Prom 22: A London Symphony – 31.07.18

[edashtav]

Well Ed this is the Proms, this is England. The orchestras and conductors deliver what you chose to call cowpat music very well and long may they do so. (They also do very good R Strauss and Mahler). I don’t know the answer to this but how much Vaughan Williams, Holst and similar is played in Vienna?

There’s a lot in your comment with which I agree, cloughie: re the expertise of orchestras, and conductors, for instance. I think we all need to remember that it’s the British not English Broadcasting Company. However, The Proms are famous worldwide and attract a goodly number of tourists to the RAH and “the world’s greatest classical music festival” [the BBC’s words]. I just look for a more sensible cross-section of the world's greatest music and an acceptance some British music is not top-drawer. I have sat at the Proms with neighbours who have been fiddling with their smart phones during the performances. Some of these seekers after distraction were undoubtedly foreign. I do not criticise them as I fear they were driven to distraction by unfamiliar music which did not engage them.

Whilst I may criticise the English Pastoral school, I’m not immune to its beauties: I attended AM’ s RVW #4,#5 and # 6 Prom, and have booked tickets for the BBC SO/Brabbins Barbican Concert centred on Bax’s November Woods and a repeat of RVW’s #4, later this year. But... I need a counter balance of Dallapiccola and Schönberg.

[edashtav]

I haven't heard of ed's "Elizabeth Lutyens", but Elisabeth Lutyens and Ralph Vaughan Williams were on at least friendly terms, and RVW's Music was not included in Lutyens' coining (which referred to the plethora of English composers who lazily followed in his wake). It might even be that Lutyens came up with her phrase as a rejoinder after RVW had teased her enthusiasm for Bartok and Berg by describing such composers as the "Wrong-Note School". And it was, in fact, Philip Heseltine who in specific reference to RVW's Pastoral described it as "like a cow looking over a gate" (or "staring" or "gazing" - different sources give different verbs). A silly (to nick Bryn's word; my own would be far less considered) description based on superficial and slovenly half-listening.

I must buy your Dictionary of Composers, Ferney, as I seem to have a soiled copy of an Encyclopaedia of Decomposers!

[edashtav]

One of Twelve-Tone Lizzie's sillier remarks, especially when taken up to refer to a work such as RVW's Pastoral. In the current context it is even sillier. London, even in the first half of the 20th Century, was not noted for its proliferation of cowpats.

London, evening the first half of the the 20th century was renowned for its Barnet Meat Market to which live cattle were driven by Drovers. Sometimes, those cattle excreted en route, Bryn.

And... as for London-based composers, one of the Cowpat School wrote an Opera Hugh the Drover!

[LMcD]

London, evening.....where next - Vienna, midnight ....Buenos Aires, dawn ...Uttoxeter, lunchtime....ending up, perhaps, in Budleigh Salterton for supper accompanied by a trio of elderly spinsters performing the Best Bits of Gurrelieder?
People who make silly- or provocative, if you prefer - comments risk attracting even sillier responses.
I really must reread Neville Cardus's famous essay on Kuhfladenmusik.

[cloughie]

There’s a lot in your comment with which I agree, cloughie: re the expertise of orchestras, and conductors, for instance. I think we all need to remember that it’s the British not English Broadcasting Company. However, The Proms are famous worldwide and attract a goodly number of tourists to the RAH and “the world’s greatest classical music festival” [the BBC’s words]. I just look for a more sensible cross-section of the world's greatest music and an acceptance some British music is not top-drawer. I have sat at the Proms with neighbours who have been fiddling with their smart phones during the performances. Some of these seekers after distraction were undoubtedly foreign. I do not criticise them as I fear they were driven to distraction by unfamiliar music which did not engage them.

Whilst I may criticise the English Pastoral school, I’m not immune to its beauties: I attended AM’ s RVW #4,#5 and # 6 Prom, and have booked tickets for the BBC SO/Brabbins Barbican Concert centred on Bax’s November Woods and a repeat of RVW’s #4, later this year. But... I need a counter balance of Dallapiccola and Schönberg.

I am well aware that it is the BBC not the EBC and living in a Celtic enclave as I do would wish to include other British composers, Ethel Smyth nicely representing the Cornish in the Proms. However you may have noticed that the RAH is in London, and London is in England which is why I referred to England rather than Britain in my post! I also like the international balance of the Proms but I think it should always showcase British composers, and maybe bias number of works positively, because if we can’t be proud of them, they will not be trumpeted away from these shores.

[edashtav]

Even when I quote others, my iPad’s spell-checker works autocratically, LMcD, that and many other infelicities slipped past my dim eyes. At least my computer has a sense of humour!

[Pabmusic]

What rubbish!

Someone who should have known better likened this to a cow looking over a gate. 95 years ago. Then a duodecaphonist (sp?) in the 1950s mentioned cowpats. And then, 60 years later a boarder suggests such music is keeping the Second Viennese School out of the Proms...

Anyone notice a problem here? Hyperbole perhaps?

[Nevilevelis]

I am well aware that it is the BBC not the EBC and living in a Celtic enclave as I do would wish to include other British composers, Ethel Smyth nicely representing the Cornish in the Proms. However you may have noticed that the RAH is in London, and London is in England which is why I referred to England rather than Britain in my post! I also like the international balance of the Proms but I think it should always showcase British composers, and maybe bias number of works positively, because if we can’t be proud of them, they will not be trumpeted away from these shores.

Indeed. I was sitting amongst Austrians and Germans and they were clearly enthralled and enthused amongst themselves about 'A London Symphony' and the BBC Proms; a couple of them having just been in Bayreuth. It seemed to me that they had come specifically to hear RVW's Symphony No. 2.

[edashtav]

What rubbish!

Someone who should have known better likened this to a cow looking over a gate. 95 years ago. Then a duodecaphonist (sp?) in the 1950s mentioned cowpats. And then, 60 years later a boarder suggests such music is keeping the Second Viennese School out of the Proms...

Anyone notice a problem here? Hyperbole perhaps?

I have not suggested a causal link between the presence of cowpat music and the near absence of the Second Viennese School, Pabmusic. I do believe that the best of British music should be show-cased as Cloughie has suggested. I’m suggesting that, whilst William Glock May have pushed the Proms’ Pendulum excessively towards the dodecacophonic school, we are in danger of seeing it swing back too far past the mid-point to the pre-Glock extreme.

[edashtav]

Indeed. I was sitting amongst Austrians and Germans and they were clearly enthralled and enthused amongst themselves about 'A London Symphony' and the BBC Proms; a couple of them having just been in Bayreuth. It seemed to me that they had come specifically to hear RVW's Symphony No. 2.

I’m pleased to hear your report, Nevilevelis. Whatever its prolixity and lack of structure in its slow movement, RVW’s London Symphony is accessible. My comments were engendered by the excessive coughing during the performance of the more taxing Pastoral Symphony.

[Cockney Sparrow]

The RAH is an oversized barn. Something of a fraud to all those buying seats in duff locations acoustically - they observe an event at some distance and often with a time lag - as opposed to a live musical event in a proper concert hall. So the concerts are pushed hard through all BBC outlets and, I don't doubt, to many a tourist passing through London.

I too have sat next to Proms attenders browsing their mobiles with only sporadic interest in the music being played. I put that down to the fact that they don't really want to engage with the concert in the same manners as (observably) 95% of the audience surrounding them. Tourists, unwilling partners etc. However - it has never occured to me that, being unable to set aside 70-75 minutes (this current season unlikely to be more) to give some respect to the music and the occasion, that it is because there is British music being played and that its inferior.

RVW and other British composers maintain their place in the repertoire and performances in the UK, which rather puts the re-emergence of the old slurs into their place. Let the writer enjoy the music he chooses and British music followers enjoy theirs.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Given that RVW was never intended to be referenced in the term "Cowpat School of Composers", could somebody name any composer who was so intended who is featured in this year's Proms? And a "Dodecaphonic School" is equally slovenly - as are the usual "excessive" charges levelled against Glock (who seems to have become related to the Prime Minister in ed's latest).

That Schoenberg's Music should feature as frequently as Brahms' or Haydn's is of course a given. That it doesn't is not the fault of a couple of RVW's fine symphonies - any more than it is Tchaikovsky's "fault" that Act One of the Nutcracker is taking up time that could be devoted to the Brahms First Serenade. If we want to apportion "blame", then it lies with the Beeb creating barriers to access to Classical Musics by appointing David Pickard to head the Proms - it's events like the Jacob Collier Prom that's taking up the time and space that could be better used.

[edashtav]

I want to return to Bryn and Ferney’s responses in posts #119 and #120 dismissing Lutyens’s cowpat comment.

I feel that you’ve forgotten the trenchant reactions of many, including Elisabeth, to the policy statement drawn up by RVW for the Arts Council in 1946. RVW was in combative mood when he asked the question “Nationalism or Internationalism?”
He caused offence when he wrote ,’the snobs and prigs who think that foreign culture is the only thing worth having,’ [...] ‘their aim’, he said, was to,’establish a little Europe in England’.

Strong stuff, eh?

It had some good, short-term outcomes, e.g. Covent Garden started to commission more works in English...leading,
quickly, to Britten’s Peter Grimes.

His statement caused more problems to the Ballet World which featured artistes performing under European pseudonyms. Arnold Haskell over at Sadler’s Wells issued, “The National Ballet: a History and Manifesto”. “Jingoism of any kind is abhorrent... the public would not long stand for an unvaried diet of balletic roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.”

It is from Haskell that I have borrowed my term “Yorkshire pudding” music for some of Parry’s works and similar pieces of early RVW, including “Towards the Unknown Region”.

[jayne lee wilson]

Very stimulating thread....
(and another nod to Pabmusic for some remarkably new & revealing comments re. VW - thanks)...

Off-piste a little but whenever the balance of rep or comparative musical neglect comes up, I can't help thinking of those 20th Century composers who really do seem to fall between all the stools - Roussel, Honegger, Martinu, Gerhard, Skalkottas, Petrassi, Ghedini... so much fascinating, attractive, compelling music but if played at all, usually the same pieces (Roussel 3 & Bacchus, Pacific 231 etc., Honegger 2 as a filler, you might get a Liturgique if you're lucky).

Yes, it's a subjective, even "selfish" view, as the mid-20th-Century is my adopted "musical homeland" to some degree (it's where I always seem to return to), but I feel so many more people could enjoy this wide-ranging repertoire if only they knew it, and it really could open doors...

[Bryn]

Very stimulating thread....
(and another nod to Pabmusic for some remarkably new & revealing comments re. VW - thanks)...

Off-piste a little but whenever the balance of rep or comparative musical neglect comes up, I can't help thinking of those 20th Century composers who really do seem to fall between all the stools - Roussel, Honegger, Martinu, Gerhard, Skalkottas, Petrassi, Ghedini... so much fascinating, attractive, compelling music but if played at all, usually the same pieces (Roussel 3 & Bacchus, Pacific 231 etc., Honegger 2 as a filler, you might get a Liturgique if you're lucky).

Yes, it's a subjective, even "selfish" view, as the mid-20th-Century is my adopted "musical homeland" to some degree (it's where I always seem to return to), but I feel so many more people could enjoy this wide-ranging repertoire if only they knew it, and it really could open doors...

On the subject of "between all the stools", if tending more towards the serial, mahy I put in a word for Matyas Seiber?