I agree that any kind of trench warfare attitudes in music (of whichever stance) are lamentable and do us no favours as musicians or listeners and more to the point they are always wrong as they are almost always based on little or no knowledge of what they decry and far too much on presumption, arrogance and extreme mean-spirited narrow-mindedness. You said your experience of Gipps as a student was a positive one and I am glad to hear it but I can not deny how sad it is to think of anybody in musical education with such extreme and extremely closed negative views as the one’s you shared about Gipps. The more I read what she wrote I also can’t avoid detecting a noticeable xenophobia which may have played quite a large part in her extremist stance. And yes why anyone would wish to limit the possibility of music they could really enjoy if given half a chance simply because it uses a particular compositional method or tools, totally baffles me and says everything about these people and their attitudes and nothing about the merits or not of the music they disparage.
Robert - the passion of your reply (which I do not disagree with!) is exactly why I avoided those quotes in my original review. I wanted to make it - quite reasonably - about the music, not the views of its composer. By most objective measures Gipps' music probably derserved to be heard more widely in her lifetime - it is at least the equal of many others.
One of my favourite books is the famous Lexicon of Musical Invective which if it teaches us one thing shows that famous and well-regarded people are often wrong about music and composers. So if Gipps was wrong about the 2nd Viennese School et al then perhaps BBC producers were wrong about her too. At this distance it is of little matter since the past cannot be changed. As should be clear, I for one am very glad to add Gipps to the list of composers whose music I enjoy alongside Britten or Xenakis and the rest.
What you refer to as 'quite contentious statements', I would describe as preposterous, bitter ranting.
First of all if her encounter with Glock was so unforgettable why is his response completely forgotten? And why would such audacity by definition not have helped her case?
I am frankly tired of this off quoted hackneyed idea that Sir William Glock somehow ostracised tonal music. Not because I don’t agree with it, but simply because it is not true and it is doesn’t bear up to an examination of the evidence. For all the prominence he gave to music that was contemporary, it never constituted anything but an extremely small part of what was broadcast on the Third Programme or later Radio 3 and what was played at the Proms under his tenure. For all the Boulez, that was played, whether as composer or conductor, it was as next to nothing compared to Bach, Mozart or Tchaikovsky. I implore anyone to actually go through or even take a random sample of Proms programmes or BBC Third Programme/Radio 3 schedules and show me how or when it was otherwise. Glock also greatly increased the presence of tonal Baroque and pre-Baroque music on radio and at the Proms.
Likewise during his tenure programme planning was completely up to the individual producers who were free to programme what they wished. Of course he had power, any controller of BBC music should have and should make choices. He or his producers may not have rated certain composers but the idea of ostracising tonal music along with the bitter balderdash of his so called blacklist is purely erroneous.
The tonal music of Benjamin Britten or Michael Tippett fared very well under Glock maybe that was simply because it was better than Gipps’ music. The BBC can never be expected to play everything and one would hope that the producers always choose what they think is best. As Michael Tippett said the job of the BBC is to give people better than what they want.
She was scathing too about the importance of originality. Really! I would argue that the greatness of Vaughan Williams lies in his total originality. Furthermore I am forever grateful that Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Bax, Boulez and Birtwistle were completely original.
Would we really want anyone who believed that Vaughan Williams, Bliss, and Walton were the three giants of music since the Second World War controlling BBC music? As there are no Europeans on her list, maybe in post-Brexit times this is what some/many people want, but not me and I find this statement frankly delusional and really makes one question her musical judgement. It would seem to follow that in her way of thinking music can only be great if it sounds like previously great music. A notion for me that would incur the death of the tradition of Western classical music within decades. Even more so considering that anything Bliss or Walton composed that still stands up was written long before the Second World War.
As for her stating that ‘all so-called 12-tone music, so-called serial music, so-called electronic music and so-called avant-garde music is utter rubbish and indeed a deliberate conning of the public’, I think this says everything about her bitter ungraciousness and exclusive elitism and nothing about the quality or not of the music that falls under her quite broad umbrella statement. By her definition when Britten or Stravinsky chose to use serial procedures these compostions automatically became rubbish. Indeed by her standards a piece of music can be categorically judged as rubbish or not simply based on the compositonal methods chosen. Furthermore I would argue that the single most avant-garde composition ever written is Beethoven’s Eroica. Please allow the public to decide for themselves when they are being conned. I don’t believe anyone in the audience felt like they were being conned while they listened to Xenakis’ extraordinary Jonchaies at this year’s Proms.
So if Gipps’ music or that of others of her contemporaries was not given as much due as that of other composers as she or they believed was fair or right, maybe it was simply because those who had to choose what to put on thought that there was simply a lot more better music available.
In my review I mentioned the website "Some Definite Service". To avoid making a long review even longer(!) I omitted this passage:
Jill Halstead, whose biography (‘Anti-Modernism, Nationalism & Difference in English Music’, Ashgate, 2006) has proven a great help to Gipps revivalists, recalls one incident in which —
With typical boldness she confronted Glock [William Glock, Head of Music at the B.B.C from 1959–1972] face to face, and in what was for her an unforgettable encounter asked him why he wanted so much power and why he felt he had the right to ostracize tonal music. It is not clear how Glock responded, but such audacity on Gipps’s part did little to help her cause.
She was scathing, too, about the importance ascribed to ‘originality’ in the musical world, declaring,
My music is a follow-on from Vaughan Williams, Bliss and Walton — the three giants of music since the Second World War. All were great and inspired composers [...] I say straight out that I regard all so-called 12-tone music, so-called serial music, so-called electronic music and so-called avant-garde music as utter rubbish and indeed a deliberate conning of the public.
But I think it supports the notion that she believed that the BBC under Glock did not overly support music such as hers (and others) - one swallow/symphony broadcast does not make a summer.... Part of the reason I did not include these quite contentious statements is that clearly NOT all 12 tone or serial music etc is rubbish and that by saying so I suspect Gipps undermines her own position - clearly this must have been the case at the time.
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