What a wonderful comparison - Schubert and Elgar smiling through tears.
It's interesting also, the difference between what one sees when one looks into one's mirror, and what the person looking at the person looking into the mirror sees.
In the end, one's impressions of ourselves and the impressions we have of others - people, nations, neighbours etc - is coloured by a myriad of disparate notions, beliefs and experiences. For example, when one talks about 'The British', we are talking about people whose 'tribal' origins are as disparate as the miner from Manchester, and the cockney from London. In the same way, a Prussian is supposed to be as echt a German as a Rhinelnder, or a Schwab from der Schwarzwald.
This perhaps brings us back to the starting point, namely that beauty and all of its variations is in the eyes and mind of the beholder.
And anyway, this is supposed to be about the great composer Vaughan Williams. Who side-tracked this topic? Or, is it, maybe, to do with the inter-connectedness of everything we do or feel or touch or are touched by?
Well, Elgar did write a few specifically British celebratory works which are redolent of Empire and monarchy -although there is nothing English about his choice of historical themes such as King Olaf and the Black Knight and, as Nick says, the influences over him were more Germanic and Latin/Mediterranean. There is also the added factor of his Catholicism, which made him something of an outsider as far as the Establishment was concerned and perhaps urged him to look beyond the borders of Protestant England to "the Continent". His appearance and demeanour very much of his age - perhaps made him appear superficially English, but I would suggest that there is something about the emotional landscape of his greatest works which reflects the "English character" as E. M. Forster delineates it when describing English literature rather than music by means of the sea as a metaphor: "That sea is the English character—apparently imperturbable and even. These depths and the colours are the English romanticism and the English sensitiveness — we do not expect to find such things, but they exist. And—to continue my metaphor—the fish are the English emotions, which are always trying to get up to the surface, but don’t quite know how." The courageous stoicism of the English character might now be an image which belongs to the past but it was certainly true of Elgar's age and I hear that in his greatest works. It is, perhaps, the same quality of "smiling through tears" which is so poignantly apparent in Schubert's more melancholy music but it is surely there.
I would suggest that there is nothing "English" in Elgar's music. HOWEVER, over time it has become accepted that it "represents" Englishness. I think of a similar scenario whereby Copland - through a tiny part of his output "represents" the wide-open plains of the good ol' US of A. Copland himself found it nigh-on absurd that an East-Side living child of Jewish Immigrants could write music that became the musical shorthand for the great plains...
Elgar's musical background is - as often stated - completely rooted in the European/Germanic traditions. He all but rejected any/all elements that could be termed Nationalistic or England-specific. Look no further than his complete ignoring of the folksong tradition/revival. The linkage between the music and a quality of Englishness that makes anyone uneasy exists solely in the mind of that individual. If you were brought up from your mother's knee having been told that Pomp & Circumstance No.1 represents bananas, you'd think it was about bananas - and who could tell you you were wrong.....!
Personally I find the music of both Elgar and RVW to have a greater universality and greater humanity than Britten
Thanks for your reply. I have not meant to imply that VW and Elgar's music is 'without compassion for human suffering'. Much of it burns with the same compassion and love which saturates the composers I had mentioned. I just find that when they retreat to their 'Englishness' I walk the other way.
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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