I was very disappointed a handful of years ago when I overheard a musician I really respect advise a conductor not to bother with "x" kind of music and to program "real" music for an upcoming concert season. Perhaps my friend was trying to impress the conductor. I don't know, but the phrase "real music" has bothered me for years. I come across the phrase from time to time, spoken by both practicing musicians, and by those who do not play. It bothers me every time I hear it.
What is real music anyway? What makes it not real (whatever "x" kind of music might have been) as opposed to real?
Aside from talking about music, we rarely use the term "real" non literally. An example of real piece of art would be an original work, not its reproduction. An example of a real piece of real furniture would be an actual bed rather than a piece of foam on the floor. Real vanilla extract would be different from imitation vanilla extract. Real meat would be different from fake meat. A real friend would be different from a fair-weather friend. A real diamond would be different from a piece of cut glass. A real signature on a check would be different from a forgery. A real dog is very different from a toy dog. Real cheese is different from imitation cheese.
If I play a piece by Granville Bantock (and I'm working on one now), it is no less real than a piece by Edward Elgar, or Johannes Brahms, yet because Bantock is not a particularly popular composer these days (please leave a comment if you have even heard of him before looking him up on google), he could be dismissed as being an unknown composer (at least to most people), and therefore not important. His music could be dismissed as being "not real" because it is no longer part of the standard repertoire.
If Bantock pays homage to Brahms by using similar voicing once in a while, or if he imitates Bizet by quoting a motive from Carmen, does that make Bantock's music "imitation Brahms" or "imitation Bizet." If Bach imitates Vivaldi, does that make Bach's music "imitation Vivaldi?" I don't think so.
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Elaine Fine I am active as a composer, a violist, a violinist, a recorder player, and as a teacher. I have been keeping this space in the blogosphere alive with assumptions about music (and assorted other things) since 2005.View Profile
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Music is a mystery for people who play it, write it, listen to it, and write about it. The only thing I can really do when I try to say something about music is assume.
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12 comments:
I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, I don't know Bantok. :(s
Rather than leave the quality of a work to "Ding an Sich," many artists today put away art and pick up the tools of politics to sway artistic decisions towards the currently approved and away from the currently disapproved. This is nothing new, sad to say, for artists are just men with all the faults of other professions, and in that regard great art has often emerged out of history which went unrecognized in the time of its creation. In fact some composers actually worked to suppress others' work, and today we know the greater work and forget the lesser. The reason for this is that there is a distinction between the great and the lesser which contemporary leverage can neither evaluate nor control across history. For this, how many Bach canatas are lost for not being recognized in their time?
"Recognition" may have meant something different to Bach, and in his time, than to us. He wrote the cantatas for church use, not to be revived for concert performances.
That said - not only do I know who Bantock was, I have recordings of several of his works. I also have in my possession somewhere a copy of an interesting paper about him and his social circle by a scholar of Victorian history.
Which of his pieces are you working on? I like what I know of his music a lot and would love to hear it in performance. Nobody in the U.S. is ever going to perform Omar Khayyam, alas, though if I tossed $50K or so to Leon Botstein and the ASO, maybe I could persuade them to do it. (Yes, I have a weakness for sprawling and somewhat messy orchestral grandeur.)
By the way, looking at the list of his works at the Wikipedia article, all I can say is that I'd pay good money for a complete-works cycle, or even a cycle of all of the tone poems and symphonies. I wonder if there is one - I believe that the late Vernon Handley recorded a fair percentage of Bantock's orchestral music.
I would be curious how well known he is in England. There is an unfortunate disdain for most British music in this country. I do not understand why American orchestras play the shorter RVW works to death and barely touch the symphonies, which are great and important pieces.
I'm working on the D major Violin Sonata, which I'm planning to perform in exactly one month. The more I work on it (and the closer I get to playing it the way it should ultimately sound), the more admiration I have for it and him. His excesses were actually not excesses: this piece is almost a study in restraint. He uses only a small amount of material, and it is in the exploration of that material that he opens up all kinds of nooks and crannies in the most inventive and satisfying ways. It requires a lot of practice, so I'm hoping my tendons hold out. Bantock already did his part, and now I have to do mine in order to do what he did justice.
Perhaps Bantock suffers from the Boccherini problem--his name (he might have been upstaged by Bartok)! Who knows. But I agree with you about the useless American attitude towards early 20th century British composers.
I don't know the violin sonata, would of course enjoy hearing it.
Bantock was a fine composer - my comment about sprawling and messy was meant affectionately. Omar Khayyam is a huge piece and not always stylistically consistent. His shorter works, which I imagine include the violin sonata, are much more tightly constructed.
Perhaps a portion of the explanation for Bantock's relative obscurity today is that there is so much music, and the new scores keep adding up. I knew a recording collector years ago who showed me his collection. Looking through the vast collection, I quickly calculated that he could not live long enough to hear each recording just once again in his life. But he was running out to buy the "newest" recording of X or Y. The question becomes "to what shall we listen?" The alternatives are vast, almost beyond comprehension.
That is possible, but in the US it's more likely that few conductors know his scores and thus can't champion him, few music directors program him, American audiences generally aren't familiar with the less popular/known English composers, he doesn't get played on the radio, etc.
If one attended (as I did) a British high school with a halfway decent music program, one encountered (i.e. performed) some works by Bantock, just as one encountered some by Moeran, Warlock, Tippett and so on. I suppose this is to be expected, but you did ask us to comment if we had heard of him :-).
Bravo to your British high school, and its choir director!
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