I think he's a wonderful and very striking composer. I might say more tomorrow, after the concert - I can't remember what works they're playing, although I'll be there tonight. One of them is the UK premiere of Lisbon, I do remember; I've heard a recording of one of the European performances and it's characteristically over-the-top, sounding rather as if a pianist playing Mozart solo keyboard works had suddenly got trapped in a high-speed computer game.

One of the things that interests me most about Barry's work, more than the zany surface features, is the extremely tight network of self-referentiality he constructs, both through musical self-quotation and through constant allusions in the texts he sets and also in his programme notes to a few favourite themes and stories (like the story of Francis Bacon stuffing a chicken with snow, which recurs in connection with at least 3 Barry pieces I can think of). Especially in the operas, this adds to the air of unreality and artificiality visiting proceedings, but in purely instrumental works too I find Barry harnesses these qualities in very intelligent and surprisingly subtle ways (surprising, given that the first impression might be that the music is all about rather immediate 'effects').

I occasionally sense an ambivalence (or maybe even a downright dislike!) from some others - admittedly more because they don't mention him at all than because they say anything particularly negative - and would be very interested to hear more on the subject from Ian, Richard, Ollie and other posters.

It was meant as a positive! (Sorry if it didn't come across that way ...) I suppose the extra point I was trying to make is that it doesn't only work at the obvious theatrical level - it's 'composed in' to the music in a way (and to the programme notes too! I've been planning an article about that for a long time ... just need some time off work to try and write it really ).

Baa.

It's true that I don't have much to say on the subject, but that's due to lack of knowledge rather than lack of enthusiasm. I like very much what little I've heard of his work (nothing for a very long time), and what I (think I) know about the way his mind works. I think I'm just as interested in baroque music as GB is, though it comes out in a slightly different way. Anyway, this thread is a reminder that I have some listening to do, as if I didn't already know, so thanks.

Well, vashti, I'd have to say first of all that the 3 pieces chosen last night didn't seem to me to represent Barry very well, with the exception of Lisbon (which came right at the end of the concert). Handel's Favourite Song was fine but isn't really much more than a transcription, the significance of which would only really be apparent once you were aware of the role Baroque music, and allusions thereto, play more generally in Barry's oeuvre. Wiener Blut seemed to me particularly underpowered and somewhat flaccid, not for the first time - I have once heard an exciting performance of that piece but I've more than once heard it sound quite aimless and underwhelming.

I also think the Sinfonietta's performances were a little on the tame side, despite Richard Baker's really sterling efforts as conductor. (The same goes to some extent for Finnissy's alongside, though that seemed to gather conviction as it went on.)

I agree with you about the formal aspect in Barry, but I think that might be part of the point. It's true that it often starts off as if it's going to be very dynamic, directional music but rarely pans out that way. This might fit with my idea about its self-referentiality: despite initial impressions, the music seems more concerned with populating a universe of ideas whose relation to one another is quasi-spatial rather than temporal, if you see what I'm getting at ... Not a wholly satisfactory answer, I feel, but I'd rather still be 'in process' with trying to understand this music than have it all wrapped up.

There's also an undeniable element of deliberately subverting listening expectations, even at times deliberately trying to annoy the listener, it seems (like those endless repetitions of a very banal sequence of clusters in the piano in the middle of Lisbon), and while it's not an explanation as such it's at least a way of hearing those rambling structures which would link their stubborn formlessness to other parameters of the music.

Were you there, james?? I was vaguely looking out for you (someone asked me if I'd seen you, and I said I hadn't, not for ages), but I figured maybe you were at the RPS thingy.

Yes, me too, much as I didn't want to admit it.

Oh, I rather liked the instrumentation actually - especially the trombone (and at least one person agreed with me about this). I agree it didn't do much with the source music, and seemed more like a fairly straight transcription to me, but I certainly didn't object to it, I just didn't think it showed GB at his most characteristic.

Agreed. They should use him more. I can think of all sorts of other types of music too that I'm sure he'd do better (and with more commitment) than some of the usual suspects.

Sometimes, yes. But it's the overall 'colour' of the oeuvre thus created that sometimes interests me more than individual pieces, anyway. Besides which, it's a slightly more elaborate network of correspondences that interests me, which I feel goes deeper than the sort of surface 'tropes' you cite. I can see how you might feel that network is tighter, and the individual instances less jaded, in the earlier work (1980s, say), but I do think it comes back with some interesting differences in the works around Petra, especially The Conquest of Ireland and The Eternal Recurrence - both of which I like rather better than a lot of the chamber music (early or recent), now I come to think about it.

Me at the RPS thingy? Too scary...one day, perhaps. No, I was at St Luke's.

t_i_n, I shall have to listen to those orchestral pieces you mention again. I seldom dislike Barry's music, but when I do it's because it sounds recycled, or ratherfeels recycled ('jaded' is a good word).

I liked the trombone too in the transcription, but the idea of making the clarinet the soloist above that ensemble was just too awful, and I don't think I would blame Mark van der Wiel for the fact that it sounded horrible. Didn't you think it was disgusting, a pitiful travesty (in the old sense of the word)? I'd go so far as to say I was embarrassed for the composer!

Now I think about it, instrumentation in Barry has always been a real issue for me. What do you think generally about his choices and preferences?

vashti: I agree I don't find Barry subversive, but it's a difficult thing, subversion, because it relies on people being able to be subverted (i.e. expecting something else). My problem is when it sounds like it's supposed to be subversive but actually we've heard it all before and we're in the know. And Barry is very much a new-music favourite (does he flatter our desire to be in on the joke?). I certainly wasn't subverted the other day, apart from when my expectations that I would enjoy Wiener Blut were subverted! (Maybe that's what it's all about - a poignant irony indeed.)

As to what it might add up to...it is indeed fair to ask this - I just wouldn't call that form.

James, you have to pop in here more often than once every couple months for that

Look, even I've got two.

(it's based on number of posts.)

Oh, and obligatory Barry comment: I can't decide whether I love or hate what little I've heard of his work (the black box chamber disc).  Maybe both, which may be precisely the point.  I am extremely interested in the idea of ostentatiously broken forms, I must say, especially as I confront a looming large-scale project myself.

What would people recommend as a second Barry recorded experience?