Music: National or Cosmopolitan?

[Mirror Image]

(Next week, why is Mussorgsky such a drunk? Can't he control himself?)

Or why did Arnie Schoenberg have triskaidekaphobia?

[Mandryka]

Art, and especially the art of music, uses knowledge as  a  means  to  the  evocation  of  personal  experience in  terms which  will  be  intelligible  to  and  command  the  sympathy  of others.

What do you think he meant by "knowledge"? What sort of knowledge? Knowledge of what? I suspect the key to what Vaughan Williams meant is there - in shared racial understanding, a product of shared culture.

[Crudblud]

I don't view music as any kind of evocation but as mental stimulus. It gives your brain the information necessary to know that you are having a musical experience, everything else (emotions, associations etc.) is coming from you. The culture/s you live in throughout your life play/s an important role in defining what the everything else is for you, but you are your own person beyond that, and there are uncountable direct and tangential influences and experiences, in addition to your own nature, that define your sympathy or lack thereof to this or that piece music. Speaking as an Englishman, I don't care for RVW. Does that make me not English? No, but it might mean that my being is defined less by my Englishness than by other things, if indeed Englishness is at all important in determining one's feelings about English composers.

[Christo]

I recall going into a record shop, whilst on holiday in Austria probably about fifteen years ago. There was no 'Vaughan Williams' section but a reasonable selection of music by Britten.

I recall buying, in the 1980s, the latest RVW releases in a major Amsterdam music store - the Bryden Thomson symphony cycle in particular - and meeting with hardly concealed contempt. At one time the store owner (a she, wellknown from classical radio shows) even openly expressed her disapproval. 

[Biffo]

I recall buying, in the 1980s, the latest RVW releases in a major Amsterdam music store - the Bryden Thomson symphony cycle in particular - and meeting with hardly concealed contempt. At one time the store owner (a she, wellknown from classical radio shows) even openly expressed her disapproval. 

You say ' a major Amsterdam store', this implies several - I haven't been to Amsterdam for many years so I don't know what the situation is (or was) - I hope you openly expressed your disapproval by taking your custom elsewhere.

[Christo]

You say ' a major Amsterdam store', this implies several - I haven't been to Amsterdam for many years so I don't know what the situation is (or was) - I hope you openly expressed your disapproval by taking your custom elsewhere.

There were dozens of them, in the 1980s, even two straight around the corner from where I was living and including a handful that I considered 'major'; IIRC Vaughan Williams/Thomson's release on Chandos of the Sixth Symphony was indeed the last cd ever I bought here (at Het Spui). 

[some guy]

I don't view music as any kind of evocation but as mental stimulus. It gives your brain the information necessary to know that you are having a musical experience, everything else (emotions, associations etc.) is coming from you. The culture/s you live in throughout your life play/s an important role in defining what the everything else is for you, but you are your own person beyond that, and there are uncountable direct and tangential influences and experiences, in addition to your own nature, that define your sympathy or lack thereof to this or that piece music. Speaking as an Englishman, I don't care for RVW. Does that make me not English? No, but it might mean that my being is defined less by my Englishness than by other things, if indeed Englishness is at all important in determining one's feelings about English composers.

I just wanted to see this particular bit of wisdom appear in this thread again.

Wisdom being rare and precious, after all.

[Florestan]

I don't view music as any kind of evocation but as mental stimulus. It gives your brain the information necessary to know that you are having a musical experience, everything else (emotions, associations etc.) is coming from you.

Do you imply that those who accuse Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff of being syrupy and sentimental are actually syrupy and sentimental themselves?

[vandermolen]

I recall buying, in the 1980s, the latest RVW releases in a major Amsterdam music store - the Bryden Thomson symphony cycle in particular - and meeting with hardly concealed contempt. At one time the store owner (a she, wellknown from classical radio shows) even openly expressed her disapproval. 

I got a similar reaction when asking for any music by Miaskovsky in a record shop ('Melodiya') in Nevsky Prospect, Leningrad in 1985.

[some guy]

Wow, you guys really don't have even the tiniest inkling about contempt do you?

Try liking anything remotely new or adventurous, eh? You'll get a bellyful of contempt with that. You want to have something to whinge about, try that one for size. Why, what's betting I get some contempt merely for writing this post.

[some guy]

Do you imply that those who accuse Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff of being syrupy and sentimental are actually syrupy and sentimental themselves?

My apologies to Crudblud if he's already got a snappy response to this already cued up.

The implication is that the music situation consists of two main elements, the thing that is sounding and the person who is hearing. Anything sensible about that situation will acknowledge that the two elements are in a nice, tight little relationship, inseparable though it is (obviously) possible to ignore one of them, to talk about the other as if it were independent of everything.

(Besides, it's not the accusers who would be the subjects of this (false) implication but the fans.)

[Irons]

Vaughan Williams is one of my favourite composers and so are Finzi, Bax and Moeran, who are all British. However so are Shostakovich, Miaskovsky, Copland, Bloch and Novak who are not. I think that VW meant that his music might have a special appeal to his own countrymen and women but also, hopefully, appeal to others. In the past I think that there was limited knowledge of his music outside Britain. I recall going into a record shop, whilst on holiday in Austria probably about fifteen years ago. There was no 'Vaughan Williams' section but a reasonable selection of music by Britten.

Interesting that you mention Britten. The Czech label, Supraphon when a Soviet satellite, made many fine Britten recordings including in my opinion the finest recording of his violin concerto. I think RVW travels better then Elgar. I get the impression RVW is fairly popular in the US where as the Elgar idiom is lost when crossing the pond.

[Crudblud]

Do you imply that those who accuse Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff of being syrupy and sentimental are actually syrupy and sentimental themselves?

I say that some listeners reflexively find that music syrupy and sentimental by virtue of the combination of their nature, experiences, and cultural conditioning. Accusation is a different matter, it is a call to have one's opinion validated and disputed by others; assuming that the opinion given is an honest one, the accusation lies upon a recollection of the listening experience but is nonetheless separate from it.

[Florestan]

I say that some listeners reflexively find that music syrupy and sentimental by virtue of the combination of their nature, experiences, and cultural conditioning. Accusation is a different matter, it is a call to have one's opinion validated and disputed by others; assuming that the opinion given is an honest one, the accusation lies upon a recollection of the listening experience but is nonetheless separate from it.

I should have written "find" instead of "accuse" --- my bad. Anyway, thanks for clarifying. Nothing to disagree with here.