composers I want to investigate further

[The new erato]

Right now, I'm particularly interested in hearing more Tippett. I've been a bit short on listening time of late, but I've really been enjoying the 2nd & 4th symphonies, and the concerto for orchestra.

I see Naxos is doing a cycle of the five quartets: I guess this will be one of my next ports of call.

On the subject of British composers: I'd like to find out if there's any more Arnold that's of the quality of (say) the 5th & 7th symphonies. But that's probably something for another thread.

Tippetts 2nd quartet, particularly the haunting first movement, is a particular favorite. There's (or maybe there used to be) an absolutely splendid cheap ASV double with the Lindsay quartet in all 5 that I cherish.

And re Arnold: Number Nine (as dear departed John Winston used to say)

[Mark G. Simon]

Right now, I'm particularly interested in hearing more Tippett. I've been a bit short on listening time of late, but I've really been enjoying the 2nd & 4th symphonies, and the concerto for orchestra.

Tippett is one of my favorites of the late 20th century. He wrote some wonderful orchestral music, including the four symphonies and the Triple Concerto  for string trio with orchestra, and his extraordinary final work The Rose Lake.

I see Naxos is doing a cycle of the five quartets: I guess this will be one of my next ports of call.

The first three quartets are from the early 1940s, and are polite examples of English neo-classicism. They don't have the real Tippett personality in them (though I wouldn't argue with Erato's advocacy of the 2nd). The fourth quartet, from 1978, suffers from an overabundance of unplayable double stops, and is bound to be more effective in its string orchestra arrangement, called Water out of Sunlight. The 5th Quartet, from 1990, is to my ears the most satisfying of his quartets.

Watch out for his operas. He wrote his own librettos, and they're rather..... peculiar. The Midsummer Marriage has some beautiful music in it, including the Ritual Dances which are sometimes performed separately.

[karlhenning]

Watch out for his operas. He wrote his own librettos, and they're rather..... peculiar.

Most diplomatic, Mark! 

[not edward]

and his extraordinary final work The Rose Lake.

Oh, yes! I forgot to mention that one: I was immediately taken by the piece when I heard the world premiere live on Radio 3 (at a time when I didn't have all that much interest in new music) and have both the Davis and Hickox recordings. Thanks for the comments regarding the quartets--do you know if the string orchestra version of the 4th has ever been recorded commercially?

[karlhenning]

Need to spend more time with Janáček's and Britten's operas, too.

[not edward]

Need to spend more time with Janáček's and Britten's operas, too.

Now that's something I can second wholeheartedly.

[Mark G. Simon]

-do you know if the string orchestra version of the 4th has ever been recorded commercially?

Not that I know of.

I forgot to mention another Tippett favorite of mine, the Fantasia concertante on a theme of Corelli, a very beautiful and complex work for string orchestra. There's one episode about 17 minutes into that just glows! A lot of music that Tippett wrote in the 1950s has the same radiance, including the Piano Concerto.

[karlhenning]

I forgot to mention another Tippett favorite of mine, the Fantasia concertante on a theme of Corelli, a very beautiful and complex work for string orchestra.

(* pounds the table! *)

[The new erato]

(* pounds the table! *)

Why do you do that when you'd rather log on somewhere and buy this ridiculously cheap and glorious disc:

[lukeottevanger]

This last page has been one after my own heart. Tippett and Janacek, eh? Doesn't get much better than that.

Mark, do you know if Water out of Sunlight has been recorded? (Stupid me, I could just look, and I will!) You are quite right about the 4th quartet being almost unplayable - it looks so luscious on the page but comes off as a bit of a struggle in performance. It's contemporary with the Triple Concerto, of course - in fact, it shares  quite a bit of some of that work's most striking material - and the Triple Concerto is Tippett at his most gorgeously lyrical. I want more of that sort of thing.

'Tippett at his most lyrical' BTW means, to me -

Double Concerto
A Child of Our Time
Correlli Fantasy
(throw in the Handel Fantasy too, though it's nowhere near such a fine work)
Midsummer Marriage - one of the great operas of the century, with such a special soundworld
Piano Concerto - an offshoot of the above opera, and my favourite British PC by some distance
Triple Concerto
Rose Lake

and odds and ends like the Four Horn Sonata. These pieces ought to win anyone over, but they aren't the end of the story as far as Tippett is concerned

[karlhenning]

Why do you do that . . . .

I like the sound, chiefly.

[Al Moritz]

Maxwell-Davies, string quartets (Naxos quartets). I wasn't sure if the composer hadn't lost his edge in recent years, but the quartets 3 & 4 (2003, I think) are masterful music of great finesse. Also, a quite timeless modernity that binds itself neither to tonality, atonality or modality, but finds some middleground floating in between. I am looking forward to more of those quartets.

[eyeresist]

I like the sound, chiefly.

Perhaps you are working on a Sonata for Clarinet and Desktop?

[karlhenning]

Perhaps you are working on a Sonata for Clarinet and Desktop?

No, that combination does not appeal to me, somehow.

[Mark G. Simon]

A sonata for clarinet and laptop would be a possibility. Some music departments are teaching laptop as a musical instrument.

http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/

[eyeresist]

A sonata for clarinet and laptop would be a possibility. Some music departments are teaching laptop as a musical instrument.

http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/

Computerised music as performance is silly. There's no need for all those PCs on stage when one would suffice, and once the music is written there's no need for a human pressing the buttons (and if you want aleatoric music, the PC can do that too.)

That said, I used to be a big techno fan, and can understand the emotional appeal of retaining the human element on stage.

[mahler10th]

I followed the link and...well...just absurd.

[Mark G. Simon]

I don't think you guys appreciate what's going on in that picture. Those laptops are running interactive software that allows them to alter the programming in real time, while the program is running. Those people are not just sitting there playing MIDI files.

Also, each key on the keypad can be programmed to play a certain sound or sequence of sounds every time it is hit. That potentially gives each laptop player a lot of sounds to play with, and they can be played in whatever rhythm the composer specifies. The laptop has serious potential as a musical instrument.


I, myself have played a composition for clarinet and laptop, as a matter of fact. In 2004 I performed at Colgate University a piece called Tephillah for clarinet and electronics by Howard Sandroff. Basically this was a clarinet solo in which the clarinet is miked and the signal sent into the computer where various sound processing modules sustained, echoed, altered and otherwise manipulated the clarinet sounds to produce more colors and textures than would have been possible with a clarinet by itself. The sound processing was operated by a performer at the laptop.

[greg]

I, myself have played a composition for clarinet and laptop, as a matter of fact. In 2004 I performed at Colgate University a piece called Tephillah for clarinet and electronics by Howard Sandroff. Basically this was a clarinet solo in which the clarinet is miked and the signal sent into the computer where various sound processing modules sustained, echoed, altered and otherwise manipulated the clarinet sounds to produce more colors and textures than would have been possible with a clarinet by itself. The sound processing was operated by a performer at the laptop.

Doesn't Boulez do the exact same thing in Repons?

[Mark G. Simon]

Morton Subotnick did something similar in the 1970s with a tape containing a "ghost score" rather than sounds. The live instruments would be miked and the signal sent into a multi-effect box (I think you had to rent it from the publisher in order to play the pieces) which would alter the sounds according to instructions encoded on the tape.