Ups and downs in the repertoire

[Gareth Vaughan]

I agree, Eric. Even some Stockhausen I have enjoyed: Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden was amazing. Act I was hard work and a lot of people left after it. But I remained for Acts II and III, and was glad I did.
I've also enjoyed a lot of Tavener, in fact more the atonal early works than the rather minimalist later ones.

[semloh]

With you 100% on that, Alan (inc. your comment about GL's 4th).

The major Australian concert series for 2018 appear to be populated by mainstream works, with the occasional avant garde piece by a living composer. 

[eschiss1]

Is Kats-Chernin (Sydney Symphony, February 28) avant-garde? I didn't think that was her reputation...

[TerraEpon]

Kats-Chernin's music is mostly tonal, though it can get spikey now and again. A lot of her music has a 'light' touch as it were -- she wrote a number of ragtime pieces among others.
Nothing I can think of that's really in this board's pervue though (I know that wasn't the point of the question)

[eschiss1]

Right, "avant-garde" was specifically what was stated. Indeed a fair amount of modern music I've encountered, especially in concert, in the last ... half of my life really is more "eclectic" and etc. than "avant-garde" in any sense. (There are some exceptions that stand out, and if I may have been mezz-mezz about some of them, I'm -more- negative about the mush. No, mush does not include solid well-crafted music that knows where it's going and has something to say and tells me what it's saying (which can be done in any number of "styles", mush is just mush, like some of the newest-of-the-newest-of-the-new-by-being-a-bit-of-rock-and-a-bit-of-classical (but not necessarily having something to say beyond style) that one sometimes runs into lately (and I try to run away -from-.)

[eschiss1]

As to American Chamber Music ensembles, yes, the most famous ones are also the most unadventurous, which doesn't surprise me. Still, the Portland Quartet (in Maine) has a nice schedule this year (if your tastes run to Cesar Franck, Walter Piston and Paul Hindemith, as mine do; it's true I don't live anywhere near there as I do the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.)  The Avery Ensemble has an intriguing lineup (in the few concerts left this season, works by Reger (2nd piano quartet), Fauré (2nd cello sonata), etc.).) A concert tomorrow in Paso Robles, California will feature chamber works by Cras and Roussel; one on Sunday in San Luis Obispo will feature works by Cras, Roussel, Fauré and Noam Elkies (b.1961) ... (not groups, admittedly.)

As to orchestras, I see no "Bax, Raff, Rubinstein, Balakirev or even Schmidt" on the horizon but there are works by Gipps, Vaughan Williams (Sea Symphony and later Symphony no.6) and Farrenc planned for the next few months (March, April and May, I believe) in Seattle, Los Angeles (VW Symphony 6 in March), and Dayton (Ohio) (Sea Symphony in April); and New York respectively. Goes as it goes. (See RVW Society Concerts 2018 which btw also lists a few performances in Australia, though mostly of The Lark Ascending.)

[Ilja]

I'll reserve judgment on Henze, but as for Stockhausen, Boulez and Cage: why should we regard them as 'giants' anyway? Nobody really wants to listen to them. The true giants have been obscured by the modernist movers and shakers who banned George Lloyd and countless others (I'll pin my colours to the mast and declare GL's 4th Symphony a 20th-century masterpiece). I could go on, but I was listening to Nimrod Borenstein's VC on Chandos earlier and my faith in the continuance of good music has been miraculously restored!

The big difference is that where in previous years various musical traditions could exist (peacefully or not) alongside one another, the modernist obsession with "purity" (and we all know how that panned out politically) manifested itself in an intellectual climate where only one kind of music was ideologically acceptable – see Boulez' notorious proclamation that any music that isn't serialist is "worthless".

Unfortunately, because performance arts are nowadays so dependent upon institutional support for publication, performance and education, such an attitude can do tremendous damage. That damage extends to creating a situation where "art music" becomes something solely comprehensible to the initiated, a purely intellectual experience that makes enjoyment almost suspect. I'm so glad that there seems to be a new generation of composers moving away from that.

[eschiss1]

seriously? (That practically all of -them- were and are almost always anti- modernists could be coincidence.)

[sdtom]

Glad to see some Vaughan Williams being performed but alas not my favorite piece of his Sinfonia Antarctica.

[Double-A]

For this discussion I don't care if Henze at al. are giants or not.  My point was that they were not considered giants by the establishment the way Stravinsky or Bartok (or Wagner, Brahms, Beethoven) were.  Indeed that nobody much younger than Stravinsky has been assigned the role of "giant" by the establishment (both musical and musicological).  And I find that  interesting (and maybe worrying for the long term survival of classical music though that need not really concern any of us).

[semloh]

Just back-tracking ... re my "avant garde" comment. Apologies for the careless use of the term - and rather careless generalization. We do hear lots of Kats-C., Ross Edwards and Peter Sculthorpe in performance.

[Ilja]

That's good, I think; there ought to be a healthy dose of circulation.


As to the "greats" question, I think if we look at contemporary orchestral works, the concert halls have at least partly been replaced by the cinema; if you look for popular orchestral repertoire it is the Michael Giacchinos rather than the Hans Werner Henzes that spring to mind.

[Alan Howe]

The problem with film music, though, is that it's primarily illustrative and so doesn't really work as pure music - after all, it's not designed to. So, a massive film score may be divided up into small chunks - very unsatisfying to listen to.

[adriano]

Some of the postings in this chapter are quite silly. A person, for example, who has no idea about Schoenberg's songs should better look through his song collections! And, even considering his more atonal work for voice, good singers have absolutely no problem with it. He wrote a lot of early, post-Brahms-like of late Romantic cycles wthout opus numbers. Later came the early ones opp. 1-14 (wonderful works), then the magnificently lyric "Book from the Hanging Gardens", op. 15, and last but not least, thr 3 songs op. 48. The 6 Lieder op. 8 and 22 (with orchestra) are also fascinating lyric masterworks. Not to speak about "Gurrelieder"!

[adriano]

Not all film scores, Alan. For example, some of Ibert's cues for "Macbeth" go for 6-8 minutes; and the first part of "Golgotha" is 12 minutes long - and are set up symphonically. That was agreed betwenn the directors and the composers, who both had bolder ideas about the finction of film music.