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A matter of opinion
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on July 22, 2023, 12:55 pm
" I think one can look to a kind of collective opinion from people who are experienced, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and informed when it comes to gauging the value of a work. "
With apologies for taking it out of context and with all due respect to him I've extracted a sentence by Ralph Moore from the "Cherubini's Les Abencerage's" thread to examine it in the light of some of my recent reading, to show that, perhaps, " I think one can look to a kind of collective opinion from people who are experienced, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and informed when it comes to gauging the value of a work" doesn't allways guarantee a correct assessment especially when the "Enthusiastic" element is notably lacking in the critic's feelings about the subject under discussion.
I think that most informed people nowadays recognise that Debussy is one of the major musical figures of the turn of the last century, but it wasn't always the case that he was recognised as such. Cecil Gray in "A survey of Contmporary music (1924)" wrote in his chapter on the composer, "Whole passages and sometimes even whole pieces such as "Voiles"...are harmonized almost throughout on one single chord, and "Pelleas" has with justice been called "the land of ninths." Indeed, in his harmony , Debussy is as curiously limited, monotonous, and restricted as in his melody. His rhythms too are singularly lifeless and torpid as a general rule , and this fault is generally admitted by his greatest admirers."
As if to confirm that Gray's sour opinion of Debussy wasn't an isolated instance, the next book I picked up "Music in my Time" by the American Daniel Gregory Mason (1873-1953)-(although Mason published his book in 1938 there is hardly a mention in it of the important influence of popular music and jazz on contemporary composers; Gershwin, who had died the previous year isn't even referred to) - contains this assesment (following the revelation that Ravel's "sentimentality" has made his music intolerable to the writer) :- "Debussy's harmonies, especially his sliding, clamped-together ninth chords reproducing a single melody at five levels simultaneously and thus virtually reducing harmony to zero, proved so seductive to the merely sensuous ear, that I used some of them , with really startling inappropriateness, in the first version of my Quartet on Negro Themes, and only came to my senses in time to expunge them in a later edition."
Mason goes on to quote triumphantly his friend Paderewski as saying, "Debussy is a man of great skill in harmony and orchestration, but he writes music not for its own sake but as a handmaid to someting that is not music......Not long ago I heard Pelleas and Melisande in Paris. It is ingenious, it has many beautiful effects , but from beginning to end it is subdued, soft, monotonous - everything is subordinated to the text, nothing is musically salient - pages and pages without one triad, without rhythmic vigour - never one manly accent."
Mason's assessment of Paderewski's own Symphony as "A perfectly wonderful masterpiece: such beauty, tenderness, nobility, majesty." was contradicted somewhat by Paderewski's compatriot Szymanowski who said of it "I can't find words bad enough to say about it."
Time has shown that Gray , Mason and Paderewski were largely wrong about Debussy so anybody who relied on their expert opinion - which it obviously was - could have been grievously mislead in their view of the composer.
There are many instances where expert opinion has made a major boo boo. Spohr's remarks about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony are too well-known to need quoting. To be fair to Spohr , Beethoven was as controversial a composer amongst commentators in his own day as Debussy was in Gray's and Mason's.
In recent years we've even seen a well-known magazine reviewer disagree completely with himself when he waxed decidedly coldly about a cd of a well-known piano work when it was first issued only to declare it one of the best available versions when it appeared under the name Joyce Hatto. Egg/face comes to mind.
Sometimes the old attitude of "I don't know much about it but I know what I like" might serve a person just as well when making a choice as relying on the opinions of experts.
Re: A matter of opinion
Posted by Ned English on July 23, 2023, 8:59 am, in reply to "A matter of opinion"
All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would
Previous Message
" I think one can look to a kind of collective opinion from people who are experienced, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and informed when it comes to gauging the value of a work. "
With apologies for taking it out of context and with all due respect to him I've extracted a sentence by Ralph Moore from the "Cherubini's Les Abencerage's" thread to examine it in the light of some of my recent reading, to show that, perhaps, " I think one can look to a kind of collective opinion from people who are experienced, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and informed when it comes to gauging the value of a work" doesn't allways guarantee a correct assessment especially when the "Enthusiastic" element is notably lacking in the critic's feelings about the subject under discussion.
I think that most informed people nowadays recognise that Debussy is one of the major musical figures of the turn of the last century, but it wasn't always the case that he was recognised as such. Cecil Gray in "A survey of Contmporary music (1924)" wrote in his chapter on the composer, "Whole passages and sometimes even whole pieces such as "Voiles"...are harmonized almost throughout on one single chord, and "Pelleas" has with justice been called "the land of ninths." Indeed, in his harmony , Debussy is as curiously limited, monotonous, and restricted as in his melody. His rhythms too are singularly lifeless and torpid as a general rule , and this fault is generally admitted by his greatest admirers."
As if to confirm that Gray's sour opinion of Debussy wasn't an isolated instance, the next book I picked up "Music in my Time" by the American Daniel Gregory Mason (1873-1953)-(although Mason published his book in 1938 there is hardly a mention in it of the important influence of popular music and jazz on contemporary composers; Gershwin, who had died the previous year isn't even referred to) - contains this assesment (following the revelation that Ravel's "sentimentality" has made his music intolerable to the writer) :- "Debussy's harmonies, especially his sliding, clamped-together ninth chords reproducing a single melody at five levels simultaneously and thus virtually reducing harmony to zero, proved so seductive to the merely sensuous ear, that I used some of them , with really startling inappropriateness, in the first version of my Quartet on Negro Themes, and only came to my senses in time to expunge them in a later edition."
Mason goes on to quote triumphantly his friend Paderewski as saying, "Debussy is a man of great skill in harmony and orchestration, but he writes music not for its own sake but as a handmaid to someting that is not music......Not long ago I heard Pelleas and Melisande in Paris. It is ingenious, it has many beautiful effects , but from beginning to end it is subdued, soft, monotonous - everything is subordinated to the text, nothing is musically salient - pages and pages without one triad, without rhythmic vigour - never one manly accent."
Mason's assessment of Paderewski's own Symphony as "A perfectly wonderful masterpiece: such beauty, tenderness, nobility, majesty." was contradicted somewhat by Paderewski's compatriot Szymanowski who said of it "I can't find words bad enough to say about it."
Time has shown that Gray , Mason and Paderewski were largely wrong about Debussy so anybody who relied on their expert opinion - which it obviously was - could have been grievously mislead in their view of the composer.
There are many instances where expert opinion has made a major boo boo. Spohr's remarks about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony are too well-known to need quoting. To be fair to Spohr , Beethoven was as controversial a composer amongst commentators in his own day as Debussy was in Gray's and Mason's.
In recent years we've even seen a well-known magazine reviewer disagree completely with himself when he waxed decidedly coldly about a cd of a well-known piano work when it was first issued only to declare it one of the best available versions when it appeared under the name Joyce Hatto. Egg/face comes to mind.
Sometimes the old attitude of "I don't know much about it but I know what I like" might serve a person just as well when making a choice as relying on the opinions of experts.
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
Your comments reminds me of the "That was Mozart" scene in Amadeus, Jeffrey! (
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
Mention of Mozart reminds me of an article I read which argued that "The greatest composer known to me (Haydn)" wasn't, by any means, the only view of him expressed by Mozart's contemporaries. It showed how some of the uncompromising theorists of the day - I can't locate the article immediately to name and shame them - castigated Mozart for his transgressions against what they recognised as the strict rules of composition. Another instance of what expertise you get depends on the type of expert you consult. It may be that the attitude of Cherubini towards Beethoven's music was as a result of his being a rule-book stickler.
As for Mahler's "My day will come" it appears that, forty years after his death, he was still waiting in the wings. In the 1949 Pelican book of The Symphony -still widely available in charity shops - we find in the chapter on Mahler , among many less-than-enthusiastic comments, such opinions as:
"As a composer he seldom knew where he was going, neither can we; but it is worth while suggesting that the smaller the form in which he wrote the more convincing the result" and goes on to compare to their advantage certain songs with "some of the garrulous and fragmentary pasticcios he calls upon to serve as movements of symphonies."
Mahler's day really arrived in the 1960s when something of a cult developed. I recall , on a visit to inspect the plumbing in the Royal College of Music where I was a student in those days , somebody had scrawled on the wall - in place of the customary limerick - "Mahler is great; Bruckner is ****" the last word being , perhaps, appropriate to the location of the graffiti and best left to the imagination of the reader.
I'm wondering if Mahler's day has begun to pass and that enthusiasm for his music has waned somewhat with Bruckner being the beneficiary of Mahler's decline in popularity (relative, that is, to what it was fifty years ago). Perhaps , in these days of all-round belt-tightening, it could just be that Mahler, with his frequent requirements for large orchestras and choral forces, is just too expensive to mount performances of.
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Your comments reminds me of the "That was Mozart" scene in Amadeus, Jeffrey! (
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
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Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
Previous Message
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
Previous Message
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
To be honest , I find the final pages of Verklarte Nacht very moving and parts of Gurrelieder lovely and sensuous, but then, I like whipped cream. Pelleas and Melisande shows Schoenberg's tendency to overwrite, with passages of dense counterpoint that the average (or, even above-average) ear can't follow....it's more like clotted cream.
It's noticeable that the music of the twelve-note school which has become most acceptable to the general public is that in which the note-row is so constructed as to be fairly close to traditional tonality and/or mixes elements of traditional music into the composition. Berg inclined to adopt a free approach towards the (initial) strictures of Schoenberg's composing method. His Violin Concerto which is based on a fairly euphonious tone-row and includes a quotation from a Bach chorale has become almost popular. It's interesting that Berg was , of 20th century composers, the one who was most admired by Britten (who had hoped to study with him ) and, rather surprisingly, Gershwin who, when he met Berg, became diffident and uncharachteristically reluctant to dash to the piano and play his own compositions for hours on end !
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Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
Previous Message
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
Previous Message
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
To be clear, I was paraphrasing Calum McDonald writing about Havergal Brian- not a Havergal Brian paraphrase per se. Schoenberg’s tonal (first) chamber symphony, allegedly, found Ravel a very unenthusiastic audience, whereas years later Maurice R (and Puccini, too) enjoyed Pierrot Lunaire a fair amount. Let’s not make assumptions…
I didn't know that Ravel had made comments about those works of Schoenberg although I knew that Puccini had attended a performance of Pierrot Lunaire and made complimentary remarks about it.
As for making assumptions....assumptions about what ?
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To be clear, I was paraphrasing Calum McDonald writing about Havergal Brian- not a Havergal Brian paraphrase per se. Schoenberg’s tonal (first) chamber symphony, allegedly, found Ravel a very unenthusiastic audience, whereas years later Maurice R (and Puccini, too) enjoyed Pierrot Lunaire a fair amount. Let’s not make assumptions…
Eh, I should probably edit that line out. Trying to find a source a Ravel; Ravel -did- try to organize a concert in Paris with works by Delage, Stravinsky, Ravel (Mallarmé poems) and Schoenberg (Pierrot) which fell apart.
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I didn't know that Ravel had made comments about those works of Schoenberg although I knew that Puccini had attended a performance of Pierrot Lunaire and made complimentary remarks about it.
As for making assumptions....assumptions about what ?
Previous Message
To be clear, I was paraphrasing Calum McDonald writing about Havergal Brian- not a Havergal Brian paraphrase per se. Schoenberg’s tonal (first) chamber symphony, allegedly, found Ravel a very unenthusiastic audience, whereas years later Maurice R (and Puccini, too) enjoyed Pierrot Lunaire a fair amount. Let’s not make assumptions…
The irony about the 12 Tone dead end is that I love Berg and WEbern. Go figure...
Previous Message
To be honest , I find the final pages of Verklarte Nacht very moving and parts of Gurrelieder lovely and sensuous, but then, I like whipped cream. Pelleas and Melisande shows Schoenberg's tendency to overwrite, with passages of dense counterpoint that the average (or, even above-average) ear can't follow....it's more like clotted cream.
It's noticeable that the music of the twelve-note school which has become most acceptable to the general public is that in which the note-row is so constructed as to be fairly close to traditional tonality and/or mixes elements of traditional music into the composition. Berg inclined to adopt a free approach towards the (initial) strictures of Schoenberg's composing method. His Violin Concerto which is based on a fairly euphonious tone-row and includes a quotation from a Bach chorale has become almost popular. It's interesting that Berg was , of 20th century composers, the one who was most admired by Britten (who had hoped to study with him ) and, rather surprisingly, Gershwin who, when he met Berg, became diffident and uncharachteristically reluctant to dash to the piano and play his own compositions for hours on end !
Previous Message
Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
Previous Message
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
Previous Message
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I love Berg, but I find him more tolerable than most. In the days when I could play piano reasonably well I studied the Berg Sonata (not twelve-tone I know) and played it a couple of times in public. I didn't feel that audiences responded to it particularly positively (could well have been due to my performance) and I found that I was tiring of it myself so dropped it from the repertoire.
As for Webern , I appreciate the fact that he had the decency to be brief in what he had to say but I was never compelled to learn his piano variations. I like "Im sommerwind" though !
Previous Message
The irony about the 12 Tone dead end is that I love Berg and WEbern. Go figure...
Previous Message
To be honest , I find the final pages of Verklarte Nacht very moving and parts of Gurrelieder lovely and sensuous, but then, I like whipped cream. Pelleas and Melisande shows Schoenberg's tendency to overwrite, with passages of dense counterpoint that the average (or, even above-average) ear can't follow....it's more like clotted cream.
It's noticeable that the music of the twelve-note school which has become most acceptable to the general public is that in which the note-row is so constructed as to be fairly close to traditional tonality and/or mixes elements of traditional music into the composition. Berg inclined to adopt a free approach towards the (initial) strictures of Schoenberg's composing method. His Violin Concerto which is based on a fairly euphonious tone-row and includes a quotation from a Bach chorale has become almost popular. It's interesting that Berg was , of 20th century composers, the one who was most admired by Britten (who had hoped to study with him ) and, rather surprisingly, Gershwin who, when he met Berg, became diffident and uncharachteristically reluctant to dash to the piano and play his own compositions for hours on end !
Previous Message
Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
Previous Message
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
Previous Message
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
Berg and Webern's compositions still sound like 'music' to me: Schoenberg sounds like either whipped cream or formulaic road to nowhere.
Previous Message
I wouldn't go so far as to say I love Berg, but I find him more tolerable than most. In the days when I could play piano reasonably well I studied the Berg Sonata (not twelve-tone I know) and played it a couple of times in public. I didn't feel that audiences responded to it particularly positively (could well have been due to my performance) and I found that I was tiring of it myself so dropped it from the repertoire.
As for Webern , I appreciate the fact that he had the decency to be brief in what he had to say but I was never compelled to learn his piano variations. I like "Im sommerwind" though !
Previous Message
The irony about the 12 Tone dead end is that I love Berg and WEbern. Go figure...
Previous Message
To be honest , I find the final pages of Verklarte Nacht very moving and parts of Gurrelieder lovely and sensuous, but then, I like whipped cream. Pelleas and Melisande shows Schoenberg's tendency to overwrite, with passages of dense counterpoint that the average (or, even above-average) ear can't follow....it's more like clotted cream.
It's noticeable that the music of the twelve-note school which has become most acceptable to the general public is that in which the note-row is so constructed as to be fairly close to traditional tonality and/or mixes elements of traditional music into the composition. Berg inclined to adopt a free approach towards the (initial) strictures of Schoenberg's composing method. His Violin Concerto which is based on a fairly euphonious tone-row and includes a quotation from a Bach chorale has become almost popular. It's interesting that Berg was , of 20th century composers, the one who was most admired by Britten (who had hoped to study with him ) and, rather surprisingly, Gershwin who, when he met Berg, became diffident and uncharachteristically reluctant to dash to the piano and play his own compositions for hours on end !
Previous Message
Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
Previous Message
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
Previous Message
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
I mentioned Gershwin earlier in the thread. Funnily enough I came across a passage (in "The memory of all that" by Joan Peyser) last night which quotes Oscar Levant as saying that among Gershwin's treasured recordings were sets of the Schoenberg Quartets. Apart from being surprised that they had been recorded so early it wouldn't seem to be the sort of music that Gershwin would have loved so much. He mixed with some funny people though; at one stage he studied with Henry Cowell. No mention of Webern on his shelves though but he did have a score of Wozzeck which he valued highly.
Previous Message
Berg and Webern's compositions still sound like 'music' to me: Schoenberg sounds like either whipped cream or formulaic road to nowhere.
Previous Message
I wouldn't go so far as to say I love Berg, but I find him more tolerable than most. In the days when I could play piano reasonably well I studied the Berg Sonata (not twelve-tone I know) and played it a couple of times in public. I didn't feel that audiences responded to it particularly positively (could well have been due to my performance) and I found that I was tiring of it myself so dropped it from the repertoire.
As for Webern , I appreciate the fact that he had the decency to be brief in what he had to say but I was never compelled to learn his piano variations. I like "Im sommerwind" though !
Previous Message
The irony about the 12 Tone dead end is that I love Berg and WEbern. Go figure...
Previous Message
To be honest , I find the final pages of Verklarte Nacht very moving and parts of Gurrelieder lovely and sensuous, but then, I like whipped cream. Pelleas and Melisande shows Schoenberg's tendency to overwrite, with passages of dense counterpoint that the average (or, even above-average) ear can't follow....it's more like clotted cream.
It's noticeable that the music of the twelve-note school which has become most acceptable to the general public is that in which the note-row is so constructed as to be fairly close to traditional tonality and/or mixes elements of traditional music into the composition. Berg inclined to adopt a free approach towards the (initial) strictures of Schoenberg's composing method. His Violin Concerto which is based on a fairly euphonious tone-row and includes a quotation from a Bach chorale has become almost popular. It's interesting that Berg was , of 20th century composers, the one who was most admired by Britten (who had hoped to study with him ) and, rather surprisingly, Gershwin who, when he met Berg, became diffident and uncharachteristically reluctant to dash to the piano and play his own compositions for hours on end !
Previous Message
Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
Previous Message
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
Previous Message
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
If I remember correctly, the Schoenberg Quartets "had been recorded so early" precisely because Gershwin funded the recordings!
There’s an interesting musicological study of the links between Gershwin and the Second Viennese School, “Reflections upon the Gershwin-Berg Connection,” by Allen Forte, in Musical Quarterly 83 (1999):150-68. Given the extent of Gershwin’s admiration for them and the closeness of his personal friendship with Schoenberg in particular, it would be surprising if their music hadn’t influenced his in some respects.
As for the absence of Webern, we must remember that Gershwin died in 1937. At that time Webern was still very much in the shadow of the other two; he hadn’t ever done anything to attract as much attention as Verklärte Nacht,Pierrot Lunaire, or Wozzeck. His music didn’t really come to prominence until the 1950s.
Re: A matter of opinion
Posted by Eric Schissel on November 16, 2023, 4:45 pm, in reply to "Re: A matter of opinion"
If it was of all 4 numbered quartets it would have had to be in the last year or so of his life, as the earliest recording of nos.3 & 4 (that I'm aware of?...) was the Kolisch Quartet's in 1936-7?...
Previous Message
I mentioned Gershwin earlier in the thread. Funnily enough I came across a passage (in "The memory of all that" by Joan Peyser) last night which quotes Oscar Levant as saying that among Gershwin's treasured recordings were sets of the Schoenberg Quartets. Apart from being surprised that they had been recorded so early it wouldn't seem to be the sort of music that Gershwin would have loved so much. He mixed with some funny people though; at one stage he studied with Henry Cowell. No mention of Webern on his shelves though but he did have a score of Wozzeck which he valued highly.
Previous Message
Berg and Webern's compositions still sound like 'music' to me: Schoenberg sounds like either whipped cream or formulaic road to nowhere.
Previous Message
I wouldn't go so far as to say I love Berg, but I find him more tolerable than most. In the days when I could play piano reasonably well I studied the Berg Sonata (not twelve-tone I know) and played it a couple of times in public. I didn't feel that audiences responded to it particularly positively (could well have been due to my performance) and I found that I was tiring of it myself so dropped it from the repertoire.
As for Webern , I appreciate the fact that he had the decency to be brief in what he had to say but I was never compelled to learn his piano variations. I like "Im sommerwind" though !
Previous Message
The irony about the 12 Tone dead end is that I love Berg and WEbern. Go figure...
Previous Message
To be honest , I find the final pages of Verklarte Nacht very moving and parts of Gurrelieder lovely and sensuous, but then, I like whipped cream. Pelleas and Melisande shows Schoenberg's tendency to overwrite, with passages of dense counterpoint that the average (or, even above-average) ear can't follow....it's more like clotted cream.
It's noticeable that the music of the twelve-note school which has become most acceptable to the general public is that in which the note-row is so constructed as to be fairly close to traditional tonality and/or mixes elements of traditional music into the composition. Berg inclined to adopt a free approach towards the (initial) strictures of Schoenberg's composing method. His Violin Concerto which is based on a fairly euphonious tone-row and includes a quotation from a Bach chorale has become almost popular. It's interesting that Berg was , of 20th century composers, the one who was most admired by Britten (who had hoped to study with him ) and, rather surprisingly, Gershwin who, when he met Berg, became diffident and uncharachteristically reluctant to dash to the piano and play his own compositions for hours on end !
Previous Message
Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
Previous Message
I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
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Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
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"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
Re: A matter of opinion
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on November 17, 2023, 7:56 pm, in reply to "Re: A matter of opinion"
I think you must be right. I tried to look up the matter in two biographies of Gershwin (Edward Jablonski & Howard Pollack) ; both mention Gershwin helping to finance the recordings but don't give dates. Both also mention Gershwin's attendance at a concert, together with Oscar Levant, given by the Kolisch Quartet which consisted of quartet(s ?) by Beethoven and all four by Schoenberg (again no dates given by either biographer). Apparently after this concert Gershwin remarked that he had been contemplating writing a quartet but in a rather simple style along the lines of Mozart. Apparently the prickly Schoenberg took this as criticism of his own works as being too complex !
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If it was of all 4 numbered quartets it would have had to be in the last year or so of his life, as the earliest recording of nos.3 & 4 (that I'm aware of?...) was the Kolisch Quartet's in 1936-7?...
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I mentioned Gershwin earlier in the thread. Funnily enough I came across a passage (in "The memory of all that" by Joan Peyser) last night which quotes Oscar Levant as saying that among Gershwin's treasured recordings were sets of the Schoenberg Quartets. Apart from being surprised that they had been recorded so early it wouldn't seem to be the sort of music that Gershwin would have loved so much. He mixed with some funny people though; at one stage he studied with Henry Cowell. No mention of Webern on his shelves though but he did have a score of Wozzeck which he valued highly.
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Berg and Webern's compositions still sound like 'music' to me: Schoenberg sounds like either whipped cream or formulaic road to nowhere.
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I wouldn't go so far as to say I love Berg, but I find him more tolerable than most. In the days when I could play piano reasonably well I studied the Berg Sonata (not twelve-tone I know) and played it a couple of times in public. I didn't feel that audiences responded to it particularly positively (could well have been due to my performance) and I found that I was tiring of it myself so dropped it from the repertoire.
As for Webern , I appreciate the fact that he had the decency to be brief in what he had to say but I was never compelled to learn his piano variations. I like "Im sommerwind" though !
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The irony about the 12 Tone dead end is that I love Berg and WEbern. Go figure...
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To be honest , I find the final pages of Verklarte Nacht very moving and parts of Gurrelieder lovely and sensuous, but then, I like whipped cream. Pelleas and Melisande shows Schoenberg's tendency to overwrite, with passages of dense counterpoint that the average (or, even above-average) ear can't follow....it's more like clotted cream.
It's noticeable that the music of the twelve-note school which has become most acceptable to the general public is that in which the note-row is so constructed as to be fairly close to traditional tonality and/or mixes elements of traditional music into the composition. Berg inclined to adopt a free approach towards the (initial) strictures of Schoenberg's composing method. His Violin Concerto which is based on a fairly euphonious tone-row and includes a quotation from a Bach chorale has become almost popular. It's interesting that Berg was , of 20th century composers, the one who was most admired by Britten (who had hoped to study with him ) and, rather surprisingly, Gershwin who, when he met Berg, became diffident and uncharachteristically reluctant to dash to the piano and play his own compositions for hours on end !
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Pre his 12-tone phase, all Schoenberg to me sounds like an overdose of whipped cream. His later music makes my skin crawl - I've said for a long time that there's more music in a page of Rachmaninov than in all of Scoenberg's output. Then again, it's all 'Taste' and 'Sensibility'. My best friend adores Arnie baby, and hates my second favourite composer after Bach, namely, Herr Bruckner. My wife loves Proust and Murnane: I can't read more than half a page of either - give me JOhn Cheever, Alice Munro or Raymond Carver any day, Not to mention Dostoevsky. Which one, you ask - Fyodor, of course.
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I'm not sure if your "Well, I certainly do" refers to the appreciation of Messrs. Birtwistle et al., or the whistling of Schoenberg's "tunes" in the bathroom, Eric.
As for the Havergal Brian paraphrase , I take from it that a composer who doesn't have a large audience cannot claim, with any conviction, that his day has arrived. Havergal Brian's music created a bit of a stir around forty years ago but I can't see that it has held a place in the repertoire. (A concert performance of his opera "The Cenci" which I attended I remember as being one of the most tedious evenings of my whole life).
I can't comment on how often Moses und Aron is staged as - and the reasons for this can be ascertained by referring to other recent threads - I take little interest in the staging of opera these days. I do know, however, that when it was presented at Covent Garden back in the 1960s it probably smashed box-office records but this was largely due to the orgy scene where the participants appeared on stage in various states of undress. It wasn't long before other opera-houses jumped onto the money-spinning bandwagon, especially when the repertoire being presented was one that might not, otherwise, guarantee sufficient audience attendance. I recall seeing Ginastera's Bomarzo at ENO presented in such a way; from what I observed I would guess there must have been record use of the opera -glasses that used to be (maybe still are ) found on the backs of seats available for a few shillings' rent. Although Ginastera was capable of writing a good tune when he was in the mood not one such, as far as I recall, found its way into the score of Bomarzo.
When I've listened to my discs of Moses und Aron I suppose I've been surprised that I have found it more engaging than I'd expected. The Serenade is , as you'd expect from the title, lighter in character and I quite like it - just a matter of opinion.
I have been familiar with Schoenberg's music for around sixty years - an early "Prom" I attended had the Piano Concerto with Katharina Wolpe as soloist and Basil Cameron as conductor - but I've never really empathised with his music after he gave up on tonality. The fault is probably mine as I can't follow the convuluted working-out of note-rows in a piece as well as I can follow the progression of traditional harmony, melody and counterpoint.
As for singing his tunes in the bath, I'll stick to Oklahoma.
Previous Message
Well, I certainly do (and I'm not an accredited music theorist)- the clarinet melody from his (Schoenberg's) Serenade, the opening of his 3rd string quartet, parts of the violin concerto, large parts of the first chamber symphony, among them. To paraphrase an author who died a few years back, a composer (Havergal Brian was the referent at the time) doesn't necessarily need a -large- audience but that doesn't mean they don't have an audience.
And the "rarely performed" (not quoting you, quoting Welsh National Opera's website's archived promotional for their 2013/4 season performances) "Moses und Aron" seems actually to be staged rather often, though since I go to too few concerts, I have no way of knowing whether the seats are nearly-empty, or otherwise...
Previous Message
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
Re: A matter of opinion
Posted by Ford on August 11, 2023, 3:20 am, in reply to "A matter of opinion"
Obviously this is only a side-note to the main thrust of the discussion, but it should be mentioned that, whatever doubts he might have expressed, Spohr was a great advocate for Beethoven during his life and in the decades after his death, when Beethoven was still widely regarded as a radical in musical terms. Spohr played most of the quartets and conducted all the symphonies many times, including the 9th. I have one CD of Spohr string quartets, which contain movements that are influenced by, not to say plainly derivative of, Beethoven's middle quartets, which give the lie to the oft repeated remark that Spohr could never progress beyond the Opus 18. Which is to say that opinions can change, and may not mean exactly what we take them to.
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There are many instances where expert opinion has made a major boo boo. Spohr's remarks about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony are too well-known to need quoting. To be fair to Spohr , Beethoven was as controversial a composer amongst commentators in his own day as Debussy was in Gray's and Mason's.
Oh, that's quite understood. One has only to read Spohr's autobiography (very entertaining and available in English as a re-print) to realise the fact. Spohr's conducting of the 9th Symphony shows that he was generous-minded enough to entertain opinions other than his own.
Previous Message
Obviously this is only a side-note to the main thrust of the discussion, but it should be mentioned that, whatever doubts he might have expressed, Spohr was a great advocate for Beethoven during his life and in the decades after his death, when Beethoven was still widely regarded as a radical in musical terms. Spohr played most of the quartets and conducted all the symphonies many times, including the 9th. I have one CD of Spohr string quartets, which contain movements that are influenced by, not to say plainly derivative of, Beethoven's middle quartets, which give the lie to the oft repeated remark that Spohr could never progress beyond the Opus 18. Which is to say that opinions can change, and may not mean exactly what we take them to.
Previous Message
There are many instances where expert opinion has made a major boo boo. Spohr's remarks about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony are too well-known to need quoting. To be fair to Spohr , Beethoven was as controversial a composer amongst commentators in his own day as Debussy was in Gray's and Mason's.