MUSIC

Paul Griffiths

From Cambridge Guide to The Arts In Britain, vol. 9

Part II: Studies in the Individual Arts, Chapter 1
 An Introduction

Change in musical taste underway in Britain after WWII

Gramophones: household features by 1950; introduction of LP

Sensibility changes: rise of humanism

Wireless radio, the BBC and the BBC Symphony Orchestra

Better quality, increasing availability of music education in schools

 A More Musical (Post-WWII) Britain?

Post-WWII Britain: consciously conservative music until roughly 1955

1945-55: growth of opera, formation of numerous companies outside London

Boom in music education, compositions for children, led by Britten & Davies

After Peter Maxwell Daviess Le Marteau sans Matre, tastes trended towards modernism

Late 1950s: musical world no longer running on diatonic harmony, sonata form

Englands avant garde: Harrison Birtwhistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr
 Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Child prodigy, beginning composing at 5 and starting on piano even earlier; he was
published by 10; by 15, ability exceeded his teachers

Studied in Ireland at the Royal College of Music from 1930-34

Beginning in 1935, output increased with works for film, theatre, concert hall

1939-42: briefly moved to America; extremely productive compositional period

1955: on a recital tour in the, Britten became interested in music of the Far East

Tendency to write opera roles and instrumental works for specific musicians
 Peter Grimes
Brittens gift for opera established in a much greater way than Paul Bunyan with Peter
Grimes

Extravagant word setting modeled after Purcell

Creation of atmosphere through orchestral interludes

Distinct characters throughout, even in the tiniest of roles

Clear community of feeling between the composer and his main character, as
would be indicative of many of his later operas; creates a personal, almost
confessional intimacy that is rare in opera
 The Opera of Britten
Britten approached opera largely as a chamber medium

The Rape of Lucretia for Soloists and 12-member orchestra

A perennial theme of Brittens operas was that of the corruption of innocence

Innocence reflected in Brittens use of Mozartian tonal harmony, while corruption

often involves intense chromaticism

The Turn of the Screw opera: chromaticism in childrens nursery rhyme,

audibly enacting the process of corruption

Forms of innocence: church dramas of the Middle Ages

 Michael Tippett (1905-1998)

Rise to fame obscured by Britten that peaked immediately following WWII

1923-28: studied at the Royal College of Music; further with R.O. Morris from 1930-32

Did not publish his first work until 1934-35, with his First Quartet

1940: became music director at Morley College in London

1940: joined Peace Pledge Union; spent 2 months in jail for refusing military service
 A Child of Our Time

Came to public notice with the debut of his oratorio A Child of Our Time (1939-41)

Quite incoherent text at times, though this is somewhat functional: essential message
of his works is that clear-cut answers are of no value

Deliberately based on Bachs very public works (Passions) in Leipzig, but overlaying a
contemporary narrative and story; secularization of Bach themes

Replaced Bachs chorales with negro spirituals, which fittingly are concerned with
a journey from present alienation to future integration
 Tippetts Compositional Style
Developed style of his works of the late 1930s with increased lyricism oratorio released

The Midsummer Marriage (1946-52): important work contrary to the conservative style of the music
propagated by events such as the Festival of Britain (1951); premiered 1955

Second opera King Priam (1958-60) much more hard-edged; this harder style continued in
subsequent works: The Vision of St. Augustine (1963-65)

By the time of his next opera, The Knot Garden (1966-69), he was beginning to gain recognition and
acclaim

Fourth opera: The Ice Break (1973-76); global counterpart to the domestic The Knot Garden

Subsequent works exhibit a composer confident in his contrast to society

Third and Fourth Piano Sonatas (1972-73; 1984); Fourth String Quartet (1977-79); Fourth
Symphony (1976-77); oratorio The Mask of Time (1977-82)
 Britten and Tippett
Common beliefs:

central importance of Stravinsky

Usefulness of standard forms (oratorio, quartet, concerto)

Vitality of the more distant English past

Primary creative differences:

Tippett was always conscious of his role in society, primarily as conscious,

prophet, and even therapist; he is looking for completeness through his work

Brittens awareness was always most deeply that of his separation; his music
expresses a sense of alienation from completeness
 Around Britten and Tippett: Who Else?
Conservatives:
Edmund Rubbra: Holst pupil;
continuer of symphonic ideal
Lennox Berkeley: more
international than Rubbra;
Boulanger pupil in Paris;
music tended to be socially
indifferent
Alan Rawsthorne: pupil of
Egon Petri, studying
Hindemith and Busoni
Robert Simpson: tonal
symphonist in vein of
Beethoven, Bruckner
International Radicals:
Matyas Seiber: Kodaly pupil;
influenced by both serialism
and jazz
Egon Wellesz: Viennese
background, pupil of
Schoenberg; no desire for
return to tonal harmony
Roberto Gerhard:
Schoenberg pupil; pioneer of
English electronic music
Priaulx Rainier: from Natal;
pre-war Boulanger pupil;
dense harmonic style
reminiscent of Hindemith
Domestic Radicals:
Elisabeth Luytens:
responsible for Schoenberg
and Webern coming to
England; first British serialist
composer
Humphrey Searle: Webern
pupil, serialist
Alan Bush: radical, but not
serialist
Radicalism corollary to
political radicalism
 The Generation of the 30s
British avant-garde movement had its beginnings in Manchester in the 1950s:
Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Harrison Birtwhistle

Royal Manchester College of Music, studying with Richard Hall

After RMCM studies, Goehr went to Paris, studying with Messiaen; Davies to Rome,
with Petrassi; Birtwhistle stayed in Britain

All of them combined English tradition with the Continental revolution happening in
music

Many of their works provoked outrage - an inevitable qualification of an avant-garde

 Alexander Goehr (b. 1932)
Father Walter Goehr was a pupil of Schoenbergs; fled to England away from Hitler

Grew up in a home where both Tippett and Schoenberg were very influential

Alexander accepted the equation between artistic and political radicalism

Goehrs Fantasia (1954) combined modern methods with medieval polyphony; expressive
ferocity of cantata The Deluge (1957-58), his breakthrough work

Friend of Boulez, involved in the serialist avant-garde movment

Music distinct for tension between spontaneity (imagination and modernism) and
conventional response (reality and tradition); embodied in his operas in confrontation
between the individual and society/religion: Behold the Sun (1985)

Other notable works: Symphony in One Movement (1969-70); Deux Etudes for orchestra
(1981)
 Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016)
1959: Returning from Italy, took position as director of music at a grammar school
Less complicated music, more obviously expressive, but far from comfortable
O Magnum Mysterium (1960): development of one idea (representing the Nativity)
through a life
Davies more private in aesthetic the Goehr (reminiscent of the Britten-Tippett dichotomy), though
with similar artistic premises; much of his later output is religious
Interweaving of unquiet contemplations with rages of the most extreme harmonic tension; St.
Michael for orchestral woodwinds and brass (1957)
Important series of works on John Taverner, including the opera Taverner (1962-68)

Pieces written solely for shock value: Revelation and Fall for screaming nun and weird orchestra,
1966; Worldes Blis (1966-69)

Later he began a return to convention, leaving parodies and shock for increasingly stable
symphonies and sonatas against a backdrop of Sibelius
 Harrison Birtwhistle (b. 1934)
Birtwhistle: the most English of the three; Tragoedia (1965) brought later prominence than Goehr
and Davies

Had idea that he and Davies should collaborate and establish a new ensemble, the Pierrot Players,
consisting of Schoenbergs instrumentation with an added percussionist

Birtwhistles entire reputation rests on no more than a dozen major works

Opera: Punch and Judy, 1966-67; The Mask of Orpheus, 1873-83, electronic music, multiple
incarnations of main characters, sometimes all present simultaneously

Music carries style of austere, ceremonial, and fractured music of Stravinsky, as well as a respect
for the timelessness of music-theatre legends; however, it avoids easy classification

Artistic wholeness: occasional presence of exact same musical ideas in separate works hints at the
notion of his works being different views of the same landscape, similar to Tippett
 Other Composers of Note
Richard Rodney Bennett: More conservative composer; visible in works of light music, in style of Cole
Porter

David Blake: moderate composer; respected and influential teacher at York University

Cornelius Cardew

Royal Academy of Music student; Stockhausen pupil and assistant, even more radical

Moved towards the aleatoricism of Cage; advocate for experimental music

Replacement of standard notation with graphics, verbal instructions; The Great Learning, 1968-70

Jonathan Harvey: Babbitt-style serialism; themes of a spiritual journeys pervasive

Nicholas Maw: Alongside Goehr, Davies, and Birtwhistle, seen as retrogressive; The Rising of the Moon
(1970)
 The Generation of the 40s & 50s

Composers who were born in the decade after the war, of thereabouts, came to maturity during a
period when contemporary music was being energetically and intelligently promoted by the BBC,
with Goehr, Davies, and Birtwhistle providing role models

The generation of the 40s and 50s may appear to be withdrawing from the avant-garde territory
conquered by their elders, but the process may be more valuably seen as one of steady progress
towards a kind of music that may be yet more widely and deeply accepted and enjoyed

After the dissolution of the Beatles, music in England experienced a feeling of post-coital
depression since 1970