I never quite know what to make of the Cello Concerto which was written just after the First World War. At times it is what it is, elegiac; at other times I hear a work which almost has the searing power and intensity of pre-war Berg in it (his Orchesterstuck, Op.6, for example). It's the opposite of a work like the Myaskovsky Fourth, maybe the most harrowing example of a post-WWI testimony but it sometimes feels likes it is on the same track.
The only conclusion I have come to about the Elgar concerto is that it works for me in the performance I hear at any one time. I've heard many that do nothing for me, some that leave me cold and a very few that reduce me to tears. I don't ever think, however, that a British cellist has done the last of these.
Appreciation of music is largely subjective, but I don't agree with your suggestion that the music of VW or Elgar is without 'compassion for human suffering'. Of course, you can choose to interpret VW's 'A Pastoral Symphony', for example, as illustrative of 'a cow looking over a gate' or (as I prefer) 'VW rolling over and over in a ploughed field on a wet day' or as VW's Requiem for those killed in the First World War (something that the composer witnessed at first hand). Likewise the evident nihilism at the end of Vaughan Williams's 6th Symphony is, I would argue, no less shot through with compassion for suffering humanity as is, for example, Shostakovich's 8th symphony or the 'Symphonie Liturgique' by Arthur Honegger. VW's pre-war oratorio 'Dona Nobis Pacem' is a doomed plea for peace and, in my opinion, just as moving and compassionate as Britten's later 'War Requiem'.
Regarding the 'Transportability of Musical Sensibility', what I'm trying to get my head around is that Pre Bach after which the German/Austrian (same thing) composers ruled the waves, and then came the Berlioz-led French resurgence, the rise of the music of the Slavic nations, the scintillating refusal of Italians to be anything other than Italian - I head the great Semiramade Overture today and it put a big smile on my face - there was a kind of homogeneity of purpose. In other words, composers wrote sonatas, chamber music, symphonies, oratorios, operas, etc and it all combined with the musical ether. In the late 19th century the dread of politics took over, music became 'Nationalistic' hence what is known as 'The British sound', typified by Elgar and Pomp and Circumstance.
I'm listening as I write to Purcell, Arise My Muse, Z320. Apart from the language, there is nothing 'English' about this music. In other words, it's pure and simply resonates with Purcell's genius.
It seems to me, then, that music only got roped into the Nationalistc paradigm when the Industrial Revolution took over and nations competed not in trade or cultural interchange, but mainly on battlefields.
What I find great about the music of say, Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, and Mahler, is - like Purcell - its Univeritalty. The music of these composers is full of compassion for human suffering, it rejoices, it opens our hearts to each other.
This may explain why Bruckner, Bach and Beethoven are played in Japan and China, and Malaysia, but not VW or Elgar.
These are random thoughts, from the top of a bald head, brought on by wondering why Purcell and Britten are Univeral Geniuses and VW and Elgar are considered to be 'simply' English - apart from the handful of outstanding works of genius produced by both of them.
I hope readers were pleased with the collection of reviews celebrating the birth sesquicentennial. I wonder if anyone shares my irritation at the constant references to Vaughan Williams as a primarily "pastoral" composer. For all that he was a collector of folk songs, loved the English countryside and expressed that love in his music, so much of it is far more challenging than the justly famous "lollipops" like Dives and Lazarus , the Lark Ascending and Greensleeves - all of which which I love, but they are not the bulk or core of his work. The "Pastoral" symphony and the Romanza of the Fifth (which does not actually have much to do with the English countryside) notwithstanding, you have only to listen to his symphonies as a whole - especially nos. 4, 6 and 9 - to hear why the composer was irked by that label.
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