Prom 30 (27.08.21) - Charlotte Bray, Walton & Arnold

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes, indeed, one iteration of the theme by strings was simply the finest corporate pianissimo playing that
I’ve heard in years: absolutely magical.

The sub-plot seems to revolved around lost friends and family who all died too young, some in WWII. The final collapse from glory into pity and sadness resonated for me in the ambiguity that we feel and share over our ‘glorious dead’ lost in Afghanistan.

Yes Hoffnung and Dennis Brain among them . The preface to the Novello score ( it’s on Issuu I am assuming legally ?) is very enlightening

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, indeed, one iteration of the theme by strings was simply the finest corporate pianissimo playing that
I’ve heard in years: absolutely magical.

The sub-plot seems to revolved around lost friends and family who all died too young, some in WWII. The final collapse from glory into pity and sadness resonated for me in the ambiguity that we feel and share over our ‘glorious dead’ lost in Afghanistan.

Same as I, thinking "how prophetically timely".

[Alison]

Not a touch of self consciousness in that glorious pianissimo either!

[Simon B]

In amongst the mentions of the big tune, has anyone mentioned that IIRC the introduction to the first movement of the symphony abides strictly by serial methods*? That's quite some stylistic juxtaposition for a start. Did the critics at the time of the premiere even notice or have anything to say about it? Was it Arnold cocking a snook? Doing it just to prove he could?

*This can't be true can it? There's immediate repetition. Maybe it was a throwaway remark from someone who then wandered off into the night whistling nonchalant 12-tone tunes of satisfaction at a good night of misleading of the easily fooled...

At the time I wondered if it was just the way this piece connects with me personally affecting my judgement but going on comments from others, the BBCSO strings really did deliver some exquisite playing, particularly of that big tune. Also, once again, Phil Cobb singing out an extended trumpet solo - a vital moment what with Arnold having been a trumpeter. LPO principal wasn't it?

Once again because of the hugely extended stage this year I ended up more or less facing Oramo. You know how sometimes a conductor who is doing a piece for the first time gives the impression that they're essentially reading the score, beating time and focussed mainly on getting a (hopefully) competent rendering of the notes? It was almost exactly unlike that... More like he'd known the piece all his life. Very much "inside" the music, slow movement in particular. It showed in the results.

Both Arnold on the EMI recording and Michael Seal a few months ago (both with the CBSO albeit of different eras) took a rather brisker and more objective view of that big tune, but I think I preferred Oramo's deeply felt and lovingly turned approach. Hickox/LSO don't quite reach the same intensity either. It's a pity last night's version can't have a few imperfections cleaned up and then be released somehow.

As a side note, I think I was also at the most recent (a very relative term) previous Proms performance of an Arnold Symphony - the very approachable No 2. As was MA himself. That puts a date on it for a start. Conducted by the late Richard Hickox. 1994 probably. Time flies and all that...

[Ein Heldenleben]

In amongst the mentions of the big tune, has anyone mentioned that IIRC the introduction to the first movement of the symphony abides strictly by serial methods*? That's quite some stylistic juxtaposition for a start. Did the critics at the time of the premiere even notice or have anything to say about it? Was it Arnold cocking a snook? Doing it just to prove he could?

*This can't be true can it? There's immediate repetition. Maybe it was a throwaway remark from someone who then wandered off into the night whistling nonchalant 12-tone tunes of satisfaction at a good night of misleading of the easily fooled...

At the time I wondered if it was just the way this piece connects with me personally affecting my judgement but going on comments from others, the BBCSO strings really did deliver some exquisite playing, particularly of that big tune. Also, once again, Phil Cobb singing out an extended trumpet solo - a vital moment what with Arnold having been a trumpeter. LPO principal wasn't it?

Once again because of the hugely extended stage this year I ended up more or less facing Oramo. You know how sometimes a conductor who is doing a piece for the first time gives the impression that they're essentially reading the score, beating time and focussed mainly on getting a (hopefully) competent rendering of the notes? It was almost exactly unlike that... More like he'd known the piece all his life. Very much "inside" the music, slow movement in particular. It showed in the results.

Both Arnold on the EMI recording and Michael Seal a few months ago (both with the CBSO albeit of different eras) took a rather brisker and more objective view of that big tune, but I think I preferred Oramo's deeply felt and lovingly turned approach. Hickox/LSO don't quite reach the same intensity either. It's a pity last night's version can't have a few imperfections cleaned up and then be released somehow.

As a side note, I think I was also at the most recent (a very relative term) previous Proms performance of an Arnold Symphony - the very approachable No 2. As was MA himself. That puts a date on it for a start. Conducted by the late Richard Hickox. 1994 probably. Time flies and all that...

Looking at the score there is possibly a tone row buried in there but the opening is four differing chromatic notes repeated three times by varying sections . It’s almost a tone row but I think the A flat is repeated in the third group of four . It is certainly very much in contrast to the romantic bit tune which Arnold seemed to indicate was to be taken as ironic in its sentimentality.

[jayne lee wilson]

In the Arnold 5th, is it really the tunes themselves that were or are found hard to take by some, critics or otherwise? Surely it is the context the popular melody is placed within, the vivid contrast-without-transition…
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function”.
(F Scott Fitzgerald)

So with the Arnold 5th, I would suggest that those opposed ideas are pleasure and pain; peace and conflict. “Aspiration and failure” starkly opposed in the final coda, as the Naxos/Penny Cycle note has it.

Early 20thC, there was the poetic technique of imagism which Ezra Pound developed (arguably too far) in his Cantos, the juxtaposition of images side-by-side without comment; no stated drawing of a moral or pointing of observation. The reader/listener is left to make of it what she can.
Music without transitions, perhaps.
It may seem quite unusual in symphonic works given the supposed first principle of integration; but as Keller said, this is the integration of contrasts, and you could see starker side-by-side juxtapositions going back to the movements of various classical works, e.g. the inner movements of Haydn Symphonies, as 44 or 52; sturm und drang being of a necessarily wide emotional range. Not such a huge leap to Arnold then.

The Arnoldian take in the 5th is of course popular or "sentimental" melody next to abstract or militaristic darkness, intensity or violence (But popular-melodic or Hollywood-filmic elements are of course not unique to the 5th; simply more vividly contrasted here. In No.4, West Indian/African percussions meet a suave smooth tune that could be a TV theme for a romcom - and get along very well).
You can find recent, subtler examples of such juxtaposition in such as David Matthews’ Symphonies, where a tango-scherzo may follow an elegy, a dance-suite after an intense lament.

Yes, it is more extreme in Arnold because of his musical materials and use of them; but always there in the broadly classical symphonic tradition.
In the 20thC though, the often class-based opposition of popular and classical cultures made such juxtapositions as Arnold offers more problematical, and thus provocative of sweepingly dismissive judgements.
Even the great Mahlerian Deryck Cooke once dismissed the finale of Mahler’s 7th as “banal” “largely a failure", too “popular” in its materials; I wonder what he thought of Arnold (the thematic contrasts and their cultural associations in the last two movements of the 7th are Mahler at his most Arnoldian).

If we can now take a more generous, culturally inclusive view, we are lucky to have come later to the party. Such phenomena should still disturb. But do they?

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think it was Robert Simpson who said that Keller’s definition of symphonic thought as “the large scale integration of contrasts “ in Simpson’s view “begged a lot of questions.” The obvious one being - what do you mean by integration? So how successful is Arnold in “integration” and if he isn’t , does it matter? It’s unusual to start a symphonic work in a near serial manner and then have such lushly diatonic (with a dash of chromatics) melody popping up. The whole is scored with key signature sharps or flats (i.e. C Major ) which is usually the indication of many tonal and atonal excursions to come but the slow movement in largely in D. I am not completely convinced by the juxtapositions but there is so much good music there I am not sure it matters . The final movt is very intriguing- you almost want to construct a story to fit it - something I’m usually very reluctant to do. It’s almost the accompaniment to an unseen film - but I think that works in a sort of parody rondo way.
I also don’t know the sequence of events well enough . Was the critical reaction to the lush tune the reason why Arnold implied it was meant ironically and even if he did “ really mean it “ so what ?

[edashtav]

Yes, indeed, one iteration of the theme by strings was simply the finest corporate pianissimo playing that
I’ve heard in years: absolutely magical.

The sub-plot seems to revolved around lost friends and family who all died too young, some in WWII. The final collapse from glory into pity and sadness resonated for me in the ambiguity that we feel and share over our ‘glorious dead’ lost in Afghanistan.

I’ve been thinking and doing some research. The symphony’s score reveals the 4 friends that Malcolm wascmissing, but did this appalling Arnold family tragedy, which occurred at the start of 1961, ( the symphony was first performed in July, 1961) occur whilst, or after, Malcolm was writing his fifth symphony?

Daily Herald 11.01.1961

William Arnold, brother of Malcolm Arnold, the composer, was found dead in the back of a car parked in a forest [on the Bucks / Northants border]. His wife, Catherine, was dead beside him. And dead on the floor of the car were Soottie, a dog, and a grey and white cat. All were thought to have died from fumes which entered the car through pipe from the exhaust. Yesterday, friends and relatives spoke of the life of 53-year- old Mr. Arnold, of Abington Avenue. Northampton. He went to public school, was a Cambridge honours graduate, Army officer, and director and sales manager of Arnold Brothers (Northampton) Ltd., the [family] shoe firm from which he resigned last October [for personal reasons].

[jayne lee wilson]

Remarkable Ed., but Arnold suffered from bipolarity of course, a desperate, only recently-understood affliction for which the victim is often blamed.....that may well have had the greater influence on his creator spiritus...

I haven't seen this complete, but given Palmer's pedigree it may well offer more than a few clues....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsuYbn8DaE

[Ein Heldenleben]

Remarkable Ed., but Arnold suffered from bipolarity of course, a desperate, only recently-understood affliction for which the victim is often blamed.....that may well have had the greater influence on his creator spiritus...

I haven't seen this complete, but given Palmer's pedigree it may well offer more than a few clues....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsuYbn8DaE

Yes - and one thankfully that is now eminently manageable.

[edashtav]

Remarkable Ed., but Arnold suffered from bipolarity of course, a desperate, only recently-understood affliction for which the victim is often blamed.....that may well have had the greater influence on his creator spiritus...

I haven't seen this complete, but given Palmer's pedigree it may well offer more than a few clues....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsuYbn8DaE

I’ve ordered Tony Meredith and Paul Harris’s biography of MA: “Rogue Genius”, which was written at the very end of Malcolm’s life and, apparently, probes his mental health in detail, to see whether they deal with the family suicide.
Although Tony, Paul, and I live in Buckingham and we have taken part in, or attended concerts together, I have never spoken to either of them.

Paul Harris was interviewed in the Prom interval.

[jayne lee wilson]

Incidentally, the Tony Palmer film Toward the Unknown Region is widely available to rent, e.g. on Prime for £2....

Booked in for the midnight movie here....!

[Serial_Apologist]

Incidentally, the Tony Palmer film Toward the Unknown Region is widely available to rent, e.g. on Prime for £2....

Booked in for the midnight movie here....!

Glad I taped it at the times of transmission.

[edashtav]

Glad I taped it at the times of transmission.

Incidentally, the Tony Palmer film Toward the Unknown Region is widely available to rent, e.g. on Prime for £2....

Booked in for the midnight movie here....!

I’ll await a report… its title makes it sound like a film about RVW’s apprentice music.

[mrbouffant]

I’ll await a report… its title makes it sound like a film about RVW’s apprentice music.

It's a good film which draws on many archive sources, includingn Kris Rusmanis' Arnold at 70 for the BBC, as well as interesting interviews with key people from Arnold's life.