Vaughan Williams's Veranda

[lukeottevanger]

God, I tried to move on but couldn't let this one go...

The wind machine evokes the wind, but when you assert that the wind machine is symbolic of something, or that it definitively contains a specific meaning, you are presuming to speak for the composer, which you don't have the right to do. Absent the composer's explanation, all you can do is report your interpretation, which in this case contains a hefty amount of interpolation.

Honestly, this lack of willingness to hear anything but the utterly literal is startling. I don't want to get into the issue again - it seems that the whole world but you can plainly see that, in a piece such as this evoking the sound of the wind has automatic connotations over and above simple sound effect. It's so basic that it isn't really an 'interpretatation' at all.

Imagine I write a 'Sahara Symphony', dusty, dry, full of struggle - and in the last moments I use some kind of watery-instrument (a rainstick, perhaps). Does this only mean 'and then it was rainy'? Doesn't the rain automatically carry some higher meaning here - salvation, life, whatever? As in VW 7, it would be impossible to hear the former without attaching the latter to it - or so I'd hope.

And you still haven't addressed the issue of redundancy. There is a wind machine, and there is a chorus imitating the wind? Why both? There is no convincing answer; the composer made a mistake.

Why both? M's just convincingly laid out the reasons he sees for both, and I agree entirely, as does everyone else whose opinions I know. 'Layers', as he says. Different groups of instruments for different things. The music operates in more dimensions; it has more symphonic scope. The voices are operating on another level - magical or supernatural is how it's usually described, and that's how it appears to most listeners, though I'm sure you won't agree until you find a written statement from VW to that effect. Which you probably won't because he liked listeners to use their own brains.

In VW 3 there are also these symbolic layers - the vocalise, the natural-harmonic brass fanfares. It shouldn't need pointing out that these 'speak' to us from different areas of experience and automatically bring with them different associations and connotations. But perhaps it does.

VW thought in terms of these connotations, BTW. We know he did. As I said earlier, he had a tendency to hide his true thoughts about his music behind a layer of irony, but even then he spoke in these terms. Writing his farcical program note to the 9th - a piece that we know for sure was associated with tragedy and the story of Tess of the d'Urbervilles (he even noted down names etc next to various themes in his sketches) - he says something to the effect that 'hearing the gong makes us automatically think that it is dinner-time' (I haven't got the note to hand, but it's something along those lines.) A black joke, clearly - the gong, as in other composers' works, is programatically associated here with death, not dinner - but proof the VW was sensitive to the idea that sound leads naturally on to extra-musical associations and concepts. Something that, previously, I thought was obvious.

[lukeottevanger]

(Maybe I should just clarify here that I don't simply think the wind sound should be omitted - in the places where it is used, I always think silence would be more effective.)

Why? What is it about silence that roughly = the effect of the wind? Is it, perhaps, that silence is a negation, a nothingness, an annihilation of sound? IOW, it would be doing exactly the job that I describe the wind machine doing. In making the equation from one to the other you show that, somewhere, you too sense that this is the deeper function of the wind machine. But you simply don't like the wind machine and would prefer silence, which is fair enough.

[eyeresist]

Please don't call me a dullard if I disagree with you. I understand your point, but I disagree. I don't think the wind machine works. I think the literal reproduction of a natural sound in the symphony has the effect of reducing the music (at times) to mere landscape description. And I've found the explanation for the choral part alongside the wind sound-effect unconvincing - a improvisation in order to explain the disparity.

Any use of naturalistic sound is a danger-area for a composer. Your hypothetical use of the rain-stick might be effective, but on the other hand it might be banal - it might give us to think of the Mercy of God, or it might merely suggest a sense of relief, or it might be "just rain". If you used rain drop-like pizzicatos as well, would we be convinced to buy in to the notion that this is "man's perception of rain", or might it just seem like ill-judged overkill? The "automatic connotations" you mention are not guaranteed, because, however lofty the composer's aim, we must judge not by intention but by result. We disagree on the result in this case. I've attempted to discuss possible practical reasons for this (the incongruity of natural sound in musical context; the redundancy of having two wind sounds), but your response has largely been to insist there is nothing to discuss, and deride me for expressing a contrary view. I hope you haven't sacrificed your critical faculties to complacency - Uncle Ralph would not have approved!

I am willing to admit that for most listeners this issue presents no problem, and the music is, by this standard, successful. But if we are discussing the nuts and bolts of the piece, surely we may allow the  possibility of weaknesses, or vulnerabilities, in the Sinfonia?


Edit: Yes, I suppose I do think silence would serve the function of a devastating negation better than wind (for the reasons previously given).

[lukeottevanger]

I haven't called you anything. I'm just rather surprised. The connection between wind and nature (which is by implication inhuman) seems to me too obvious to even need to be made, and I would have thought that all who listen to the piece make it.

The 'explanation for the choral part' is certainly no improvisation, but the way I've always heard the piece,and, to judge by the views of others, the way most other listeners hear it too. The interaction between different levels is one of the most striking things in this symphony, I think.

My rain-stick piece would be banal, absolutely. That's why I'm not going to write it! But if what's important to you is 'not intention but result' then why are you so keen to see substantiation of VW's intention? If the result doesn't work for you that is fine, but to go from that to VW 'made a mistake' is a bit of a leap, I think.

There are of course weaknesses in VW, IMO. As I said a long time ago, though I love much of his music I'm not even a particular 'fan' of his, even though this thread has made me appear like one. Sometimes I hear things that are problematic in his music to my ears, and perhaps the wind machine might even be one of them. I'm not discussing that, because in the end our individual reactions to the music aren't particularly important, and because if the wind machine is a problem, I don't think it's for lack of poetic potency (which for me means the relation of simple 'musical onject' to a larger-scale concern).

Edit: Yes, I suppose I do think silence would serve the function of a devastating negation better than wind (for the reasons previously given).

My edit - But you made the connection - that's what I find interesting. 'I wouldn't just remove the wind, I'd actively replace it with silence' - this implies that you too feel the wind means something more than just wind, and isn't redundant as you say it is. Because if it is redundant, it doesn't need to be replaced by anything.

[karlhenning]

I've enjoyed the discussion. (Just wanted to say.)

[Catison]

I've enjoyed the discussion. (Just wanted to say.)

Definitely.  My appreciation for this symphony has increased ten-fold.  While, for me, it doesn't surpass my favorite (the Fifth), I have found it much more rewarding.

[scarpia]

My edit - But you made the connection - that's what I find interesting. 'I wouldn't just remove the wind, I'd actively replace it with silence' - this implies that you too feel the wind means something more than just wind, and isn't redundant as you say it is. Because if it is redundant, it doesn't need to be replaced by anything.

Vaughan Williams may very well have meant the wind machine to have a symbolic role (it is impossible to know if he didn't say one way or the other).  Regardless, I just think it sounds stupid.

[karlhenning]

Regardless, I just think it sounds stupid.

That's your trip.

[lukeottevanger]

Vaughan Williams may very well have meant the wind machine to have a symbolic role (it is impossible to know if he didn't say one way or the other).  Regardless, I just think it sounds stupid.

To the first, I think it so likely as to be a certainty, as I've previously said - simply because any composer thinks about these things as a matter of course; especially an extremely fine composer (as VW was); especially one with proven sensitivity to this sort of thing (as VW has); especially one writing in a high-profile genre like the symphony; especially when the choice of instrument is as peculiar and dramatic as this one. But I've said all that already.

To the second, I have not the tiniest issue with your dislike the sound of the wind machine whatsoever. Though I was accused of 'laying down the law' on this matter, I'm doing no such thing. I haven't even stated my own opinion on whether or not I think the wind machine is a good idea, or if I think it works. I simply pointed out the context it was used in, and to the answer 'you can't be sure VW meant it that way', I refer to the previous paragraph.

[scarpia]

To the first, I think it so likely as to be a certainty, as I've previously said - simply because any composer thinks about these things as a matter of course; especially an extremely fine composer (as VW was); especially one with proven sensitivity to this sort of thing (as VW has); especially one writing in a high-profile genre like the symphony; especially when the choice of instrument is as peculiar and dramatic as this one. But I've said all that already.

The argument that he was such a fine composer that he must have had a high purpose is unconvincing to me, especially since V-W also had an interest of experimenting with different unusual sonorities, apparently for their own sake.  For instance, he apparently added three tuned tam-tams to the finale of his 9th symphony after hearing them used in a performance of Turandot, which he thought sounded cool.  I don't see that it is impossible that a similar impulse motivated V-W in the case of the 7th. 

[Mark G. Simon]

The argument that he was such a fine composer that he must have had a high purpose is unconvincing to me, especially since V-W also had an interest of experimenting with different unusual sonorities, apparently for their own sake.

Most modern composers are praised if they experiment with different sonorities for their own sake.

  For instance, he apparently added three tuned tam-tams to the finale of his 9th symphony after hearing them used in a performance of Turandot, which he thought sounded cool. 

That's the 8th symphony, not the 9th. As far as I'm concerned, sounding cool is justification enough.

[scarpia]

Most modern composers are praised if they experiment with different sonorities for their own sake.

Not if it involves a canvas sheet draped over slotted wooden cylinder with a hand crank.

[lukeottevanger]

Most modern composers are praised if they experiment with different sonorities for their own sake.

Indeed, and not just modern ones. A very odd argument this, I think.

Not if it involves a canvas sheet draped over slotted wooden cylinder with a hand crank.

As opposed to what - animal skin stretched over wooden cylinders and hit with sticks? Wooden boxes with wire stretched over them scrapped by sticks strung with hairy substances? All instruments sound ridiculous if described like this!

[karlhenning]

That's the 8th symphony, not the 9th. As far as I'm concerned, sounding cool is justification enough.

Hear, hear.

[scarpia]

As opposed to what - animal skin stretched over wooden cylinders and hit with sticks? Wooden boxes with wire stretched over them scrapped by sticks strung with hairy substances? All instruments sound ridiculous if described like this!

There is a world of difference between a Stradivarius violin, played by a virtuoso musician, and a wind machine which is operated by turning a hand crank and essentially produces white noise.

[sound67]

There is a world of difference between a Stradivarius violin, played by a virtuoso musician, and a wind machine which is operated by turning a hand crank and essentially produces white noise.

Yawn! 

[Mark G. Simon]

This reminds me of how César Franck was criticized for including an English horn in his D minor symphony. Ambroise Thomas is said to have remarked in scorn "Name a single symphony by Haydn or Beethoven that uses the English horn!" as if that was supposed to have settled the matter.*

After all, an English horn is nothing but a wooden tube with bulbuous growth at one end.


* (In any case he was ignorant of Haydn's Philosopher Symphony, which uses not just one but two English horns)

[karlhenning]

Yawn! 

Or, even:

[M forever]

There is a world of difference between a Stradivarius violin, played by a virtuoso musician, and a wind machine which is operated by turning a hand crank and essentially produces white noise.

Not really. The former may be more refined and difficult to make, and more difficult to operate. But both are instruments, tools designed for a certain purpose, and both serve their respective purposes well.

Besides, the wind machine is probably the only instrument you would be able to play, so don't look down on it!

[M forever]

Please don't call me a dullard if I disagree with you. I understand your point, but I disagree. I don't think the wind machine works. I think the literal reproduction of a natural sound in the symphony has the effect of reducing the music (at times) to mere landscape description. And I've found the explanation for the choral part alongside the wind sound-effect unconvincing - a improvisation in order to explain the disparity.

If you found the explanation (not sure if you are referring to what Mr O said or my explanation of "layers" and "transitions" here) unconvincing, explain why.

As I pointed out before, the wind machine does not play the same role as silence here - which occurs in music all the time anyway and, by definition, at the end of every piece of music once the last note has died away, no matter if the music faded out softly or ended triumphantly in a blast of sound - it is the transition between musical sounds with an emotional content of some sort and silence. Do you get that?