Elgar and Berlioz Compared

[lukeottevanger]

It's okay to like symphonies of any other composer but if I say I prefer Elgar's symphonies people are like "What? You like Elgar's 2nd symphony?" Well, it just happens to be the best symphony I have heard in my life. Until I hear a better one it will be the best symphony in the world for me. If there were 10 times more Elgarians in the world I wouldn't perhaps feel an alien, but there aren't. I

You really don't need this persecution complex! No one is in the least against you loving Elgar's Second more than any other symphony - their argument is when you try to make some objective case that it is definitively the best symphony of all. It may well be so to you, but it isn't to them, or to most music lovers, so why shouldn't they be able to say so without you feeling persecuted? I would hope people would take me to task if I made a similar statement about e.g. Janacek's 2nd Quartet, which in truth I happen to prefer to all other quartets, and which affects me more profoundly than all other quartets, but which I couldn't in all honesty say, objectively, is the best quartet ever written.

In the same way no one is in the least against Elgarians (any more than they are against Sibelians, Straussians, Mahlerians, Berliozians and Boulezbians; Wagnerians, of course, are another matter ). He's just one more great composer composer, a great composer of some wonderful music most of us wouldn't want to be without. He's just not, in the generally accepted view, one of the very top rank.

What really rubs some of us up the wrong way is your contention/implication that there's some kind of conspiracy out there, because otherwise, to sum up the impression your posts make, the composer you like best would surely be thought of as the best by everyone else. It is fairly insulting, actually, because your posts have an all-knowing attitude about other composers - 'I tried that, I realised it wasn't very good' - which betrays a lack of humility which we really ought to feel in the face of great music.

[71 dB]

Boulezbians;

Is that a new sexual minority? 

[lukeottevanger]

Is that a new sexual minority? 

Just a silly choral scholar's joke from my student days....

[71 dB]

Just a silly choral scholar's joke from my student days....

Okay. Janacek is one composer I need to explore. I know next to nothing about him.

[Harry]

Okay. Janacek is one composer I need to explore. I know next to nothing about him.

You should my friend, and there are plenty of good and cheap recordings, just look on JPC!

[71 dB]

You should my friend, and there are plenty of good and cheap recordings, just look on JPC!

I am almost done exploring Rodrigo so Janacek could be the next target... ...but I don't have a clue where to start. Opera? Piano music? String Quartets?

[Harry]

I am almost done exploring Rodrigo so Janacek could be the next target... ...but I don't have a clue where to start. Opera? Piano music? String Quartets?

Start with the pieces for piano, on a cheap Brilliant two far box, that will give you insight into Janacek's harmonies, they go for the SQ, and from thereon you can figure out yourself if he is your man our not. From the SQ there are many cheap and good recordings, so plenty to chose!

[MishaK]

Start with the pieces for piano, on a cheap Brilliant two far box, that will give you insight into Janacek's harmonies, they go for the SQ, and from thereon you can figure out yourself if he is your man our not. From the SQ there are many cheap and good recordings, so plenty to chose!

Or you could start with his Sinfonietta or the amazing Glagolitic Mass.

[Harry]

Or you could start with his Sinfonietta or the amazing Glagolitic Mass.

Well the Sinfonietta yes, but is the Mass not a bit too strong for someone beginning with Janacek?

[lukeottevanger]

No, I don't think so, not if they already love Gerontius - though the Glagolitic does pack a pretty extraordinary punch. The essential Janacek, IMO, is:

1 Glagolitic Mass
2 Quartets
3 Piano pieces (Mists, Sonata, Overgrown Path)
4 Choruses (Bezruc)
5 Operas (Vixen, Katya, House of the Dead, Makropulous, Broucek)
and then other bits and pieces - above all the Diary, then Mladi, Concertino, Capriccio, Sinfonietta, Fiddler's Child and (for the full picture) Riklada, before all others, I'd say.

Of these, for the most concentrated Janacek of all I'd recommend the Diary and the Second Quartet.

I must emphasize that Janacek is something special and unique, not just 'another composer' - this isn't just IMO, I think, he's generally recognised as a very special, stand-alone case. Rodrigo is all very well, a nice composer indeed, but Janacek is something very different - I find it funny to see this implied equality between them! But hopefully you'll discover that for yourself when you get to know his music.

[71 dB]

Start with the pieces for piano, on a cheap Brilliant two far box, that will give you insight into Janacek's harmonies, they go for the SQ, and from thereon you can figure out yourself if he is your man our not. From the SQ there are many cheap and good recordings, so plenty to chose!

Okay thanks! 

Or you could start with his Sinfonietta or the amazing Glagolitic Mass.

Thanks!  Glagolitic Mass sounds promising.

Well the Sinfonietta yes, but is the Mass not a bit too strong for someone beginning with Janacek?

Please don't underestimate me Harry.

No, I don't think so, not if they already love Gerontius - though the Glagolitic does pack a pretty extraordinary punch. The essential Janacek, IMO, is:

1 Glagolitic Mass
2 Quartets
3 Piano pieces (Mists, Sonata, Overgrown Path)
4 Choruses (Bezruc)
5 Operas (Vixen, Katya, House of the Dead, Makropulous, Broucek)
and then other bits and pieces - above all the Diary, then Mladi, Concertino, Capriccio, Sinfonietta, Fiddler's Child and (for the full picture) Riklada, before all others, I'd say.

Of these, for the most concentrated Janacek of all I'd recommend the Diary and the Second Quartet.

I must emphasize that Janacek is something special and unique, not just 'another composer' - this isn't just IMO, I think, he's generally recognised as a very special, stand-alone case. Rodrigo is all very well, a nice composer indeed, but Janacek is something very different - I find it funny to see this implied equality between them! But hopefully you'll discover that for yourself when you get to know his music.

Thanks! This helps me a lot! I didn't compare Rodrigo and Janacek. I am just almost done with exploring Rodrigo (buying his works on CD) and I can start funding other exploring projects. It could be Janacek's turn.

[lukeottevanger]

This helps me a lot! I didn't compare Rodrigo and Janacek.

No, I know you didn't, I just found the juxtaposition amusing, as you would if someone said something like 'well, I've nearly finished getting hold of all the music of Mozkowsky, so perhaps I'll try Elgar next'  - the implied equality is funny, no?

[71 dB]

No, I know you didn't, I just found the juxtaposition amusing, as you would if someone said something like 'well, I've nearly finished getting hold of all the music of Mozkowsky, so perhaps I'll try Elgar next'  - the implied equality is funny, no?

Well, isn't it a good idea to explore something very different for a change? 

[Mark G. Simon]

Elgar's orchestration is like a Victorian living room: chock full of heavy, upholstered furniture, overlaid with doilies and swaths of fabrics, hung with ancestral armour and old brasses, carved oak and tapestry from distant Rome, rare "blue and white" Venetian finger-glasses, rich oriental rugs, luxurious sofa pillows, and everything that isn't old, from Gillow's.

He never wrote a woodwind solo he didn't feel the need to double in some other instrument.

[lukeottevanger]

Hmm, that may be a slight exaggeration! Actually, what is unusual about Elgar's orchestration is its extreme precision - the most careful calculation of doubling I've seen in music of this period, so that the colours are constantly shifting, mosaic-like (as McVeagh puts it). There is also his amazing attention to detail in matters of articulation (!) and subtleties of notation - I've been re-reading through Gerontius and some other works these last days and noticed all sorts of notational oddities that can only really be explained by an ultra-sensitivity to nuance and indeed to an understanding of the mentality of the orchestral player. So it won't do to cariacature him as just ladling on the doublings unthinkingly. It seems he was often praised by his performers for his practical considerations - writing music that was always playable, and that always 'sounded', and that always had purpose, (even if the purpose was a practical one, such as a pp bass clarinet doubling that is actually a way for the the player to warm up their instrument before a big solo). In this, he has been seen by some orchestral players as unique, exceeding Wagner, Strauss etc. in these matter.

Just to be fair....

[T-C]

5 Operas (Vixen, Katya, House of the Dead, Makropulous, Broucek)

Have you deliberately excluded Jenufa?

This is the first Janacek work I got acquainted with.

And of course, Taras Bulba is another exciting orchestral work.

[lukeottevanger]

Have you deliberately excluded Jenufa?

This is the first Janacek work I got acquainted with.

And of course, Taras Bulba is another exciting orchestral work.

Yes, it was deliberate. Jenufa is a very great, significant and powerful work, but I've never honestly considered it the equal of the last five, which taken together present a much more mature, integrated and fully-rounded picture of Janacek (Broucek being the one I would drop first, though, of those five). This is just IMO, naturally, and I still think Jenufa is a wonderful piece, vastly more powerful and gut-wrenching than any other similarly 'realistic' opera of the time. I just think that Janacek could do even better than it, so it doesn't make the very top of my list. So, for instance, although of course they are very different operas, there is enough similarity in Katya, for instance, for us to compare the two profitably, and Katya I think comes off as pretty undoubtedly the superior work.

Taras Bulba I think is the weakest of Janacek's well-known orchestral pieces (there are lesser ones, even among his mature pieces, such as the Ballad of Blanik, which is relatively uninspired, I think, though even then a very memorable and interesting piece); again, though, it is chock-full of very beautiful or exciting stuff and typically Janacekian, at least on a note-to-note level. It suffers, I think, from a lack of involvement - Janacek is at his best when every note has really been through the fires, as it were, and I don't think this was the case with Taras Bulba, which seems a little forced, more like the sort of thing other composers write in comparison with e.g. the lesser known but more personal Fiddler's Child. The latter is just IMO, of course, but it should be noted in passing that there is a tendency to find Taras Bulba quite a troubling work in this respect; some people, for instance, feeling it to be let down structurally.

However, all Janacek is superb, really, from Amarus onwards, and I'm just nit-picking - every one of these works is something very special.

[quintett op.57]

Personnally I love both, with a slight preference for Berlioz (I guess they are in my top 10 & top 20 respectively, thanks to 71db regarding the 2nd).
I love Elgar's 1st symphony, including the 1st movement (I didn't notice it was 20mn long before I read it on the booklet).

I find it a good kind of thread, as it is really surprising. Who else would have thought of comparing Elgar and Berlioz?

My knowledge of Elgar is still limited to his orchestral works but it's enough for me to assume they are really different .
I find it possible that Elgar's orchestration was influenced by Berlioz, but it does not change that they're not similar in form and in expressivity. One sticking to the classical development when the other "almost" writing his symphonies like an opera. And I'm not talking about Romeo & Juliet, which I consider as an oratorio  (Is there a reason why I'd be wrong?)

It was impossible that Berlioz wrote a real concerto, I assume. He wrote the most concerting work he could. This guy needed to give an important role to every instrument of the orchestra, each one of them being a passion for him.

I also assume that normally, we shouldn't pronounce the "Z" at the end of his name (as well as for "Avoriaz" or "Chamonix", cities of his region). But it's true I keep pronoucing it anyway"

[lukeottevanger]

And I'm not talking about Romeo & Juliet, which I consider as an oratorio  (Is there a reason why I'd be wrong?)

Well, the fact that Berlioz thought of it and conceived it as a symphony? - explicitly 'neither an opera in concert form nor a cantata, but a symphony with chorus'

It's a unique form that he evolved in this piece, but it's closer to symphony than oratorio if only for the reason that the bulk of the work, the terrific central movements, are purely orchestral. The vocal parts are confined to the outer movements, and they are purely to set the scene and get the plot out of the way, so that the central sections don't have to be burdened with setting it, but can take wing according to inner musical logic. I find this a very interesting attempt to solve the problem of abstract vs. programmatic music.

The notes to the Eulenburg score puts it this way

The composer has restricted the solo voices to narration, realizing that if they were given dialogue or musical characterization he would have found himself writing an opera or canata. He has solved the problem of maintaining a symphonic medium by relegating the textual exposition to the first part of the symphony in which he outlines the whole story in recitative style. In this way he has disencumbered himself of verbal impedimenta and is free to translate into purely orchestral tones the supreme moments of Shakespeare's tale as he had seen and experienced them many years before

which uis exaclty what I said, only better expressed!

[quintett op.57]

allright