Prom 29 (26.08.21) - George Lewis & Beethoven

[edashtav]

Get yourself a stiff drink and read......
https://www.van-outernational.com/lewis-en/

Well, I’ve just read George Lewis’s proto-manifesto for the decolonisation of music but I washed it down with Black Tea and not a stiff drink. I have some sympathy for the cause but George’s remedy may make matters worse. Looking forward, I feel the important point is ensuring that composers are helped to identify and speak / write with their own voice, not tutored to assume or plagiarise another’s trademark. At one stage, Stanford was keen to purge his Royal College students of their tendency to plagiarise Brahms. That had an impact on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor but his conversion was not root and branch - back to his African heritage - but to different European prop: Dvorak. The other evening we heard Fela Sowande’s African Suite but that fell between two stools : Old African Wine served in new European Bottles; neither identity rang truly authentic. Tonight, we expect to hear a new, short work by Charlotte Bray ‘Where Icebergs Dance Away’. I hope it will add to her established musical identity which is a unique amalgam of so many influences and interests. I certainly don’t want a piece of political art: ‘Bray’s angle on Global Warming’.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Well, I’ve just read George Lewis’s proto-manifesto for the decolonisation of music but I washed it down with Black Tea and not a stiff drink. I have some sympathy for the cause but George’s remedy may make matters worse. Looking forward, I feel the important point is ensuring that composers are helped to identify and speak / write with their own voice, not tutored to assume or plagiarise another’s trademark. At one stage, Stanford was keen to purge his Royal College students of their tendency to plagiarise Brahms. That had an impact on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor but his conversion was not root and branch - back to his African heritage - but to different European prop: Dvorak. The other evening we heard Fela Sowande’s African Suite but that fell between two stools : Old African Wine served in new European Bottles; neither identity rang truly authentic. Tonight, we expect to hear a new, short work by Charlotte Bray ‘Where Icebergs Dance Away’. I hope it will add to her established musical identity which is a unique amalgam of so many influences and interests. I certainly don’t want a piece of political art: ‘Bray’s angle on Global Warming’.

Music is so full of “cultural appropriation” , colonisation , plagiarism , imitation I would almost not know where to start. Almost all musicians have got a legitimate grievance. I completely take all George’s points on the historic marginalisation of ethnic minorities in the classical music world - it’s unarguable. Just look at the Coleridge- Taylor symphony played the other night an accomplished work that remains unrecorded. Didn’t he also at one point sign away all his copyright for a pittance?
But rap , hip-hop and other US genres are currently so dominant they seem to be squeezing out so much other minority ethnic music including the genres that I like jazz and blues . I think it’s wider than classical music - popular music since virtually the beginning of recording has been so dominated by two Atlantic countries - the US and , to a lesser extent , Britain. I am not sure how healthy that is.

[Serial_Apologist]

Music is so full of “cultural appropriation” , colonisation , plagiarism , imitation I would almost not know where to start. Almost all musicians have got a legitimate grievance. I completely take all George’s points on the historic marginalisation of ethnic minorities in the classical music world - it’s unarguable. Just look at the Coleridge- Taylor symphony played the other night an accomplished work that remains unrecorded. Didn’t he also at one point sign away all his copyright for a pittance?
But rap , hip-hop and other US genres are currently so dominant they seem to be squeezing out so much other minority ethnic music including the genres that I like jazz and blues . I think it’s wider than classical music - popular music since virtually the beginning of recording has been so dominated by two Atlantic countries - the US and , to a lesser extent , Britain. I am not sure how healthy that is.

It's partly to do with growing up in particular environments, I would think. The famous fusion guitarist John Mclaughlin said somewhere that for fusion (he meant between different genres) to work, the fusion has to happen inside yourself. Otherwise one gets an artificial welding together of long evolved traditions and cultures, each of which is then not respected for its evolution and cultural matrix. The danger is that the culture re-defined as genre can then be eclipsed by overriding marketing considerations and fail to develop further without the establishment and help of cultural protection agencies - by which stage the original context that gave rise and meaning to the cultural phenomenon has undergone change and been effectively appropriated beyond recovery.

I've long thought that jazz provides a platform in which the essential element of improvisation enables cross-fertilisation between different traditions can take place on an egalitarian basis, one which takes as given jazz as itself a genre with a long pedigree which has evolved by virtue of assimilating the different ethnic and national cultures that have gone into its evolution, thereby obviating the charge black American musicians, especially, have thrown at the white "Euroclassical" musical heritage: George Lewis, among that generation of Chicago jazz musicians that came up in the 1960s, being a case in point.

[Ein Heldenleben]

It's partly to do with growing up in particular environments, I would think. The famous fusion guitarist John Mclaughlin said somewhere that for fusion (he meant between different genres) to work, the fusion has to happen inside yourself. Otherwise one gets an artificial welding together of long evolved traditions and cultures, each of which is then not respected for its evolution and cultural matrix. The danger is that the culture re-defined as genre can then be eclipsed by overriding marketing considerations and fail to develop further without the establishment and help of cultural protection agencies - by which stage the original context that gave rise and meaning to the cultural phenomenon has undergone change and been effectively appropriated beyond recovery.

I've long thought that jazz provides a platform in which the essential element of improvisation enables cross-fertilisation between different traditions can take place on an egalitarian basis, one which takes as given jazz as itself a genre with a long pedigree which has evolved by virtue of assimilating the different ethnic and national cultures that have gone into its evolution, thereby obviating the charge black American musicians, especially, have thrown at the white "Euroclassical" musical heritage: George Lewis, among that generation of Chicago jazz musicians that came up in the 1960s, being a case in point.

Yes agreed - Is it sentimental of me to think of collective jazz improvisation as something in which the barriers between people can perhaps fall away in the collective possession of something greater than ourselves ? If only we could live in a perpetual jam session ..

[Barbirollians]

Well, I’ve just read George Lewis’s proto-manifesto for the decolonisation of music but I washed it down with Black Tea and not a stiff drink. I have some sympathy for the cause but George’s remedy may make matters worse. Looking forward, I feel the important point is ensuring that composers are helped to identify and speak / write with their own voice, not tutored to assume or plagiarise another’s trademark. At one stage, Stanford was keen to purge his Royal College students of their tendency to plagiarise Brahms. That had an impact on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor but his conversion was not root and branch - back to his African heritage - but to different European prop: Dvorak. The other evening we heard Fela Sowande’s African Suite but that fell between two stools : Old African Wine served in new European Bottles; neither identity rang truly authentic. Tonight, we expect to hear a new, short work by Charlotte Bray ‘Where Icebergs Dance Away’. I hope it will add to her established musical identity which is a unique amalgam of so many influences and interests. I certainly don’t want a piece of political art: ‘Bray’s angle on Global Warming’.

Rather ironic considering Stanford’s direct lifting from Brahms.

[Serial_Apologist]

Rather ironic considering Stanford’s direct lifting from Brahms.

Also that Stanford castigated his pupil John Ireland for composing diluted Brahms. In fact the early string quartet by the teenage Ireland is rather good Brahms, not diluted at all!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Also that Stanford castigated his pupil John Ireland for composing diluted Brahms. In fact the early string quartet by the teenage Ireland is rather good Brahms, not diluted at all!

Didn’t Schoenberg set his composition students the task of writing a symphony in the style of Brahms? To be honest he was pretty inescapable wasn’t he ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Didn’t Schoenberg set his composition students the task of writing a symphony in the style of Brahms? To be honest he was pretty inescapable wasn’t he ?

You could have just thumbed your nose at Hanslick and taken the post-Wagnerian route as variously pursued by Strauss, Mahler, Reger, Wolf, Schmidt, Elgar, Pfitzner, Scriabin and Schoenberg, or acknowledged, as did the much-missed Ferneyhoughgeliebte on this forum - and Schoenberg in his time - that Brahms was a lot more revolutionary than his more conservative promoters of the time realised.

[edashtav]

Rather ironic considering Stanford’s direct lifting from Brahms.

Excellent point, Barbs!

[Barbirollians]

No mention of Lucy Crowe yet ? - one of my favourite singers.

[makropulos]

I’ll catch-up with the decolonoscopy, in the morning.

But, before I forget, I thoroughly enjoyed Ilan Volkov’s forthright interpretation of Beethoven’s wonderful 2nd Symphony, a favourite work of mine. He didn’t belittle it or treat it as ‘one of those even numbered’ Beethoven symphonies that are warmer, friendlier and less grand than the craggy, odd-numbered symphonies which demonstrate the peaks of Beethoven’s originality and invention but let it speak with its own inimitable voice. The returns to positive, happy D major affirmation were particularly well handled. Plaudits, too, for the BBC SSO.

Very much agree with this. I've just caught up with it on the telly tonight and enjoyed it very much. Smallish orch, but that was an advantage, and good to see the layout with split violins (à la Boult or Klemperer) –something that's become a bit of a habit this year (and most welcome I think). Ticciati did it for Tristan, Karabits and the Bournemouth SO for their concert and there have been others.

Plenty of energy in Volkov's Beethoven, nice clear textures and a fine ear for orchestral colour (helped by the orch being on good form too). Enjoyed it a lot.