This is just to say goodbye. Well, not forever. But perhaps until some point in September. At the moment I’m writing another blog with my librarian hat on, and it is consuming too much of my time for me to be able to concentrate on that one and this simultaneously. But rest assured, I shall return. I dare say you’ll cope.
I fully intend to be back before the leaves lose their greenness, but shall leave you with an autumnal piece by way of valediction. Enjoy!
Reading the thoughts of Susan Tomes on the subject of the Guardian’s airbrushing of classical music a few days ago, I pondered the marginalisation of classical music, and in particular of new classical music. There has been a dichotomy between classical and popular music for centuries, of course, though by and large the best music has persisted while the dross has fallen by the wayside, as far as we can tell. Still, contemporary classical music is a minority interest now more than ever.
That is the case for several reasons: first of all, popular music has diversified in so many directions over the past century, especially since the age of recording, that it swamps the marketplace. Not just all of the different types of mainstream pop music, but also jazz and blues and big band and swing, gospel, world music (that horrible catch-all phrase), new age (fingers-down-throat time). The list is endless.
The divergent paths taken by classical composers in the last century are also pertinent. Atonality and serialism seem an inevitable resting place of classical music. They are a dead end. Much great music has been composed within these disciplines, and happily the view that dismisses the music of the Second Viennese School as valueless is now a dissenting one, but atonal music is a bridge with nothing on the other side. It is an extreme. Since Schoenberg et al. deconstructed the principles of tonality early in the last century, there has been no single thrust driving classical music towards something original. Every so often a genius like Stravinsky will come along to shake things up, but as a rule composers today either write tonal music (which may be dismissed as reactionary or derivative, all the avenues of tonality having been explored exhaustively over the course of the past several centuries) or atonal music (which practically nobody wants to listen to).
When Britten’s Peter Grimes was premiered in June 1945, it almost automatically became a part of the operatic canon. Today, it is performed in many different productions throughout the world every year. It is difficult to imagine any piece of serious classical music having a similar impact today.
Now, some self-interrogation. How much classical music do I know well that was composed in, say, the last twenty years? A fair amount of the music of Thomas Adès, for one thing. He is a rare beast, a composer who has not abandoned tonality but writes with a distinct and individual voice, his music assimilating with conviction diverse forms of popular and older classical music. (In the interests of fairness, I should state that there are many composers around today with original things to say, it’s just that Adès is the one who has got through to me most.) Also Nicholas Maw’s beautiful, Brahmsian violin concerto, and, coming from a similar direction, a certain amount of the more recent music of Robin Holloway, who writes with the language of romanticism tinged with the modern. All in all, not a great deal compared to what I know of the composers of years gone by, and only a fraction of the volume of presumably fabulous music being written by living composers in Britain alone.
The thing is, Bach and Beethoven and Brahms can all be viewed with hindsight, and we can understand their work in the context of general musical trends. It’s much more difficult to get a handle on people writing today, to work out where they come from and what they have to tell us, especially as the influences that inform their own music must inevitably be more diverse than those of their predecessors.
On the theme of getting to know new music, I will relate a recent happy discovery. A week ago I went to a piano recital by the mercurial Stephen Hough at the Wigmore Hall, where he played sonatas by Beethoven, Scriabin and Liszt, and premiered a new sonata by himself, which he talks about in conversation here. After the concert Hough was gently probed by Jessica Duchen, and those of us who had stayed behind were treated to another premiere, of Hough’s song cycle Other Love Songs, written for the Prince Consort.
Other Love Songs was written to be programmed between Brahms’ two sets of Liebeslieder-Walzer, some of the most frustrating music Brahms wrote, and some of the hardest to love, at any rate for me. Hough’s cycle sets a catholic selection of texts, from Julian of Norwich and the Gospel of John, Harlem Renaissance poets Claude McKay and Langston Hughes, Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Nicolson) and A.E. Housman. They all treat love between people of the same sex, though not in all cases romantic love. In the spirit of otherness, the accompaniment is not for piano four hands like the Brahms, but for piano three hands (the upper pianist uses his right hand only).
One reason why this music appeals more than the Brahms is that Hough’s textures are sparser. The Liebeslieder are part-songs for the potentially stodgy combination of vocal quartet and piano duet, while Hough’s are generally solo songs, giving individual members of the vocal group their chance to star, with a couple of duets and two larger (but still sensitively scored) ensemble pieces at the end. This helps to create variety. The Brahms waltzes blur into one another, but Hough keeps you on your feet.
I find it very difficult to write about modern composers without referring to composers of the past. I’m sure that’s indicative of the paucity of my descriptive abilities, but it may perhaps have a positive application in helping readers to imagine what the music sounds like. There are so many influences audible in Other Love Songs, from the ecstasy of Messiaen in the soprano/mezzo duet ‘All Shall Be Well’ to the inevitable echoes of the great twentieth-century British composers of art song. Finzi would surely have been proud to write a setting of Housman’s ‘Because I Liked You Better’ as distinguished as Hough’s, with its murky and twisty repeated chromatic figures. The delectable ‘Kashmiri Song’ uses the Indian Bhairav raga, and opens with the one-handed pianist strumming the scale on the strings of the piano.
For all of these multifarious influences, Other Love Songs feels remarkably unified, and when hints of other composers are communicated they never come across as mere pastiche. What may unite all eight songs is a joy in sensuality and, dare I say, camp? Hough confessed in his interview at the Wigmore that he instructed mezzo Jennifer Johnston, a Liverpudian herself, to bring something of Lily Savage to her characterisation of Langston Hughes’ maid in ‘Madam and Her Madam’. It works delightfully. And how delightful too to find myself humming bits of it all this week at work, especially the backstreet beating anthem ‘The Colour of His Hair’ (I’ve always thought this was one of Housman’s best poems, and so brilliantly pithy – it laments the fate of Oscar Wilde and you can read it here; Hough’s setting is vicious and violent).
I do recommend listening to the recording that has just been released by Linn. You can read all about it and listen to excerpts on their website here. In case you should be sufficiently intrigued to wish to buy it from Amazon.co.uk, here is a handy link.
Gramophone has recently revived on its website one of the newer old chestnuts. You put iTunes or your iPod or the music player of your choice on shuffle (N.B. with a turntable this is impractical and may necessitate some jumping around) and note the first ten tracks. The result may be supposed to reveal secrets about your inner self that more ordered lists do not, though as far as I’m concerned it’s nothing more than an excuse to show off – in my case, hopefully, to back up the highbrow pretensions I cultivate. The fact that I may have as much Wham! as Stockhausen on my iPod, or more 2Pac than Brian Ferneyhough, or in fact more Jason Donovan than all of them together … well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In any case, as has been documented already, I can’t resist a list. Here we go again.
1. Hymn: Forty days and forty nights (Aus der Tiefe) / Choir of Christ Church, Frome
From a recording of evensong from Sunday 1st March 2009. I’m there somewhere among the basses. Good hymn, good start.
Spotify (Choir of Gloucester Cathedral, David Briggs)
2. Let’s Go Away For Awhile / The Beach Boys
One of the instrumentals from Pet Sounds. Cool.
3. Debussy: La Danse de Puck (from Preludes, Book I) / Krystian Zimerman
I don’t actually own the Zimerman recording of the Preludes in its entirety – this is from a sampler CD for the Philips Great Pianists of the 20th Century series. He takes it a little slow for my liking at the start, but once he gets going the music becomes a perfect embodiment of Puck. Click the icon in the bottom right-hand corner to see the score in all its glory.
4. Mahler: Symphony no. 1 – Langsam, schleppend / City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle
Great stuff. This is the ‘Ging heut Morgen übers Feld’ movement. Full of rejoicing in nature.
YouTube (Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly) | Spotify (Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Kubelik)
5. Stanchinsky: Allegro Moderato (No. 1 from Three Sketches) / Daniel Blumenthal
Stanchinsky, like Mieczysław Karłowicz, died young early in the twentieth century, with early promise perhaps not quite fulfilled. The small body of music he left behind, which shows the influence of Scriabin, especially in the longer works, is ripe for rediscovery now.
6. Cage: Sonata V for prepared piano / Yuji Takahashi
I heard the Takahashi recording of the fourth interlude on Radio 3 when I was about 12, and was immediately entranced by the sound of the prepared piano.
YouTube (Boris Berman) | Spotify (Joanna MacGregor)
7. Evangile selon Jean, Chapitres 1-5 / Ezwa
Yes, an audiobook of John’s Gospel in French. I downloaded it for free from Project Gutenberg a couple of years ago. I suppose I thought it would revive my flagging French. A nice thing to have if you ever want to hear someone talking the language. The female reader identifies herself only as ‘Ezwa’. As there is no album art, I have illustrated it on my iPod with a picture of Robert Powell.
The Son of Our Lord
8. Rachmaninov: Mercy and Peace (from Liturgy of St John Chrysostom) / Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, Stephen Cleobury
I can’t claim to know this as well as the Vespers, but there it is.
YouTube (Russian State Symphony Cappella, Polyansky) | Spotify
9. Respighi: Villanella (from Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite no. 1) / Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Neville Marriner
One of my most beloved recordings. The music fills me with joy like little else, though this is one of the more muted movements. I’ve been meaning to write something about Respighi here for months. Watch this space. The video is of the perfectly decent López-Cobos recording on Decca, but the Spotify link will take you to the real thing.
10. Britten: Storm (from Peter Grimes) / Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Benjamin Britten
He certainly knew how to conduct his own music, I must say. The rhythmic definition of this performance puts many recent pretenders in the shade.
Well, all fine and dandy. I am pleased the Respighi came up, and the French Bible adds a pleasing air of the esoteric. How about you?
It’s taken until the third post for me to break my vow to choose the order of these films at random, but I felt obliged to write about this one now for the sake of neatness, as it ties in so neatly with the first two. Like Walkabout it is concerned with the descendants of European colonists meeting untamed Australia, and like The Go-Between it is set during the summer of 1900 (though of course this is the end of the Australian summer, in February). And Dominic Guard reappears, transformed from the prepubescent Leo into the young gentleman Michael, though his advanced years have not made him any more comfortable socially.
On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without a trace …
So reads the opening title card of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Appleyard College is a fee-paying girls’ school where formality is the order of the day. The widow Mrs Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), a formidable martinet, hair dressed with military precision, oversees everything. All the girls save one, the orphan Sara, travel with two teachers to Hanging Rock. A group of four – Miranda, Irma, Marion and Edith – leaves the party to explore the higher reaches of the rock. Apparently in a trance, Miranda, Irma and Marion leave Edith behind to venture further upwards, oblivious to her cries. Edith alerts the rest of the party, and the stern Maths teacher Miss McCraw goes to investigate. Neither she nor the other girls return.
The first words we hear in the film are poetry, a misquotation of Poe spoken as a voiceover: ‘What we see / and what we seem / are but a dream / a dream within a dream.’ Poetry and poetic aphorisms recur throughout the film, which opens with scenes of the girls reciting verse to each other as they share Valentine’s Day cards. Poetry is their currency. It is also a weapon. ‘You little ignoramus!’ cries Mrs Appleyard indignantly at Sara’s protestation that she cannot memorise a poem. ‘Evidently you don’t know that Mrs. Felicia Hemans is considered one of the finest of our English poets.’
The film itself is a dream-poem, operating at a level of not-quite-reality. This grows from Weir’s awe at Hanging Rock itself, and invites comparisons with Walkabout. There are certainly parallels: take for instance the soundtrack, which juxtaposes original music by Bruce Smeaton, the primal flûte de Pan of Gheorghe Zamfir, and the most refined of Western classical music. As the girls are driven towards Mount Macedon, we hear the first prelude from Bach’s Das wohltemperierte Clavier. The music seems to personify the youth and gentility of the girls, but it also highlights the gulf between the order of the school and the disorder of the wilderness. Weir also takes several opportunities, as Roeg does, to show the wildlife of the rock intruding on the lives of the girls – ants swarming over a piece of cake; a lizard crawling past the reclining Miranda. There is a strain of sexuality running through both films. In Walkabout it is unchecked because the children have abandoned the restrictions of their society, but in Picnic it is always bubbling under the surface. Michael admonishes his ocker servant Albert (the superb John Jarratt) for making crude sexual insinuations. ‘I say the crude things,’ replies Albert, ‘you just think ‘em.’
It seems to me that Weir has a greater instinct for telling stories than Roeg. It is not by chance that in the BAFTA David Lean Lecture he gave last December Weir dwelled heavily on the subject of storytelling and oral tradition, even suggesting that if he weren’t a filmmaker he would be a storyteller in the manner of the French trouvères. It is natural then that Picnic at Hanging Rock should be a more plot-driven film than Walkabout, and yet its plot is anything but conventional.
Critics compared it to Michelangelo Antonioni’s groundbreaking L’Avventura on its release. L’Avventura centres around three principal characters: Sandro, his girlfriend Anna, and her friend Claudia. 25 minutes into the film, Anna disappears. Sandro and Claudia spend the rest of the film exploring various avenues by which they hope to find her. Anna never turns up, and her disappearance remains unexplained. By the end, what one might have expected to be a mystery has turned into a psychological study of the people left behind. Antonioni subverts the viewer’s expectations of the narrative, and produces something far more interesting than a mere mystery.
Picnic follows the model of L’Avventura closely. Once the girls have disappeared, the focus changes subtly. The viewer is given tantalising hints that the mystery will be explained – Edith’s sighting of Miss McCraw; Michael’s discovery of a telltale piece of lace; perhaps most devastatingly of all the reappearance of Irma, dehydrated but alive – but by the end, although the stories of many of the protagonists have been resolved, the mystery has not. One can understand some viewers feeling swindled, but to lament the lack of resolution is to miss the point. The viewer should disregard the possibility of the girls’ return and look instead at the tangible aspect of their disappearance: the ripples that radiate outwards, affecting those left behind. Michael becomes obsessed with discovering Miranda and goes nearly mad on the rock; one by one, parents withdraw their daughters from Appleyard College; Mrs Appleyard has a breakdown. By the end there is barely a character in the film whose life has not assumed some tragic aspect.
There is a common apprehension that the film is based on a true story, which the presentation of the film, with its title card and final voiceover, does nothing to dispel. In fact it is based on a novel by Joan Lindsay. Lindsay was a fine writer and a delightful woman (for a demonstration, watch this interview from 1974 where she talks about the novel), but the periodic statements she made about the story’s origins can appear to contradict each other, making the mystery even more enigmatic than it already is. I believe it is a fiction, but that its power is not lessened by its not being true. When she first wrote the novel, Lindsay contemplated appending a chapter giving a supernatural explanation to the disappearance, but decided against it. It was a wise decision.
IMDb | Buy from Amazon.co.uk
