Vaughan Williams's Veranda

Started by karlhenning, April 12, 2007, 06:03:44 AM

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vandermolen

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 03:14:08 PM
I think I actually have the 5th symphony because I have a Telarc disc of the Tallis Fantasia with RPO/Previn which also has the 5th on it. The Tallis Fantasia is the only VW piece I know very well because I once performed it with my chamber group in Berlin. There is a chance I might still have a copy of the recording of the concert (every time I am reminded of this, I could hit my head against the wall because when I last came across the tape, I think that was when I packed for moving to the US 5 years ago, I didn't set it aside but packed it up with other stuff...).
Anyway, when I listened to the 5th, I didn't find much access to the music. I might buy the download of that Boult recording. I think I also have the 6th and 9th with LSO/Previn somewhere. Did Previn understand the very special "idiom"?

By the way, the CD I recommended above (Berglund/Gibson) has a wonderful performance of the Tallis Fantasia conducted by Constantin Sivestri in Winchester Cathedral; my favourite version of this much recorded work.
"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).

drogulus

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 03:14:08 PM
Did Previn understand the very special "idiom"?

    Idioms aren't special, as you probably know. It's just what's been done and passed down. For me, Previn sounds like an insider, someone who understands what the music requires without a lot of work (not that he didn't do it. Perhaps the work paid off).

   
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M forever

Quote from: drogulus on August 29, 2008, 04:16:22 PM
Idioms aren't special, as you probably know.

I didn't, actually. I thought a specific "idiom" is always "special" (as well as specific) because it is a distinct set of expressive and stylistic means.

Quote from: drogulus on August 29, 2008, 04:16:22 PM
It's just what's been done and passed down.

The question is, what has "been done and passed down"?

drogulus

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 04:21:11 PM
I didn't, actually. I thought a specific "idiom" is always "special" (as well as specific) because it is a distinct set of expressive and stylistic means.

The question is, what has "been done and passed down"?

     Yes, you know the lingo, I see. Also, you probably know something about how it's used by performers, which I wouldn't know, not being one. So how about you cut the shit with your mock questions and tell me what, in your educated opinion, "a distinct set of expressive and stylistic means" means from a working musicians perspective. We listeners would like to know, and I said in an earlier post, I'd like to know.

     I recognize, within limits, what so-called authentic performances sound like, though I've made it clear that recognizing something as familiar and liking it are not the same as knowing in detail how this is accomplished.
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M forever

I can't tell you what's "idiomatic" when it comes to VW because I don't know the music well (in fact, very little). That's why I am asking. ome experts here pointed or rather hinted at a particular idiom and some musicians' familiarity (or lack thereof) , so I want to know, what characterizes that? You said yourself that to you, Previn sounds "like an insider", what elements of his interpretations make you think that?

I just listened to the 6th symphony which was quite interesting although I wouldn't pretend that I got more than a superficial first impression. I couldn't follow the music completely. My initial reaction was like, OK, so what was your point? I am not sure I get what the music tries to express, both in musical or extra-musical (if any) dimensions. I could tell though he really liked Ravel, Nielsen, and Janáček.

drogulus

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 06:52:25 PM
I can't tell you what's "idiomatic" when it comes to VW because I don't know the music well (in fact, very little). That's why I am asking. ome experts here pointed or rather hinted at a particular idiom and some musicians' familiarity (or lack thereof) , so I want to know, what characterizes that? You said yourself that to you, Previn sounds "like an insider", what elements of his interpretations make you think that?

I just listened to the 6th symphony which was quite interesting although I wouldn't pretend that I got more than a superficial first impression. I couldn't follow the music completely. My initial reaction was like, OK, so what was your point? I am not sure I get what the music tries to express, both in musical or extra-musical (if any) dimensions. I could tell though he really liked Ravel, Nielsen, and Janáček.

    OK, there are 2 things here. One is knowing what is or isn't idiomatic, the way I and others have used this expression. The second thing is what makes a particular performance idiomatic. What am I recognizing as familiar and convincing? That's what I don't know. I haven't heard the Previn since I owned the LP 20 years ago, so what impressed me about it has been lost.

    Now your point about RVW ("OK, so what was your point?") is in fact a very common reaction to his music, in part because of its modal nature. It seems that it just goes round and round. There are all these minor seconds and thirds that just keep piling up and where are they going? I can easily put myself in the frame of mind of someone who doesn't know what's going on. So I think that rather than understanding RVWs music I've been accustomed to it after it grabbed me at a very early age. I recognize that RVW does to some extent represent a special problem without knowing how exactly.
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M forever

I think parts of the first movement are his answer to Gershwin's "American in Paris"  $:) I like the somewhat improvisatory, strolling nature of that music though, with lots of small surprises and unexpected turns here and there. The interesting thing is that in other sections, the same disjointedness of musical thought is there, too, with long, rambling declamations which appear to me to be more the attempt at an than an actually widely arched statement. But again, these are just first impressions. I have a feeling this performance isn't as coherent as it could (and should) be. A lot of phrase turns aren't really shaped, they just happen, and there are no special inflections in most of these places. So I have the feeling that the conductor doesn't have an overall concept, he seems to shape the music a little bit as it goes along, but many of these phrase turns appear to surprise him, too, as some passages sound rather awkward.

scarpia

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 10:27:41 AM
Did you mean the string sound or the grunting part?

I consider the string sound to be a superficial attribute in comparison with the grunting.

lukeottevanger

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 06:52:25 PM
I can't tell you what's "idiomatic" when it comes to VW because I don't know the music well (in fact, very little). That's why I am asking. ome experts here pointed or rather hinted at a particular idiom and some musicians' familiarity (or lack thereof) , so I want to know, what characterizes that? You said yourself that to you, Previn sounds "like an insider", what elements of his interpretations make you think that?

I just listened to the 6th symphony which was quite interesting although I wouldn't pretend that I got more than a superficial first impression. I couldn't follow the music completely. My initial reaction was like, OK, so what was your point? I am not sure I get what the music tries to express, both in musical or extra-musical (if any) dimensions. I could tell though he really liked Ravel, Nielsen, and Janáček.

I find it very doubtful he knew very much Janáček, FWIW. In his book 'National Music' he doesn't mention the name once; when he talks about Czech music only the names of Dvorak and Smetana are found. OTOH, about a decade after the composition of VW's 6th we find Tippett writing of Jenufa with the joy and wonder of a great discovery - to paraphrase, 'I'd heard of this composer, but I didn't expect anything like this!'. If that was the case for Tippett, a younger composer as aware of 'The Repertoire' as any other British composer, I'm sure it was for VW too.

Re the 6th - its structure, its 'point' to use your word, was devastatingly clear to me from the first time I heard it as a youngster: the alternation of aggressive, demonic and destructive forces (nagging ostinati, wheeling and wheedling tritones, galumphing cross-rhythms...) with folk-music-type lyricism forms the heart of the first movement (reminds me somewhat of Brian's 8th - would be an interesting and revealing coupling!). In the central movements negativity has the upper hand, so that the unique bleached-out epilogue is all that is left to be said. This movement is sometimes seen as a post-nuclear wasteland, which would make the various elements of the rest of the symphony somehow warlike in association. That makes some sense, of course - certainly we have martial elements, grotesqueries, 'grace-under-fire' and so on - but we ought to be careful about ascribing this sort of thing. Especially as VW said elsewhere when such subtexts were applied to his music "...why can't a fellow just write a piece of music?"

A very penetrating, revealing read is Wilfrid Meller's study on VW, the 'Vision of Albion'. One of those books which takes analysis to the point it always aims at but rarely achieves: a real elucidation of why the music works as it does, why it has the strong-but-previously-indescribable emotional impact that it has. His explanation of the implication of false relations, for instance, is extraordinary and, speaking from my own listening experience, absolutely correct, though until I'd read it, I had no idea that this was why I experienced the music as I did.

I second, BTW, the advice to listen to the sequence 4-5-6....but I'm loath to leave out 3, which is an equally remarkable work (and pre-dates Ligeti by decades in its use of 'out-of-tune' natural horn playing!)

lukeottevanger

#629
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 29, 2008, 11:08:45 PM
I find it very doubtful he knew very much Janáček, FWIW. In his book 'National Music' he doesn't mention the name once; when he talks about Czech music only the names of Dvorak and Smetana are found. OTOH, about a decade after the composition of VW's 6th we find Tippett writing of Jenufa with the joy and wonder of a great discovery - to paraphrase, 'I'd heard of this composer, but I didn't expect anything like this!'. If that was the case for Tippett, a younger composer as aware of 'The Repertoire' as any other British composer, I'm sure it was for VW too.


I wrote this and then suddenly remembered Janacek's single visit to Britain in 1926, at the behest of Rosa Newmarch. I remembered that Henry Wood had played a role in the welcoming committee, but then I had a flash of recollection that RVW did too, though how much he knew of Janacek's music at this time when hardly anyone knew much of it is unknown to me. This interesting article from Musicweb implies that despite being on the committee, as a composer with his interest in 'national music' ought to be, he can't have known much, as I suspect, for the reasons outlined before.

QuoteJanáček visited London only once in his life-during April-May 1926 at the time of the General Strike-at the invitation of an influential group of English musicians headed by Rosa Newmarch who, at that time, was the leading propagandist of Czech music in Britain. Others on the committee were Sir Henry Wood, Adrian Boult, Sir Hugh Allen and Vaughan Williams. Janáček's music was then little known in England although his operas (particularly Jenůfa) were becoming increasingly popular elsewhere. In the same year as Janáček visited London, Jenůfa was played in about seventy different opera houses: the first English production, however, did not occur till thirty years later.

(that's the production that Tippett found so revelatory.)

J.Z. Herrenberg

#630
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 29, 2008, 11:08:45 PM
Re the 6th - its structure, its 'point' to use your word, was devastatingly clear to me from the first time I heard it as a youngster

Same here. For the rest - excellent post. I am reading 'The Vision of Albion' at the moment - it shows extraordinary insight into what makes RVW tick. I would recommend it only to those already 'touched' by his music, though (and who possess some grounding in the mechanics of music). Elucidation can only become revelatory if you are already 'inside', so to speak.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Christo

Quote from: vandermolen on August 29, 2008, 03:01:22 PM
(empty that is apart from the occasional Dutch airforce jet fighter

We were similarly exposed to them in our "polder": in those days they were Starfighters, and occasionally a Northrop 5

Quote from: vandermolen on August 29, 2008, 03:01:22 PM
William Golding; interesting. I will look out for that.  In fact I had to study Golding's novels in my first year at university. I enjoyed Lord of the Flies but found works like Pincher Martin rather heavy going.  My feelings may be different now.

I enjoyed all of his novels, especially Free Fall, Rites of Passage and his unfinished The Double Tongue. I mentioned his name because I guess there might be some similarities between his interests and yours, but that's just my intuition.

Poortvliet at Tholen: never been there, but I imagine the landscape to be rather similar to where I grew up. An ideal setting for Vaughan Williams, imo.  ;)
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

vandermolen

#632
Quote from: Christo on August 29, 2008, 11:56:05 PM
We were similarly exposed to them in our "polder": in those days they were Starfighters, and occasionally a Northrop 5

I enjoyed all of his novels, especially Free Fall, Rites of Passage and his unfinished The Double Tongue. I mentioned his name because I guess there might be some similarities between his interests and yours, but that's just my intuition.

Poortvliet at Tholen: never been there, but I imagine the landscape to be rather similar to where I grew up. An ideal setting for Vaughan Williams, imo.  ;)



Actually I was knocked off my bicycle by a Dutch airforce jet. Not literally, of course, otherwise I would not be here, but it flew so low above me, as I was cyclying along, minding my own business, huming Vaughan Williams's 9th Symphony to myself, that I had a big fright and turned my bike into a ditch  ::)

Other than that, you are right, the landscape went very well with Symphony No 9.  Happy memories (apart from the Starfighter, or whatever it was !).

I usually associate VW with landscape. Nos 1,2 and 7 are obvious but No 6 always is associated in mind with the bleaker elements of the English countryside, probably because of the photo of the Lake District (Blea Tarn in Cumbria) on the sleeve of my old Decca Eclipse LP.  such is the power of association. Interestingly, the same area features on the cover painting of Kees Bakels's Naxos recording of Symphony 6.
"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).

lukeottevanger

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 07:36:23 PM
I think parts of the first movement are his answer to Gershwin's "American in Paris"  $:)

I find this a most surprising link! I'd be interested to hear your reasons for making it. I suppose, if I look totally objectively at the piece, I could with difficulty twist some of its features - major-minor harmonies, syncopated marching/walking figures - so as to force a connection with the Gershwin, but it's an enormous stretch. To me, this whole movement is cries of pain, destruction, brutishness (unusually, the fairly complex syncopations and rhythmic dislocations cause the music to become deliberately lumpen and degraded), lyricism momentarily resurgent....

Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 07:36:23 PM
I like the somewhat improvisatory, strolling nature of that music though, with lots of small surprises and unexpected turns here and there. The interesting thing is that in other sections, the same disjointedness of musical thought is there, too, with long, rambling declamations which appear to me to be more the attempt at an than an actually widely arched statement. But again, these are just first impressions. I have a feeling this performance isn't as coherent as it could (and should) be. A lot of phrase turns aren't really shaped, they just happen, and there are no special inflections in most of these places. So I have the feeling that the conductor doesn't have an overall concept, he seems to shape the music a little bit as it goes along, but many of these phrase turns appear to surprise him, too, as some passages sound rather awkward.

Deryck Cooke chose this symphony as the subject of one of the two extended studies that form the last part of his classic 'The Language of Music' (the other was Mozart #40). He saw it as a work of extreme urgency and great communicative power, and as one which used that 'language of music' in such a way as to ensure compelling sweep and unity from start to finish. That's certainly how I've always experienced the work - as one of the most compelling and stripped-down of all 20th century symphonies. Just FWIW.

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 30, 2008, 04:58:10 AM
I find this a most surprising link!

This suddenly brings back my memory of listening to VW's London symphony for the first time - the 'jaunty' (Mellers) second subject of the first movement also reminded me of Gershwin (I didn't know Elgar's Cockaigne, then, or Walton's Portsmouth Point, which inhabit some of the same world).
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

lukeottevanger

Now, that connection I can understand a little more. 'A Gloucestershirian in London', perhaps. With horse 'jingles' replacing car-horns.

drogulus

#636
Quote from: M forever on August 29, 2008, 07:36:23 PM
I think parts of the first movement are his answer to Gershwin's "American in Paris"  $:) I like the somewhat improvisatory, strolling nature of that music though, with lots of small surprises and unexpected turns here and there. The interesting thing is that in other sections, the same disjointedness of musical thought is there, too, with long, rambling declamations which appear to me to be more the attempt at an than an actually widely arched statement. But again, these are just first impressions. I have a feeling this performance isn't as coherent as it could (and should) be. A lot of phrase turns aren't really shaped, they just happen, and there are no special inflections in most of these places. So I have the feeling that the conductor doesn't have an overall concept, he seems to shape the music a little bit as it goes along, but many of these phrase turns appear to surprise him, too, as some passages sound rather awkward.

    I don't think Gershwin is right. The London Symphony premiered in 1914, An American in Paris in 1928. The rest of your impressions sound spot on, but note that I have the same reactions after decades of listening to these works. Vaughan Williams is a composer whose difficulties don't disappear with time, they're just there. You either accept what he does or you don't, and some people never do. This is a problem I don't have with Sibelius, Hindemith, Shostakovitch, or Copland (and certainly not with Mahler or Strauss, who by comparison compose like schoolboys eager to please their instructor). I do have it with Roy Harris, who goes off on inexplicable tangents in his music that leave me baffled, not unlike Vaughan Williams.

         
Quote(apart from the Starfighter, or whatever it was !).

     

    I read a book some years ago that analyzed RVWs music in some detail. It mostly flew right over my head, though I might understand it a little better today. I wish I could remember what it was.

     Edit: Could it have been the Kennedy book?
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Mark G. Simon

Quote from: Jezetha on August 30, 2008, 05:09:33 AM
This suddenly brings back my memory of listening to VW's London symphony for the first time - the 'jaunty' (Mellers) second subject of the first movement also reminded me of Gershwin (I didn't know Elgar's Cockaigne, then, or Walton's Portsmouth Point, which inhabit some of the same world).

But it's just got to be some kind of English or Scottish folk song. Is this the theme with the syncopation in the first bar? (sol-la---do-re---mi----sol) The 5th-8th bars of it sound like "Loch Lomond". A lot of themes in this movement sound like folk songs.

lukeottevanger

Quote from: Mark G. Simon on August 30, 2008, 09:24:04 AM
But it's just got to be some kind of English or Scottish folk song. Is this the theme with the syncopation in the first bar? (sol-la---do-re---mi----sol) The 5th-8th bars of it sound like "Loch Lomond". A lot of themes in this movement sound like folk songs.

IIRC the only genuine folk songs quoted in VW symphonies are to be found buried somewhere in the scherzo of the Sea Symphony. In general he doesn't use folk songs as source material in works that aren't arrangements.

Mark G. Simon

Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 30, 2008, 09:47:59 AM
IIRC the only genuine folk songs quoted in VW symphonies are to be found buried somewhere in the scherzo of the Sea Symphony. In general he doesn't use folk songs as source material in works that aren't arrangements.


But he knew them well enough that he could come up with his own tunes in the same style.