Roy Harris (1898-1979)

[drogulus]

This may be the worst thing I've ever heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrvFtRPgIHs&feature=related

WARNING!: This may permanently damage your opinion of RH, but, hey,... I just chalk it up to the '70s!

     I don't know how you can tell how bad it is with such a poor performance.

     I was over at YT listening to No. 11 and it sounds pretty good, though perhaps too typical. Harris sounds best to my ears when he moves away from the stylistic trap he set with his first 3 symphonies. I think he did this with No. 6. It still sounds like Harris but less insistently so, and with more variety.

     Anyway No. 11 settles the decline question for me as far as 1967. It was decline of the common kind and not dementia.

[cilgwyn]

Tend to agree with you. No 11 has some interesting,ear tickling textures & I like his use of the piano,but it is a re-tread! I mean,he did this in No 8,didn't he?
I love No 6 in the Pacific SO recording. A very exciting reading & like you say it's more varied  than some of his symphonies. I think it's a very powerful symphony,actually. But,Harris's gung ho patriotism can get a bit much at times.
  After that,No 7 & 5 get my vote,for next best. In that order. I recently listened to the Kuchar recording of No 7 & found it VERY exciting. But again,that patriotism? It's like John Wayne leading the green beret's,or something. You need a rest afterwards & maybe some Copland or Walter Piston,who's probably my favourite American symphonist,if I HAD to pick one at gun point!

[snyprrr]

Banality has never sent people packing.

Point taken.

[cilgwyn]

Harris 13,the new Gorecki 3! You never know?!!!

[Dundonnell]

The Harris Symphony No.11 is an odd sort of work. Harris appears to be trying to conjure up again all those bold, heroic brass fanfares which so characterise the mid-period symphonies but with more 'modern' dissonances added in for good measure. Within the confines of this relatively short piece he just about gets away with it.

I have no idea what was going through his head in the 1960s. He was, apparently, distressed by the changes which were occurring in his native country, political upheaval, social change and so on. The old optimisms seem to have been disappearing.

And he writes three works which he chooses-possibly unwisely- to call symphonies: No.10 "Abraham Lincoln" for speaker, chorus, brass, percussion and two pianos(1965), No.12 "Pere Marquette" for tenor/speaker and orchestra(1968/69) and the Bicentennial Symphony for speakers, chorus and orchestra(1975/76), two of which use the iconography of American History but in such a frankly feeble fashion that it is difficult to know what to think.

My sad conclusion is that Harris was basically a one-dimensional composer who, at his best, could produce exciting, rousing, patriotically-infused music but just went on recycling the same basic theme, could find no new ideas and, in using, choral and other orchestral resources found the old ideas coming unstuck.

[cilgwyn]

I tend to agree with you're conclusions,Dundonnell. This is one instance where recordings have broadened our experience and understanding  of Harris's symphonic output;although,unfortunately, not in the way we,or Harris himself,might have hoped!

Excited as I was,as a youngster, by a broadcast recording of Harris's Sixth,my local libraries Lp of his Fifth & Bernsteins recording of his epochal third,that is a conclusion I genuinely,deeply,regret!

On a slightly more positive note,new first rate recordings of Harris's Fifth & Seventh would still be welcome & for a 'one dimensional' composer (I know what you mean),they're pretty good,in their own way (especially 7)! Also,Harris's wildly uneven Fourth DOES have some rather lovely bits 'in there' amongst the dross, & something newer & better than the 'flabby' Alsop recording would be quite nice to have in my collection......but NOT essential!
  Furthermore,while it was interesting to get to hear 8 & 9, I really DID quite enjoy making the aquaintance of No 11. Flawed as it is,there's allot of drivel being touted around,that's far less worth hearing than this & the Albany recording & performance was exemplary!
  And No 6 as performed by the Pacific SO,really IS in my humble opinion (& in VERY unintellectual terminology,indeed) a bit of a cracker & deserves more performances. than it gets. So,maybe there's some 'life' in the 'old dog' yet?!

But,10,12 & 13!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

[cilgwyn]

I'm playing Delius at the moment!

[drogulus]

    The 6th indicated that Harris might not have been as one dimensional as he later became. It looks like his inspiration dried up and he fell back on what he knew best, or what had worked best to get played, which was the style of the early symphonies (1-3). I think the middle period showed considerable variety (from the 4th at least as far as the 7th).

[snyprrr]

   It looks like his inspiration dried up and he fell back

No one has brought up the ills of alcoholism. I have got to believe that thorough personal research would reveal a sadder truth than we are perhaps willing to admit.

Perhaps

[cilgwyn]

I suppose,if you wanted to be nasty,you could just say,3,5,6 & 7 were good and the rest are crap! Or No 3 & the rest are crap!!!! (Excuse the language!)
But when I'm in the right mood the right Harris symphony can be quite stirring!
No 3 is unquestionably the GREAT one,IF one of them is?
My runner up is No 6,as performed by the Pacific SO,because if I'd heard it only in the Alsop/Naxos rendition,I wouldn't think so much of it. As 'Drogulus' observed,it is more varied & unlike No 7,it's not in 'one movement',which is ALWAYS going to make No 7 a target for unfavourable comparisons,whatever it's merits,or lack of them? Furthermore,the mood is reasonably varied,it's not so relentlessly 'God Bless America' heroic' & some of Harris's writing in the quiet,reflective parts of the symphony is very beautiful,almost like an American Martinu,but not quite! Wonderful really,if only he could have come up with a bit more of this sort of thing.
If this was the only Roy Harris symphony I'd ever heard,I'd probably be quite impressed & wanting to hear more!
And that's the trouble!

Mind you,anyone who thinks Harris did just write the same sort of symphony OVER & OVER AGAIN,should try listening to a couple of Alan Hovhaness's symphonies in a row! (And I DO quite like SOME Hovhaness!)

Memories of a Child's Sunday really IS a lovely little work & suggests what Harris might have been capable if he'd had more of a sense of b**** humour! This little gem is included on Albany's cd of Harris's eighth & ninth which is entitled 'THE Great American Ninth!" How unfortunate that the best & most enjoyable piece of music on the entire cd is,in actual fact, the 'fill up'! (Lots of enthusiastic 'listener' reviews of the symphonies on this cd,on the Amazon site,I note!)

To be fair to Harris,if I thought his music really was that lousy, (or crap?!!! )I wouldn't have written all this & my Harris cds would have  headed off for the charity shop,by now! (Alsop's 3 & 4,are down there,already! ) Maybe,'problematic' is the right word for him?
I DO find him a bit of a puzzle,to say the least!

Others might be less polite!

[drogulus]

I suppose,if you wanted to be nasty,you could just say,3,5,6 & 7 were good and the rest are crap! Or No 3 & the rest are crap!!!! (Excuse the language!)

     The first one is good (Symphony 1933) and there were several recordings from the '30s through the '50s then everything went dark. It seems that only one Harris symphony at a time was allowed until recently, regardless of merit.

     What does merit mean, really? Is Twain right that Wagner's music is "better than it sounds"? What's the best music on earth that no one likes? If everyone likes shitty music, how shitty is it? I think it's very important to figure out why these questions don't have a correct answer.

     

[springrite]

I first heard the 6th at a concert and later on the radio, both from Pacific Symphony under Keith Clark. I loved it to bits. But when I finally got a recording of it last year, the NAXOS recording, I could not recognise it at all.

So, get the Clark and avoid the Alsop if you can.

[cilgwyn]

I first heard the 6th at a concert and later on the radio, both from Pacific Symphony under Keith Clark. I loved it to bits. But when I finally got a recording of it last year, the NAXOS recording, I could not recognise it at all.

So, get the Clark and avoid the Alsop if you can.

No,the Alsop is absolutely awful,there's no comparison. I remember being excited by a broadcast of the Pacific SO Sixth back in the eighties (I think). I recorded an off air cassette,at the time. Of course,I've had the Albany cd for a while,now. There's no momentum in the Alsop ,and where's that amazing brass in the fast movement ('Conflict',I think?I haven't got the cd to hand,silly me!)? I remember hearing that & thinking,"Wow! That's wierd!". Almost as annoying & detrimental to the impact of the music as the 'missing' xylophone in the 'swimmy' Naxos (Brian) gothic!
The bounders should have put before the mast!

NB Keith Clarke & the Pacific SO seem like the ideal team to have tackled No 5. Instead we get Alsop's flabby,but passable recording! Sometimes,it's not ALL Harris's fault!!!

[Dundonnell]

You are absolutely on the money as far as the Alsop recordings are concerned   And that is very sad and, indeed, unexpected-she is a very good conductor. But something just seems to have gone wrong. There is no passion, no energy, no real conviction. These are perfectly adequate, run-through performances but absolutely no more than that. If you are going to conduct a Harris symphony you have to do it with genuine brio and let the orchestra rip (as Bernstein could do, for example). Instead we get cautious, tepid readings which do Harris no favours.

[eyeresist]

We all know that Sibelius stopped composing or at least preserving his compositions, for his own reasons, more than 25 years before his death. If I had to instance some 20th century composers whose inspiration seems to have seriously waned at least ten years before their deaths......

Elgar
Bax
Walton

....spring to mind.

A number of composers' powers begin to wane after they turn 60. It's part of the cycle of life 

[snyprrr]

Keeping Harris and Cowell together.

[drogulus]

You are absolutely on the money as far as the Alsop recordings are concerned   And that is very sad and, indeed, unexpected-she is a very good conductor. But something just seems to have gone wrong. There is no passion, no energy, no real conviction. These are perfectly adequate, run-through performances but absolutely no more than that. If you are going to conduct a Harris symphony you have to do it with genuine brio and let the orchestra rip (as Bernstein could do, for example). Instead we get cautious, tepid readings which do Harris no favours.

     I don't much care for Alsop in the Barber recordings, either. Her rendition of the Essay for Orchestra (No. 1) is curiously light. Once again Clark conveys the gravity and intensity of the music, as does Slatkin with the St. Louis SO.

[snyprrr]

gotta bump RH with HC.

[kentel]

My sad conclusion is that Harris was basically a one-dimensional composer who, at his best, could produce exciting, rousing, patriotically-infused music but just went on recycling the same basic theme, could find no new ideas and, in using, choral and other orchestral resources found the old ideas coming unstuck.

I agree. And that's sad : I was so enthralled when I discovered the 6th and the 3rd... Afterwards, my enthusiasm went down progressively : even if the other symphonies are good, you're right, that's only the recycling of the same basic ideas. The only piece which I discoverd later and which I really enjoyed is his violin concerto.

And Alsop, yes, catastrophical. Even in Copland she's colourless and dull.

[snyprrr]

I agree. And that's sad : I was so enthralled when I discovered the 6th and the 3rd... Afterwards, my enthusiasm went down progressively : even if the other symphonies are good, you're right, that's only the recycling of the same basic ideas. The only piece which I discoverd later and which I really enjoyed is his violin concerto.

And Alsop, yes, catastrophical. Even in Copland she's colourless and dull.

There's an article on her in The Post today. The Baltimore Symphony is doing a 'feminist' thing... oh, great!!