British Composers Research Articles

Delius and the Sound of Place by Daniel M. Grimley

Reviewed by: Delius and the Sound of Place by Daniel M. Grimley Helen Faulkner Delius and the Sound of Place. By Daniel M. Grimley. (Music in Context.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. [xxiii, 312 p. ISBN 978-1-108-47039-1. £75] This Cambridge University Press series has a broad mission "to illuminate specific musical works, repertoires, or practices in historical, critical, socio-economic or other contexts . . . and to extend the conceptual framework of musicology into other disciplines or into new theoretical directions". In his contribution to the series, Daniel Grimley, professor of music at Oxford University and a fellow of Merton College, has added significantly to Delius scholarship by boldly tackling the difficult issue of where Frederick (Fritz) Delius sits in terms of his cultural identity. Born in England to German parents, Delius's first language was German. He was schooled in Yorkshire before transferring at age sixteen to a progressive International College on the outskirts of London. In 1884, aged twenty-two, he went to Florida, to work as an orange planter and there had his first composition lessons from an American, Thomas Ward. After a period in Danville, Virginia, where he decided to make his living from music, Delius returned to Europe in 1886, this time to the Leipzig Conservatoire where he met Grieg, who was to have a profound influence on his life and music. An avid traveller to Scandinavia, he then moved on to Paris before finally settling in the artistic colony of Grez-sur-Loing near Fontainebleu, with his German wife, Jelka. Delius was firm in stating that he did not claim to be a British composer, though the folk music of the country of his birth was one of many important influences on his music. The difficulty in pinning Delius down is undoubtedly one of the factors that has resulted in, to date, there being no single substantial monograph on his entire [End Page 313] musical output. Grimley's book is not a consideration of all Delius's music—inevitably, it has a bias towards works of a programmatic nature—but it certainly fills gaps in the existing published literature. A great strength of the book is that it has been researched largely from primary musical sources, including the unpublished Negro Songs, which only came to light in 2001. Grimley has visited the places which most inspired the music he considers, drawing new insights from his visits and research. This is perhaps most vividly demonstrated in his discussion of the Southern U.S. where he addresses the issue of how "black music", hitherto generally treated as a single, defined influence on Delius's music, is in reality needful of an infinitely more subtle study, which he characterises as "a fraught and difficult task"; a task he nevertheless tackles fearlessly. The book is organised into seven thematic chapters, "Place", "Idyll", "River", "Drift", "Village", "Hill", and "Garden". The first chapter, "Place", is both an introduction to the framework on which Grimley's method rests and an analysis of perhaps Delius's most performed work, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. The following chapters centre on specific works or groups of works in a loosely chronological arrangement. Finally, "Garden" demonstrates vividly Grimley's assertion that "Place refers not only to a specific geographical site . . . but also to matters of identity, presence, and behavior". Significantly, this chapter examines a work, the Double Concerto, which is not, at first sight, programmatic, but which crystalises what "place" can signify. Handsomely produced, with copious musical examples, this book has one significant failing, for which Daniel Grimley cannot be blamed. The index is a shamble, a particular drawback in a book that is unlikely to be read at a single sitting. Musical works are assigned to the wrong composers—Appalachia and Brigg Fair being credited to Delius's sister Clare, The Song of the High Hills indexed under Percy Grainger and Eric Fenby, but not Delius, and other similar errors. The Negro Songs escape the index entirely, even though they are illustrated in facsimile within the text. In a book with a cover price of £75, Cambridge University Press really should issue a corrected index, compiled by someone who understands...

«Русский след» в творчестве Харрисона Бёртуисла

British composer Harrison Birtwistle from the very beginning of his composer`s career sought creative impulses from his ancestors, among which the most evident influence was produced by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. But Stravinsky wasn`t the only composer of Russian origin important for Birtwistle as a source of inspiration. Another artist of Russian origin also became a powerful source of creative ideas for British composer. His name is Peter Zinoviev and this person became the first musician in Great Britain who began to produce experiments with electronic instruments and electronic music. His aristocratic roots (Zinoviev belongs to the aristocratic families of Bobrinskiys, Dolgorukovs, Zinovievs) played considerable role in his attitude to the complex problems of electronic music which were solved with genuinely Russian invention talent and courage. Besides working with technical problems like sound amplification, sound effects, sound engineering, scenic space development, Zinoviev also had global influence on Birtwistle: he produced two librettos (one – for chamber cantata “Nenia: The death of Orpheus; and the second – for grand opera “The Mask of Orpheus”). In these librettos musician and engineer showed as an erudite, profound interpreter of ancient mythology and at the same time as an artist with a taste for postvodernist ideas. “The Mask of Orpheus” became the last project of Zinoviev and Birtwistle. Nevertheless the impact of Peter Zinoviev is evident in a number of Birtwistle`s compositions which belong to so-called “Orpheus-project”, for example, in opera “The Corridor”.

Harrison Birtwistle’s “Orpheus-Project”: Images of Melancholy

British composer Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) is considered to be one of the most striking figures of contemporary classical music. The most important idea which crosses many of his pieces is the multiple embodiment of the Orpheus myth. Orpheus is interpreted not only as a person with his own tragedy, but also becomes an umbrella phenomenon embracing his mythic brother Linos, his wife Euridice, and different aspects of the voyage to the Underworld: wandering in the kingdom of Hades, conducting a dialog with the King of the Dead, as well as various-level reflections on the whole myth (allegoric, metaphoric, symbolic). Embodying all these aspects, the composer takes a wide range of texts (from Ausonius and Boethius, to Christopher Logue and Sir Thomas Wyatt, to Rainer Maria Rilke and Peter Zinoviev) and produces a number of works of different genres: instrumental pieces (Linoi), cantatas (The Death of Orpheus, Meridian), choral compositions (Fields of Sorrow, On the Threshold of the Night), operas (The Mask of Orpheus, The Corridor), and song cycles (Orpheus Elegies). Thus, Birtwistle’s reflections on Orpheus form a series of works that display the whole range of images and situations contained in the myth, taken from different angles that can be compared to Picasso’s famous series of reinterpretations of Las Meninas. One feature common to all these compositions is:that they are emotionally charged with a deep melancholy characteristic of a composer who recognizes in himself this kind of temperament as his peculiarity, and inspired by his famous predecessor, Durer and Dowland.

Фокстрот для оркестра «Канун праздника Св. Фомы» П.М. Дэйвиса: молитва или фарс?

Peter Maxwell Davies’s Orchestral piece «St. Thomas Wake» on a Pavan by John Bull was commissioned by the City of Dortmund in 1969 and premiered there by the City of Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra under the composer as a conductor. The piece is based on St. Thomas Pavan by an English composer John Bull (1562-1628) which is transformed in diverse and exciting ways using different genres, compositional techniques, experiments with sound even ethical approach. P.M. Davies used incredibly wide range of sources in his compositions (their genre range is not fewer): from medieval and Renaissance ideas though Indian music (the subject of the composer’s dissertation) to up-to-date calls. Foxtrot was one of memoirs from his childhood: little Max was listening to foxtrots on the gramophone while air raid on his native Manchester in 1940. We all know that childhood experiences are the most vivid ones. Suppose after the commission from a German city Max recalled that war time episode. «St. Thomas Wake» is just a parody, it is an important step in a process of searching new sound, style and technique All those is analyzed in the article from various points of view: what was the initial idea, how it is embodied, why the sound of the foxtrot makes listeners laugh or clamour, what is the meaning of this work in a vast composer’s heritage.

MOTIVES FOR MUSIC: LONDON, MAY 2018

Abstract‘Motive’ or ‘motif’ has long been a familiar term in writing about music, not least because many writers enjoy the word-play available when a composer's possible motivation for inventing and elaborating specific motivic materials is under discussion. The extent to which motives reach beyond melody into harmony has arguably become a more conscious concern of composers who have moved beyond traditional tonality, and some of the consequences of such concerns are considered here, in relation to recent works by two leading British composers, George Benjamin (b. 1960) and his one-time student Christian Mason (b. 1984).

ARCHITECTURAL AND THEATRICAL CODES OF LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TEXT

The classic of the adventurous, detective, fantastic, and mysterious novel, Gaston Leroux got the enormous popularity through the cycle of eight detective novels united by the figure of a detective-amateur, professional reporter — Rultaby. It is believed that the author was his prototype. A well-known journalist, a lawyer, Gaston Leroux is the author of a large number various articles. But the real fame solidified through the musical based on his novel which was published in 1910. In 1986 English composer Baron Andrew Lloyd Webber created the most popular musical performance of the last quarter of the twentieth century — the musical «The Phantom of the Opera». In 2004 Joel Schumacher made the film based on the musical. These facts of culture became the object of the research. Today there are about thirty films based on Leroux works. The secret of such attention of cinema makers is in a specific artistic world of the product that provokes interdisciplinary intermedial transcoding, which is open to inter-artistic polylogue. The subject of this research is the intermedial cut of the novel. Intermedialism is viewed from two perspectives: as a phenomenon of art and as a method of analysis. Intermedial analysis is aimed at identifying the means of adjoining arts that are realized in the literature. Reading of painting, cinematographic or musical codes allows to reveal the semantic depths of the text, to find hidden values in the intricate discourses.The title of the novel focuses on the main character and place of action. The opera house is the main character. Leroux brings it to the metaphysical level, universalizing a very real architectural structure — Paris Grand Opera.The artist is interested in the antithesis of the top and bottom of the opera as two worlds: inspiration / creativity and hatred / fear, and consequently — good and evil. The similar principle is also used in the modeling of Phantom. His appearance sharply contrasts with his ingenious abilities. He is as ambivalent as the opera he serves.Compared with the novel, in the musical and the film, the main semantic focus is shifted to masks, which are active elements of action and get a symbolic meaning. They are a visual reflection of his inner world. In this way, his psychological portrait deepens, which allows to observe the evolution of the character. In the end, Eric refuses to wear a mask as a defense from the outside world and himself.Artistic and aesthetic concept of Gaston Leroux ’s novel «The Phantom of the Opera» acquires exclusive expression through intermedial accents. The main idea of the work is read through the architectural, theatrical, and musical contexts, which decoding contributes to the approach to the secret phenomenal talent of Leroux.

Quartettmusik in the Age of Revolutions

Looking back on the period around 1800, Eduard Hanslick confirmed that the string quartet was the favoured genre for private music-making in Vienna at this time: ‘practically every music-loving family gathered together their [string] quartet of amateurs, mostly on a given day of the week’ (Eduard Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna, 1869; Vienna, vol.i), p.202). Close friends joined the family group, and others might be invited because of their musical connections. Musical newcomers to the city with good connections could also expect to join such parties. Thus it was that the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, who lived in Vienna from 1783 to 1787 and became a close friend of Mozart, found himself at an evening quartet party in 1784 in the home of English composer Stephen Storace, at which a string quartet consisting of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Johann Baptist Wanhal supposedly performed. I say ‘supposedly’ because Kelly’s Reminiscences, in which he describes this quartet party, were written some four decades after the fact (1826), and doubt has been cast on the veracity of Kelly’s statements (R. Graves, ‘The comic operas of Stephen Storace’, The Musical Times, xcv/1340 (1954), pp.530–32). Nonetheless, this type of event—a quartet party with a small number of talented participants—was the norm rather than the exception in Mozart's Vienna.

Альтова мініатюра у творчості Ребекки Кларк

Мета роботи. Визначення особливостей індивідуального стилю англійської композиторки ХХ ст. Р. Кларк крізь призму її альтових мініатюр. Методологія дослідження включає в себе застосування аналізу, синтезу, індукції, дедукції та аналогії. Наукова новизна роботи полягає в тому, що твори композиторки у жанрі альтової мініатюри на сьогоднішній день є зовсім не дослідженими у вітчизняному та малодослідженими у світовому музикознавстві. Висновки. Дане дослідження може сприяти більш активному залученню творів Р. Кларк до концертного репертуару, стати імпульсом для подальших досліджень у галузі інструментальної мініатюри ХХ – початку ХХІ ст.

THE AVANT GARDE AS EXFORM

AbstractPeter Bürger's critique of the historical avant garde (in Theory of the Avant Garde) accounts for its ineffectual nature as a political movement because of its relationship with institutions. He argues for hermeneutics to be employed as a critique of ideology, and as a facet of the understanding of the ‘historicity of aesthetic categories’. The influence of institutions on music since 1968 has served as a central part of its critique: the work concept itself seems to enshrine political ineffectiveness and the bourgeois nature of art practice that ought to be critiqued by an avant garde. In contrast, Nicolas Bourriaud's concept of the ‘exform’ re-conceives the avant garde as outside of institutions and an idea of ‘progress’ that is aligned with a dominant capitalist ideology. He frames the task of the avant-garde artist as giving energy to ‘waste’, outside of political and ideological institutions. This type of avant-garde practice functions to ‘bring precarity to mind: to keep the notion alive that intervention in the world is possible’. This article explores the exform with respect to the work of the British composer Chris Newman and the Swiss composer Annette Schmucki, and considers how Bourriaud's approach to re-thinking the avant garde might apply specifically to contemporary and experimental music in the present.

Гендель и английская музыкальная культура

The article is devoted to the analysis of the musical culture of England of the first half of the 18th century and the interaction of the traditions of English, Italian and German music. This work shows how during time of the reign of Italian opera and Italian singers on the British stage witnessed the development of the music of London-based composers who continued the original traditions of England and, most notably, Henry Purcell, and what role in this phenomenon was played by the German emigre, the Saxon composer Handel, who developed a high aesthetical taste among the English. The liberation of the art of music from the preponderance of entertainment-oriented Italian opera is examined on the basis of the mutual influences of the music of Handel and the works of the English composers – William Boyce, Thomas Arne, Maurice Greene and Michael Christian Festing, which results in the birth of the monumental genre of national oratorio permeated by high moral ideas. However, it was particularly Handel who as the result of his music, directed towards high ethical ideas assumed the leading position in the English musical culture. His oratorios, written to many diverse plots (Biblical, mythological, Christian vernacular), excelled the specimens of his contemporary English composers and achieved the meaning of the “cultural phenomenon” of the epoch. Keywords: Georg Friedrich Handel, Thomas Arne, William Boyce, Maurice Greene, Michael Festing, Edward Elgar, the British musical culture, Italian opera, British oratorio.

Politics and the Popular in British Music Theatre of the Vietnam Era

AbstractBritish music-theatre works of the 1960s and early 1970s largely avoided direct engagement with contemporary political topics. Intriguing in this light is Michael Hall’s recent proposition that Brecht’s music theatre set the terms for younger British composers’ experiments with the genre. Brecht proved a complicated model, however, because of composers’ anxieties about music’s capability to convey sociopolitical messages, and their reluctance to accord popular music a progressive function. The entanglement of Vietnam War activism and rock music forms the backdrop for analyses of two works that do address Vietnam directly: Anthony Gilbert’s The Scene-Machine and George Newson’s Arena (both 1971) – both of which also pass pointed comment on different popular-music traditions. Both works highlight the difficulty in emulating Brecht’s model in an era when the concept of ‘the political’ was being significantly redefined, and the cultural gap between activist cadres and the wider population was unprecedentedly visible.

Music into Fiction: Composers Writing, Compositions Imitated

Music into Fiction: Composers Writing, Compositions Imitated

Кристофер Симпсон – первооткрыватель темы времён года в инструментальной музыке

The article illustrates the life and artistic path of English composer Christopher Simpson (1602/1606–1669), who wrote the “The Seasons” (1659), the first a such instrumental cycle devoted to this topic in the history of European music. Simpson was born into a family of Catholics during the time when Catholicism was officially prohibited in England; many elements of his biography remain a mystery. Simpson was a universal musician: a brilliant virtuoso performer on the viola da gamba, a composer, a music theorist and a teacher. Not having the possibility to lead an open life, he published his own compositions as examples to his theoretical treatises. For musicians mastering the viola da gamba his work “The Division-Viol, or the Art of Playing ex Tempore upon a Ground” (1667) has not lost its relevance up to the present day. Only several compositions by Simpson were published separately: the cycle of 12 fantasies “The Months” and the cycle “The Seasons” for two viola da gambas and basso continuo . The second of them presets a super-cycle of four programmatic fantasy-suites (“Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn” and “Winter”). Simpson became a pioneer of the subject of the seasons in the instrumental music of the Baroque period. His cycle fits into the traditions of English ensemble music. In comparison with the works by composers of other national schools, the interpretation of genres within each fantasy-suite remains very individual. This relates to the structure of the fantasy, in the compositional structure of which the composer stemmed from his own performance practice. Simpson’s attempt to create a large-scale composition on the subject of the seasons was later continued in numerous compositions in the 17th century and in the subsequent centuries. Keywords: the seasons in music, Christopher Simpson, fantasy-suite, English fantasy for ensembles, viola da gamba.

When the Composer Has PTSD: Examining the Life of George Lloyd (1919-1998)

Abstract Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) impairs cognitive function, attention, memory, mood, initiative, human relationships and self-esteem. Music therapy can ameliorate some of these problems. Although there is literature on music and PTSD, there is scant information on the musician-composer with PTSD, the process of recovery, and the connections between composition, PTSD and neurocognitive function. Presented here is an account of George Lloyd, a highly regarded young English composer in the 1930s. Following severe trauma in World War 2, Lloyd’s ability to compose suffered greatly for many years. He took a professional detour into market gardening to recover his health and then subsequently rehabilitated his musical career. Lessons learned from Lloyd’s life are described both in relation to approaches he used to achieve recovery from PTSD and a more general question of composition’s potential therapeutic effects in light of recent cognitive neuroscience.

Avison and his Subscribers: Musical Networking in Eighteenth-Century Britain

One of the most important and valuable resources available to researchers of eighteenth-century social history are the lists of subscribers that were attached to a wide variety of publications. Yet, the study of this type of source material remains one of the areas most neglected by academics. These lists shed considerable light on the connections that an author or composer had with other like-minded individuals and the support that they received from members of the middle and upper classes. In cases where a single composer published a series of works by subscription, there is an opportunity to gain an insight into the growth of the public's appreciation of the composer and the contacts he or she forged over the course of a lifetime. Charles Avison is one of the best known British composers from the eighteenth century. He issued six works by subscription between 1740 and 1767 and they together provide a unique insight into his growth into one of this country's leading native musicians. Although a respectable number of the associations discussed are already known through other sources, this study not only reinforces the importance of these associations, but additionally gives an insight into those links for which there is no other known evidence. This research ultimately reveals that Avison's location in the North-East of England did not significantly impact on his ability to forge connections across Britain and beyond.

The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones

Reviewed by: The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones Marina Gerzić Bildhauer, Bettina, and Chris Jones, The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives (Proceedings of the British Academy, 208), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017; hardback; pp. xx, 346; 21 b/w, 16 colour illustrations; R.R.P. US$135.00, £85.00; ISBN 9780197266144. The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives offers a fascinating array of international and multidisciplinary reflections on medievalism. The introduction by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones presents a broad history of the continuing evolution of the idea of ‘the Middle Ages’ from the fourteenth century to the present day. The collection is then divided into three themed sections, with various genres and areas, such as film, literature, politics, and Byzantinism, discussed across all the sections. One of the major strengths of this wide-ranging collection is its diversity of voices and of subject matter, with topics ranging from how Old Norse sagas are used as evidence by climate change deniers, to the way that Lady Gaga employs medieval iconography in her music videos. Part I of the collection looks at medievalism in politics and histories. Bruce Holsinger’s chapter traces the origin of the idea of the ‘medieval Warm Period’ to a naïve reading of Landnámabók, highlighting the afterlife of the idea of the ‘Warm Period’ in political discourse regarding climate change in order to argue for a more engaged relationship between natural sciences and the humanities. Eamon Byers, Stephen Kelly, and Kath Stevenson examine the connection between cultural nationalism and the figures of Cú Chulainn and Saint Patrick in their chapter, showing how these figures were used to give legitimacy to political affiliations during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Patrick Geary argues that nineteenth-century scholars such as Alexandre Herculano, Jules Michelet, and Felix Dahn served as proto-celebrities, whose writings reflect a time when medieval origin myths were used to bolster European nations. Andrew Lynch’s chapter analyses the attitudes towards and representation of the Middle Ages in a selection of children’s histories from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, arguing that these works often feature the beginning of the British nation, war, and religion as ‘the chief signifiers of the Middle Ages’ (p. 90). [End Page 194] Part II of the collection looks at practising medievalism. Celebrated German author Felicitas Hoppe reflects on her experience in adapting Hartmann von Aue’s verse romance Iwein into the young-adult novel genre, highlighting the importance of female characters Laudine and Lunette, both in von Aue’s original and in her adaptation. Museum curator James Robinson’s chapter draws on his experience of curating the Treasures of Heaven exhibition at the British Museum to outline the parallels between the medieval cult of saints and contemporary celebrity culture. Composer and musician Graham Coatman’s chapter analyses the way that medieval music is used by British composers such as Benjamin Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Judith Weir, arguing for their role as examples of a broader trend of medievalism in twentieth- and twenty-first-century avant-garde music. Archivist Fani Gargova demonstrates that ‘the political dimension of medievalism […] can only be understood through an investigation of archival material’ (p. 152), examining previously unknown photographs that prove the sustained contact of three early twentieth-century Byzantine scholars. Chris Jones’s chapter provides a rich overview of medievalism in recent British and Irish poetry, highlighting the renewed turn to the medieval in contemporary verse, and offering insightful reflections of his own involvement with two projects: the translation of Seamus Heaney’s versions of Robert Henryson’s Fables into a digital app; and the creation of poetic riddles capable of being published on Twitter. The joint chapter between Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri and Lila Yawn focuses on the medieval revival festival Calendimaggio held in Assisi, and Pasolini’s left-wing medievalist Trilogy of Life, and provides insight not only into the nostalgia for, and a selective reevocation of, the medieval past, but also the importance of medievalism in Italian culture and politics. Part III of the collection centres on medievalism...

Panic at the proms (perhaps the explanation lies in his background)

This paper has been written as both a celebration of the music of Harrison Birtwistle-"the most forceful and uncompromisingly original British composer of his generation" according to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians - and as a response, at once playful and polemic, to the critics and commentators who struggle to name, claim, frame and contain it within the familiar categories and tropes of contemporary music interpretation. My particular focus is Panic which is exemplary in this respect and what Birtwistle cognoscendi have a habit of referring to as 'his background to 'explain' the idiosyncratic difficulty and difference of his work, as in the quotation cited as my subtitle.

Squaring with the Truth: Peter Maxwell Davies and <em>Vesalii Icones</em>

SQUARING WITH THE TRUTH: PETER MAXWELL DAVIES AND VESALII ICONES NIRMALI FENN N DECEMBER 4, 1963, THE VATICAN COUNCIL II (VCII) passed a decree permitting the Mass to be conducted in the vernacular.1 Such a reform had the potential of transforming the way in which communicants engaged in worship and challenged the distinctive ritualization strategies of the Mass for which the priest ritualized the traditional Eucharistic meal. In the Mass, the actions of eating flesh and drinking blood are symbolic—a theatrical act to preserve the memory of sacrifice. The language reform favored comprehension of such symbols and provoked widespread debate. For theologians, such as Dom Gregory Dix, the fundamental quality lost by the implementation of this reform was mystery—“the Eucharist is a holy mystery to be experienced, not something to comprehend with the mind and reduce to rational categories.”2 Following a similar logic, the British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies condemned the language reform by writing a powerfully damning response in the form of a music theater piece for dancer, cello and ensemble titled Vesalii Icones (1969).3 The year of the VCII decree occurred during a period when Davies was using music theatre as a vehicle for musical protest. His focus was O 138 Perspectives of New Music on what he perceived as religious corruption within the Catholic Church, which was spearheaded by his opera Taverner (1962–68) that dealt with the forced betrayal of a musician’s artistry for the sake of Church dogma. Through Vesalii Icones, Davies conducted an attack on the Council’s language reform; ultimately, he believed the use of the vernacular as a language to convey the sacred jeopardized the mystery behind the sanctity of the ritual that is the Catholic Mass. The objective of this paper is to unravel why Vesalii Icones heightens mystery, and how increasing mystification increases revelation. First, I will focus on the most ritualistically overt sound in Vesalii Icones—the ringing of the Sanctus bells. These bells mark the boundary points of individual musical movements. However, I will argue that these bell solos are “contaminated” by composed music, which as examples of imported secular music, dissolve the demarcated boundaries between musical movements and the sacred from the profane. Second, I intend to reveal the presence of recursive structures operating at a sectional and macro level. The consequence of these structures is to destabilize the structured ritual framework. To reinforce this observation, I will draw on the anthropological work of Don Handelman, referring to research from his two papers Ritual in its own Right and Models and Mirrors.4 By citing Handelman, I intend to demonstrate that the structure of Vesalii Icones effectuates a curve that is intensified by the lack of demarcated boundaries and the use of recursions. Effectively, the piece folds in on itself, torquing from a point of intense introspection, which represents the point of ultimate concealment. Following the point in which the ritual achieves maximum introspection, the drama suddenly springs outwards in a display of unabashed exhibitionism with the dancer flinging off his garments—this is the moment of revelation. 1) THE VCII LANGUAGE REFORM AND THE PREMISE OF VESALII ICONES The VCII language reform reevaluated the operational nature of the Mass and challenged the communicative function of ritualistic language. The council’s intention was to foster the communal aspects of the liturgy. By supplanting Latin as the language of Catholic ritual, it was assumed that the vernacular language would provide the laity with a means to identify the intention directing the action.5 However, as ritual scholar Roy Rappaport raises, there are distinctions in the communicative capacities of languages. Vernacular languages have the potential to subvert, but liturgical languages are languages removed from “everyday” social systems, thereby possessing the potential to convey the sacred and the timeless: Squaring with the Truth: Peter Maxwell Davies and Vesalii Icones 139 the words of liturgy can connect that which is present to the past, or even to the beginning of time, and to the future, or even to time’s end. In their invariance itself the words of liturgy implicitly assimilate the current event into an ancient or ageless category of events, something that...

Squaring with the Truth: Peter Maxwell Davies and Vesalii Icones

SQUARING WITH THE TRUTH: PETER MAXWELL DAVIES AND VESALII ICONES NIRMALI FENN N DECEMBER 4, 1963, THE VATICAN COUNCIL II (VCII) passed a decree permitting the Mass to be conducted in the vernacular.1 Such a reform had the potential of transforming the way in which communicants engaged in worship and challenged the distinctive ritualization strategies of the Mass for which the priest ritualized the traditional Eucharistic meal. In the Mass, the actions of eating flesh and drinking blood are symbolic—a theatrical act to preserve the memory of sacrifice. The language reform favored comprehension of such symbols and provoked widespread debate. For theologians, such as Dom Gregory Dix, the fundamental quality lost by the implementation of this reform was mystery—“the Eucharist is a holy mystery to be experienced, not something to comprehend with the mind and reduce to rational categories.”2 Following a similar logic, the British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies condemned the language reform by writing a powerfully damning response in the form of a music theater piece for dancer, cello and ensemble titled Vesalii Icones (1969).3 The year of the VCII decree occurred during a period when Davies was using music theatre as a vehicle for musical protest. His focus was O 138 Perspectives of New Music on what he perceived as religious corruption within the Catholic Church, which was spearheaded by his opera Taverner (1962–68) that dealt with the forced betrayal of a musician’s artistry for the sake of Church dogma. Through Vesalii Icones, Davies conducted an attack on the Council’s language reform; ultimately, he believed the use of the vernacular as a language to convey the sacred jeopardized the mystery behind the sanctity of the ritual that is the Catholic Mass. The objective of this paper is to unravel why Vesalii Icones heightens mystery, and how increasing mystification increases revelation. First, I will focus on the most ritualistically overt sound in Vesalii Icones—the ringing of the Sanctus bells. These bells mark the boundary points of individual musical movements. However, I will argue that these bell solos are “contaminated” by composed music, which as examples of imported secular music, dissolve the demarcated boundaries between musical movements and the sacred from the profane. Second, I intend to reveal the presence of recursive structures operating at a sectional and macro level. The consequence of these structures is to destabilize the structured ritual framework. To reinforce this observation, I will draw on the anthropological work of Don Handelman, referring to research from his two papers Ritual in its own Right and Models and Mirrors.4 By citing Handelman, I intend to demonstrate that the structure of Vesalii Icones effectuates a curve that is intensified by the lack of demarcated boundaries and the use of recursions. Effectively, the piece folds in on itself, torquing from a point of intense introspection, which represents the point of ultimate concealment. Following the point in which the ritual achieves maximum introspection, the drama suddenly springs outwards in a display of unabashed exhibitionism with the dancer flinging off his garments—this is the moment of revelation. 1) THE VCII LANGUAGE REFORM AND THE PREMISE OF VESALII ICONES The VCII language reform reevaluated the operational nature of the Mass and challenged the communicative function of ritualistic language. The council’s intention was to foster the communal aspects of the liturgy. By supplanting Latin as the language of Catholic ritual, it was assumed that the vernacular language would provide the laity with a means to identify the intention directing the action.5 However, as ritual scholar Roy Rappaport raises, there are distinctions in the communicative capacities of languages. Vernacular languages have the potential to subvert, but liturgical languages are languages removed from “everyday” social systems, thereby possessing the potential to convey the sacred and the timeless: Squaring with the Truth: Peter Maxwell Davies and Vesalii Icones 139 the words of liturgy can connect that which is present to the past, or even to the beginning of time, and to the future, or even to time’s end. In their invariance itself the words of liturgy implicitly assimilate the current event into an ancient or ageless category of events, something that...

Modernism and its Discontents: Reclaiming the Major Minor British Composer

The cathedrals of the English-speaking world will be in celebratory mourning on Saturday, the centenary of the birth of the man who was effectively their house composer. Herbert Howells has probabl...