Erm ... that seems a little unfair?

One of the pluses of our organization was the fact that we gave commissions for young composers.
This is why I was on board. Even now there are aspects to organization that I support.
Young composers should not be frustrated and in cinical attitude.

I'm not trying to stop anyone saying anything beastly about Uncle Ollie, I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt as to whether he actively favours the situation we've been discussing whereby he seems to have acquired something of a monopoly on certain aspects of contemporary musical life in Britain.

I don't know him, I've never met or corresponded with him, and the only concrete facts on which I can base my feelings are stories I've heard, among which Aaron's - which was something of a pleasant surprise - was prominently in my mind when I wrote my previous comment.

But just think! In 1908 there was no such animal really as a British "radical experimental composer," and was not the musical scene on the whole better off without them? The nearest thing we suppose was Joseph Holbrooke.



Here are a few impressions from Sydney Grew the elder:

"In the first few moments of considering how to write briefly of the art and personality of the composer [Holbrooke] one is confused by the multitudinous material and disturbed by the intense electric atmosphere."
. . .
"I advise my reader never to speak disrespectfully of any worker, unless the work is done in politics. In art, only equals may disparage one another; and as a rule equal workers are too busy to do this."
. . .
"Holbrooke, dissatisfied that whenever at a concert he was appearing as pianist-composer, the group of his own compositions was always placed at the end of the programme, a place never in the ordinary running of a concert good for anything but light or familiar music, on one occasion took matters into his own hands, careless as to how next day he would be hauled over the coals. He was put down to play in the first half of the programme a virtuosic study by Schumann, and in the second half a group of his own pieces, among these a work with the name 'L'Orgie,' a 'Fantasie Bacchanale.' Taking his first turn according to programme, he sat at the piano, and to an audience mentally prepared to receive the brilliant clarity of the Schumann 'Toccata,' he played his own three pieces. In this manner he forced a hearing for himself, with ample leisure of time but, as I should fancy, with little chance of the music being listened to calmly, for the reason that nothing so disturbs an audience as to have an unannounced change thrust upon it."
. . .
"He was very thin in the face, flesh burned up in the ardour of an interior life. His hair was rough; and his clothes had attained that extreme stage of comfort for the wearer that makes a man love them, but rather induces him to keep them for use at home in the early hours of the day, when no visitors are to be expected."
. . .
"In the 'Four Futurist Dances' (1914) I can see how the manner of the new artists around 1910 was only a sort of casual juggling trick for a really fine athletic artist like Holbrooke, and that if 'Futurism' be wanted, a genuine musician can provide it better than the exclusive specialist. . . . Ten years before the birth of Futurism, organ students used to amuse themselves by extemporising in two keys at once, one for the right hand, the other for the left, and if clever enough find notes for the feet which were foreign to both keys. Futurism invented the idea of placing these two keys, not apart, in different registers, but together, in the same register; how this is done, and what results from it, Holbrooke shows in these 'Futurist Dances.' The direction for performance of the 'Demons' Dance' reads: 'Moving exorably, grim, and prodded.'"

Is that a misprint for "inexorably" perhaps? How do demons actually move, does any one know?

I don't disagree with you in principle Ian (you can cut that out and frame it), but I think your argument is unnecessarily weakened by unrelated material you have dragged into it.  I think Britain ought to be bloody grateful there is a London Sinfonietta at all, because many large countries (viz Russia, Ukraine, Serbia for starters) haven't got anything remotely similar.  But do you really think there ought to be just ONE new-music ensemble who are mandated to "play everything".  And moreover, based in London, as if Britain was London-centric enough already?  Surely the rallying-call here ought to be "more provision for new music!", and not "bloody Ollie Knussen won't play my piece"?   Because from where I sit, it sounds remarkably like sour grapes to me

As for the "British deference towards those who" blah-blah-blah, this line of argument only serves to cheapen your argument, and is unworthy of the cause you uphold.

Since I seem to be one of only two participants in the discussion who is actually in the regular business of producing pieces, I have to say that my own grapes are in no way sour, Reiner. Firstly, like you I responded to what I saw as a hostile situation in the UK by leaving the country; secondly, my involvement with many of the performers and ensembles I've worked with has been one of the most satisfying aspects of my artistic activity over the last 25 years or so, and I wouldn't have had it any other way; thirdly, I do actually have an ongoing commission from the LS at the moment, although I suspect the resulting work isn't likely to be conducted by the subject of the present thread!

Your little parenthetical aside does have a distinct tinge of ad-hominemness about it, you know... I'm not suggesting at all that Knussen is an innocent victim of circumstances, as you seem to think I am - I'm just suggesting that the Knussenisation of contemporary music in the UK is a little more complex than you appear to be making out.

And please could you try to be a little less pompous and patronising, unless you want to sink this thread!

Well, I don't think so t_i_n, and I'd add Songs without Voices to your list. I don't find any of his work 'merely decorative'; it's a lot, lot better than that for me. Although I find the paucity of work, both in terms of number of pieces written and in a lot of cases in terms of their individual length frustrating, to say the least. That's surely a large part of the problem in any assessment of OK the composer.

But, insofar as we can separate out that aspect of the man from his (even more?) accomplished career as a conductor, or from his championing of certain kinds of new music, or individuals such as Takemitsu and Carter, the issue before us surely remains the inequity of the situation vis-a-vis new music ensembles and their levels of state subsidy, their 'status' and their perceived objectives.

Very hard to deny that the LS gets a lion's share and that others get little, increasingly less, or nothing at all. But we haven't yet broadened this out, as we might, to the bigger picture - festivals, media coverage (and RB is right that R3 is just about hanging in there from the point of view of variety), publishing (in all its various forms), recordings, commissioning 'policies', PRS recognised venues etc. Do we want to go there?!

You're burying your own argument.

But that's your prerogative in what you claim to be a "democracy", I suppose.

What I would suggest is actually more "characteristically British" is to sit on your arse whining about how it's all a conspiracy of which you are the victim, ending with the phrase "me - I blame the Government".

Meantime I go to LS concerts whenever my visits to London permit me to - we have nothing like that at all in Russia.