Havergal Brian.

[Luke]

As for the Fourth: I hope for a performance that will do it full justice. Again, if a conductor (Brabbins?!) can mould the final movement so that it sounds completely inevitable, my doubts will have been quelled. I now think ... that both the recapitulation of the final movement's opening material and the return of the opening theme of the work as a whole are more mechanical than I am used to in Brian. Compared with the structural adventurousness of the final movement of 'The Gothic', that counts as a minus (for me).

To me, these things are a plus, even though I agree with your description. IMO, sometimes music can be deliberately bad, or have only a sparse scattering of ideas, or a hollowness at its centre, or a mechanical disengagement....and still be masterly Mahler does this sometimes, I think. And these final moments of no 4 are, IMO, another such moment. I find a deep poetic truth in the fact that the recapitulation is literal, mechanical-sounding, uncouth, stylistically at  complete, uncaring variance with the main body of the music, simplistic, crass, unmoved by anything that has been said in the intervening symphony. There's an ugly, inhuman logic in that. The music rather reminds me of theose Stalinist scores - e.g. Sviridov's infamous Vremya Vpered - which aim to convince of the rightness of their political stance by dint of brazen power that brooks no sentiment or argument.

eit - better link

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I know exactly what you're driving at, Luke, certainly when you mention Mahler with his sometimes devastatingly ironic juxtapositions... I think 'Das Siegeslied' could be just such a work, and of course, Malcolm MacDonald has always 'sold' it as such. I hope I live long enough for the dream performance that clinches everything.

[Dundonnell]

Nothing like a good Nuremberg rally to cleanse the system. 

Oh dear

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Oh dear

"A glass of water for Mr. Mackie!"

[Philip Legge]

A brief digression to begin with, if it's permitted: you may be aware of the strange beliefs of certain fundamentalist religious types over in the United States. They tend to gain strength in their extremism from the mis-education of the general populace, a very large proportion of which does not acknowledge basic scientific facts such as evolution, this especially being chosen as the site of battles in the culture wars over there. Creationism, especially the ludicrous variety that pretends to rewrite the accumulation of human history and knowledge wholesale by imagining the world came into existence just over 6,000 years ago, is particularly rife and strenuously defended on the Internet, to the extent that it resulted in the creation of an adage entitled Poe's Law. This says in effect, that you can't make a parody of the ridiculousness of these viewpoints (without using blatant signposts to the contrived nature of the parody) which won't also be prone to being mis-identified as an actual, fundamentalist viewpoint.

You may think you've concocted the most wicked, monster-raving-looniest parody of such a subject imaginable, so obvious that no one could possibly fail to recognise the target must be parody: when in fact, in trawling the Internet, you will almost certainly find real examples of these views that far outstrip it for off-on-a-different-planet fruitcakiness or nuttiness, essentially leaving it for dead. As originally phrased, Nathan Poe said "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is uttrerly [sic] impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake [it] for the genuine article."

Where I'm going with this is the intent behind the extreme nature of Brian's setting of Psalm 68 in Luther's translation. The psalm is not completely militaristic as might be implied by the opening verse, "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him", but like the entirety of the Bible itself, it contains numerous contradictions and can be cherry-picked for both positive and negative, good and bad sayings. For example, against the blood-thirsty verse 23 (set with perverse relish by Brian), "That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same," you could cherry-pick a more peace-loving phrase from verse 30, "Rebuke the company of spearmen, ... scatter thou the people that delight in war." The psalm as a whole is a self-contradictory and self-righteous praising of a particularly jealous Old Testament god, named in verse 4 as JAH, with a basic mindset of bronze-age tribalism: either you're for JAH (read verse 3!), or else you're one of the enemies (compare verse 2!). For this text to be chosen for a colossal choral symphony fifteen years after the bloodiest war in human history until that point is obviously making a major artistic statement, and to set it to music of such a pitiless character (take any of the times the chorus recites the name of "JAH", for example) seems to be openly making a pæan to tribalism, to warfare, and to the nastier xenophobic elements of human nature which are implied by the text. It is also quite proper to ask in light of the historical context, is this symphony actually a demonstration of the fascist triumphalism that was then nascent? Was Brian completely mad to try to set this psalm in German, in as brutal a choral-orchestral setting as imaginable, at this time in European history? In Internet parlance, is "Das Siegeslied" a gigantic Poe or is it actually the real thing, a colossal affirmation of war?

I think the answer is in the last-minute recapitulation of the quasi-Handelian march which provided the work's opening strains: it is both monstrously inappropriate as the summation of the previous forty minutes of musical development as well as being the only logical music at that point which can now undercut the basic message of the psalm and the premise of the intervening music for the psalm-setting. It leaves a final impression of "we went through all that forty-five minutes of sturm und drang and yet we're no better off at the end because of it!" – except for the memory of the visceral music itself, given over in large part to envisaging the violent slaughter of our enemies, followed by copious rejoicing in the fact. I think that casts the symphony as a complicated but fundamentally anti-war work – but it's alarmingly easy (thanks to the difficulty in separating apart sincere extremism and the parody of it) to see it as a monument of triumphalism. That this is a work of the same composer as the one that wrote "The Tigers" gives me confidence that he did not actually intend a superficial triumph to this "Song of Victory".

Cheers, Philip

PS As for the Nuremberg rally comment: I find it difficult not to think of that sort of image when cue-ing the Adrian Leaper recording to say, track 11 directly at the start, or the march beginning afterwards at 1:30, or to the marvellous trumpet tune in track 12 at 0:58. It could so easily be festival music for the self-righteous xenophobes who only just moments before (track 10), had been merrily carolling about with "Dein fuss", i.e. dipping their foot in the blood of their enemies. And yet it's wonderful, stirring music all the same: an essay in cognitive dissonance when you consider the sentiment expressed to such glorious sounds. (The Poole is pretty damn impressive too, but I thought the Leaper cue points would be a lot easier for most readers to identify the exact passages I have in mind.)

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Alan (Thranx), Luke and Philip have all made an excellent case for the philosophical inevitability in 'Das Siegeslied's' music. I am going to listen to the work again later today. The final sentence of Philip's mini-essay (leaving the P.S. aside) leads me to something else: the symphony could be considered as a grim satire, the dark twin of The Tigers. The Tigers lampoons war in a very English way, 'Das Siegeslied' does it the German way, thorough, serious, and the 'quotation marks' are created ONLY by the contrast between the opening and closing music and what comes inbetween.

[springrite]

After an initial listening about 12 years ago, listened to Zigi-Sled about 10 times in the past 3 days. Oh how I love it now! Awesome!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

After an initial listening about 12 years ago, listened to Zigi-Sled about 10 times in the past 3 days. Oh how I love it now! Awesome!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Two photos of our eponymous composer...

[cilgwyn]

Havergal Brian in colour!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Havergal Brian in colour!

Shocking, isn't it? 

[cilgwyn]

Seriously,whoever took some of those late photos of HB was a pretty good photographer.

[Dundonnell]

Similar nose to my grandfather-

[cilgwyn]

Havergal Brian had some interesting looking radios too!

[Hattoff]

I think that is an "Elizabethan" reel to reel. I had one about 40 years ago, t'was my pride and joy
Recorded much HB on it, if it is?
Good pic.

[cilgwyn]

I used to be interested in old radios & I remember mulling over a transistor radio like that. I thought £20 was too much! It still worked.

[Dundonnell]

I can tell you that it is a transistor radio, that the photograph was taken in 1958 and that my grandfather and I were listening to some Sibelius

[cilgwyn]

I think Havergal Brian's transistor radio collection may warrant it's own thread.
More Brian radio photos PLEASE!

[springrite]

More Brian radio photos PLEASE!

Too bad Brian is not famous or hip enough to interest cartoonists. He has a face that any good cartoonist would love!

[cilgwyn]

According to the Havergal Brian website,recordings from Toccata Vol 2 of Brian Orchestral works,will be broadcast on Radio 3,'in the week of' September 19th. I am sure Johan knows & other HB Society members,but others may not! There is a nice (small) photo of the front cover of the Toccata cd there,too.