Prom 22: A London Symphony – 31.07.18

[Lat-Literal]

Also, I feel quite strongly about this - I don't mind an argument that opposes mine - but I will lay into glaring loopholes. If you are going to describe English pastoralism as cow pat, then if you start with RVW as the prime example you should instinctively know that you are on a very sticky wicket. For all of the larks ascending, which is so delicately nuanced and almost jazz, yes, it isn't a good example and the Thomas Tallises which I love but is susceptible, you've got in those nine symphonies some amazingly complex things. There isn't a lot of stereotypical pastoralism in them. Plus it's all again different with a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis or a Rhosymedre. So then one has to say "if not RVW, then who?" and "gis' us the concrete examples". To have a go at a Butterworth or a Gurney or any of the WW1 people would be trite bordering on the sadistic. So - again - who? Ireland's "Downland" sounds in title like it would be but it is not that sort of piece. Julius Harrison perhaps - "Bredon" - but where are the numbers? They don't exist and it is almost certainly unsubstantiated prejudice.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not sure that anyone has made the point that Lutyens was a woman. As suggested above, she might have had issues with other women being in with RVW but she would have also known that being female and in with RVW was rarely enough for equal promotion. See Ruth Gipps etc. So she was probably tying her colours to The Glock and that sort of spiel, sensing that was the more likely road to glory. Obviously she was wrong. Mostly, women composers were regarded sadly as basics in a separate field. So savvy, yep - but that was not enough. It takes a nobody like me - and luckily there are plenty of us - to promote Gipps and increasingly Grace Williams in a more accepting age. Lutyens also has her 2018 backers. Good.

You really must get rid of your prejudice against Glock, Lats, and find out what he actually did for Music and the cultural life of this country, rather than feeding off the myths and lies attached to him. He's really a jolly good egg!

Lutyens was active years before Glock - and, indeed, was furious with him for not promoting her own Music as much as she felt was its due after the decades when it had been disparaged. She was, in fact, married to Edward Clark, who was a Music Producer for the BBC in the 1920s and 30s, introducing the Music of Stravinsky, Bartok, and the Second Viennese School (RVW's "Wrong Note School", in fact) to British listeners, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra would not exist if it were not for him. The Beeb treated him with its usual shoddy ingratitude, and he has become largely forgotten in this country. He's known abroad for helping establish the International Society for Contemporary Music, of which he was President after the Second World War.

[Lat-Literal]

You really must get rid of your prejudice against Glock, Lats, and find out what he actually did for Music and the cultural life of this country, rather than feeding off the myths and lies attached to him. He's really a jolly good egg!

Lutyens was active years before Glock - and, indeed, was furious with him for not promoting her own Music as much as she felt was its due after the decades when it had been disparaged. She was, in fact, married to Edward Clark, who was a Music Producer for the BBC in the 1920s and 30s, introducing the Music of Stravinsky, Bartok, and the Second Viennese School (RVW's "Wrong Note School", in fact) to British listeners, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra would not exist if it were not for him. The Beeb treated him with its usual shoddy ingratitude, and he has become largely forgotten in this country. He's known abroad for helping establish the International Society for Contemporary Music, of which he was President after the Second World War.

He cropped up in the Boulez last night but not for long. I think you are sort of proving the point in explaining her fury with him. Which women composers did he, erm, "champion"?

Among the greatest "English" pastoralists imho - Moeran (Irish), Delius (with American slaves in orange groves before in Paris brothels) - hardly stereotypical, personally or musically.

And that is a part of their appeal!

I also like the much maligned Bantock (no, he isn't Scottish etc but sort of was) and the underrated Blackwood McEwen who definitely was Scottish but are they pastoral as such?

Nope.

Hardly anyone was!

[edashtav]

You really must get rid of your prejudice against Glock, Lats, and find out what he actually did for Music and the cultural life of this country, rather than feeding off the myths and lies attached to him. He's really a jolly good egg!

Lutyens was active years before Glock - and, indeed, was furious with him for not promoting her own Music as much as she felt was its due after the decades when it had been disparaged. She was, in fact, married to Edward Clark, who was a Music Producer for the BBC in the 1920s and 30s, introducing the Music of Stravinsky, Bartok, and the Second Viennese School (RVW's "Wrong Note School", in fact) to British listeners, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra would not exist if it were not for him. The Beeb treated him with its usual shoddy ingratitude, and he has become largely forgotten in this country. He's known abroad for helping establish the International Society for Contemporary Music, of which he was President after the Second World War.

Well written,Ferney... I am, for the only time today, in total agreement!
(Now for the washing up, dominated here, on the banks of the dreamy, breamy river Great Ouse, by... bream.)

[Lat-Literal]

Well, I don't attack the Second Viennese School but can't quite see why it is an eternal battle. Much as with rap music when it reached 40, it feels like the boxing is just a little old hat.

Youth is a la carte - the best way to be for generations who haven't the capacity to achieve something novel. I'm looking for an astrologer who can see when the next music wave is.

[Lat-Literal]

…..Let's really get to grips with this issue : name just ten names who are stereotypical English "cow pat" pastoralism.

I promise you it isn't possible.

And if anyone dares to mention poor old W Denis Browne, I'm walking out now.

nb - Bax isn't (see the symphonies); Lambert isn't; Lloyd isn't; even Warlock isn't and that is before you get to BeefO favourites like Simpson and Rubbra who unequivocally were isn'ts. Cardew - no. Bush and Bush - no. Cooke - no. Coleridge-Taylor - no. Berkeley - no. Brittan and Tippett - no. Holbrooke maybe but too Water Goblin ethereal. And Grainger - not English.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

C’mon,LMcD, there is good evidence that RVW looked upon his Sea Symphony as an apprentice piece. You will know that for decades the composer did not list it amongst his numbered symphonies and it was pressure from his publisher (O.U.P.) to award it a number that caused RVW to accept it as #1.

I agree with you that the Tallis Fantasia is a masterpiece.

I don't think OUP or the composer singled out the Sea Symphony in this way. No VW Symphony was numbered until no. 8, followed soon after by no. 9. The numbering of 4-6 followed, but the titled works are still officially unnumbered in the scores.

Incidentally, A Sea Symphony is the one I would take to my desert island.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And by the way, Haydn composed 12 London Symphonies.

[Pabmusic]

…..Let's really get to grips with this issue : name just ten names who are stereotypical English "cow pat" pastoralism.

I promise you it isn't possible.

(And if anyone dares to mention poor old W Denis Browne, I'm walking out now)

(nb - Bax isn't (see the symphonies); Lambert isn't; Lloyd isn't; even Warlock isn't and that is before you get to BeefO favourites like Simpson and Rubbra who definitely were isn'ts)

Well said, Lat! All there ever was was a style (harmonic rather more than melodic) that owed as much to Debussy as anything - consider the chorale in the last mvt of La Mer.

You can find examples in most British composers of the time ('big tune' in Tintagel) but similar melodic/harmonic styles spasmodically employed do not amount to a 'school', any more than Elgar's penchant for falling sevenths makes him a disciple of Strauss.

[Lat-Literal]

I don't think OUP or the composer singled out the Sea Symphony in this way. No VW Symphony was numbered until no. 8, followed soon after by no. 9. The numbering of 4-6 followed, but the titled works are still officially unnumbered in the scores.

Incidentally, A Sea Symphony is the one I would take to my desert island.

Well, interesting stuff, and I think there is some argument that RVW4 is the first RVW symphony in its time so to speak but that is counter-balanced by all the urging re RVW2 to write a symphony as if RVW1 wasn't that, plus that notion that RVW2 is a tone poem which one can see/hear but was it partially because it took the concept of symphony into a new domain?

I would like to call on Pab's expertise here. The alternative aspect is a lack of confidence. RVW is a bit heroic to me in a solid sense - he is slightly centre left with a social conscience but very establishment. Probably the kind of figure today who would be viewed with a degree of scepticism. And, of course, we are all aware of Churchill's problems when young and how the early pleas to home hardly suggested a stalwart against Nazism. I just wonder how solid or fragile RVW was - perhaps especially in his beliefs in his ability to produce a symphony?

[Lat-Literal]

Well said, Lat! All there ever was was a style (harmonic rather more than melodic) that owed as much to Debussy as anything - consider the chorale in the last mvt of La Mer.

You can find examples in most British composers of the time ('big tune' in Tintagel) but similar melodic/harmonic styles spasmodically employed do not amount to a 'school', any more than Elgar's penchant for falling sevenths makes him a disciple of Strauss.

Without wanting to be overly ingratiating or self-promoting, I am still, Pab, a bit bewildered in being able to have a conversation of this kind with someone so knowledgeable. It is a testament to the forum and its members, self teaching and being open to new enthusiasms. I am reminded by Serial-Apologist's words which were to the effect that he had been looking for a forum of this kind throughout his life. We like what we like. All of us. The differences/similarities are what make it. I feel a thank you to French Frank at this point is appropriate.

Anyways....we move on...…!

(He's a class act, that S-A, but don't tell him that I said so - PS, I can talk deck shoes an' all)

[Pabmusic]

Well, interesting stuff, and I think there is some argument that RVW4 is the first RVW symphony in its time so to speak but that is counter-balanced by all the urging re RVW2 to write a symphony as if RVW1 wasn't that, plus that notion that RVW2 is a tone poem which one can see/hear but was it partially because it took the concept of symphony into a new domain?

I would like to call on Pab's expertise here. The alternative aspect is a lack of confidence. RVW is a bit heroic to me in a solid sense - he is slightly centre left with a social conscience but very establishment. Probably the kind of figure today who would be viewed with a degree of scepticism. And, of course, we are all aware of Churchill's problems when young and how the early pleas to home hardly suggested a stalwart against Nazism. I just wonder how solid or fragile RVW was - perhaps especially in his beliefs in his ability to produce a symphony?

There's absolutely no doubt that RVW saw the London as his first symphony. He committed the story of its genesis to paper at least twice - once in a letter to Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth in 1918, and again in his own Musical Autobiography (1934). In both his reply to George's "You ought to write a symphony" is along the lines of "a symphony was something I had never written and didn't intend to" (I'm paraphrasing). In 1934 he added a comment that his reply had not been quite true, because he had early on in fact written three movements of one and one of another - "all now thankfully lost".

Then George's letter after the first performance of the London is important. After talking about it and how "frightfully glad" he was that RVW had at last achieved something truly worthy of his talent, he counsels against altering it till after a second performance. Then he ends - "Meanwhile here's to Symph. no 2!" - and he clearly means "your next symphony". Butterworth had attended the first performance of the Sea Symphony, so knew it existed - indeed he mentions ot earlier in the letter I've mentioned.

EA is correct about the numbering. The issue was that RVW's new symphony in 1956 was in D minor, and Hubert Foss at OUP thought that would cause confusion with the earlier D major (5), so he insisted on a number. By then two things had happened: the Sea was often colloquially referred to as his first (not by the composer, though), and Decca had recorded all the symphonies to date with Boult and the LPO, starting with the Sea. That made seven. So RVW (grudgingly I think) allowed the new one to be numbered 8.

As to what the composer's problem was, I rather suspect a lack of confidence going right back to the Sea. The programme note for the first performance at Leeds says the word 'symphony' is used only to indicate how the composer had assembled the text.

I think the date is significant. The Leeds Festival was in October, so that composition (or at least finishing) must have been theoughout 1909. And what had happened on 4 December 1908 in Manchester? Elgar 1 - the symphony that had 100 performances in its first year. Such a success! I wouldn't be at all surprised if the essentially unsure RVW was at pains to stress the Sea wasn't a 'real' symphony like the Elgar.

[Lat-Literal]

There's absolutely no doubt that RVW saw the London as his first symphony. He committed the story of its genesis to paper at least twice - once in a letter to Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth in 1918, and again in his own Musical Autobiography (1934). In both his reply to George's "You ought to write a symphony" is along the lines of "a symphony was something I had never written and didn't intend to" (I'm paraphrasing). In 1934 he added a comment that his reply had not been quite true, because he had early on in fact written three movements of one and one of another - "all now thankfully lost".

Then George's letter after the first performance of the London is important. After talking about it and how "frightfully glad" he was that RVW had at last achieved something truly worthy of his talent, he counsels against altering it till after a second performance. Then he ends - "Meanwhile here's to Symph. no 2!" - and he clearly means "your next symphony". Butterworth had attended the first performance of the Sea Symphony, so knew it existed - indeed he mentions ot earlier in the letter I've mentioned.

EA is correct about the numbering. The issue was that RVW's new symphony in 1956 was in D minor, and Hubert Foss at OUP thought that would cause confusion with the earlier D major (5), so he insisted on a number. By then two things had happened: the Sea was often colloquially referred to as his first (not by the composer, though), and Decca had recorded all the symphonies to date with Boult and the LPO, starting with the Sea. That made seven. So RVW (grudgingly I think) allowed the new one to be numbered 8.

As to what the composer's problem was, I rather suspect a lack of confidence going right back to the Sea. The programme note for the first performance at Leeds says the word 'symphony' is used only to indicate how the composer had assembled the text.

I think the date is significant. The Leeds Festival was in October, so that composition (or at least finishing) must have been theoughout 1909. And what had happened on 4 December 1908 in Manchester? Elgar 1 - the symphony that had 100 performances in its first year. Such a success! I wouldn't be at all surprised if the essentially unsure RVW was at pains to stress the Sea wasn't a 'real' symphony like the Elgar.

Well, that is magnificent, thank you.

I am fascinated by this man, He hardly had life easy, He was a stretcher bearer at 41. He had a long term involvement with a disabled woman to whom he was dutiful although he fell in love with someone else. There is a question about the extent to which he was loved in Dorking even though he put in huge inputs. There is urban man versus rural man, There is Leith Hill where there is a troubling question going on with Darwin who was undertaking early experiments there and, as family, related. This is an establishment figure who has huge doubts about the establishment. This is a man of part Welsh descent who could easily be criticised for being too English. And the way in which just beyond Caroline Wedgwood's marvellous rhododendron wood, Leith Hill Place was left to ruin in a sense - I was there in 2016 or 2017 and the graffiti in the basement is an utter disgrace - - I just hope the National Trust can turn it around. In every way one looks this is hardly a softly-softly lambikins and nothing like it. It's tough. Key word in my humble opinion - organic - but we have done these rounds.

[Pabmusic]

Well, that is magnificent, thank you.

I am fascinated by this man, He hardly had life easy, He was a stretcher bearer at 41. He had a long term involvement with a disabled woman to whom he was dutiful although he fell in love with someone else. There is a question about the extent to which he was loved in Dorking even though he put in huge inputs. There is urban man versus rural man, There is Leith Hill where there is a troubling question going on with Darwin who was undertaking early experiments there and, as family, related. This is an establishment figure who has huge doubts about the establishment. This is a man of part Welsh descent who could easily be criticised for being too English. And the way in which just beyond Caroline Wedgwood's marvellous rhododendron wood, Leith Hill Place was left to ruin in a sense - I was there in 2016 or 2017 and the graffiti in the basement is an utter disgrace - - I just hope the National Trust can turn it around. In every way one looks this is hardly a softly-softly lambikins and nothing like it. It's tough. Key word in my humble opinion - organic - but we have done these rounds.

Indeed. He was full of paradoxes. Medical orderly, yes, but later an artillery officer (heavy guns too - the war's biggest killers).

As to Darwin, who was his mother's uncle, Ralph was taken to meet him at Downe not long before he died - Darwin gave him a coin with the instruction not to tell his mother till they were in the carriage going home.

[BBMmk2]

Thank you Pabs, for these posts. Always interesting to read.