Arnold Whittall

Contemporary German composers

LACHENMANN: Das Madchen mit den Schwefelholzern (Tokyo Version, 2000) c. Sylvain Cambreling. ECM New Series 1858/9 (2-CD set). DOHL: Sound of Sleat ; Bruchstucke zur Winterreise for piano; String quintet: Winterreise ; Notturno . James Tocco (pno), Hugo Noth (accordion), Ovidiu Dabila (double bass), Auryn Quartet with Boris Pergamenschikov (vlc), Lasalle Quartet. Dreyer-Gaido 21013. HOLLER: Piano Works. Kristi Becker, Pi-hsien Chen (pnos). cpo 999 954-2. PINTSCHER: Figura I–V ; String Quartet No. 4, Portrait of Gesualdo ; Dernier espace avec introspecteur . Theodoro Anzelotti (accordion), Arditti String Quartet. Winter & Winter 910 097-2.

Wagner's Great Transition? From 'Lohengrin' to 'Das Rheingold'

Wagner died in Venice on 13 February 1883: so the post-Wagnerian period has now become the post-Wagnerian century.* It is a century which has been more concerned with criticism, biography and, latterly, manuscript study than with analysis in the full and fundamental sense of that term: and this is scarcely surprising in view of the difficulties which the analysis of Wagner presents. The best analytical results during this first century have been achieved by those who, in totally different ways, have made the most consistent efforts to be comprehensive. Ernest Newmans essentially literary commentaries and Alfred Lorenzs formal segmentations and comparisons of the later works may be, and often are, arraigned for their superficialities and over-simplifications; but their critics have not so far succeeded in replacing them with anything as stimulating or as wide-ranging. Perhaps that will be possible only after a second century of Wagner studies devoted to painstakingly detailed analysis, using appropriately rigorous and sophisticated techniques. It will then be for the third century of Wagner studies to attempt the great synthesis between detail and totality! Yet even the most cursory consideration of exactly what those techniques might be reminds us of the work that remains to be done with respect to music with which analysts have so far made the most conspicuously constructive progress: music without texts, symphonic music. Nearly fifty years after the death of Schenker we still await those comprehensive studies of symphonic music which will make definitive statements about the connections, if any, between structural fundamentals and stylistic evolution, and between the technique and the quality of a composition: in fact, we still await truly critical analytical accounts of individual composers, and of historical periods. Small wonder, then, that a subject in some ways more demanding the analysis of large-scale compositions with texts should be in an even more primitive state, and it is not the purpose of this paper to attempt a great leap forward, proposing comprehensive new theories from which more sophisticated techniques may eventually emerge. Rather, the object is to consider certain essential features of

NICHOLAS MAW AND THE MUSIC OF MEMORY

Back in the early 1960s, followers of new music in Britain soon became aware that the future would not be entirely dictated by the innovative radicalism of Princeton or Darmstadt – or even by such iconoclastic Brits as Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. And anyone inclined to dismiss Nicholas Maws Scenes and Arias , on its first versions Proms premiere in August 1962, as a nostalgic pseudo-Delian wallow, was put right by Anthony Paynes enthusiastic contextualization of Maw in this journal a couple of years later. In Paynes analysis, Scenes and Arias triumphantly avoided rambling romanticism, demonstrating a ‘post-expressionist language’ at ‘a new pitch of intensity’, as well as ‘the composers exceptional feeling for the movement inherent in atonal harmony’.

The Heart of the Matter

Andrew Griffiths from Lesotho Highlands Consultants spoke to Suzanne Moxon about the complex financing strategy which has been implemented for the Lesotho Highlands water project.

Ferneyhough's ‘Shadowtime’

BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH: Shadowtime . Nicolas Hodges (pno, speaker), Mats Scheidegger (gtr), Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Nieuw Ensemble, c. Jurjen Hempel. NMC D123 (2-CD set).

Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources (review)

Alongside ideas about music-making in particular, Somervell developed his thinking on educational philosophy in general. He felt that teachers had lost sight of civilization’s great myths and legends: ‘the only quite true stories in the world [because] they deal with the questions which in the long run are the most important to every human creature’ (p. 87). He was aware of the shortcomings of an education based upon rote learning, satirizing it wittily with the image of ‘the small boy [who] must begin his eight or nine years’ sustained effort not to learn Latin—an effort crowned with conspicuous success in the large majority of cases’ (p. 55). In spite of such strong feelings, his educational interests were to be implemented by instruction. The vehicle would be national songs, from which he ‘expected great things . . . [believing that] they could break down barriers’. For example, ‘an acquaintance with one another’s songs by the Irish and the English could produce better understanding’ (p. 26). As Cox points out, ‘this could be seen as indoctrination’, a view that would appear to be reinforced by those prescriptive publications representative of Somervell’s conviction that ‘sight-singing was an essential skill’: Fifty Steps in Sight Singing (1904), One Thousand Exercises (1912), The Compleat Teacher (1932)— this last providing detailed lessons for a whole year (p. 27). Cox acknowledges the paradox that Somervell’s educational reputation should rest ‘mostly upon his invention of a shorthand for musical dictation’, seemingly playing directly into the hands of the very people whose teaching style he criticized. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to see this as a retreat from ideals. Again, Cox notes that, although there was ‘a conflict between Somervell’s idealism and his practical hints, . . . he recognised this’ (p. 27). Ultimately,

Plotting the path, prolonging the moment: Kurtág's Settings of German

Kurtágs settings of Kafka, Hölderlin (with Celan) and Lichtenberg have little in common, stylistically or structurally, with the cycles of Schubert and Schumann, or the large-scale song collections of Hugo Wolf. They nevertheless reflect the ideals of those precursors in the close relationship they explore between pictorial, expressive aspects of the chosen texts and specific musical motives and formal procedures. Kurtág offers both a critique and an intensification of the German song tradition, aligning himself with other contemporary setters of Hölderlin, like Nono and Holliger. He builds his Kafka and Lichtenberg collections mainly from very brief single items, although two of the Kafka movements last for more than 5 minutes. In all three works, aspects of Kurtágs reliance on what is termed the discipline/freedom metaphor is especially salient, and this is particularly striking in the way the combination of obsessiveness and disorientation in Hölderlins texts finds musical representation. By contrast, Lichtenbergs aphorisms subvert the lyric effulgence of the Lieder tradition, and Kurtág intensifies this effect by allowing considerable freedom of choice as to which movements are performed and in which order.

'A Slight Oversimplification': An Interview with Arnold Whittall

1995 sees the sixtieth birthday of Arnold Whittall, and 1996 his retirement from Kings College London. Contrary to what many have assumed over the years, I never studied with him, but became his junior colleague when I was appointed Lecturer at KCL in 1979, where I worked for six exciting years. I have long ago lost count of the number of projects he and I have worked on together, and indeed the number of my own projects about which I have sought his advice. The Editor of Music Analysis invited me to contribute a celebration to this issue and gave me carte-blanche on the form it should take. It hardly required prolonged or even deep thought for me to realise what it would be best to do. Rather than constructing some sort of biographical or simply historical tribute to celebrate his work, I thought it would be most appropriate to let Arnold speak for himself. It was reassuring when he readily agreed to this, seizing the chance perhaps of a mechanism guaranteed to prevent me from writing at my customary length. What follows is the result of a single interview conducted in July 1995. It is virtually unedited, shorn here and there (in the interests of good taste) of Whittalls cutting humour and Dunsbys sarcasm, but certainly not in any sense sanitised as will be indicated, if not exactly proved, by the frank moments below where some intended deceptions were, on reflection, not carried out. I have introduced a minimum of punctuation, and unfortunately it is unrealistic to try to record emphasis (but there is plenty of it on the tapes). My approach was simple enough to make a record of what the interviewee had to say, to some extent about himself, which will be of greatest interest to his hundreds of friends and former students (there is a lot of overlap in these categories!), but also about current issues in theory and analysis, which will, I am in no doubt, be of interest to the thousands who read this journal.

Comparatively Complex: Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies and Modernist Analysis

Parry and Stanford, Holst and Vaughan Williams, Britten and Tippett, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies, Finnissy and Ferneyhough even perhaps, on the horizon, Anderson and Ades: the last century of British musical historiography has made a regular feature of such pairings, which, if nothing else, offer musicologists the opportunity to act as self-appointed referees in an intriguing game in which these same musicologists discourse on similarities and differences. In the case of Harrison Birtwistle and Peter

Thematicism in Stravinsky's ‘Abraham and Isaac’

Style, in music where pitch alone is serialised, stems from decisions about repetition. The set can be used in such a way that, even if restatements of one particular form are frequent, a different register, rhythm and timbral distribution will make it difficult to hear the restatement as repetition, at least before close analysis. Serial composers who retain the essentially traditional, pre-serial method of melodic or motivic identity are perhaps more likely to use repetitions which possess a clear similarity of shape as well as an explicit element of variation. Such a method can ensure the audibility of the evolving structure of a serial work, and also enable a composer to use designs involving tonal emphases without recourse to triadic formulae.