Vaughan Williams's Veranda

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

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lukeottevanger

Quote from: M forever on August 30, 2008, 05:55:28 PM
I said more than just influenced, not lifted. Please don't twist my words.

I wasn't trying to twist your words, I merely felt this strong inference in them. If you don't want your views misrepresented, then it's best not to leave such darkly suggestive phrases as 'a lot of the material is more than just "influenced" ' hanging around!  ;D I still think that the most obvious reading of this phrase implies that the unconsciousness of influence has been superceded by the consciousness of copying. Which = lifting.

lukeottevanger

#661
Quote from: M forever on August 30, 2008, 06:04:47 PM
I actually thik that's quite interesting, and something to think about. It will definitely be a while anyway before I form more of an actual own opinion than these first impressions I shared here.

Glad you think so, and also glad you are keeping an open mind on VW. Not, as you may think, because I'm a particularly avid fan of his - actually, I love a lot of his music and think that he attained a fascinating and unique style, but he's not a main area of interest for me and I know nothing about him compared to others on this thread. No, I'm simply pleased that you're keeping an open mind because he is worth discovering, he does offer real rewards and insights to the listener. if possible, I would suggest that you take it on trust from those here who know their VW that he's worth it, and that he's an original, and try not to hear him 'in terms of' other composers* - an understandable habit, which we probably all share when listening to a new-to-us composer, but not really a helpful one.

*as I said before, no one will deny that other composers influenced VW in small ways, just as even the greatest composer bears traces of others, but that's not really important in the appreciation of his music. If, listening to La Mer for the first time, I'd got stuck on the fact that it reminded me of Franck in some ways, and had allowed that to inform my image of the composer, it would have somewhat inhibited my appreciation of his originality.

M forever

Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 30, 2008, 11:52:50 PM
Glad you think so, and also glad you are keeping an open mind on VW. Not, as you may think, because I'm a particularly avid fan of his - actually, I love a lot of his music and think that he attained a fascinating and unique style, but he's not a main area of interest for me and I know nothing about him compared to others on this thread. No, I'm simply pleased that you're keeping an open mind because he is worth discovering, he does offer real rewards and insights to the listener. if possible, I would suggest that you take it on trust from those here who know their VW that he's worth it, and that he's an original, and try not to hear him 'in terms of' other composers - an understandable habit, which we probably all share when listening to a new-to-use composer, but not really a helpful one.

Not everything stylistically copied or imitated is directly "lifted". It's not that simple. It's not either "unconsciously" influenced (which I find very strange, since one can be very consciously influenced and still process the influences to arrive at original forms of expression) or, as the only alternative, consciously "lifted". There are many stages in between.
And conscious copying or quoting can also be original in a way if the context is.


Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 30, 2008, 11:52:50 PM
Glad you think so, and also glad you are keeping an open mind on VW. Not, as you may think, because I'm a particularly avid fan of his - actually, I love a lot of his music and think that he attained a fascinating and unique style, but he's not a main area of interest for me and I know nothing about him compared to others on this thread. No, I'm simply pleased that you're keeping an open mind because he is worth discovering, he does offer real rewards and insights to the listener. if possible, I would suggest that you take it on trust from those here who know their VW that he's worth it, and that he's an original, and try not to hear him 'in terms of' other composers - an understandable habit, which we probably all share when listening to a new-to-use composer, but not really a helpful one.

I don't have that habit. At all. I am actually looking for and hoping for new and unheard styles of music when I discover new repertoire. Often, when I hear music that I don't connect with but that I notice has interesting elements that might take time or another mindset or mood to appreciate, I set the music aside and return to it at some other point. That usually works well.
But so far, I have to say that with the exception of the fairly original and well crafted Tallis Fantasia, what I have heard does not make me very interested and curious at all. I listened to the London Symphony and the 9th in the meantime, and it's basically the same disjointed, rambling, all-over-the-place throwing in of musical ideas and materials that I have heard in other works. I find the ending of the 9th symphony laughable, like a bad joke, a Schickele-type parody - but my feeling is that it is supposed to be somehow "grand". He does come up with some interesting ideas and sounds, but I don't see the scope of symphonic music in that at all. But there is a lot of grand gesturing going on.
I prefer composers who actually have some degree of self-criticism and who don't think that everything they come up with has to go on the page. Composers who develop and refine and concentrate their material. Have you ever heard the first version of Sibelius' 5th? It has most of the great musical ideas that the revised version has, plus a lot of hollow musical filler material. Then Sibelius withdrew the symphony and boiled it down to the concise but truly epic masterwork it now is. I don't have that sense of compelling musical argument when I listen to VW's music at all. There are lots of nice sounds, and some interesting phrase turns here and there, and a lot of random stuff in between.

vandermolen

 I think that you are either tuned in to the Vaughan Williams idiom (whatever that is) or you are not. If you are, you can look forward to a life time of musical discovery; if not, you will, no doubt, find the same thing elsewhere. I think that it's as simple as that, but I always try to keep an open mind to composers whose music has hitherto eluded me.
"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).

M forever

Quote from: vandermolen on August 31, 2008, 12:29:06 AM
I think that you are either tuned in to the Vaughan Williams idiom (whatever that is)

Yes, whatever that is. What had made me interested was when I asked the question, what is that actually, and I was surprised by how little real feedback that question triggered. I think there isn't much of a special "idiom" there, just a lot of collected musical material. There are many composers with wildly varying styles whose music immediately makes a striking impression, one way or another. This music leaves me with the feeling that in order to get 5 minutes worth of really good material, I have to sit through 45 minutes of musical blabla. I rarely ever have that feeling with other music, even music that doesn't appeal to me or that I don't "get".

The funny thing is, I normally don't get into comparing music and composers as much as most people do (see the many replies here who inferred comparisons I would never have thought of, and, of course, all the endless threads and polls here, like "Wagner or Wiener Schnitzel"?). I think I get a lot of the historical connections and vectors of influences which connect all musical styles, but when I listen to this music, I have the feeling a lot that I have heard something similar before, but more to the point and more distinct than what I am hearing right now.

sound67

#665
It helps to remind one that M forever admires Mahler, a composer where you usually get zero minutes worth of really good material and you have to sit through 80 minutes of blabla - made worse by that it's 80 minutes of navel-gazing blabla.  ;D

That may be why RVW called Mahler "a tolerable imitation of a composer" whose notes always sounded "painfully right". Or, that Mahler keeps milking for emotional climaxes (by which I mean facile orchestral bonanzas) every two to three seconds, instead of reserving them for the places they can have maximum impact, like RVW usually does.  :)

See, I'm not into comparing composers either. Certainly not with M forver, who should keep busy doing Aufstrich und Abstrich.
"Vivaldi didn't compose 500 concertos. He composed the same concerto 500 times" - Igor Stravinsky

"Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours." - Norman Lebrecht

lukeottevanger

#666
Well, I don't see a need to denigrate Mahler in order to praise VW, but I do think that M's use of the term 'blabla' is both unnecessary and incorrect! I've rarely heard full-length symphonies as tightly-knit as VW 4-6, and there's certainly no hint of diffuseness in any of them. Every note counts, every phrase means something and also leads you somewhere else equally vital - and that's why, listening to them, I always feel that these symphonies are a lot shorter than they actually are. That's something VW does share with Nielsen and Sibelius, I think.

Quote from: M forever on August 31, 2008, 12:41:49 AM
Yes, whatever that is. What had made me interested was when I asked the question, what is that actually, and I was surprised by how little real feedback that question triggered.

I have a feeling you might have been hoist by your own petard here, though. I for one wasn't sure how seriously to take your request for information on the VW idiom*, and in any case, I thought you meant performance idiom (which I couldn't possibly talk about interestingly) not the idiom of the notes themselves, which is what you're talking about here.   

The Vaughan Williams idiom, though, seems to me one of the most remarkably unified and self-sufficient in 20th century music. He doesn't quite achieve the degree of individuality that (say) Janacek did, perhaps, but he's darned close to it. A few traits, in the order they occur to me:

His harmony is distinctively his - predominantly triadic, not chromatic, but with the triads themselves frequently related by false-relation (who did this before him? where did he get it from? rhetorical questions both, because it seems clear that this sound, which influenced so many later composers, was Vaughan Williams' own). These false-relations have a force all of their own, too, as I indicated yesterday.

He uses different modes with great consistency - the Phrygian for this sort of music, the Mixolydian for that, and so on. And he uses diatonicism, pentatonicism and chromaticism with the same 'rightness'. There is as much logic in his use of the various modes as there is in (say) Bruckner's use of major and minor (I'm not comparing in any other respect, and Bruckner's name is pulled at random), and so the modes and their relationships take on a force equivalent to that between major and minor in earlier music. Hear that Phrygian pull at the beginning of the 9th, and its continuation into the parallel chord motive of the saxophones? That dark, ominous use of the Phrygian semitone is treated with great logicality, going to to inflect/infect the harmony throughout the movement, leading to constant major-minor ambiguities that likewise inflect/infect the music even when it moves into aeolian, major and lydian modes. This is wonderful symphonic thinking, a perfect reconciliation of two things - modality and development - that really oughtn't go together!

In a related area, he has a great sensitivity to the expressive power and implication of interval - perfect fourths and fifths to conjure purity, nature, Godliness; tritones etc for negativity, destruction, hellishness. He's hardly alone in this, of course, but what is striking is that he is remarkably consistent and coherent in his writing in this respect, so that his music carries an extraordinarily strong moral punch, if I can put it that way. (To my mind, only Nielsen really comes close to achieving the same kind of moral force, and he does so in similar ways but with less shocking consistency). So, if you look at the opening of the London Symphony you will find that 95% of all intervals, chordal or melodic, are perfect fourth, perfect fifth and major second (which is the difference between the two). These (rather than the major triad) set the moral tone of the symphony's 'bedrock' so that all chromatic inflections that happen after a minute or two are heard as slight moral disturbances, and the entrance of the Allegro - essentially chromatically descending minor triads with bitonal implications - is really a cataclysm. Compare this use of the 'pure' intervals to the demonic Scherzo of the 6th, where for large stretches of the music you will find scarcely anything that isn't tritone or minor second - quite audibly, the movement is monomaniacally fixated on this interval, and it infects the moral tone thoroughly. This kind of intervallic consistency, whatever it 'means', is undoubtedly a VW fingerprint.

In VW texture means something - polyphony, homophony, monody all play a role in the musical argument, not just in themselves but (again) because of their implications. Homophony - which emphasizes time, the movement from place to place - is often 'human' in implication, perhaps hymnic (Tallis Fantasia), perhaps spiritual (Mass for unaccompanied chorus - 'et homo factus est') etc. etc. etc.

VW's orchestration isn't dazzling in a Straussian or Mahlerian way. But again he has an instinctive feeling for the moral tone of an instrument, which means we may get one-offs - like the flugelhorn and the trio of saxes in in the 9th - or instrumental images that are consistent throughout his music. That solo violin of The Lark Ascending actually appears in countless places, and it always seems to carry something of the same tone, of purity and goodness. In the 9th it is the solo violin's pained oscillations between major and minor that usher in some sort of resolution; in the Tallis Fantasia or the Serenade to Music (pure VW both, start to finish) it is the solo violin which puts a seal on things, Lark-like.

And so on and on - these are just some of the things which make up the VW idiom....

* wasn't sure because there was obviously antagonism between you and the one you originally asked about the issue and because, simply going by your posting history, I'm afraid there's always the suspicion that you're simply angling for an argument. And I'm still not sure quite how seriously you want the answer to that question either, because although you've covered all your bases very well ('I've listened to this and this; 'I've asked the question in all seriousness') I can't help but be aware of the way you've ratcheted up the tone of your 'I'm not impressed' language in the last few posts. Again, only going by your past history, this leaves me with the feeling that what you're really interested in doing is getting a rise out of others. I'm very sorry if this isn't the case, and I hope it isn't - but it's not my fault if it's the impression I've got, despite my attempts to take your request for information about VW at face value. (If I wasn't making that attempt, I wouldn't be taking the time to write lengthy posts like this)

Quote from: M forever on August 31, 2008, 12:41:49 AMI think there isn't much of a special "idiom" there, just a lot of collected musical material. There are many composers with wildly varying styles whose music immediately makes a striking impression, one way or another. This music leaves me with the feeling that in order to get 5 minutes worth of really good material, I have to sit through 45 minutes of musical blabla. I rarely ever have that feeling with other music, even music that doesn't appeal to me or that I don't "get".

The funny thing is, I normally don't get into comparing music and composers as much as most people do (see the many replies here who inferred comparisons I would never have thought of, and, of course, all the endless threads and polls here, like "Wagner or Wiener Schnitzel"?). I think I get a lot of the historical connections and vectors of influences which connect all musical styles, but when I listen to this music, I have the feeling a lot that I have heard something similar before, but more to the point and more distinct than what I am hearing right now.

Yes, and you said you'd been most impressed by the Tallis Fantasia, which you called 'fairly original', implying that even this still has debts. I'd be interested to know what they are, though, outside the English Renaissance music which self-evidently lies behind the piece. Seems to me that nothing like the Tallis Fantasia had been written before - though plenty of pieces like it were written afterwards! The Tallis Fantasia, FWIW and IMO, distills everything that is most personal to VW into one space - the parallel chords in false relation, modality, metrically-fixed homophony and winged, rhythmically-free monody, the use of solo violin which is special to VW, the link between cloister and field. Apart from the Tallis tune itself, I can't see a note in it that derives from anyone else. This piece alone is proof that VW was an extraordinary musical thinker

sound67

#667
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 31, 2008, 05:06:31 AM
* wasn't sure because there was obviously antagonism between you and the one you originally asked about the issue and because, simply going by your posting history, I'm afraid there's always the suspicion that you're simply angling for an argument.

Bull's eye. Of course I myself would never do that.  0:)

And I wasn't denigrating Mahler, just pointing out he's pompous and hollow, the exact opposite of RVW.  ;D

Quote(If I wasn't making that attempt, I wouldn't be taking the time to write lengthy posts like this)

And you're covering some valid bases very well. But, alas, it'll be for naught - as far as M forever is concerned. You might convince some others tough, so it's definitely worth the effort.

Right about 4-6, and when RVW realized there was a certain hint of diffuseness about the original version of the London Symphony (a great impressionistic work it is), he did the right thing - cut the rot out. Kind of great we have the Hickox recording to prove RVW was correct.

Thomas

"Vivaldi didn't compose 500 concertos. He composed the same concerto 500 times" - Igor Stravinsky

"Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours." - Norman Lebrecht

DavidRoss

Quote from: sound67 on August 31, 2008, 05:17:09 AM
I wasn't denigrating Mahler, just pointing out he's pompous and hollow, the exact opposite of RVW.  ;D
I trust the smiley indicates that the irony here is intentional...?  Your ridiculous claim is more likely to get a rise out of Mahler fanboys on a Mahler thread. 
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." ~Margaret Thatcher

sound67

Quote from: DavidRoss on August 31, 2008, 05:32:48 AM
I trust the smiley indicates that the irony here is intentional...?  Your ridiculous claim is more likely to get a rise out of Mahler fanboys on a Mahler thread. 

Only trying to get a rise out of the Mahler fanboy around here.

... Oops!

Thomas
"Vivaldi didn't compose 500 concertos. He composed the same concerto 500 times" - Igor Stravinsky

"Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours." - Norman Lebrecht

karlhenning

Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 30, 2008, 03:20:57 PM
Ernie's correct about this, I think. VW's music is completely different in this respect. Formally speaking, his symphonism is not like Mahler's. But that is because he thoroughly understood what he was doing, and knew that the roots of his style implied formal structures unlike Germanic models. Which is really what all the below is about, too:

First, remember that I don't claim that VW made enormous advances for the general state of future music.  I'm not going to make extravagant claims that he invented x or was the first to do y, where x and y are major features of music after him - but then, not many composers did. VW's discoveries are small-scale, but profound, and influenced the generation of British composers who followed him - in fact, they made this music possible. The following is an attempt to explain something of what I mean, but, as you can see, it's wordy. The trouble with these subtle innovations is that they don't fit into easy definitions! I quickly stop saying what VW's contribution was, and then go on to expound upon the hows and whys. But then I expect you appreciate more rather than less.

IMO perhaps the most important thing VW did was to understand the aesthetic or metaphysical implications of modality, and therefore how it could be integrated into (for instance) symphonic structures. In the finest VW modality isn't decorative, or a surface harmonic feature - it becomes structural in the deepest sense. It and its implications are thoroughly understood. The book by Mellers which I mentioned has a great deal to say on this issue, which helped me to realise quite how profoundly 'right' VW's treatment of modality, diatonicism and chromaticism is - but I have no idea how conscious VW was of the sort of things Mellers postulates. Possibly a great deal; possible not at all.

Mellers links the modality of the English Renaissance (c.f. the Tallis portions of the Tallis Fantasia) and of English folk music (c.f the solo viola tune that unfolds in the centre of the Tallis Fantasia) to the world of those pre-Enlightenment, pre-Enclosure times: the lack of sharpened leading notes etc leads to a floating music, a music in which the functional, time-directed progress from Chord A to Chord B of diatonicism is on the contrary left unemphasized. Modality, being thus relatively non-directional, is not ideally suited to the teleology of the traditional symphony. Which is why, I suppose, modality in most pre-VW symphonies is decorative rather than operational at a deeper level.

Mellers views VW as a 'double man', one caught between various postions - urban+rural, Christian+agnostic etc. - and this duality is clear in the way 'timeless' modality confronts 'teleological' diatonicism, most obviously in the sweet-painful clash of the false relation. As you know, traditional harmony explains this as a clash between two forms of a note - say, C and C# - when two lines following the rules of voice-leading but moving in contrary directions happen to contradict each other. Mellers, though, takes this a step further - the pain of the false relation derives from this metaphysical clash of types: the ancient and freely-floating (rural...) and the modern and directed (urban...)

Well, you might think that's all a load of crap, and you may be right, though I think it (as Mellers writes about it, anyway) is one of the most penetrating bits of music writing I've read. And of course, as I said, VW may have thought no such thing anyway - if you don't agree, try not to tar him with the brush you want to apply to Mellers! But the point is that VW's music does operate with this kind of thing, this duality between modality and diatonicism, with all that entails, in the background. His 5th symphony - the echt-VW symphony, IMO - is a beautiful example. We had a great discussion of it starting here on an old VW thread - read on a page or two to read more about Mellers' theory. I managed to describe it a bit more lucidly back then! In any case, what I said about the 5th symphony then was the following - I didn't play up the modality issue back then particularly because I wasn't having this discussion with you!:

Well, now, this deep connection between the behaviour of notes and of voice-leading and the aesthetics underpinning the music is truly rare, I think. A composer who is able to understand the full implications, structural and aesthetic, of the harmony and modality he uses, whether consciously or subconsciously, has discovered something of value, and I think this is perhaps VW's main 'discovery', if you like. Certainly, as I said, it's impossible to imagine so much later British music without this discovery. Along with a host of smaller figures, Tippett, to speak of a major figure, is a true inheritor of this aspect of VW's writing.

One of the most enjoyable and rewarding posts to grace the Veranda, IMO. Thanks, Luke.

karlhenning

Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 31, 2008, 05:06:31 AM
Well, I don't see a need to denigrate Mahler in order to praise VW, but I do think that M's use of the term 'blabla' is both unnecessary and incorrect! I've rarely heard full-length symphonies as tightly-knit as VW 4-6, and there's certainly no hint of diffuseness in any of them. Every note counts, every phrase means something and also leads you somewhere else equally vital - and that's why, listening to them, I always feel that these symphonies are a lot shorter than they actually are. That's something VW does share with Nielsen and Sibelius, I think.

Hear, hear.

DavidRoss

Quote from: sound67 on August 31, 2008, 05:37:07 AM
Only trying to get a rise out of the Mahler fanboy around here.

... Oops!
Your sense of humor is so dry, Thomas, that it goes over the heads of many.  Wit, however, must hit its target, and in this case you've missed by a mile.  Nice try, though.  ;D
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." ~Margaret Thatcher

J.Z. Herrenberg

Admirable post, Luke. You put the case very well. Anyone expecting the Beethovenian-Brahmsian-Mahlerian logic will be disappointed, because Vaughan Williams thinks outside the Austro-German box, achieving his own brand of symphonic coherence. But to appreciate this, you must be attuned to him. If you don't like a composer, no amount of intelligent elucidation will convince you of his qualities.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

lukeottevanger

#674
Quote from: M forever on August 31, 2008, 12:06:24 AM
I find the ending of the 9th symphony laughable, like a bad joke, a Schickele-type parody - but my feeling is that it is supposed to be somehow "grand".

Just to pick up on this - that would show a surprising lack of perceptiveness, I'd say, though the type of mishearing this suggests does help to show why you're not connecting with VW. It's pretty clear to me, in all sorts of ways, that the end of # 9 is anything but grand. There is a long-striven for E major chord, fff, yes - but it's arrived at in a deliberately perfunctory manner, imposed forcibly on the Phrygian lines preceding it and still undercut by the baleful Phrygian saxophones from the first movement. The chord tries again and again to assert itself, but eventually it fades away. I find it an extraordinary ending, the way these two harmonic types cut across each other along with - as I said earlier - the moral implications they both hold. True symphonism, this. It's comparable to Mahler 6, in a way - not in specifics, but in the way a modal dialectic present throughout the symphony finally becomes the shaping force for the closing cadence.

Quote from: M forever on August 31, 2008, 12:06:24 AM
I prefer composers who actually have some degree of self-criticism and who don't think that everything they come up with has to go on the page. Composers who develop and refine and concentrate their material. Have you ever heard the first version of Sibelius' 5th? It has most of the great musical ideas that the revised version has, plus a lot of hollow musical filler material. Then Sibelius withdrew the symphony and boiled it down to the concise but truly epic masterwork it now is. I don't have that sense of compelling musical argument when I listen to VW's music at all. There are lots of nice sounds, and some interesting phrase turns here and there, and a lot of random stuff in between.

As others have hinted, this Sibelian refining process was precisely followed by VW too - and is audible in the recording of the original version of the London Symphony. To create the final form, VW ruthlessly cut out pages of beautiful music, which tends to argue against your vision of someone who simply strung lots of pretty stuff together without self-criticism.

Mark G. Simon

Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 31, 2008, 06:23:55 AM
Just to pick up on this - that would show a surprising lack of perceptiveness, I'd say, though the type of mishearing this suggests does help to show why you're not connecting with VW. It's pretty clear to me, in all sorts of ways, that the end of # 9 is anything but grand. There is a long-striven for E major chord, fff, yes - but it's arrived at in a deliberately perfunctory manner, imposed forcibly on the Phrygian lines preceding it and still undercut by the baleful Phrygian saxophones from the first movement. The chord tries again and again to assert itself, but eventually it fades away. I find it an extraordinary ending,

I'll say. Very haunting and unsettling. A kind of "let's put on a happy face for the camera" in which all manner of doubts and uncertainties still make themselves apparent. The tension of the saxophones' f minor persisting as the orchestra swells on the E major produces major goosebumps on me.


Mark G. Simon

Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 30, 2008, 03:20:57 PM

the sweet-painful clash of the false relation. As you know, traditional harmony explains this as a clash between two forms of a note - say, C and C# - when two lines following the rules of voice-leading but moving in contrary directions happen to contradict each other.

a phenomenon which is particularly characteristic of English Renaissance music. RVW would have been especially keen to pick up on that.

I think Mellers has a special talent for making anything he talks about sound unbearbly pompous, but I don't let him affect my reaction to RVW.


lukeottevanger

#677
Quote from: Mark G. Simon on August 31, 2008, 06:43:26 AM
a phenomenon which is particularly characteristic of English Renaissance music. RVW would have been especially keen to pick up on that.

Absolultely. This is the whole background to Mellers' point. He sees in this Renaissance polyphony the tug between the ancient, 'timeless' + medieval and the incipient, temporal tonal harmony of modern man. There is no doubt that the false relation has a very special effect, hence the adjectives usually lavished on it ('bittersweet', 'biting' etc.) - it is so much more than simply a minor second or major seventh or minor ninth, even though in strict harmonic terms that is all it is. AFAIK no one before Mellers has satisfactorily explained why its effect is so much more than its simple theoretical explanation. But once I'd read him, I realised - 'yes, that's precisely how I experience it - that the clash between eagerly, onwards-pushing sharpened leading note and downwards floating flattened one really does encapsulate a clash of something much bigger.' What VW did, in general terms, was to turn this into something bigger, more complex, more tortured, more relevant; more specifically he also applied the principle to chords as well as to individual lines.

Quote from: Mark G. Simon on August 31, 2008, 06:43:26 AMI think Mellers has a special talent for making anything he talks about sound unbearbly pompous, but I don't let him affect my reaction to RVW.

There is that danger, and I think it's because he tends to talk in abstractions with great big Capital Letters all over the place - Godly, Heavenly, Devilish, Hellish, Edenic etc. etc. I know other people who've reacted negatively to this too. But it's never bothered me - I've always thought his fundamental theses are so penetrating and convincing that such use of language doesn't matter. And in any case, he's dealing with big concepts, and it's important that the reader understands what concrete significance they have in his argument. The 'Capitals' certainly serve to make this argument much clearer than it otherwise would be.

Christo

Breathtaking series of exposés, Luke.

Never since I (too) accidentally read Mellers' book, did I see such an insightful analysis of RVW's style. You may not convince the odd Teuton here, but your argument is very helpful for RVW's admirers, who know quite well what they love and how unique his voice actually is.  :)
... 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

lukeottevanger

You're very kind. Though as I said earlier, and I meant it, I know nothing about VW compared to some here - not most of the minor pieces, not many of the details of biography. I know that most of what I've said comes from elsewhere - and everything else probably does too!  :)