My point re. Ives, entirely. That is why I sort of ring-fenced the 3rd and 4th Symphonies. Having much admired Glass's work, up to and including "Einstein on the Beach" and "Music in Twelve Parts", I have only rarely found his output since then throwing up anything of great interest to me. I have given the the first five of his symphonies a try, but they are not for me. Nor are those concertante works of his I have heard. You will have appreciated, I feel sure, that he was not a serious suggestion of an American symphonist of worth.

I do like in general to steer clear of attributing more than is absolutely necessary of a composer's musical personality to his/her nationality. Especially nowadays the boundaries are much less clear than they might seem - witness for example the significant influence Brian Ferneyhough has had among younger American composers (even to the point that their music is more appreciated in Europe than in the US, I think) and on the other hand the even wider influence American composers like Steve Reich and John Adams have had in Europe.

However: I think Jenny's experience is indicative that foreign audiences for the most part associate 20th century British music with Elgar, Britten and Britten's contemporary "heirs", in which case a lack of edge can hardly be denied, whatever other fine qualities these composers might have. (I can see some of you getting the rotten tomatoes ready over there; I'll just get my wetsuit on before continuing.) British composers who don't fit into this mould tend to be better appreciated elsewhere. Has a British CD label released a complete recording of Searle's symphonis on CD? No, that was CPO of Osnabrück. Plus, exiled composers like Gerhard and Goldschmidt who ended up in the UK were hardly given their due. It's enough to make one start believing all those stories about insularity.

I don't think there's any excuse for this kind of chauvinism, though, SN. Are you unaware of the work of Elliott Carter, John Cage, Morton Feldman and many others who were surely better "shots" than Copland? If you're rejecting such composers as not relevant to your argument then I respectfully suggest that you have nothing useful to say about American composition!

Well, questions of 'nationality' inevitably come to be seen as tainted by association (with questions of ethnicity, extreme nationalism, etc.). But I do believe that the influence of the culture in which a composer was raised and nurtured is profound. And the culture of the nation state one was raised in is a strong component of this (allowing for differences to do with region, class, etc.). It's one thing I personally can perceive very readily in most composers' work, certainly when I listen to various pieces from different countries alongside one another. If I listen to Ferneyhough's music alongside some non-British composers influenced by him (e.g. Klaus K. Hübler or Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf or Alessandro Melchiorre), the different sensibilities seem very clear. Same if I were, say, to listen to some of the more 'French'-influenced works of James Dillon alongside music of Manoury, Dusapin, Murail or others (all of whom are themselves very different). That's an instinctive response - I could try and discern which elements in the music might produce such an impression, but I can hear this before I can explain it.

People pick up an accent, mostly without being conscious of how they do so, which is identifiable to those with a different accent (or at least identifiable as different). Most composers make a great many intuitive choices at various stages of the composition process - these things reflect their personality, itself in part a product of the culture in which they were raised and to some extent absorbed by the processes of socialisation. I can think of few composers, at least those from countries where a fair amount of music is known, whose music does not have some commonality with others from that country, notwithstanding other forms of diversity and individuation.

(and these are questions I think about self-reflexively as well, very often)

My favourite Babbitt piece is 'Philomel' - one of the best live/electronic pieces ever, IMO.
And just to put in a word for Copland. I just don't buy this 'colloquial' stuff. The Piano Concerto and Piano Variations, from the 20s and 30s, are exemplars of clear-headed, provocative modernism for their time. In the case of the Concerto, I can't think of a piece which better, or more provocatively integrates classical and jazz idioms - and that includes Stravinsky's winking, know-it-all efforts.
As a symphonist? Not the greatest, certainly. (But not half bad, and Harris, Schuman et al have to be considered here too.)
But I think my favourite Copland work of all is the Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson - as fine and sophisticated a song cycle as any I can think of in the last 100 years, including those of Britten. Why on earth are they so under-performed?

mart, Quiet City is also one to mention - slight, maybe, but unforgettable. A nocturnal urban film soundtrack from before they were invented.

Hi, 'time is now', thank you for reading my post and replying. I will try to answer your questions.


If one says that a certain composer 'doesn't sell' I think it's important to understand what this means . For instance, does it mean there are no sales at all, or simply that  there are  fewer than those of another composer? What I mean is that saying Tippett sells less than Britten might be a meaningful criticism, but saying he sells less than Michael Jackson probably isn't. I think we would need to take into account the amount of publicity given .

I think Tippett was in a very small percentage of English men who read  Goethe and Schiller in the 1930s to1950s. Yes, readers of the 'Criterion' would have done. but a liking for German literature was uncommon  among even educated Englishmen then.

I should think the HMV in Oxford St. London, is the biggest Classical CD shop in Britain, and the Manchester HMV the biggest outside London. If you know of bigger ones I should be interested to know where they  are.


I have found that many Americans think everything about Britain is small, incompetent and trivial, including our politics and politicians.

Yes, jenny, thought ollie's mention of japanese food (unintentional i'm sure) would make you happy! ;-)

Finally found an article I've been looking around for - a review in the Berliner Zeitung of the 2005 Ultraschall Festival, which featured British music.

http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2005/0117/feuilleton/0012/