Maxwell Davies

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Triggered by remarks of Albion and then Alan on the current thread about 2012 Naxos releases, I suspected that many Maxwell Davies compositions are not available on current CDs and therefore more or less unavailable to those less long in the tooth than myself. Given a quick glance at Amazon this suspicion quickly became a cause for considerable dismay. Much of Max's work was recorded by Collins and Unicorn-Kanchana, and when these labels folded a few years ago many works promptly became unavailable (apart from to those with bulging cheque books willing to satisfy the greed of certain Amazon sellers).

Some may remember the good old days (around 2005) when it was possible to compile CDs of one's own choice by selecting works from just about the whole corpus on the MaxOpus website. That was before such things as downloading - and great fun it was. The duration of all works was given, down to the second, and you then selected individual works up to around 75 minutes. I can remember the anguish of working out you still had 6 mins 49 secs of free space on your CD and wondering how to fill it. In my own catalogues I've got down a payment of between £6-7 for each full length CD - and a few days later a physical CD accompanied by full and lengthy notes dropped through the letterbox. Marvellous - you had a physical CD of high quality, and none of the tiresome problems associated with current ways of obtaining music. That way, together with all the CDs from Collins and Unicorn, I built up several feet of Max on my shelves.

Somewhat of a diversion, but this source was discontinued at about the same time as when one of Max's associates was detected dipping in the till in quite a big way. Only scanty details got into the press, and as far as I know no criminal charges were made.....but alas, at that time Max's music became hard to obtain.

To the point: we now have a situation where the music of the Master of the Queen's Music (another notion, along with knighthoods, that will puzzle friends overseas!) is pretty dangerously close to being generally unavailable. I'm aware that some just don't get on with this music, but nonetheless the situation is surely something of a scandal?

True, we have the series of the 10 'Naxos' quartets (wonderfully performed by the Maggini) composed from 2001 to 2007. There's the promise of some of the symphonies once recorded by Collins being released on Naxos. But what else? Browsing along my shelves I'll stick out my neck and proclaim that nearly all the following are either major works or at least deserve serious attention by those with ears and minds:

Worldes Bliss (1969)
Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969)
Miss Donnithorne's Maggot (1974)
Ave Maria Stella (1975)
Five Klee Pictures (1976)
Runes from a Holy Island (1977)
The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1977)
To the Lighthouse (1980)
Piano Sonata (1981)
Black Pentecost (1982)
Image Reflection Shadow (1982)
Sinfonia Concertante (1982)
Into the Labyrinth (1983)
Sinfonietta Accademica (1983)
Resurrection (1987) [But, sorry, Max, try as I might you've quite lost me with this extraordinarily batty work]
Trumpet Concerto (1988)
Time and the Raven (1995)
The Beltane Fire (1995)
The Doctor of Myddfai (1996)
Piccolo Concerto (1996)
Piano Concerto (1997)
The Jacobite Rising (1997)
Sea Elegy (1998)
Commemoration Sixty (2005)

Apologies for tiresomely producing a mere list. For the sake of brevity I've left out the truly marvellously inventive (IMHO!!) 10 'Stratchclyde' concertos written for members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 1987 to 1994. Plus again all the symphonies - the 8th, the Antartic Symphony of 2001, I consider a staggering masterpiece.

So there you are. Master of the Queen's Music (however one estimates that!), a vast range of work including orchestral, chamber, instrumental, choral and opera, some of it admittedly peculiar (the same can be said of late Tippett, but I love it all the same) but much of it splendid stuff that makes at least me glad to be alive......and vast amounts of it pretty much currently unobtainable. Is that not a scandal?

Peter

[Dundonnell]

You have written a quite excellent post hugely amplifying the point I had just made in the 2012 Naxos thread

I too was fortunate to acquire the Symphony No.8, Strathclyde Concerto No.3, The Beltane Fire, Mavis in Las Vegas, An Orkney Wedding, Ojai Festival Overture and the Oratorio 'Job' as my own compilations from the Max Opus site in its previous incarnation.

Now..to be honest...I find early Maxwell Davies quite beyond my comprehension His later music can still be tough going at times but he is a serious composer, writing in traditional musical forms and merits serious study.

Your splendid post hits the nail squarely on the head

[Jimfin]

I'm so glad to have this topic brought up. It is a disgrace. Admittedly, Max's music is not to everyone's taste, but he is generally accepted as a pretty fine composer and certainly a good deal more so than his immediate predecessor as Master of the Queen's music (sorry I met MW and the experience did not endear him to me). Max is also comparatively high profile for a contemporary serious composer, which can only be a good thing for the worry position of 'classical' music in British society, where we have a pop-picking Prime Minister.

[Dundonnell]

I'm so glad to have this topic brought up. It is a disgrace. Admittedly, Max's music is not to everyone's taste, but he is generally accepted as a pretty fine composer and certainly a good deal more so than his immediate predecessor as Master of the Queen's music (sorry I met MW and the experience did not endear him to me). Max is also comparatively high profile for a contemporary serious composer, which can only be a good thing for the worry position of 'classical' music in British society, where we have a pop-picking Prime Minister.

i am not sure that is really quite fair to Malcolm Williamson.

Agreed, he was not the pleasantest of individuals but neither were a number of famous and indeed great composers. The music of Williamson I know I definitely like but there is so much that has not been heard for a very long time or indeed ever. That makes it extremely difficult to reach a balanced assessment of his genuine merits as a composer. The Chandos series was quickly aborted, for example

I also would agree with those who considered his selection as Master of the Queen's Music as perverse(you will recall Sir William Walton's famous comment-"They got the wrong Malcolm!") but the possible choices at the time were not very obvious and we know that some composers are simply not willing to take on the duty of writing music for state occasions to order. The "other Malcolm" was not really an option in 1975 when Bliss died. Arnold was in such a 'dark place' in the mid 1970s onwards that he was discounted for the post.

Regarding "a pop-picking Prime Minister"....I have said this before but it appears to be de rigueur for politicians to claim an interest in popular music-whether real or feigned-in order not to appear elitist. If a prominent politician stood up and said something like "you know what, I detest all popular music, I don't know who Coldplay are, I don't care who they are, I happen to prefer Bruckner and Sibelius" their minders would probably go ballistic............and I would vote for him
(I think the last prominent British politicians who claimed a real interest in classical music were David Mellor and Chris Smith )

[Jimfin]

Sorry, I was a bit strong about 'the wrong Malcolm'. I've just never really got on with such of his music as I have heard. At school he was a regular visitor and we were made to play his music a lot and, just as some people can never watch a Shakespeare play again after doing 'o' level, so I think I shall never be able to like MW again. I have tried occasionally.
     I love the idea of a politician saying that. I would vote for them, whatever their politics. Actually, I think Nick Clegg professes a love of Puccini, but I don't think he listens to Maxwell Davies a lot.

[isokani]

I know quite few people who spent time with Williamson and really liked him. I have no idea about him or his music. Apparently MW was great for one-liners. He was describing a prominent photographer of musicians to a conductor friend of mine, who asked, re. photographer, 'is he gay?' to which MW replied 'gay? He *invented* it'.