Havergal Brian.

Started by Harry, June 09, 2007, 04:36:53 AM

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Dundonnell

Hm, it's very quiet in the Composer Discussion Forum at the moment. Members away on holiday? In exotic places like Austria or Crete, I wonder :)

Anyway, as a long-time lover(oh no-that sounds like another popular song title ;D) of Brian's music, I had better join this discussion :)

In the final two chapters of Volume III of "The Symphonies of Havergal Brian" the author, Malcolm MacDonald, attempted to summarise the views he had at the time(1983) of each symphony and where each stood in relation to its neighbours. He produced a schematic diagram or genealogical tree of the symphonies(albeit with definite caveats) and a tentative and provisional ranking order.

While he would no doubt concede that his views have shifted over time through further study of the works Malcolm clearly felt then that after three volumes which dealt with each symphony in turn and several further chapters dealing with the wider musical issues relating to Brian's symphonism it would be helpful to the reader whose familiarity with the music was a very great deal less than his that a Recapitulation was much in order.

Setting 'The Gothic' to one side as 'unrankable', he put Symphonies 3, 4, 7, 16 and 30 in the top rank-regarding these five as equal to the two Elgar symphonies and the best by Vaughan Williams and of a stature to place Brian in the same league as Mahler and Sibelius as a symphonist. From these five he did not express a favourite but No.4 'Das Siegeslied' comes in for especially high praise.

Just below these five (but still regarded as 'masterpieces') come Nos. 8, 10, 17, 20 and 22.

Next-but perhaps creeping into the higher category- Nos. 19, 24 and 28.

At the lower end-as the least highly regarded- are Nos. 14 and 26. ("..vision is at a low ebb...technique sometimes a matter of routine")

Slightly above these two come Nos. 9, 13, 21 and 23.

The remainder occupy the middle ground.

Malcolm emphasised that these were personal selections and that other listeners would have different preferences. I certainly do!
Two of the lower rated symphonies-Nos. 9 and 14-may not be great symphonies but i actually enjoy both immensely and used to argue the point with Malcolm MacDonald when we were much younger!

Anyone with the slightest interest in Brian really should try to get hold of Malcolm MacDonals' books. Wonderfully well written they make for a superlative introduction to the music and listening to the symphonies while following Malcolm's descriptions helps enormously towards an understanding of what Brian is doing!

Hector

No 6 or 16?

The Lyrita reissue should change all that!

lukeottevanger

MacDonald's Brian books, like everything he writes, are a storehouse of great writing - he has a way of finding a perfect phrase, and does a such a superb job of summing up Brian's symphonic output that reading him I could almost 'hear' music which (before I had all the symphonies) I had never heard in the flesh. The more general chapters -  the first couple in volume one and the bulk of volume three - are just superb; one comes away feeling one really knows Brian and his mind.

Personally, I'd put no 8 into the top rank too - in some respects it's Brian's most Brianic symphony, concise, brief and taking his juxtaposition technique to an extreme position, balancing the vulnerably lyrical with the dangerously martial, each pushing the other to evermore extraordinary lengths; but it's also an utterly new reimagining of symphonic form from first principles, and it works to a startling degree. It also contains some of Brian's most attractive melodic and harmonic material.

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Dundonnell on July 21, 2008, 06:09:50 AM
Anyone with the slightest interest in Brian really should try to get hold of Malcolm MacDonals' books. Wonderfully well written they make for a superlative introduction to the music and listening to the symphonies while following Malcolm's descriptions helps enormously towards an understanding of what Brian is doing!

Yes, those books are seminal and without them I probably wouldn't have discovered Brian as early as I did (Amsterdam, 1977).

Re ranking the symphonies - I really rate 13 and 14 higher than MacDonald does. For me they are great successors to 8-12. Symphony No. 15 is celebration, 16 perhaps at the other end of 8 in its indubitable triumph, and 17 is the wild and lyrical epilogue to that whole phase of Brian's symphonic career.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

J.Z. Herrenberg

#224
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 21, 2008, 07:09:12 AM
Personally, I'd put no 8 into the top rank too - in some respects it's Brian's most Brianic symphony, concise, brief and taking his juxtaposition technique to an extreme position, balancing the vulnerably lyrical with the dangerously martial, each pushing the other to evermore extraordinary lengths; but it's also an utterly new reimagining of symphonic form from first principles, and it works to a startling degree. It also contains some of Brian's most attractive melodic and harmonic material.

MacDonald calls the 8th the 'quintessential' Brian symphony (iirc) and it probably is, in its unresolved tension of harsh against soft. 'Thoughts against thoughts in groans grind',  to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins (I have always connected his 'sprung rhythm' to Brian's sinewy, double-dotted bass lines! Brian is so English in this.)

       ‘Some find me a sword; some
             The flange and the rail; flame,
          Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum,
              And storms bugle his fame.
    But wé dream we are rooted in earth―Dust!
    Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,
          Wave with the meadow, forget that there must
The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

lukeottevanger

Hopkins was a composer too, of course...this may or may not be relevant!

Dundonnell

Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 21, 2008, 07:17:11 AM
Hopkins was a composer too, of course...this may or may not be relevant!

Was he? Rushes off to Wikipedia.......

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 21, 2008, 07:17:11 AM
Hopkins was a composer too, of course...this may or may not be relevant!

Yes, and it seems that Hopkins was thinking of chromaticism in 1865, when Tristan was first revealed to the world... (Read it in the classic Hopkins study by Gardner.)
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Dundonnell

Cringes in abject shame :(

I read some Gerard Manley Hopkins at school-"The Wreck of the Deutschland" as I recall-but since then.......

Returning hurriedly to Havergal Brian before my poetic philistinism is exposed further..

I would really like to hear Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 in modern recordings which could enable a more considered judgment on such complex scores.

I also wish we could hear Brian's Concerto for Orchestra which sounds highly impressive in Malcolm MacDonald's description.

Yes, I share the admiration expressed for Symphony No.8 and indeed for all the symphonies stretching through from No.6 to No.17(my favourite Brian symphonies!).

I was thinking the other day whilst driving from my home to Edinburgh what I would do if somehow or other I could come into possession of a fortune :) Buy a yacht-no! Buy a castle-probably not. A range of other possibilities drifted through my mind. Then it came to me-of course, finance the recording of a complete set of Brian symphonies!! Top-flight orchestra of course(London Symphony, London Philharmonic) and a conductor...? Ah, but who would want to do it, to learn all these works and commit to such a cycle?

Ah..fantasies...! :) :)

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Dundonnell on July 21, 2008, 07:37:25 AM
I was thinking the other day whilst driving from my home to Edinburgh what I would do if somehow or other I could come into possession of a fortune :) Buy a yacht-no! Buy a castle-probably not. A range of other possibilities drifted through my mind. Then it came to me-of course, finance the recording of a complete set of Brian symphonies!! Top-flight orchestra of course(London Symphony, London Philharmonic) and a conductor...? Ah, but who would want to do it, to learn all these works and commit to such a cycle?

Ah..fantasies...! :) :)

Allow me to join in on this dreary summer's day - it's always been my firm intention that if I become a famous writer (!), I'll do everything in my power to promote Brian in the Netherlands. It's my dream to hear him played by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra...
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Dundonnell

#230
Quote from: Jezetha on July 21, 2008, 07:48:12 AM
Allow me to join in on this dreary summer's day - it's always been my firm intention that if I become a famous writer (!), I'll do everything in my power to promote Brian in the Netherlands. It's my dream to hear him played by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra...

Jansons? Or do you have some other conductor in mind?

That's part of the problem you see! I spoke about this to another friend from school, another Macdonald(Hugh this time) who was the boss of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He planned programmes and hired conductors. Hugh told me that it was not as simple as I fondly imagined to get the two in conjunction. You could decide to programme-let us say, for the sake of argument, a symphony by Panufnik and then find that you simply could not get anyone to conduct it. Certain conductors would be unavailable at the right time, others would claim that they didn't like/understand the music. You might get someone(like Vernon Handley) who would then fall ill and have to be replaced at short notice by another conductor who turned out to be no more than adequate.

Oh...reality..... :( ;)

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Dundonnell on July 21, 2008, 08:01:20 AM
Jansons? Or do you have some other conductor in mind?

He'll do.

QuoteOh...reality..... :( ;)

I know. That's why we have dreams!  ;)
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Renfield

Well, I've already promised I'd finance a good friend's MMO project if my writing works out, the books sell, and I become filthy rich. But I suppose if my financial success is such that I can buy a small country, I could certainly do the Brian symphonies on the side. ;) :P

Firmly tongue-in-cheek, of course. Though I really would give the money if I could spare it, even from my impressions of the Gothic alone.

Edit: Because I want to hear them well-performed, if nothing else!

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Renfield on July 21, 2008, 09:12:06 AM
Because I want to hear them well-performed, if nothing else!

And so say all of us!
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

lukeottevanger

Quote from: Jezetha on July 21, 2008, 07:19:49 AM
Yes, and it seems that Hopkins was thinking of chromaticism in 1865, when Tristan was first revealed to the world... (Read it in the classic Hopkins study by Gardner.)

More than that - I remember someone a few years ago opening a thread about 'the earliest quarter tone' with a scanned manuscript of a Hopkins song which contained just such a thing - decades before Haba, Bartok, Berg, Enescu etc. etc first experimented with them!

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 21, 2008, 11:41:37 AM
More than that - I remember someone a few years ago opening a thread about 'the earliest quarter tone' with a scanned manuscript of a Hopkins song which contained just such a thing - decades before Haba, Bartok, Berg, Enescu etc. etc first experimented with them!

Fascinating and wholly characteristic of his utter independence of mind.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

J.Z. Herrenberg

#236
News from the Brian front, from the latest issue of the Havergal Brian Newsletter... (click to enlarge)

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

vandermolen

Interesting news!

Have you ever seen the Gothic live Johan?

I was lucky to see Ole Schmidt conduct in London decades ago; a great experience.

We need a professional recording of Symphony 10; one of his greatest scores.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: vandermolen on August 18, 2008, 07:15:11 AM
Interesting news!

Have you ever seen the Gothic live Johan?

I was lucky to see Ole Schmidt conduct in London decades ago; a great experience.

We need a professional recording of Symphony 10; one of his greatest scores.

Lucky you! No, 'The Gothic' is still something I have to experience. I don't think I'll go all the way to Australia, though, to listen to it...
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

eyeresist


It's particularly interesting that they'll be filming it, giving many outside Queensland the chance to "see" their first performance.