Prom 22: A London Symphony – 31.07.18

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think you are sort of proving the point in explaining her [Lutyens'] fury with him [Glock]. Which women composers did he, erm, "champion"?s!

Difficult to say with any precision, because there's only the Proms Archive readily (or even "at all") available - but using that archive, we see that Lutyens received six Proms performances during Glock's thirteen years of programming (1960-73). Thea Musgrave received seven, and Priaulx Rainier four. I presume that this sort of distribution was reflected in the "regular" broadcasts.

I shouldn't take Lutyens' sense of neglect as a reliable guide to how matters actually were - in that thirteen-year period, she received twice as many Proms performances as she had in the previous twenty-five (and in the subsequent forty-five years she's only received as many again*). After decades of ridicule and neglect, she had hoped for (even "expected") a corresponding showcasing of her works under Glock's more sympathetic aesthetic. To be frank, she'd've probably grumbled if she'd had twice as many performances!

(* - her work was completely ignored during her Centenary year in 2008. When I wrote to Nicholas Kenyon to protest about this, he wrote back saying that he didn't know what I was moaning about: there was a piece by Thea Musgrave performed in that year's season! And he described himself as an "admirer" of Lutyen's Music!!!)

[edashtav]

And the evidence that this is all a parody of RVW ... ?

[…] Listening to the "Norfolk Rhapsody" in the light of Elgar's Cockaigne Overture, or the "Tallis Fantasia" in that of Parry's Fifth Symphony, or the Pastoral Symphony in the light of the Elgar 'cello Concerto - in the terms of contemporary English Music, RVW (and George Butterworth, and Holst) are positively psychedelic; they are the "advanced" composers of their time, not the nostalgist conservatives that many commentators describe them as (both those who approve of such a way of hearing the Music and those who use such terms as a way of slapping the Music around the head). […] And we now know that he gave encouragement to Harrison Birtwistle - now there's a composer who also uses the post-industrial English pastoral/lyrical traditions to fuel his work!

Let me start with a positive reaction: I loved your sentence about RVW and Birtwistle. It made me chuckle with delight because it was fresh, and insightful. Yes, the Headman of the British cowpat School fertilised Sir Harry! Nice one,

“Listening to the "Norfolk Rhapsody" in the light of Elgar's Cockaigne Overture, or the "Tallis Fantasia" in that of Parry's Fifth Symphony, or the Pastoral Symphony in the light of the Elgar 'cello Concerto - in the terms of contemporary English Music, RVW (and George Butterworth, and Holst) are positively psychedelic; they are the "advanced" composers of their time, not the nostalgist conservatives that many commentators describe them as (both those who approve of such a way of hearing the Music and those who use such terms as a way of slapping the Music around the head). “

Oh dear, Ferney, that sentence is another matter, altogether, I feel that it is misleading and unhelpful. Let’s examine its key term “positively psychedelic” i.e. opening up the mind in ways that other “contemporary” composer’s works do not. Fair enough comparing chalk with cheese, Cockaigne with the 1st Norfolk Rhapsody, the busy urban city with a slice of rural life, and finding that one prefers the latter to the former, maybe because the sad theme of the latter has more soul than evident in Elgar’s busy cityscape.
I grew up in Bournemouth with the B.S.O. under Constantin Silvestri. The orchestra’s chief clarinet, Ray Carpenter, once said of CS, in the context of having played under Adrian Boult,”Nobody did nobilmente like Silvestri.” Is there evidence? Look up Silvestri’s CD of Elgar’s “ In the South” (written in 1899) : spell-binding, mind-blowing, revelatory, infused with the spirit of a place and its people. It blows where RVW’s Norfolk piece is a mere breeze. Again, I heard CS’s interpretation of Elgar's Falstaff, a piece that Elgar was working on whilst RVW was engaged on the Broads. As an analysis of a man’s character in action, CS’s conducting gave Falstaff so many colourful facets, each cut to perfection. RVW did many things very well but he was a slow learner and comparing his early works with his “ contemporary!” Elgar rarely convinces me that RVW was “advanced” for his time.

He could have been: you’ll recall, Ferney, RVW’s three months of study with Maurice Ravel in 1908? RVW came back with a piece of paper declaring that Ravel had taught him,” to do exactly what I half felt in my mind, I ought to do. “ That’s to say, RVW’s mind was given a psychedelic boost of self confidence. What’s the evidence? Well, it’s contradictory, is it not? In 1909, he was working on three scores: A Sea Symphony (by RVW out of Parry’s leftover, cold Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding), Wenlock Edge ( RVW controlled by Ravel) and the Wasps ( with a little help from his French Friend, RVW imagines the future world of Prokofiev). Mixed progress: B+

What would a more enquiring mind have picked up in France in 1908?
Debussy’s non-functional harmony?

I shall return later to examine your later post, Ferney, which placed RVW astonishingly high amongst a cross-section of his contemporaries. I must be positive!

[LMcD]

Was that Silvestri version from 1899 the first time that a work by Elgar was committed to disc (or would it have been a cylinder?)
'RVW cane back' was presumably a type of chair in vogue at the time.
I'm really starting to enjoy this discussion - not only is it very informative, it also gives my powers of imagination plenty to work on!

[edashtav]

Was that Silvestri version from 1899 the first time that a work by Elgar was committed to disc (or would it have been a cylinder?)
'RVW cane back' was presumably a type of chair in vogue at the time.
I'm really starting to enjoy this discussion - not only is it very informative, it also gives my powers of imagination plenty to work on!

Oh , you are naughty, LMcD— I put the composition Date in to emphasise that the Elgar was written half a dozen years before the Elgar.

I’m afraid that my eyesight is too poor to cope reliably with the small characters on my iPads screen, but thanks for the free proof-reading!

[BBMmk2]

Let me start with a positive reaction: I loved your sentence about RVW and Birtwistle. It made me chuckle with delight because it was fresh, and insightful. Yes, the Headman of the British cowpat School fertilised Sir Harry! Nice one,

“Listening to the "Norfolk Rhapsody" in the light of Elgar's Cockaigne Overture, or the "Tallis Fantasia" in that of Parry's Fifth Symphony, or the Pastoral Symphony in the light of the Elgar 'cello Concerto - in the terms of contemporary English Music, RVW (and George Butterworth, and Holst) are positively psychedelic; they are the "advanced" composers of their time, not the nostalgist conservatives that many commentators describe them as (both those who approve of such a way of hearing the Music and those who use such terms as a way of slapping the Music around the head). “

Oh dear, Ferney, that sentence is another matter, altogether, I feel that it is misleading and unhelpful. Let’s examine its key term “positively psychedelic” i.e. opening up the mind in ways that other “contemporary” composer’s works do not. Fair enough comparing chalk with cheese, Cockaigne with the 1st Norfolk Rhapsody, the busy urban city with a slice of rural life, and finding that one prefers the latter to the former, maybe because the sad theme of the latter has more soul than evident in Elgar’s busy cityscape.
I grew up in Bournemouth with the B.S.O. under Constantin Silvestri. The orchestra’s chief clarinet, Ray Carpenter, once said of CS, in the context of having played under Adrian Boult,”Nobody did nobilmente like Silvestri.” Is there evidence? Look up Silvestri’s CD of Elgar’s “ In the South” (written in 1899) : spell-binding, mind-blowing, revelatory, infused with the spirit of a place and its people. It blows where RVW’s Norfolk piece is a mere breeze. Again, I heard CS’s interpretation of Elgar's Falstaff, a piece that Elgar was working on whilst RVW was engaged on the Broads. As an analysis of a man’s character in action, CS’s conducting gave Falstaff so many colourful facets, each cut to perfection. RVW did many things very well but he was a slow learner and comparing his early works with his “ contemporary!” Elgar rarely convinces me that RVW was “advanced” for his time.

He could have been: you’ll recall, Ferney, RVW’s three months of study with Maurice Ravel in 1908? RVW came back with a piece of paper declaring that Ravel had taught him,” to do exactly what I half felt in my mind, I ought to do. “ That’s to say, RVW’s mind was given a psychedelic boost of self confidence. What’s the evidence? Well, it’s contradictory, is it not? In 1909, he was working on three scores: A Sea Symphony (by RVW out of Parry’s leftover, cold Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding), Wenlock Edge ( RVW controlled by Ravel) and the Wasps ( with a little help from his French Friend, RVW imagines the future world of Prokofiev). Mixed progress: B+

What would a more enquiringly mind have picked up in France in 1908?
Debussy’s non-functional harmony?

I shall return later to examine your later post, Ferney, which placed RVW astonishingly high amongst a cross-section of his contemporaries. I must be positive!

If ever there were awards for nomination of Best Post of the Year, this is one of them!

[edashtav]

If ever there were awards for nomination of Best Post of the Year, this is one of them!

Too kind by far, BBMmk2, I know ‘I’m very trying!’

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If ever there were awards for nomination of Best Post of the Year, this is one of them!

I didn't entirely understand it; the suggestion that Silvestri's recording of In the South (a work seemingly written for English audiences who found Strauss' Don Juan too risqué in both subject matter and harmony) demonstrates that RVW's Norfolk Rhapsody is less [not sure what - "advanced"] in its harmony? Elgar's harmony is about as advanced as Wagenaar's contemporary Cyrano de Bergerac, and it is the work of a 47-year-old composer with five important works already to his name.

The Norfolk Rhapsody by a 33-year-old perhaps unaware of Debussy's "differently-functioning harmony", but seeking to create a harmonic language unfettered by the Germanic misconceptions and simplifications of his British elders (he'd been there, done that with Bruch ten years earlier) - and more appropriate to the modal language of the folk Music that he was collecting. This is heard from the very start of the Rhapsody - a sustained E minor triad (essentially held for over 30 bars) with fragments of a melody on E Dorian. Music like this wouldn't be created again until Sibelius wrote his Sixth Symphony.

And still RVW is dissatisfied, knowing that he needs to hone his technique, to explore even further, to create a more flexible language that will allow him to move through Modal centres with the ease and expressive potential that would take him through the Pastoral (where the subtle differences between different modal presentations of material are reflected in the subtle nuances of Tempo within and between Movements) to the finale of the Sixth (in which the "artificial" Modes of Debussy's late Chamber works are re-created in RVW's own manner) and the "cold pastoral" of the Sinfonia Antartica, where RVW's modal/tonal/harmonic discoveries become suffused by the language of the odd-numbered Movements of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.

And still he doesn't rest on his laurels, still he moves ever on - exploring new means of expression, ever renewing what his Music has to "say" and how it can say it. (Contrast Elgar's last years - the sense of a "spent" aesthetic, of an artist impotent to say anything fresh; and the difficulties - psychological, physical, and technical - that felled him as he is trying to write his Third Symphony; and how that needed a later composer, aware of the achievements of both RVW and Schoenberg to bring those sketches to so convincing a performable state.)

Small wonder, then, that another French composer spoke of RVW "his Music struck me as much more interesting and powerful than most of the Music of his French contemporaries in the 20s - 40s", and who told a gathering of composition students "Vaughan Williams? He's a very interesting composer".

That was Pierre Boulez.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I should, perhaps, reiterate my adoration of a lot of Elgar's work (not really In the South, but yes, including Dream of Gerontius, my first encounter of which was a life-changing experience) - I regard him as an internationally important composer. But he was content (and why not) to work in an aesthetic that was at a crossroads, and which could only be developed in means that Elgar was unable and unwilling to adopt. My last post (shades of the Pastoral Symphony! ) is purely an observation of Elgar's relatively self-contained tonal/harmonic style and RVW's Whitmanesque ever-exploring, "stop only for the undertaker" attitude.

[Pabmusic]

...Look up Silvestri’s CD of Elgar’s “ In the South” (written in 1899) : spell-binding, mind-blowing, revelatory, infused with the spirit of a place and its people. It blows where RVW’s Norfolk piece is a mere breeze...

In the South was written during the winter of 1903-1904, ready for the Covent Garden Festival of Elgar's works held in the spring of 1904.

Also, Silvestri's (wonderful) performance is not evidence for the quality of the piece, though it may be for the notion that a great performance can transform music. Alassio is a very fine work, but it has been criticised for getting bogged down in the "Roman armies" section (the bit in the middle with the bass drum). It doesn't bother me, but it does some. Now, to compare it with RVW's Norfolk Rhapsody is odd, since by any standard the Rhapsody is not a major work produced at the height of the composer's powers. For a better comparison one might choose Flos Campi.

But I shall follow your example and announce that I shall return to the rest of your detailed analysis later: it's 3 o'clock in the morning here.

[Pabmusic]

I didn't entirely understand it; the suggestion that Silvestri's recording of In the South (a work seemingly written for English audiences who found Strauss' Don Juan too risqué in both subject matter and harmony) demonstrates that RVW's Norfolk Rhapsody is less [not sure what - "advanced"] in its harmony? Elgar's harmony is about as advanced as Wagenaar's contemporary Cyrano de Bergerac, and it is the work of a 47-year-old composer with five important works already to his name.

The Norfolk Rhapsody by a 33-year-old perhaps unaware of Debussy's "differently-functioning harmony", but seeking to create a harmonic language unfettered by the Germanic misconceptions and simplifications of his British elders (he'd been there, done that with Bruch ten years earlier) - and more appropriate to the modal language of the folk Music that he was collecting. This is heard from the very start of the Rhapsody - a sustained E minor triad (essentially held for over 30 bars) with fragments of a melody on E Dorian. Music like this wouldn't be created again until Sibelius wrote his Sixth Symphony.

And still RVW is dissatisfied, knowing that he needs to hone his technique, to explore even further, to create a more flexible language that will allow him to move through Modal centres with the ease and expressive potential that would take him through the Pastoral (where the subtle differences between different modal presentations of material are reflected in the subtle nuances of Tempo within and between Movements) to the finale of the Sixth (in which the "artificial" Modes of Debussy's late Chamber works are re-created in RVW's own manner) and the "cold pastoral" of the Sinfonia Antartica, where RVW's modal/tonal/harmonic discoveries become suffused by the language of the odd-numbered Movements of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.

And still he doesn't rest on his laurels, still he moves ever on - exploring new means of expression, ever renewing what his Music has to "say" and how it can say it. (Contrast Elgar's last years - the sense of a "spent" aesthetic, of an artist impotent to say anything fresh; and the difficulties - psychological, physical, and technical - that felled him as he is trying to write his Third Symphony; and how that needed a later composer, aware of the achievements of both RVW and Schoenberg to bring those sketches to so convincing a performable state.)

Small wonder, then, that another French composer spoke of RVW "his Music struck me as much more interesting and powerful than most of the Music of his French contemporaries in the 20s - 40s", and who told a gathering of composition students "Vaughan Williams? He's a very interesting composer".

That was Pierre Boulez.

How I agree. But I'm too tired to comment meaningfully at present.

[LMcD]

Oh , you are naughty, LMcD— I put the composition Date in to emphasise that the Elgar was written half a dozen years before the Elgar.

I’m afraid that my eyesight is too poor to cope reliably with the small characters on my iPads screen, but thanks for the free proof-reading!

Not at the same time, then
I did quite a bit of proof-reading/checking in a previous life - for money - and find the habit hard to break, but my recent howler concerning Christian names of little heard English composers suggests that I'm making progress in that regard.
(Just out of interest - I don't have an iPad or anything like that, still use a desktop with a nice big screen - is it not possible to enlarge your on-screen characters?)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

He could have been: you’ll recall, Ferney, RVW’s three months of study with Maurice Ravel in 1908? RVW came back with a piece of paper declaring that Ravel had taught him,” to do exactly what I half felt in my mind, I ought to do. “ That’s to say, RVW’s mind was given a psychedelic boost of self confidence. What’s the evidence? Well, it’s contradictory, is it not? In 1909, he was working on three scores: A Sea Symphony (by RVW out of Parry’s leftover, cold Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding), Wenlock Edge ( RVW controlled by Ravel) and the Wasps ( with a little help from his French Friend, RVW imagines the future world of Prokofiev). Mixed progress: B+

Knocking A Sea Symphony seems to be a spectator sport around here. Personally, I wouldn't change a note, as it's perfect as it is. Superb settings of Whitman's poems, and orchestral writing far in advance of Parry's. Previn's recording is among my top half dozen recordings of all time.

[edashtav]

Not at the same time, then
I did quite a bit of proof-reading/checking in a previous life - for money - and find the habit hard to break, but my recent howler concerning Christian names of little heard English composers suggests that I'm making progress in that regard.
(Just out of interest - I don't have an iPad or anything like that, still use a desktop with a nice big screen - is it not possible to enlarge your on-screen characters?)

Yes, that did occur to me as I typed. My main computer’s didn because our phone line has failed... I need to cut branches on two trees. It ain’t ‘are ‘ot ‘ere!

[edashtav]

Knocking A Sea Symphony seems to be a spectator sport around here. Personally, I wouldn't change a note, as it's perfect as it is. Superb settings of Whitman's poems, and orchestral writing far in advance of Parry's. Previn's recording is among my top half dozen recordings of all time.

It certainly has fine moments, Alpie, including its wonderful opening and the nocturnal movement. There are a no of aspects of RVW’s work that I admire,not least his careful and assured selection of texts to set to music. The Seas Symphony is all the better for the practice RVW put in when composing TOwards the Unknown Region which is horribly derivative.

[Lat-Literal]

Knocking A Sea Symphony seems to be a spectator sport around here. Personally, I wouldn't change a note, as it's perfect as it is. Superb settings of Whitman's poems, and orchestral writing far in advance of Parry's. Previn's recording is among my top half dozen recordings of all time.

Not by me. Symphonies or not, I like music that evokes the sea. Some composers in this regard are merely enjoyable so that any argument put forward that they are top notch would be easily knocked down - Braga Santos, Le Flem etc. But Jean Cras is the name I would push. Criminally underrated. And in his Four Pieces there is even a nod to A Lark Ascending.