The best symphonies of the past 50 years?

[Alan Howe]

Let's get away from the issue of British symphonies pre-Elgar...

[theqbar]

What about Ivanovs' last symphonies? I would vote for n.20. I also think that nobody has mentioned so far Boris Tischenko. I find really interesting his 5 Dante Symphonies. (which have been composed from 1997 to 2005).
  I also would like to thank so much all the members of the forum who voted for Simpson's 9th symphony because they made me discover a magnificent work that was unknown to me.

[saxtromba]

Having read through all the above posts, it seems that there are two relevant discussions going on here.  One is simply a list of symphonies people think worthwhile; another (the more interesting, imo) is an attempt to determine whether or not some sort of great symphonic tradition has been lost or abandoned by recent composers.

This latter reminds me of the story about Brahms and Mahler.  Supposedly they were walking along a mountain stream and Brahms was declaring sadly that when he died the great symphonic tradition would die with him.  Mahler suddenly stopped, pointed at the stream, and exclaimed.  'What is it?' Brahms asked. 'The last wave,' Mahler replied.  Brahms acknowledged the humor but not the point.  Something of the same sort seems to me to be going on in discussions which attempt to demand that music follow a prescribed path or be declared to somehow be out of bounds.

Nor am I a big fan of claims that music needs to become more 'accessible'.  Henry Pleasants made this charge in The Agony of Modern Music decades ago, arguing that jazz would be the salvation of serious music.  It wasn't.  Now David Matthews is making the same sort of claim about rock.  It isn't (just listen to Glass's desperate attempt to inflate pop music into a symphony (his David Bowie piece for a demonstration).  But the fact, so far as I can see it, is that music doesn't need saving.  Rather, music education does.  There is less and less of it, and what there is is too often truncated or squeezed in with other, unrelated, matters.  As a result, listeners are simply not equipped to be interested in music that doesn't conform to 'masterpiece marketing' (but this is another topic).

So, back to the great tradition  Is there anyone who would argue that there were 150 genuine masterpieces of the symphony between 1810 and 1960?  Let's assume so, especially since 'masterpiece' is a pretty flexible term.  I have taken the liberty of providing a list of symphonies, one per year, from 1961 to 1986, a list created in about 20 minutes of scanning Baker's and a few CDs for confirmation of dates.  Every one these, I would say indisputably, composed by someone not only aware of but working within the 'great tradition' (although I don't necessarily endorse each and every one of these as a 'masterpiece' per se).  This suggests to me that there is no genuine downturn in either the tradition or works connected to it.

1961: Shostakovitch 12
1962: Shostakovitch 13*
1963: Brian 21
1964: Toch 7
1965: Harris 10
1966: Harrison 'on G'*
1967: Pettersson 7*
1968: Schuman 9
1969: Shostakovitch 14*
1970: Aho 2*
1971: Shostakovitch 15*
1972: Pettersson 10*
1973: Sallinen 2
1974: Pettersson 12
1975: Schuman 10
1976: Aho 5
1977: Hanson 6*
1978: Pettersson 14
1979: Sallinen 4
1980: Aho 6
1981: Simpson 8
1982: Creston 6*
1983: Graunke 7
1984: [oops- I somehow missed this year; I'll throw in Holmboe's 1988 12th, since he hasn't even been mentioned yet ]
1985: Sallinen 5
1986: Rautavaara 5

I am sure that plenty of people will rush to add symphonies I've 'forgotten.'  This will simply help make the point more fully....

[Dundonnell]

What about Ivanovs' last symphonies? I would vote for n.20. I also think that nobody has mentioned so far Boris Tischenko. I find really interesting his 5 Dante Symphonies. (which have been composed from 1997 to 2005).
  I also would like to thank so much all the members of the forum who voted for Simpson's 9th symphony because they made me discover a magnificent work that was unknown to me.

Splendid that you should have discovered the Simpson 9th through this thread

That is one reason why forums like this exist and are so enormously valuable

Regarding Tishchenko's five Dante Symphonies I must confess to finding them pretty hard going. His Symphony No.5 is however a particularly impressive composition.

[BFerrell]

I will be re-visiting the Simpson 9th tonight.

[chill319]

Some years ago, the outstanding American composer Steven Stuckey admitted to liking and respecting Roy Harris (at his nadir when our conversation occurred). I do, too, if not with as much affection as Bruckner elicits, still with rather the same kind of affection. The "10 decibel" recording of Harris 12, generously uploaded by shamokin88, has raised my earlier high opinion of Harris the symphonist even further. An utterly original work, programme music in a way, but with a serious demeanor and craft out of the great symphonic tradition.

I haven't heard Harris 11, written for the NY Philharmonic, but Albany has been touting Harris 9 as "the great American 9" for many years, and if 11 is anything like as original as 12, it may be "the great American 11." : )
I love VW 8 (in the Haitink performance) and 9 (in several performances, especially Previn and Haitink). Like those VW masterworks, the late Harris symphonies will not likely "bring the house down," but as a group, contrary to everything I was taught two generations ago, they are, I believe, deserving candidates for the canon.

[JimL]

Is there a download of Simpson 9 in the BMB corner?  Or maybe just the British music thread?

[Dundonnell]

Is there a download of Simpson 9 in the BMB corner?  Or maybe just the British music thread?

I am afraid not

The work was first performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, who commissioned the work, on April 8th, 1987. It was recorded by the same orchestra for Hyperion on 7th-8th February 1988.

"The Independent"(British newspaper) said "Awesome: few symphonies have better deserved the description of a cathedral in sound since the first movement of Bruckner's Ninth itself".

Lionel Pike wrote in the cd booklet "This symphony is not only a mighty study of musical motion, comparable to those we find in Beethoven and Sibelius, it is also a study of the power of a simple musical germ to generate enormous paragraphs of music. It is of immense directness and power, and enshrines all that is best in symphonic writing, while still remaining completely unified and original. This symphony is a giant written by a giant among symphonists".

It is-to my ears(and obviously a number of others on this forum)- quite simply a sublime masterpiece of concentrated power and quite breathtaking grandeur.

Will add a bit more by Private Message

[Greg K]

There must be others like me here who find Simpson 9 among the most utterly sterile large-scale symphonic constructions (I won't say "creations") they have ever encountered, - however technically brilliant it might be, - absent any shred of heart or humanity, and unlike in what one might refer to as the "cosmic dimension" of a Beethoven, Bruckner, or Sibelius Symphony without a "call" to something potentially transcendent in us either. 

I have often thought an appropriate literary preface to the work might be Pascal's famous lines:

   "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after,
     the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which
     I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here
     rather than there, why now rather than then."

[eschiss1]

*shrug* speaking just personally I'm more convinced by and interested in other works - symphonies and others - of his.

[Dundonnell]

There must be others like me here who find Simpson 9 among the most utterly sterile large-scale symphonic constructions (I won't say "creations") they have ever encountered, - however technically brilliant it might be, - absent any shred of heart or humanity, and unlike in what one might refer to as the "cosmic dimension" of a Beethoven, Bruckner, or Sibelius Symphony without a "call" to something potentially transcendent in us either. 

I have often thought an appropriate literary preface to the work might be Pascal's famous lines:

   "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after,
     the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which
     I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here
     rather than there, why now rather than then."

I am sure that there probably are others on here who share your views about the Simpson 9th and, if they do so, they may well join in the discusssion and say so with their reasons.

I profoundly disagree with your assessment....but then there are at least a couple of members who have mentioned the Tippett 3rd Symphony as one of the best symphonies of the past 50 years and that is a work I positively detest.

I simply cannot abide anything Rachmaninov wrote apart from the First Symphony, 'The Bells' and 'The Isle of the Dead'(although I once liked the Symphonic Dances ). One of my dearest friends and a member on here-Johan Herrenberg-loves the Music of Frederick Delius whereas I am bored to tears by most of Delius's music. I happen to think that, with the exceptions of his 1st, 2nd and 8th symphonies Gustav Mahler is grossly over-rated.

Our musical tastes, as in other forms of the arts, will inevitably, naturally and quite properly, differ. But if we respect the fact that what brings us together is a love of Music then those differences are healthy differences which distinguish but not divide us

[Greg K]

No disrespect towards or attack on Simpson 9 lovers, of course (given such a tiny presence here, my judgement will hardly matter much in any case).  I have just never understood the felt passion it's devotees so fervently express for a piece so completely devoid of any feeling and passion and fervency. I still listen to it from time to time and always unfailingly it evokes precisely nothing or nothingness in me, - neither attraction or revulsion or any response at all in fact.  It is just an empty structure really, probably ingeniously built, but with nothing "inside".  Why does it exist (I ask myself)?

[Dundonnell]

I fear that nothing I could write would dissuade you from your view of the Simpson 9th, any more than anyone will convince me that later Tippett makes much sense(to me, at least ). I am sorry that you find it, as you say, "devoid of any feeling and passion and fervency"

It will in no way assist to read something like this-written by a Simpson admirer from Michigan:

"It is autumn again; and for me, that means it is high time to listen to some music composed by Robert Simpson. The late Mr. Simpson was, in my humble opinion, the greatest composer of the second half of the twentieth century. I also find that there is no better music to listen to on a chilly fall evening than something composed by Mr. Simpson.

Simpson's ninth symphony is a monumental thing of beauty. It is like scaling the sheer face of a majestic mountain. This one movement masterpiece builds slowly with an intrinsic intensity. It then keeps on building. Then it builds some more. The climax is breathtaking.

Then what after the climax? Is this piece just an extended nerve-racking thrill ride?

No. It is not. It is much more. To return to the previous mountain scaling metaphor...The real treat of this symphony, at least as far as I am concerned, is the sense of release, the sense of exasperated wonder that is expressed in the fading, echoing, post-climactic ending to the piece.

Some folks, including Mr. Simpson himself, compare this symphony to Bruckner's sixth. I can see why. It does share a lot of characteristics with that symphony. I would also add that there are parts reminiscent of Bruckner's ninth as well. Yet, while I am a great admirer of Bruckner (actually, I am a Brucknerian to the core), I would have to say that this piece transcends both symphonies; and I can pinpoint the exact spot where it occurs-the moment Simpson attains his peak and then reverses his way down into the ecstasy of the ending. I know of few moments in the vast span of twentieth century classical music that could even compare, much less measure up.

Isaiah 40:31 says: "Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary." The same could be said (In a little less spiritual way) about this symphony. Those who are brave of heart and sound of mind enough to endure the climb, will see the view from the top. What a view it is."

We shall agree-with mutual respect-to differ in our opinions of the Simpson and leave it at that

[Greg K]

Interesting to juxtapose that quote from Isaiah with mine from Pascal as attempts to verbalize the Symphony's evocations.  We hear with different ears.

[Alan Howe]

Personally, I'll have both Simpson and Tippett....