danger? Where is the optimism - the sense that Music can inspire new, provocative ways of thinking; the belief that Music from the Western Classical traditions are as valid and vivid and alive as those of the most provocative visual and literary Artists? If we aren't given some indication - just some - that there are Musicians who are still re-thinking sound from the roots (a genuinely "radical" movement) up, then it can only confirm the wide-spread erroneous belief that "Classical Music" is museum stuff.

Fortunately for the future of the Art, the internet and a few industrious and precariously-financed record companies are doing the job that the BBC should be doing. But it does mean that developments in Music are kept from general awareness, and this is something that I think the Corporation should find a matter of some concern. Because if it's not there to inform interested viewers and listeners about what's going on in the Arts, what's the point of it?

Tonal and atonal are mostly a crutch I use as I am relatively new to "new" music, and as I am little more than a layman, I might well use them in the wrong context (Without terms and definitions though, discussion in any field becomes difficult, and I'm not sure which to use instead. Danger - or daring - is an interesting one, though. Originality might be another one.) Thing is that looking at the composers that are represented at the Prom, there is a fair crop of musicians I can't really place. Sadly, I have to wait till I get home from work to listen to the example you gave. It's just that looking through the season, I was pleased that there are quite a few new/modern/written in the last X years pieces to explore. Then I read the discussion here and wondered that comments from quite a few people, who frankly know more about music - especially in this field - than I ever will, felt that it was a disappointing effort by the planners.

"Atonal" and "tonal" are often bandied around without a clear idea of what they mean. As fg implies, if you do have a clear idea of what they mean you tend not to use them as defining characteristics of one music or another.

Quite possibly, and if you look deep enough into them, they might well end up being completely meaningless (A professor of mine liked to remind everyone that there is no entirely correct definition of poems beyond "some writing on a page with a lot of space around it" ... which is also not always true). But how to discuss something without terms?

[Richard Barrett]

if you look deep enough into them, they might well end up being completely meaningless (A professor of mine liked to remind everyone that there is no entirely correct definition of poems beyond "some writing on a page with a lot of space around it" ... which is also not always true). But how to discuss something without terms?

All I'm saying is that these particular terms aren't so useful, regardless of one's degree of knowledge.

[Alison]

Anyone heard anything by Malcolm Hayes?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Anyone heard anything by Malcolm Hayes?

Checking his worklist, I remember hearing his Byzantium when it was broadcast a couple of years ago. It did nothing to thrill nor outrage me. It was alright, I suppose; and can be heard on the composer's website:

http://www.malcolmhayes.co.uk/page2.htm

PS: listening again, it does seem terribly thin stuff, doesn't it? A ten minute Introduction followed by a five minute Coda: fifteen minutes' waiting for something to happen.

[Richard Barrett]

Where is the danger? Where is the optimism - the sense that Music can inspire new, provocative ways of thinking; the belief that Music from the Western Classical traditions are as valid and vivid and alive as those of the most provocative visual and literary Artists? If we aren't given some indication - just some - that there are Musicians who are still re-thinking sound from the roots (a genuinely "radical" movement) up

I suppose the thing is not to expect the Proms to do that (any more?). The appointment of David Pickard seems to indicate that they will remain as far behind the "cutting edge" as they've been in recent years. If one thinks of it as basically a festival of oldish (but not too old) music, there are plenty of interesting things going on. Shame they aren't happening in a concert hall where you can hear the music properly though.

[Barbirollians]

I suppose the thing is not to expect the Proms to do that (any more?). The appointment of David Pickard seems to indicate that they will remain as far behind the "cutting edge" as they've been in recent years. If one thinks of it as basically a festival of oldish (but not too old) music, there are plenty of interesting things going on. Shame they aren't happening in a concert hall where you can hear the music properly though.

There are lots of new commissions and Proms premieres this year .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There are lots of new commissions and Proms premieres this year .

Yeah, right. Lots of "Classical Music" programmes on BBC4, too.

[Richard Barrett]

There are lots of new commissions and Proms premieres this year.

Yes, the boxes have been ticked, and everything that's actually new in contemporary music ignored. For example (correct me if I'm wrong) not a single concert with any electronic music in it. In 2016!!!

[makropulos]

Yes, the boxes have been ticked, and everything that's actually new in contemporary music ignored. For example (correct me if I'm wrong) not a single concert with any electronic music in it. In 2016!!!

But even during the Glock/Boulez years, the Proms have never been much of a showcase for what is "actually new in contemporary music", so this shouldn't come as any surprise - it's the Proms, not Huddersfield or Donaueschingen. Historically, while the Proms have had some interesting premieres, that's not been its main purpose. The breadth of the Proms has always struck me - mostly - as a good thing, given that there are specialist festivals catering for those aspects of music that have never been strengths at the Proms (including anything music much before 1700, and a lot of contemporary music).

By the same token, the Proms are not focussed on specifically British music (pace the "give us more Havergal Brian symphonies" lobbyists). Again, I'd argue that's not what they are there to do.

[ahinton]

Whilst I cannot now locate the references concerned, I do find that describing such new works as are to be presented in this year's Proms as "middle of the road" is less than enlightening; were such music indeed "middle of the road" and the more challenging / radical of contemporary works on one side of that road, what music would supposedly occupy the other side of it? A point of pedantry, perhaps (albeit not intended as such) - and would it really upset anyone in any contemporary music camp were, for example, Plötzlichkeit and David Matthews' Eighth Symphony each to appear on Proms programmes - or even on the same Proms programme?...

[Serial_Apologist]

But even during the Glock/Boulez years, the Proms have never been much of a showcase for what is "actually new in contemporary music", so this shouldn't come as any surprise - it's the Proms, not Huddersfield or Donaueschingen. Historically, while the Proms have had some interesting premieres, that's not been its main purpose. The breadth of the Proms has always struck me - mostly - as a good thing, given that there are specialist festivals catering for those aspects of music that have never been strengths at the Proms (including anything music much before 1700, and a lot of contemporary music).

Agreed, but as one who, having become aware of what the Proms stood for, made a conscious choice to find a bedsit around the corner from the RAH in 1967 despite being on a waiter's wage, I would have to say that the modernist pre-WWI classics that were put on reflected what was still being digested by the modernists of the time, just showing what remained to be digested following a quarter of a century of Neo-Classical postponement over the development of a modern musical language and was being reflected in developments outwith the Proms*. I would have to say the present programming, including most if not all the new commissions, reflect a mindset that acts as if all that never happened. If a work such as "Gruppen" is performed now, it is treated almost as anomalous.

*I just remembered that "Kontakte" was put on at the Proms - IIRC first time in 1968.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But even during the Glock/Boulez years, the Proms have never been much of a showcase for what is "actually new in contemporary music", so this shouldn't come as any surprise - it's the Proms, not Huddersfield or Donaueschingen. Historically, while the Proms have had some interesting premieres, that's not been its main purpose.

But nobody is suggesting that the Proms' "main purpose" IS to become "much of a showcase" for the most recent ideas and developments in Music, makky. What is being suggested is that SOME of this repertoire SHOULD be regularly featured. At no point in the Glock years were the most recent ideas and developments completely boycotted year after year after year.

As I said earlier ... just two or three events in the season. If it helps, you could even stick 'em on late at night where they'll cause the least spillings of Ovaltine!

[ahinton]

But nobody is suggesting that the Proms' "main purpose" IS to become "much of a showcase" for the most recent ideas and developments in Music, makky. What is being suggested is that SOME of this repertoire SHOULD be regularly featured. At no point in the Glock years were the most recent ideas and developments completely boycotted year after year after year.

As I said earlier ... just two or three events in the season. If it helps, you could even stick 'em on late at night where they'll cause the least spillings of Ovaltine!

Quite (although the mere mention of Ovaltine prompts me to want to throw up, even if it would be Ferneyhoughvaltine!). The issue here is surely that the sheer diversity of music being composed today in Britain alone IS something that a festival as widely regarded and well known and established as the Proms ought to be accorded proportionate recognition and due reflection in its programming, as I implied when mentioning those two very near English contemporaries Ferneyhough and Matthews a few posts back.

As to complaints about not enough Brian symphonies, these are plain nonsense (the complaints, I mean); there are as many of them as there are numbered Beethoven piano sonatas and there would simply not be room for more than one of them in a season except, perhaps, in an important anniversary year (and there's a decade to go before the next of these, the 150th anniversary of his birth). Why? Because if those who clamour for this do so in the spirit of desiring just a little more British symphonic representation in the Proms, there are literally hundreds of examples of it from the time of Elgar 1 onwards that merit at least a single Prom performance,

That said, there are several Prom programmes this season that, to my mind, could be gotten rid of and replaced by others more deserving of incluson and I won't name any of them because it's almost certainly unnecessary to do so!

[teamsaint]

big difference, of course , between the mid 60's ( for example) and today, is that back then the Proms provided a vital channel for access to music at a time when these channels were so much more restricted , whereas today access to the music that we might like to hear at the Proms, is at least generally cheap and easy, online and elsewhere.
Not the same , of course, as hearing that music in a concert situation, with or without the bathroom effect of the RAH, and the huge exposure that a broadcast gives.

[ahinton]

big difference, of course , between the mid 60's ( for example) and today, is that back then the Proms provided a vital channel for access to music at a time when these channels were so much more restricted , whereas today access to the music that we might like to hear at the Proms, is at least generally cheap and easy, online and elsewhere.
Not the same , of course, as hearing that music in a concert situation, with or without the bathroom effect of the RAH, and the huge exposure that a broadcast gives.

Indeed. As to the venue that Beecham might better have called the Kensington Public Baths rather than the ditto Gas Works as he famously did, I cannot claim other than to have some sympathy with the statement made by a German conductor quoted by cellist Keith Harvey in a reminiscence of him some years ago, as follows:

"Another memorable occasion was a performance of the solo part of Don Quixote with the conductor Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt. During the rehearsal at the Albert Hall, Schmidt-Isserstedt was troubled by the acoustics: "It's not many years since I was flying over London as a member of the Luftwaffe," he said. "I had this building within my sights and I didn't fire. Now I wish I had.""

I've heard another version of this story from a source that I cannot now recall in which HS-I is credited as having had the building within his sights and did fire but missed, a misfire that he later came to regret; I'm not sure which is true...