Havergal Brian.

[calyptorhynchus]

Elgar's recordings of himself conducting several of his works show many divergences from the published scores in the matter of tempi, volume, phrasing &c...

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Quote from: calyptorhynchus on Today at 23:31:38

Elgar's recordings of himself conducting several of his works show many divergences from the published scores in the matter of tempi, volume, phrasing &c...



That's perfect by me, if the music sounds natural.

[John Whitmore]

Quote from: Dundonnell on Today at 22:42:18

That is an astonishingly controversial statement, Johan



>I seem to remember that Malcolm Arnold's later years were marred by a drink problem (?) If he wasn't in complete possession of his faculties when he made the decision to change the tempo, I think a conductor would be right to defend the composer against himself... I wish we could hear both versions!

Correct. The main problem being the pubs closing at 10.30 at night.

[Dundonnell]

Quote from: Dundonnell on Today at 22:42:18

That is an astonishingly controversial statement, Johan



I seem to remember that Malcolm Arnold's later years were marred by a drink problem (?) If he wasn't in complete possession of his faculties when he made the decision to change the tempo, I think a conductor would be right to defend the composer against himself... I wish we could hear both versions!

We have been here before and I am loathe to go into a detailed analysis of an Arnold symphony in a thread, ostensibly at least, devoted to Havergal Brian.

.......but, to be brief, the Rumon Gamba/Chandos version of the Arnold 7th clocks in at just under 32 minutes, the Vernon Handley/Conifer at just under 38 minutes(I haven't heard the Andrew Penney/Naxos reading). Arnold in his 1977 performance of the work takes just over 50 minutes.

Now that is quite astonishing: Arnold takes almost twice as long to conduct his own symphony as Rumon Gamba

Was he so affected by alcoholism and mental problems as to cripple his own symphony, composed four years before I don't know.

(You can hear it, Johan....you know where )

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Quote from: Dundonnell on Today at 00:30:00

We have been here before and I am loathe to go into a detailed analysis of an Arnold symphony in a thread, ostensibly at least, devoted to Havergal Brian.

.......but, to be brief, the Rumon Gamba/Chandos version of the Arnold 7th clocks in at just under 32 minutes, the Vernon Handley/Conifer at just under 38 minutes(I haven't heard the Andrew Penney/Naxos reading). Arnold in his 1977 premiere of the work takes just over 50 minutes.

Now that is quite astonishing: Arnold takes almost twice as long to conduct his own symphony as Rumon Gamba

Was he so affected by alcoholism and mental problems as to cripple his own symphony, composed four years before I don't know.

(You

can hear it, Johan....you know where )



I don't mind veering off to another symphonist for a few posts, and neither would Havergal, the man of the apparent non-sequitur... (I took the hint.     Listening to the opening minutes, and not being able to see a score nor compare the performance, the music doesn't sound laboured or slow...)

[Luke]

Re Arnold - I saw him a few times in his later years (and I mean semi-socially, not as a performer - he lived near me, and my ex-wife used to play in a local youth orchestra with which he had associations and whose functions he sometimes attended). He certainly didn't look in full control at all imes, but he was getting on in years by this point. But more than that, his whole demeanour was that of someone alive, passionate, someone less concerned with re-creation than with recreation (see what I did there?!    ). My own reading of this issue, then, would be that whilst listeners, critics, conductors, all tend to get very concerned with the minutiae of these things - tempo choices, dynamics etc. - from performance to performance and recording to recording, to some composers (and I have a feeling Arnold would have been of this type) they are can be fairly loose and unimportant, and shouldn't be put before the expressive power of the piece itself - on the night, the piece leads where it will, the precise detail of the markings follows and gives way.

The markings in a score - in a score of the Arnold type, anyway (I have a few of his symphonies in score) - are not so detailed and presriptive as in e.g. Mahler; they are a kind of approximation, an average of the kind of markings that will yield a satisfying result. So they can be treated more flexibly thn in e.g. Mahler, and sometimes wildly so. IMO this in itself doesn't necessarily constitute recomposition, it could be just something that took over on the night. Of course, if the composer does this time and time again, and becomes convinced that the original markings were misleading/ineffective, he might change them. That is recomposition. 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Interesting and sensible post, Luke. Many thanks! One question: how do you rate Arnold as a symphonist?

[cilgwyn]

Wow! I wish I lived near a composer,or did! Musically,I've met Sir Geraint Evans once,very briefly (I told this story,here somewhere. My dads rust bucket was parked next to his Rolls! ). We weren't introduced! And I remember I had a book on Cyril Scott by Ian Parrott & my father said,'I met him!' (on a train).

Arnold doesn't sound like the kind of bloke you'd want to go drinking with,but we all have our problems! I recently invested in the Naxos (and some Conifer's s/h). Having previously enjoyed Arnold's music,but not being too sure whether the symphonies really hold together,I am now a convert & I think they are probably as good as some of Malcolm Arnold's most ardent admirers say they are.Arnold's assimilation of popular & classical idioms is very individual & I do think he is one of the very few composers to have ever pulled this off. Now,I really DON'T want to compare him with Mahler,but his use of 'popular music' in some of his symphonies ie No's 2,4,5,6,7 & 8,makes me think of Arnold as a sort of updated British equivalent,albeit,not on such an exalted level,perhaps (like Dundonnell,I dislike comparisons). No 4 is a case in point,with such a powerful slow movement. No 7 sounds very impressivel,to my untutored ears,in the Handley performance.Astonishingly original music!

Have to say I like Arnolds own recordings,but it was listening to some of these other interpretations that convinced me. Having said that,Arnold composed them,so who am I to argue with his own interpretations?

Arnold's strikes me as a bit of a maverick,like Brian & similarly controversial. Although,unlike Brian he didn't compose any colossal record breaking works,he was less philosophical about his neglect.......oh,and Brian didn't team up with Deep Purple! That COULD have been fun , and he certainly lived long enough,didn't he?

Brian's Concerto for orchestra & (rock) group? The mind boggles!

Incidentally,I remember years ago,there was a programme on,BBC2 I think,about Arnold,and I remember my parents sitting there waiting for the intro to finish,expecting a jolly little man who composed the English Dances & Beckus the Dandipratt & the first thing they saw was this embittered,depressed looking man,launching into a gloomy,miserable rant. The shock on my parents faces! This was at a time when a good deal of Arnold's music,including allot of the symphonies,remained unrecorded. Reading about them in a library book was like reading MM's book (s) on the Brian symphonies;they descriptions of them so tantalising. No's 4,6 & 7,for example. I remember thinking.'What do THEY sound like?' 'Will I EVER hear them?' Who would have though that only a few years later there would be all these recorded cycles?!!!

(Erm,back to Brian!!!! )

[Luke]

Interesting and sensible post, Luke. Many thanks! One question: how do you rate Arnold as a symphonist?

Just wrote a long (but probably needlessly so) response on this slow old laptop, and then lost it! Maybe I will try again later...

[John Whitmore]

Wow! I wish I lived near a composer,or did! Musically,I've met Sir Geraint Evans once,very briefly (I told this story,here somewhere. My dads rust bucket was parked next to his Rolls! ). We weren't introduced! And I remember I had a book on Cyril Scott by Ian Parrott & my father said,'I met him!' (on a train).

Arnold doesn't sound like the kind of bloke you'd want to go drinking with,but we all have our problems! I recently invested in the Naxos (and some Conifer's s/h). Having previously enjoyed Arnold's music,but not being too sure whether the symphonies really hold together,I am now a convert & I think they are probably as good as some of Malcolm Arnold's most ardent admirers say they are.Arnold's assimilation of popular & classical idioms is very individual & I do think he is one of the very few composers to have ever pulled this off. Now,I really DON'T want to compare him with Mahler,but his use of 'popular music' in some of his symphonies ie No's 2,4,5,6,7 & 8,makes me think of Arnold as a sort of updated British equivalent,albeit,not on such an exalted level,perhaps (like Dundonnell,I dislike comparisons). No 4 is a case in point,with such a powerful slow movement. No 7 sounds very impressivel,to my untutored ears,in the Handley performance.Astonishingly original music!

Have to say I like Arnolds own recordings,but it was listening to some of these other interpretations that convinced me. Having said that,Arnold composed them,so who am I to argue with his own interpretations?

Arnold's strikes me as a bit of a maverick,like Brian & similarly controversial. Although,unlike Brian he didn't compose any colossal record breaking works,he was less philosophical about his neglect.......oh,and Brian didn't team up with Deep Purple! That COULD have been fun , and he certainly lived long enough,didn't he?

Brian's Concerto for orchestra & (rock) group? The mind boggles!

Incidentally,I remember years ago,there was a programme on,BBC2 I think,about Arnold,and I remember my parents sitting there waiting for the intro to finish,expecting a jolly little man who composed the English Dances & Beckus the Dandipratt & the first thing they saw was this embittered,depressed looking man,launching into a gloomy,miserable rant. The shock on my parents faces! This was at a time when a good deal of Arnold's music,including allot of the symphonies,remained unrecorded. Reading about them in a library book was like reading MM's book (s) on the Brian symphonies;they descriptions of them so tantalising. No's 4,6 & 7,for example. I remember thinking.'What do THEY sound like?' 'Will I EVER hear them?' Who would have though that only a few years later there would be all these recorded cycles?!!!

(Erm,back to Brian!!!! )

It's a brilliant film from 2004 called Toward the Unknown Region by Tony Palmer. Runs for well over 2 hours and well worth getting on DVD. It includes a cracking interveiw with Jon Lord and several sections of Brass Band music played by youth bands (Rochdale and Wardle). I came across Malcolm Arnold twice. Once in Leicester in 1963 when I heard him rehearse and then perform in concert with the LSSO. Very hearty and jovial. This was when I was very young, a few years before I got into the LSSO. The programme included Tam O'shanter, Till Eulenspiegel and The Young Persons Guide. Many years later - either 1998 or 2000 - I saw him in Dubai having a drink or two with a young man who was his carer I believe. Malcolm was a very versatile, agile musician. Very quick thinking and he wrote wonderful music almost at the drop of a hat. Unlike our hero HB (dons tin hat quickly) he was an expert orchestrator who knew the orchestra inside out and understood all the instruments and their limitations. Even when he wrote the Guitar Concerto (a very alien instument to him) Julian Bream only had to make one or two minor changes to make it playable. Much too tuneful and smart for the establishment was our Malcolm I'm afraid.

[Dundonnell]

The trouble with Malcolm Arnold from the 1970s and over the next two decades is that, as a consequence of his drink and other problems, he could be, and sadly often was, extremely abusive towards those who were continuing to try to help by getting his music performed. This included both orchestral management, conductors and orchestras. The jolly, cheerful Malcolm of 1963 had been replaced by a highy unpleasant and very sick character

[John Whitmore]

Wow! I wish I lived near a composer,or did! Musically,I've met Sir Geraint Evans once,very briefly (I told this story,here somewhere. My dads rust bucket was parked next to his Rolls! ). We weren't introduced! And I remember I had a book on Cyril Scott by Ian Parrott & my father said,'I met him!' (on a train).

Arnold doesn't sound like the kind of bloke you'd want to go drinking with,but we all have our problems! I recently invested in the Naxos (and some Conifer's s/h). Having previously enjoyed Arnold's music,but not being too sure whether the symphonies really hold together,I am now a convert & I think they are probably as good as some of Malcolm Arnold's most ardent admirers say they are.Arnold's assimilation of popular & classical idioms is very individual & I do think he is one of the very few composers to have ever pulled this off. Now,I really DON'T want to compare him with Mahler,but his use of 'popular music' in some of his symphonies ie No's 2,4,5,6,7 & 8,makes me think of Arnold as a sort of updated British equivalent,albeit,not on such an exalted level,perhaps (like Dundonnell,I dislike comparisons). No 4 is a case in point,with such a powerful slow movement. No 7 sounds very impressivel,to my untutored ears,in the Handley performance.Astonishingly original music!

Have to say I like Arnolds own recordings,but it was listening to some of these other interpretations that convinced me. Having said that,Arnold composed them,so who am I to argue with his own interpretations? Arnold's strikes me as a bit of a maverick,like Brian & similarly controversial. Although,unlike Brian he didn't compose any colossal record breaking works,he was less philosophical about his neglect.......oh,and Brian didn't team up with Deep Purple! That COULD have been fun , and he certainly lived long enough,didn't he?

Brian's Concerto for orchestra & (rock) group? The mind boggles!

Incidentally,I remember years ago,there was a programme on,BBC2 I think,about Arnold,and I remember my parents sitting there waiting for the intro to finish,expecting a jolly little man who composed the English Dances & Beckus the Dandipratt & the first thing they saw was this embittered,depressed looking man,launching into a gloomy,miserable rant. The shock on my parents faces! This was at a time when a good deal of Arnold's music,including allot of the symphonies,remained unrecorded. Reading about them in a library book was like reading MM's book (s) on the Brian symphonies;they descriptions of them so tantalising. No's 4,6 & 7,for example. I remember thinking.'What do THEY sound like?' 'Will I EVER hear them?' Who would have though that only a few years later there would be all these recorded cycles?!!!

(Erm,back to Brian!!!! )

Trouble is, not many composers are particularly gifted at conducting. It's a totally different skill. Britten was absolutely superb. Tippett was terrible. Bliss was highly professional and more than competent. Walton was OK but his recordings of his own music pale by comparison to those by Previn (Symphony No.1) and Szell (Partita and Symphony No.2). Oliver Knussen is technically amazing. As it turns out Malcolm Arnold was annoyingly good at everything. Wonderful composer, world class trumpet player and a dynamic inspirational conductor. I'm just listening to his recording with the LPO of his 3rd symphony. Great playing, beautifully conducted and the Everest sonics are staggering for something recorded in 1958.  Fabulous record. Sounds as good as new. Actually. I've just noticed that the theme from the slow movement was nicked by Planet of the Apes. Monkey business indeed.

[John Whitmore]

As promised, here's the Pope Brian 10. Pitch corrected by yours truly, repaired and with some special ingedients added by the Wizard of Oklahoma, Curt Timmons. This is as good as it will get.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8lpag733avfvpb7

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Many thanks both to you, John, and Curt!

[John Whitmore]

Has anyone downloaded the Schwarz recording of the 8th?  It's very good with a very assured and in tune opening - a passage that's always let down the Groves performance.

[Sergeant Rock]

Has anyone downloaded the Schwarz recording of the 8th?  It's very good with a very assured and in tune opening - a passage that's always let down the Groves performance.

Thank god I don't have perfect pitch 

As promised, here's the Pope Brian 10. Pitch corrected by yours truly, repaired and with some special ingedients added by the Wizard of Oklahoma, Curt Timmons. This is as good as it will get.

Thank you. I quite like this performance....including the slow opening. But then, I'm rather slow myself 

Sarge

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Quote from: John Whitmore on Today at 21:12:15

Has anyone downloaded the Schwarz recording of the 8th?  It's very good with a very assured and in tune opening - a passage that's always let down the Groves performance.



Well, the tuba solo isn't note-perfect (just preceding another descending piano scale)... But you can't have everything. 

[John Whitmore]

Quote from: John Whitmore on Today at 21:12:15

Has anyone downloaded the Schwarz recording of the 8th?  It's very good with a very assured and in tune opening - a passage that's always let down the Groves performance.



Well,

the tuba solo isn't note-perfect (just preceding another descending piano scale)... But you can't have everything. 

I've never heard a note perfect performance of anything either live or on record. It's the humans that spoil it. Stop being Mr Picky Have you listened to Curt's restoration yet? It sounds very good I must say. It's been said that had Sibelius only written one piece - Tapiola - he would still be classed as a great composer. I don't disagree. If Brian had only written the 10th symphony he would still be classed as a very good composer. I have no doubt about that. It's a splendid piece.   

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Have you listened to Curt's restoration yet? It sounds very good I must say.

I listened to it 3 times already... We've come a long way, it sounds perfectly acceptable! I wonder what Curt's 'secret ingredient' consists of? A voodoo ritual?


Great composer, Havergal Brian. 

[calyptorhynchus]

I've been listening to The Tigers again, and whilst I'm even more impressed by it, at the same time I'm even more intrigued by it.

Most of the discussion of it seems to focus on the 'anti-war' aspects of it. But I find the anti-war, anti-militarism aspects of the opera quite muted. The Tigers are presumably a Territorial Army regiment, not a regular army regiment, and the opera isn't set during WW1, but just as it begins, with a false alarm of a Zeppelin attack occurring in the final act. It could almost be understood as Kitchener's New Army ruefully nostalgic view of 'how we were before the war', how unprofessional the army was, how we underestimated what total war would be like. (Note how the Colonel of the Tigers, Sir John Stout, whilst depicted as absurd and given to issuing nonsensical and contradictory orders, is actually treated quite sympathetically).

You can see there's a lot of satire of operas like Hugh the Drover, showing the English folk going about their traditional business, in The Tigers, and this type of action is disrupted by farce (the young man on the elephant being chased by police, the illiterate stall holders, the soldier-worshipping clergy and so forth), but not by brutal reality, and there is a sense that these elements are still valid, for example the way that Columbine and Pantaloon emerge from the Carnival at the end of the Prelude, or the Tigers making merry with the harvestgirls rather than taking part in military manoeuvres (as you would).

The way I think I understand the opera is that it is saying that both the pre-war Edwardian summer of Englishness greatness and our knowledge of the horrors of the War (actually not articulated in the opera) are not real responses to the experience of the last so many years of late C19 and early C20 life (Brian's life-time). What are the real responses? where do they come from? Perhaps, the opera suggests, they come from the life of the untrammelled, dream-like imagination that is presented to us in the opera in the Symphonic Dances which contain the most amazingly impressive music (NB the title of these, is Brian saying, 'well here's an opera, but I think my symphonies will contain my real imaginative life' ?).

This is underlined by the fact that here, as in the Gothic, the voices are subordinated to the music. That is, whilst the words and the word-setting, vocal melodies &c are not incompetent or uninteresting, the main interest in the Opera is in the orchestral music, and the most impressive vocal writing is where the voices, usually the chorus, becomes a part of the orchestra and what they are singing is less important than the sound they make (again as with the Gothic).

I think that in this opera Brian was doing something similar to what he did in writing the Gothic, thinking in effect 'right, they're not performing my music, I don't care, I'll just write the most extraordinary music I am capable of, with no regard for any practicalities of performance, that'll show them'. I don't think we ever see this opera staged (how do you have an elephant on stage? Or a dog and a donkey fighting?), but it did occur to me that what we might see, and this would apply to other operas where the staging is a problem, like The Ring, is a studio performance coupled on a DVD with sophisticated art-cartoon version of the opera.

The music, it goes without saying. is of the most incredible power and delicacy. I am reminded of the C19 inventor who used his newly-invented steam-hammer to crack an egg. Contrary to the heresies flying around here about Brian's orchestration, I think he was one of the masters of the orchestra of the C20, if a passage sounds to someone with a good knowledge of classical music as thick, heavy and inappropriate, then presumably this is exactly what Brian intended, and you have to ask what this means for an understanding of the work. You can find plenty of examples in The Tigers of music that is deliberately plodding and thick, and these are for satiric or parodic purposes, so the same would hold true for such passages in the symphonies.

One final thing I noted with amusement was how the theme of an older man in love with a younger woman crops up, with Columbine and Pantaloon in the Prelude and with Sir John Stout and Mrs Pamela Freebody in the rest of the opera. Is this a reflection on Brian relationship with his second wife, who was younger than him?