Havergal Brian.

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

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J.Z. Herrenberg

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

Albion

#481
Quote from: Jezetha on December 20, 2010, 08:56:20 AM
Excellent, Albion!!!!
Well, given your generosity in sharing your Brian recordings, I figured that one good turn deserves another!  ;D
A piece is worth your attention, and is itself for you praiseworthy, if it makes you feel you have not wasted your time over it. (SG, 1922)

Lethevich

Albion, many thanks for your efforts!
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

J.Z. Herrenberg

#483
Listening to 'The Tigers' again - the orchestration remains a miracle of inventiveness.


Edit: two great, purely orchestral pieces, are 13.wma and 14.wma in Albion's folder: Gargoyles and Lacryma. They prefigure 'The Gothic'.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Albion

#484
Quote from: albion on December 20, 2010, 08:33:53 AM
I've finally managed to upload my transcript of Havergal Brian's The Tigers:

http://www.mediafire.com/?fm6zmepcgdcjb

3-8 January 1983 (recording) / 3 May 1983 (broadcast BBC Radio 3)
Teresa Cahill (soprano)  Mrs Freebody/Lady 1
Alison Hargan (soprano)  Columbine/Female in car/Lady Stout
Marilyn Hill-Smith (soprano)  Lady 2/Toy seller
Ameral Gunson (mezzo soprano)  Lady 3
Ann Marie Owens (alto)  Costerwoman/Sweetmeat seller
Paul Crook (tenor)  Artist/Bishop/Clergyman 2/Cook 2
Harry Nicoll (tenor)  Constable 1/Pantalon
John Winfield (tenor)  Coster/Clergyman 1/Cook 1/Old clothes seller
Kenneth Wollam (tenor)  Man on elephant/Man in tweeds
Ian Caddy (baritone)  Coster 1/Gentleman 1/Policeman 1
Malcolm Donnelly (baritone)  Colonel Sir John Stout
Henry Herford (baritone)  Gentleman 2
Alan Opie (baritone)  Clergyman 5/Napoleon/Young man
Alan Watt (baritone)  Coster 3/Clergyman 3/Fruitseller/Policeman 2
Norman Welsby (baritone)  Billposterer/Clergyman 4/Elephant keeper/Man's voice/Police sergeant
Richard Angas (bass-baritone)  Alexander the Great/Crier/Constable 2/Guard/Policeman 3
Eric Shilling (bass-baritone)  Officer/Regimental sergeant major/Voices
Denis Wicks (bass)  Coster 2/Clergyman 6/Red Indian
BBC Singers  The Tigers/Crowds
BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Lionel Friend
producer Elaine Padmore


As a supplement to the above, there are the six separate movements that Brian orchestrated during 1921-22 before completing the full score of the opera in 1929 (Luxembourg Radio SO/ Leopold Hager, 1981):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Havergal-Brian-Orchestral-Pieces-Tigers/dp/B001UJOZGA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298909447&sr=8-1
A piece is worth your attention, and is itself for you praiseworthy, if it makes you feel you have not wasted your time over it. (SG, 1922)

J.Z. Herrenberg

Here an article about the coming Brisbane performance of the 'Gothic', culled from the pages of the HBS Newsletter I just received: http://bit.ly/hxHP02


Albion, you made my day! Those performances of the 'Tigers' Suite are really first rate. Thank you!
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Brian

#486
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on December 19, 2010, 06:00:52 AM
I'm sure all twelve of us will show up  ;D

Sarge

This reminds me of Dave Hurwitz' old review of the Naxos Gothic...
QuoteHow vividly I remember the initial release of this set on Marco Polo some 15 years ago. There I was, clutching my copy of this legendary work having suffered previously through the hideous sound of a pirate issue of Boult's performance. Standing in line before me at Tower Records, Lincoln Center, was the New York chapter of the Havergal Brian Society. There were about 10 of them, average age about 70, men with bald scalps and lanky shoulder-length white hair hanging limply in the latest Benjamin Franklin style. All wore thick glasses, and a few had conditions that I thought had been cured by the turn of the last century: goiters, a harelip or two, and various poxes and skin diseases. None had credit cards, or a majority of their teeth, but most had, to put in kindly, olfactorily obvious personal hygiene issues.

"Gothic indeed," I thought, putting down my copy and deciding to try mail order. "If this is the core market for this composer, Marco Polo's projected complete cycle is in trouble."

Postscript: the cycle did eventually die, but the Gothic Symphony was, in fact, the best-selling CD in Marco Polo history.

J.Z. Herrenberg

I'll remember to wash.  ;)
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Sergeant Rock

Quote from: albion on December 20, 2010, 08:33:53 AM
I've finally managed to upload my transcript of Havergal Brian's The Tigers:

Fantastic! Thank you very much. This is turning out to be a great week for Brianites  8)

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

Sergeant Rock

the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

Sergeant Rock

Quote from: Jezetha on December 20, 2010, 01:50:55 PM
I'll remember to wash.  ;)

I'll bathe...relunctantly (I am retired, you know!) but I refuse to cut my shoulder length white hair!

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on December 20, 2010, 02:41:20 PM
I'll bathe...relunctantly (I am retired, you know!) but I refuse to cut my shoulder length white hair!

Sarge
Your white mane will be very distinguished-looking, I don't doubt...


The Musicweb news about the Proms 'Gothic' has been qualified by this statement:


(The veracity of this information may be in doubt. Roger Wright of the BBC refuses to confirm or deny as all information is embargoed until April.)


Even the HBS Committee doesn't seem to know, nor does Malcolm Macdonald say anything (on Facebook, where he's my 'friend'). I think they know, but are obliged to leave the initiative of the formal announcement to the BBC.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Albion

Quote from: Jezetha on December 20, 2010, 03:01:43 PM

The Musicweb news about the Proms 'Gothic' has been qualified by this statement:


(The veracity of this information may be in doubt. Roger Wright of the BBC refuses to confirm or deny as all information is embargoed until April.)


Even the HBS Committee doesn't seem to know, nor does Malcolm Macdonald say anything (on Facebook, where he's my 'friend'). I think they know, but are obliged to leave the initiative of the formal announcement to the BBC.

That's fair enough, I suppose! I've already cancelled all other engagements on and around the sacred date so if it doesn't go ahead I'll be heading straight down to South Kensington, where I'll be hiring the largest stage amplification that can be found, and with which I'll be blasting the eardrums of the audience (queueing to hear Beethoven's Choral Symphony) on 17th July with Ondrej Lenard's recording of The Gothic;)
A piece is worth your attention, and is itself for you praiseworthy, if it makes you feel you have not wasted your time over it. (SG, 1922)

Hattoff

Many thanks to Albion. I used to have the Tigers on cassette but it deteriorated badly before I could transfer it to CD. The sound quality of the download is surprisingly good :D.
And, hi to Johan.
Steve

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Hattoff on December 21, 2010, 02:27:02 AM
Many thanks to Albion. I used to have the Tigers on cassette but it deteriorated badly before I could transfer it to CD. The sound quality of the download is surprisingly good :D .
And, hi to Johan.
Steve


Hi, Steve! How's your Dover/Deal book going?
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Hattoff

Hi Johan,
The book came out in the Summer. Look here if you're interested in english beer.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+old+pubs+of+deal+and+walmer&x=24&y=24

I am currently working on the newly rediscovered 5 popular songs of Kazakhstan by Prokofiev.

I am pleased to see that your writing is going well. Do you have a link to the short stories?

I am listening to the Tigers right now, I had forgotton how good it was. It is a struggle at first to understand Brian but when you do, you are repaid a thousandfold.
steven

Albion

Quote from: Hattoff on December 21, 2010, 02:27:02 AM
The sound quality of the download is surprisingly good :D.

By some miracle, my tapes managed to survive more or less intact (apart from a tiny bit of echo and some distortion) long enough to make it into the CD-transfer age!

Listening to The Tigers, it has always struck me that Brian must have been aware of the Dada movement, at it's peak between 1916 and 1922, and not only by the anti-war stance that both represent. He produced an unprecedented absurdist anti-opera in which, despite some pseudo-heroic posturing by the Colonel, nothing really happens at all. Characters speak in everyday language, others appear only to disappear again, and then there is the peculiarity of that huge dream-like Prologue which completely dwarfs the tiny first act proper (in itself, the Prologue is perhaps one of the most startlingly original things that even Brian created - one of my favourite moments is when Pantalon says of his supposed rival for Columbine's affections "I'll hit him with a carrot").

What is really needed is a full and luxuriously-presented commercial release of this wonderful performance - one of the best and most enterprising that the BBC has ever initiated. We may never see it staged, but then perhaps the visual element is best left to the imagination anyway!
A piece is worth your attention, and is itself for you praiseworthy, if it makes you feel you have not wasted your time over it. (SG, 1922)

J.Z. Herrenberg

#497
Courtesy of your good self, Albion, I listened to the whole of 'The Tigers' again yesterday. Whether the 'opera' is successful as an opera is a moot point. What is most striking is the dream logic that informs everything. And the music that follows from that is Brian at his most mercurial and original. I can see him 'working through', in a satirical fashion, World War 1, but also his failed first marriage. Colonel Sir John Stout is for me the protagonist of the opera, not the eponymous regiment. I wonder whether his delusions of grandeur - dreaming about Alexander and Napoleon, amongst others - isn't Brian poking fun at himself at this point in his career when he definitively became a great composer. Your point about Dada is interesting. But I think Brian's satire is intensely English and draws its inspiration from the music hall, Dickens, Hogarth et al. Brian, with his working-class background, takes a swipe at the British class system. He 'hides' in a colonel, who is unhappily married, feels old, and senses a new beginning in the outrageous(ly funny) Pamela Freebody (a very speaking name, that!) His decision, in Act Three, to meet her again tomorrow is - I discovered yesterday - the central decision of the whole opera. After that the music descends into comic pandemonium, as a precursor of the social opprobrium that the colonel's decision will cause him, like it did Brian (who fell in love with the maid, whom he later married, and was divorced by his first wife).


That's my new understanding of 'The Tigers'. For which I have to thank you (indirectly)!


P.S. What Dutton did with 'The Gothic', they might do with 'The Tigers'...
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Albion

Quote from: Jezetha on December 22, 2010, 11:50:35 AM
Whether the 'opera' is successful as an opera is a moot point. What is most striking is the dream logic that informs everything. And the music that follows from that is Brian at his most mercurial and original. I can see him 'working through', in a satirical fashion, World War 1, but also his failed first marriage. Colonel Sir John Stout is for me the protagonist of the opera, not the eponymous regiment. I wonder whether his delusions of grandeur - dreaming about Alexander and Napoleon, amongst others - isn't Brian poking fun at himself at this point in his career when he definitively became a great composer. Your point about Dada is interesting. But I think Brian's satire is intensely English and draws its inspiration from the music hall, Dickens, Hogarth et al. Brian, with his working-class background, takes a swipe at the British class system. He 'hides' in a colonel, who is unhappily married, feels old, and senses a new beginning in the outrageous(ly funny) Pamela Freebody (a very speaking name, that!) His decision, in Act Three, to meet her again tomorrow is - I discovered yesterday - the central decision of the whole opera. After that the music descends into comic pandemonium, as a precursor of the social opprobrium that the colonel's decision will cause him, like it did Brian (who fell in love with the maid, whom he later married, and was divorced by his first wife).

Some fascinating points. I'm sure you're quite right in seeing much of the 'action' in The Tigers as autobiographical, based either on Brian's frustration with incompetence or frustration with his domestic situation. Regarding the link to Dada, with it's irreverent and surreal 'de-bunking' of art, Brian was perhaps simply a kindred spirit - certainly there is no precedent in British opera for the character or style of his libretto.

Music Hall does play a huge part in The Tigers - from the structuring of an elaborate set of Symphonic Variations on the throw-away song Has anybody here seen Kelly? to a general sense that the regiment are the very embodiment of Fred Karno's Army:

"We are Fred Karno's army,
Fred Karno's infantry;
We cannot fight, we cannot shoot,
So what damn good are we?
But when we get to Berlin
The Kaiser he will say
Hoch, hoch, mein Gott
Vot a bloody fine lot
Fred Karno's infantry."

Perhaps also important is the vivid nature of Brian's own dreams, and the fact that he seems to have been able to recall them in minute detail. Writing to Bantock during the composition of the opera he recounted

"You entered into my dreams this afternoon. Whether it is the medicine or the 'flu I don't know, but I am half asleep and it is always the same when I have had a bad dose of it. But I was at your place at Broadmeadow: from the way I walked about I seemed to own it. I was going up a wide staircase and met the Colonel [H. Orsmond Anderton, friend and biographer of Bantock] coming down in a dressing gown, hair standing straight. I was frightened by his looks. As he passed me he hissed: 'I'm going to have a seesaw on the viola.' I noted the time. An hour afterwards I met you and asked, 'Where's the bathroom?' You pointed to the door and I found it locked. You said: 'Kick it.' I did, and the door slowly opened and the Colonel passed out just as before, in dressing gown and straight hair. I noticed there was a lot of water on the floor. Also there were three large taps. The middle one seemed to have been in use most, so I put my mouth to it and turned the tap [...] I told you what I had done; that I had been drinking water with my mouth to the tap, and the middle tap. You shouted: 'Why, that's the house water!' I shouted: 'O Christ! What makes me feel so drunk?' You said: 'It may be the pitch from the roof or the poison from the leaves in the water.' I then turned on the middle tap, and feathers and leaves flew out. I turned sick as I thought of the rubbish in my stomach. You grew alarmed and went on the roof. Coming down, you said to me seriously, 'It's a dead peacock'. You armed me down the stairs and we passed the Colonel just outside his door - still in his dressing gown and straight hair, addressing an imaginary crowd. He heeded us not but went on addressing the unseen, his hands and arms going, and emphasizing:

I knew he was sold to the devil.
He must be his brother or his heir.
Drunk on this and drunk on that -
He was always drunk.
Now he is drunk on a dead peacock.

And he repeated the word many times, as though caressing it: 'Peacock! Peacock! Peacock!'
Then I awoke. Through the window I saw a sparrow pinching my seeds."
A piece is worth your attention, and is itself for you praiseworthy, if it makes you feel you have not wasted your time over it. (SG, 1922)

Klaatu

#499
Quote from: Jezetha on December 20, 2010, 08:28:50 AM

Calm down, dear!


Yes.....it's only a commercial......
I do apologise; I was quite overcome!

At your suggestion, Jezetha, I've just listened to "Gargoyles" from The Tigers for the first time (MANY thanks for the link, Albion!) and......wow! There's the prototype of the xylophone-led "storm" from the climax of the Gothic's tremendous third movement - AND just listen to the concluding bars of this piece; that's surely the prototype for the magical ending of Symphony No 10!