I cannot add anything to this thread, but I wanted to comment that I found that above comment to be brilliantly stated and I want to enthusiastically agree.

However, to backpedal slightly... what you say nearly infers that anything that anyone calls 'art' is therefore immune (that is the wrong word) from any 'intuitive' criticism - positive or negative since it is all founded on potentially bias or incorrect or pedjudicial assumptions. It this fair to say?

Is my negative criticism of.. perhaps, a small pile of poop mounted on a pedastal in a gallary merely a vehicle to further conversation of said poop?

I am being completely serious.

That's a fascinating question, and a huge one; but if we try to talk about it here, we'll destroy this thread about Elgar (possibly beyond recovery), which would be ever so sad. How would you feel about using your post (or a slightly edited version of it, to explain what we're at) to start a new thread somewhere appropriate, and we can take it from there?

I missed this earlier. The Introduction and Allegro is one of the most characteristic expressions of Elgarian Englishness that I know - it seems inexhaustible, to me. As deep as England. It's one of the pieces where I can most understand that comment he made about his music being in the air around him, and he just takes what he needs. And that other one - you know? - about 'the trees singing my music; or am I singing theirs?'

I have no conception of what it must be like actually to be there, playing, in the midst of it, part of it. I know I'm asking the impossible, but I wonder if there's any way you can describe the experience?

There's much in this thread that I now feel I need to respond to (and also, much fresh consideration to be done, perhaps, regarding my position on Elgar). However, other commitments will prevent me from posting here more fully until next week. I'll be sure to consider my words carefully before I next do.

FK

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My classical music reviews blog: An everyman for himself

I felt I had to post this before I forgot how it was first phrased in my head.

If Parry and Stanford were the inaugural paving stones in the path that led to the Eden that was British music's renaissance in the first half of the 20th century, then Elgar must surely be the final slab. But for me, he remains mostly outside of the garden's gates, with only an edge reaching beyond them.

That edge touches Delius, Wood* and Bantock - who together represent a widening of the path - until the path reaches those who constitute an 'edifice' of composers which might be likened to a magnificent fountain. This is ornate with the works of Vaughan Williams, Walton, Bax, Rubbra, Holst, Bridge, Howells, Bliss, Finzi and others.

And on top of that fountain? Possibly the single most significant (and aptly named) composer Britain has ever produced: Benjamin Britten.

FK



*I mean, of course, Charles - not Haydn, Henry or Ralph - included in my list above not for his compositions but for his educational influence on Vaughan Williams and Howells.

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My classical music reviews blog: An everyman for himself

Well here goes:
you know that playing music in ensembles requires a hightened awareness, even in a rehearsal you have to be pretty alert to what's going on around you. The Introduction and Allegro is one of those pieces that never lets up, you are in the hot seat from start to finish! There are passages where you can sit back and rellish the part you have to play but those are mostly at the beginning after the initial out burst up to the viola solo. The Allegro is great fun but it's not easy (this is one of Elgar's european pointers - how hard the parts are! No punches pulled here.) and the fugue at the end takes a tremendous effort not to drag and even playing all the right notes is a major task. When you are taking part in a recording of a piece like this it can be very tiring and nerve-racking but if all goes well and the band can make sonething magic happen then it's one of the most exciting experiences you can go through. We had to play the piece twice in concerts in the week before the recording (along with the other material on the CD - this is quite usual.) so we were quite geared up for it but the final tweeking and detailed work that Chris pulled out in the session was wonderful to see! There was a thread recently here kind of trashing recording techniques but anyone who has lived this situation knows that it's very different. As I said 'remember I made this recording for you.' This has to be in your mind all the time when playing such emotionally charged music in a recording situation becuase you can go over board in a concert and scoosh thing up too much but whe you know that the public will hear the same performance every time they put on the CD you have to be very detailed and measured indeed. Imagine hearing my exaggerated vibrato on the top G in the fugue theme (which can be thouroughly riviting in concert) the same everytime. you'd soon go off the predictable melodramatics.
These are a few things that go through your head while waiting for the red light to go on for another take. I hope that has given you an insight into what it feels like to record something like Intro&All.
FC

That's a far, far better reply than I had any right to expect. Thank you! (It sounds utterly terrifying, to me! I imagine a state of complete exhaustion at the end....)

Having now had more time to listen to Elgar anew since last posting to this thread - and indeed, to hear again works by his contemporaries and near-contemporaries - I think I've identified what it is about some of Elgar's music which, when I consider it in the context of the period in which it was composed, jars with me.

Put simply, I feel that Elgar unintentionally caricatured what it meant to be British in the early 20th century. Bax, Britten, Walton and others seemed to better capture the spirit of the age in which they were writing. It's not until I come to the final third of Elgar's career that I hear the composer start to reflect - rather than affect (to return to my earlier assertion that Elgar sometimes sounds emotionally insincere to these ears) - the mood of the so-called Modern period.

Perhaps this makes a little more sense of what I said about Elgar sounding like Parry and Stanford. It's entirely appropriate and understandable that strains of the works of both men should be apparent in Elgar's earlier output. But such references, however mild, seem to me somehow out of place in works composed firmly inside the 20th century. For example, the finale of the brilliant and tragic (and otherwise quite Modern) Cello Concerto of 1919 suggests a reluctance on the part of its composer to relinguish past musical influences.

But be all this as it may, I must stress that I do enjoy Elgar's music; and I'd rather this be a thread in praise of the composer's many excellent compositions, rather than a place for me to air my rather inconsequential and unacademic niggles. So I shall say no more unless invited to - and I'll end by adding that anyone who hasn't heard this CD really ought to correct that error by buying it immediately:




FK

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My classical music reviews blog: An everyman for himself

A number of questions come to mind, here. First, looking at your first sentence: can we specify what it meant to be British in the early 20th century? It seems to me to be an unanswerable question, 'early 20th century Britishness' covering a very wide spectrum indeed. Second, I find (and this is no more than a personal response of course, though it runs counter to yours) that Elgar actually speaks directly and deeply to my own 21st century Britishness: he transcends his time, while remaining securely rooted in it (which seems to be a characteristic of most great artists). Third, the scope of Elgar's work is so broad - ranging from the blatantly patriotic (Pomp & Circumstance) to the mystical (Intro & Allegro) - that I'm not sure what part of it is the caricature that you think you've identified.

I think - and you'll correct me if I'm wrong - that what may be causing you to have reservations about Elgar is probably related to his concept of nobilmente. That's what might be misidentified as 'stiff upper lipness', perhaps, though it would be closer to descibe it as a deliberate 'loftiness' - an attempt to rise above the particular, the narrowness of the moment, and transcend it. I've said it before, but the chivalric ideal is an essential part of Elgar, and his music is flooded with its influence. To someone who is suspicious of it, the music may indeed be problematic when that influence comes through.

On a different tack altogether, I can't see why this is a problem, unless one sees the history of music (and all art, perhaps) as a gradual progression towards some higher, yet so far imperfectly formed, ideal. Those historic influences that make you uneasy lie at the heart of Elgar's music, in the same way, surely, as folk song lies at the heart of RVW's. Indeed, one could 'explain' reservations about RVW (if I had them, which I don't) in very similar terms: one might argue how, even in his finest work, there is still that regrettable influence of folk music that he never quite let go of, in order to more fully represent the 20th century....'

Do you see what I mean? Both you and I would agree that such a statement would be nonsense. But if we were unconvinced about RVW's greatness, we might well find ourselves saying such things to justify our misgivings. That there is something in Elgar which you have serious reservations about is evident; but I think the reservations are basically subjective and intuitive, however much one might suppose there are rational, objective reasons for them.

Hmm. As a point of argument, I am not completely comfortable with perhaps discounting someones reservations simply because the sentiment does not contain what you percieve as 'rational, objective reasons'.

example: "I dislike Matthew Bartholomew Marblegonads. I think his music is tedious and boring".

response: "That is merely an intuive, emotional, subjective observation and not a rational, objective reason. Though his music consists of slapping frogs together and gargling, your statement carrys no weight with me."

Sorry. Elgarian - you offered to take that discussion to another thread... looks like I will have to do that.

carry on.

Obviously, there's no easy nor single answer to this. I think what I mean is that whereas many other British composers of the early 20th century sound to me as though their writing is more representative of the wide spectrum of Britishness to which you refer, Elgar seems somewhat narrower in focus - more concerned, I'd argue, with Britain's imperial past and the 'glories' of years gone by than with the social, political, cultural and economic realities that prevailed in the first three decades of the 1900s.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. In my view, the music of Elgar sounds very far from relevant to our current times.

I always feel with Elgar that perhaps he focused on all the noble qualities for which Britain was best known at that point in history, accentuated these in his music, and disregarded some of the darker, grittier truths. The result, for me at least, is an unrealistic portrait of Britain: recognisable as British, but not truly representative. Maybe this was his aim?

You might well be right about this. Perhaps I want my music less 'idealised'. It's like the difference I discern between the music of Mozart and Beethoven: that of the former seems too divinely perfect, while that of the latter is a perfect marriage of the divine and the human.

I think I've failed to make myself clear on this. Those 'past musical influences' I hear in the Cello Concerto's finale aren't a problem, but they do jar a little for me in an otherwise Modern-sounding work. As for Vaughan Williams, he - like Bartok - absorbed folk song into his music in a way that, to these ears at least, doesn't sound like he's pastiching the past. Elgar was possibly aiming for a similar level of integration of musical influences from days gone by, but his attempts at such seem to me to stick out more obviously.

Again, a slight misunderstanding seems to have crept in here. I'm not disputing Elgar's greatness - just giving my reasons (wholly subjective, certainly) for not considering this composer so great when I weigh him against other British composers from the first half of the 20th century.

FK

No, no, that isn't what I meant at all. I'm not discounting anything Kuhlau said; in fact I have the greatest regard for what he says, even where I disagree with it (as I believe he knows). My point here is that what looks like a rational argument is really no such thing (which you seemed to agree with when I mentioned it in an earlier post). These apparently rational arguments are the things we construct in support of a conviction about a work of art which is actually subjective and intuitive. If you like, they represent another way of expressing our pleasure (or displeasure), but they're no more reliable than the subjectively determined premisses on which they're based. If we love a work of art, we will always be able to find a good 'rational' reason for doing so. If we detest a particular work of art, we can always find a rational defence of that, too.

To the mid-nineteenth century French academician, an Impressionist painting really was a disgrace, and he could find a hundred good reasons for saying so, yet all of them were really only expressions of his deeper, intuitively-held assumptions about what good painting is. Responding passionately to most of Elgar's music, as I do, I see his ability to carry the past with him into the future as a strength. Yet Kuhlau identifies it as a weakness. The real difference between our positions lies further back, and farther in: beyond the rational.

On this, we agree absolutely. It is, after all, part of what makes music criticism so much fun (and so infuriating) to read. We'll never see eye to eye with everyone on everything. I, for one, see that as a good thing. How dull life would be otherwise. And of course, there's always the possibility that we might switch our views some day and see things the other way about. Or from both sides. This makes art much more valuable to me than anything it might fetch at auction.

I think 'weakness' is too strong a word. I want to replace that with 'limitation', but that isn't right, either.

FK

I haven't time to do justice to all that you've written here (though I've read it carefully), but I'd like to pick up on this point because it seems to me to be central. I agree entirely (of course) that RVW doesn't sound as if he's pastiching the past. But for someone who admired RVW a lot less than we do, and who was casting around for a rational argument to support his lack of enthusiasm, this is the kind of thing he might seize upon. 'Yes,' he might say, 'it's that dratted reliance on folk music that held him back from real greatness. If only he could have shaken it off.' In other words, what to you and me gives deep and profound roots to RVW's music (because we love it), could be taken down and used in evidence against him by someone who dislikes it.

Elgar straddles the 19th and 20th centuries in a very particular way; he's positioned on a kind of musical and social cusp, witnessing the death of established old ways and being well into middle age when the centuries turned; his music is bound to reflect that. But RVW was still a young man at that time. His music sounds more 'modern', surely, because he simply is more modern, by an accident of birth - being born fifteen years (and a pretty crucial 15 years) later.

My point is that these aren't actually strengths or weaknesses; we may speak of them as if they are, but all we're doing is trying to find a justification for a subjective preference.

I know exactly what you mean, but I can't think of a better word either.