Vaughan Williams's Veranda

[Sergeant Rock]

One of the 'facts of orchestration' demonstrated by the Vaughan Williams Pastoral and Sinfonia antartica (and the Nielsen Sinfonia espansiva, and I imagine the Tippett Fourth) is that un-texted vocalise makes the voice as an instrument something quite other than, well, the medium of text-delivery . . . and that, as a timbral resource, the 'range' of the voice, or of a choir, is appreciably broadened.

Yes, good point.

Sarge

[lukeottevanger]

Luke, tried to PM you but your inbox is full.

Sarge

You can try again now if you're still wanting to!

[lukeottevanger]

Chamber much more interesting than solo piano, though I'm not really the one to tell you about it. There's a discussion about it approx. 15 pages back.  To be honest, James, I find it hard to imagine you liking it, not because of a fault in either the music or in you, but simply going by your own priorities as you've expressed them before - I don't see VW slotting alongside these very comfortably. Nevertheless, it's fine music and worth spending time on - hopefully I'm wrong.

But in the final analysis, the middle symphonies are the centre of VW's output and are the pieces that best lead to an understanding of him, I think.

[scarpia]

Sounds a bit facile to me, I'm afraid. The voice is by definition the most human of instruments, and what VW wants here is inhumanity, or, rather, absence of humanity. He needs a shocking symbol to acheive this, something exterior to the normal range of orchestral or vocal sound. somethin 'other'. This is why the wind machine is used here, and for similar reasons in Messiaen's Des Canyons.... for instance. It's only in e.g the Alpine Symphony that its use is purely literal - perhaps not even there, though I'd hesitate to make that argument.

if VW wants something inhuman, there is nothing that makes trombones, trumpets, horns, oboes, clarinets, violins, etc, more human than a wind machine.  Something exterior to the normal range of orchestral sound can be a novel harmony, orchestration, etc.  In the Anactica (as well as in the Alpine) it is just an imitative sound effect.   It makes sense in a dramatic context (the thunder and anvils in Rheingold) but in a symphony I find it silly. 

[lukeottevanger]

if VW wants something inhuman, there is nothing that makes trombones, trumpets, horns, oboes, clarinets, violins, etc, more human than a wind machine.  Something exterior to the normal range of orchestral sound can be a novel harmony, orchestration, etc.  In the Anactica (as well as in the Alpine) it is just an imitative sound effect.   It makes sense in a dramatic context (the thunder and anvils in Rheingold) but in a symphony I find it silly. 

Where to start?

In the Antarctica the wind machine is not merely imitative, it is also symbolic, like (I'll say it again) the hammer in Mahler 6 - the context is dramatic. In the Alpine it is imitative - I could make an argument that it isn't but I wouldn't believe it myself - but what's the problem with that: it's good fun, and despite its name that piece is not really aiming at true the same kind of symphonism IMO.

The fact that we are so used to 'trombones, trumpets, horns, oboes, clarinets, violins, etc', and to the human faces of their players, and to the fact that they play in an expressive manner, and that they play music which is so clearly a human construct - all of those things make these instruments human. The wind machine is a freak, an instrument we hardly ever hear,  whose sound is essentially a natural one, uninflected by human harmony, or melody, or by association with human activity. Quite plainly VW wished to choose an instrument that sits totally apart from the rest of the orchestra, so as to create this striking dichotomy between the human and the inhuman - and quite plainly he succeeded, otherwise you wouldn't be making this fuss about it. You think the wind machine is out of place, and that's just what VW wanted it to be. If' he'd chosen to represent the wind with a trombone, you wouldn't be commenting - and he would clearly have failed to find an instrumental equivalent for 'the Other'.

'Something exterior to the normal range of orchestral sound can be a novel harmony, orchestration, etc.' Yes, possibly - and the wind machine is one such novel orchestration; its sound creates one such novel harmony. Please tell me how you would depict something totally alien, inhuman and other in a piece of this sort.

[lukeottevanger]

i have had those for many years, yeah... not my thing you're right.

Thought not. that's fair enough. It pains me to say it, then, but I suspect you might as well steer clear of the chamber music too!

[Sergeant Rock]

i have had those for many years, yeah... not my thing you're right.

Move along, nothing to see here   

[M forever]

The fact that we are so used to 'trombones, trumpets, horns, oboes, clarinets, violins, etc', and to the human faces of their players, and to the fact that they play in an expressive manner, and that they play music which is so clearly a human construct - all of those things make these instruments human. The wind machine is a freak, an instrument we hardly ever hear,  whose sound is essentially a natural one, uninflected by human harmony, or melody, or by association with human activity. Quite plainly VW wished to choose an instrument that sits totally apart from the rest of the orchestra, so as to create this striking dichotomy between the human and the inhuman - and quite plainly he succeeded, otherwise you wouldn't be making this fuss about it. You think the wind machine is out of place, and that's just what VW wanted it to be. If' he'd chosen to represent the wind with a trombone, you wouldn't be commenting - and he would clearly have failed to find an instrumental equivalent for 'the Other'.

Good point. "Non-musical" sound effects have been used in music for a very long time, and basically, all non-pitch percussion instruments go in that direction anyway. The wind machine isn't anything more "exotic" or outrageous than the "zzzzzing" effect of drawing a metal stick across a suspended cymbal (as heard to great effect in La Mer) or many other similar unusual sound effects, like the "Ratsche" (dunno what that's called in English) which is used in Till E. (the thing with a handle and a spinning part which makes that funny "krrrrrrrrrr" sound), or the woodblocks in Shostakovich 4 which create that madly gallopping effect.
I think it is silly to categorically dismiss the use of such effects, what counts is if it works in the context or not. In the pieces I know (like Don Quixote, Alpensinfonie, Daphnis et Chloé) I think it works great. I don't know the Sinfonia Antarctica, but now I am curious to hear it even though my first VW expedition did not make me very interested to hear more of his music at this time.

BTW, the first time I actually saw a wind machine

was in 1987 when the LAP came to Berlin and played Don Quixote (that was on the same weekend that the BP played Zarathustra under Karajan, the performance that's on the Sony DVD, these concerts were part of the city's 750th anniversary celebration - LA is a partner city of Berlin). I had never seen it before because at that time, the BP used a wind sound recorded on tape and played back through speakers in the hall. So the percussionist basically sat there and operated the fader on the tape deck...in later performances of the Alpensinfonie, with Mehta and Jansons, they used the hand-cranked wind machine.

[lukeottevanger]

Ratsche = rattle, in the sense of a football rattle, not a baby's one!

M, I'm curious - I know nothing about the 'thunder machine' used in the Alpine Symphony - presumably you've seen it more than once. How is it constructed and how does it work? Or is it simply a 'thunder sheet'?

[pjme]

Thundersheet - usually shaken, sometimes hit with a stick.




they come in bronze aswell...

[pjme]

Poor RVW...( we'll come back to you later) :here's a percussion set up for Alpine symph.

[pjme]

The thunder sheet is at the left...

[M forever]

Where are those pictures from?

[Sergeant Rock]

Ratsche = rattle

Or ratchet.

Sarge

[pjme]

Mark Jutton's photostream  at Flickr

[lukeottevanger]

It's just that the score talks about a thunder machine, not a sheet, so I wondered if there was a difference. Or if, in fact, there is no such thing as a thunder machine and anything making an appropriate noise is acceptable.

[pjme]

AFAIK, a thundersheet = thundermachine. It is always a (very) large sheet of ( rather thin) metal rattled, shaken and /or hit by a hammer or a stick.

I've seen the Dresden Gewandhaus Orch in Strauss Alpine symph. The thundersheet was almost 2.5 meters high.

[M forever]

AFAIK, a thundersheet = thundermachine. It is always a (very) large sheet of ( rather thin) metal rattled, shaken and /or hit by a hammer or a stick.

I've seen the Dresden Gewandhaus Orch in Strauss Alpine symph. The thundersheet was almost 2.5 meters high.

There is no Gewandhaus in Dresden. It's in Leipzig. You have to make up your mind. Was that live or on video? With which conductor? And where are the pictures you posted from?

[lukeottevanger]

For the latter, he said already - 'Mark Jutton's photostream at Flickr'

[M forever]

It's just that the score talks about a thunder machine, not a sheet, so I wondered if there was a difference. Or if, in fact, there is no such thing as a thunder machine and anything making an appropriate noise is acceptable.

There used to be a device which basically was a box filled with rocks that was suspended on a joint at the middle, and which could be rocked up and down like a see-saw with ropes going over pulleys. I read they have one of these at the Drottningholm Court Theater, but I have never seen one. There also used to be a thunder machine which looks similar to the wind machine and which is a drum filled with rocks and a lever to turn it. I don't know though if that is specifically what Strauss had in mind.