Prom 22: A London Symphony – 31.07.18

[LMcD]

21 replies ago, LMcD but you can't win 'em all!

Would it help if I offered to post even more dreadful (or even more dreadful!) faeces-related wordplay, do you think? I've got some bovine-related puns in my head and I'm not afraid to use them....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Would it help if I offered to post even more dreadful (or even more dreadful!) faeces-related wordplay, do you think? I've got some bovine-related puns in my head and I'm not afraid to use them....

There's a favourite joke thread where it might be more welcome.

[edashtav]

Here’s my re-assessment of RVW following my surprise that Ferney valued his work so highly.
RVW: a Positive List of his Musical Virtues

A lifelong learner who never rested on his laurels
Some of his music has a unique, pastoral soundscape.
That style derives much from his work researching English Folksongs.
He created the ground-breaking English Hymnal & that influenced his output.
He developed Modal composition at a time when tonal music was in trouble.
He loved Tudor Music.
The British equivalent of Stravinsky’s Neo-Classicism was the result:
The Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Thomas was written in 1910.
(Such works deserve a style title: Neo-Tudor, or Neo-Modal?)
RVW’s modal style often has a lofty, visionary quality.
RVW was a master of lovely cadences.
RVW was humble and produced music for amateurs: singers and bands.
RVW’s Church Music was iconoclastic: the rule of 4-part hymns was broken, secular
(folksongs) pillaged and made sacred.
Practical, too: easy tunes were given to Tenors whilst Ladies sang Descants.
RVW was widely recognised as Britain’s greatest living composer for 35 years.
He was only the second composer to be awarded the Order of Merit (1935).
His music became the nation’s music because it reflected their fears and hopes.
After WWII, many people thought of RVW as the G.O.M. of their music.

[edashtav]

And... finally, some broad comparisons:
TOP CLASS ( beyond compare)
Debussy (1862-1917)
Schönberg (1874-1951)
Ravel (1875-1937)
Stravinsky (1882-1971)

For the rest, in Ferney’s terms of harmony, tonal-modality, timbre, texture, rhythm, structure I would place this group of his contemporaries above RVW (they are NOT in any order):

Strauss,R.(1864-1949)
Bartok (1881-1945)
Sibelius (1865-1957)
Busoni (1866-1924)
Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Zemlinsky (1871-1942)
Koechlin (1867-1950)
Nielsen (1865-1931)
Enescu (1881-1955)
Kodaly (1882-1967)

RVW (1872-1958)

The final group are those whom, I feel, RVW excelled in his achievements

Delius (1862-1934)
Roussel (1869-1937)
Schmitt (1870-1958)
Scriabin (1872-1915)
Reger (1873-1916)
Holst ( 1874-1934)
Schmidt (1874-1939)
De Falla (1876-1946)
Dohnanyi (1877-1960)
Boughton (1878-1960)
Schreker (1878-1934)
Bridge (1879-1941)
Respighi (1879-1936)
Medtner (1881-1951)
Miaskovsky (1881-1950)
Glazunov (1864-1936)

[LMcD]

There's a favourite joke thread where it might be more welcome.

I'll happily desist. All seems to be quiet on the London front at the moment...

[cloughie]

[Ein Heldenleben]

Sorry to come so late to this thread . A few thoughts -
-The reason the second Viennese school get comparatively few RAH performances is - there's not a huge amount of it and a lot of it isn't suitable for the wide open spaces .
- There is a strong argument that RVW is Britain's greatest symphonist and he is certainly on a par with the names on FHG's list.
- Any one wishing to get to grips with the complexity of RVW's art needs to engage not just with the symphonies , but works like Pilgrim's Progress, Job , Blake Songs etc.
-The many paradoxes and complexities of this great Englishman can be studied at length in Wilfrid Mellers book 'VW and the Vision Of Albion' . For those with less time on their hands there's Tony Palmer's magnificent , if occasionally rather weird documentary, ' O Thou Transcendent ' . Far from just being a cuddly pastoralist, folksy transcriber and agnostic hymn arranger ( though he was all that as well ) the film correctly identifies his bleak musical vision of the destructive power of world war and imminent nuclear conflict. In many ways he was more ' modern ' - whatever that means - than those composing in a more apparently modern idiom. Long may his music sound and long may it draw audiences in by the tens of thousands.
- I thought both the Proms Pastoral and London performances were excellent. Am I right in thinking that after a bit of a sixties slump his reputation stands higher than ever ?

[Pabmusic]

Ed. sums up part of RVW's achievement as:

"Some of his music has a unique, pastoral soundscape.

That style derives much from his work researching English Folksongs.

He created the ground-breaking English Hymnal & that influenced his output.

He developed Modal composition at a time when tonal music was in trouble."

Most of this is incontrovertible, and I agree with it, although it's a little amusing to see his "pastoral soundscape" called "unique" - I thought there was a 'school'.

Elgar's influence is often missed, though it's actually quite strong - RVW acknowledged this in "What have we learned from Elgar?" (1934). The widely-spaced string chords, for instance ("This emptying out of each constituent" in Gerontius; variation XIII & Sea-slumber Song from Sea Pictures; most obviously the opening chords of The Apostles) give pre-echoes of the Tallis Fantasia.

RVW's genius was to mould elements of all that captured his inagination into an instantly recognisable style. Add to that the fact that he had the intellectual rigour to succesfully write lengthy pieces without the need of words as a prop, and you have much of the explanation for his resilience.

But there's one thing more that sets him apart from some on Ed.'s list: he could write tunes - memorable ones too. This has not been a strong feature of music in the last 120 years - in fact it's been looked down on in some circles.

I don't like ranking artists; to write something (in music) that captures and holds the attention over time is a profoundly great achievement, whatever style it's in or philosophy it propounds. The artists share with us (almost always of future generations) their own thoughts and motivations. I think that is supremely great in itself.

[BBMmk2]

Ed, that’s great work there! Goodness, must’ve put some thought, into this. I listen to a lot of those composers quite regularly.

[edashtav]

Ed. sums up part of RVW's achievement as:

"Some of his music has a unique, pastoral soundscape.

That style derives much from his work researching English Folksongs.

He created the ground-breaking English Hymnal & that influenced his output.

He developed Modal composition at a time when tonal music was in trouble."

Most of this is incontrovertible, and I agree with it, although it's a little amusing to see his "pastoral soundscape" called "unique" - I thought there was a 'school'.

Elgar's influence is often missed, though it's actually quite strong - RVW acknowledged this in "What have we learned from Elgar?" (1934). The widely-spaced string chords, for instance ("This emptying out of each constituent" in Gerontius; variation XIII & Sea-slumber Song from Sea Pictures; most obviously the opening chords of The Apostles) give pre-echoes of the Tallis Fantasia.

RVW's genius was to mould elements of all that captured his inagination into an instantly recognisable style. Add to that the fact that he had the intellectual rigour to succesfully write lengthy pieces without the need of words as a prop, and you have much of the explanation for his resilience.

But there's one thing more that sets him apart from some on Ed.'s list: he could write tunes - memorable ones too. This has not been a strong feature of music in the last 120 years - in fact it's been looked down on in some circles.

I don't like ranking artists; to write something (in music) that captures and holds the attention over time is a profoundly great achievement, whatever style it's in or philosophy it propounds. The artists share with us (almost always of future generations) their own thoughts and motivations. I think that is supremely great in itself.

Thank you for your pertinent and constructive comments, Pabmusic.
Yes, I did fall into my own cowpat through using “unique” !
I do like your identification of what RVW inherited from Elgar.
I should have emphasised RVW’s expertise at inventing memorable tunes but counter your argument with my observation that almost 33% of the composer’s I listed as his contemporaries shared his facility in that direction.

[Pabmusic]

Thank you for your pertinent and constructive comments, Pabmusic.
Yes, I did fall into my own cowpat through using “unique” !
I do like your identification of what RVW inherited from Elgar.
I should have emphasised RVW’s expertise at inventing memorable tunes but counter your argument with my observation that almost 33% of the composer’s I listed as his contemporaries shared his facility in that direction.

To agree that two-thirds of your list had less fecility in tune-making than our subject rather sounds as if you are agreeing with my comment that it sets RVW apart from "some on [your] list". I don't see how it counters my argument.

Also, I did not mention this before, but how can presuppositions be acceptable in any such list. We all have to accept that Ravel, Debussy and Schoenberg are beyond question? What is the justification for that beyond personal preference?

This is the sort of problem you get into with lists.

[Serial_Apologist]

I do like your identification of what RVW inherited from Elgar.

I'm not the only person hearing Elgarian echoes, then - not just in early RVW, notably (by his own admission) the opening passages of the last movement of the "Sea Symphony", but several times in the fully mature works. There seems to be what I can only describe as a kind of "modalised Elgar" overhanging much of the Fifth Symphony, seeming (for once) to supersede the Ravelian oft-repeated in VW's at times almost indiscriminate pandiatonic use of triads (which came back very much to the fore in the later "Hodie"); and I would cite a passage in the first climax of the finale in Five, in which a figure of four rising consecutive pitches falling a closing fifth is repeated at least three times, each time a tone lower, with falling non-resolving accompanying parallel harmonies - the whole slow descending movement "not going anywhere" until a final push brings matters to a decisive major chord resolution - which is then rammed home with additional brass overlay, immediately prior to the chill switch to the minor that re-introduces the cyclic opening theme of the symphony. It's a feature that often occurs throughout VW, and which I think of as a sort of de-bombasticised Elgar, shed of its "patriotic/ceremonial" associations - and possibly related to VW's (and Holst's) use of block-chord thickened melodies with repeated descending consecutive four-note ostinatos. Comparisons between Vaughan Williams's and Holst's harmonic methodologies haven't played any part in this discussion so far and maybe don't have a place here, but could be a subject for another thread, perhaps?

[LMcD]

To agree that two-thirds of your list had less fecility in tune-making than our subject rather sounds as if you are agreeing with my comment that it sets RVW apart from "some on [your] list". I don't see how it counters my argument.

Also, I did not mention this before, but how can presuppositions be acceptable in any such list. We all have to accept that Ravel, Debussy and Schoenberg are beyond question? What is the justification for that beyond personal preference?

This is the sort of problem you get into with lists.

'And that singular phenomenon / The Ralph Vaughan Williams list'

[edashtav]

To agree that two-thirds of your list had less fecility in tune-making than our subject rather sounds as if you are agreeing with my comment that it sets RVW apart from "some on [your] list". I don't see how it counters my argument.
.

Your argument ended with “This has not been a strong feature of music in the last 120 years - in fact it's been looked down on in some circles.”

By finding that 33% of composers were good at tunes, I was distancing myself from your claim.

[Pabmusic]

Your argument ended with “This has not been a strong feature of music in the last 120 years - in fact it's been looked down on in some circles.”

By finding that 33% of composers were good at tunes, I was distancing myself from your claim.

Mmm... Story of my life.