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Ian Pace
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« on: 12:08:19, 22-06-2008 » |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #1 on: 12:38:30, 22-06-2008 » |
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This is an excellent excuse to post a link to the article that Benjamin Zephaniah wrote when he declined the OBE, and the poem - Bought and Sold - that accompanied it: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1094011,00.htmlI find it difficult to see Nyman as anything other than an establishment figure, and a commercially successful one at that, and I suppose the CBE is an almost inevitable staging-post on the populist road that Nyman has taken. The idea that such an award might do anything for new music seems to me to be risible. Like Philip Clark, it's some of the other recipients that I can't understand. To whose benefit does such a system really operate? Not to the recipients, I should have thought. |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #2 on: 13:10:22, 22-06-2008 » |
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Tippett couldn’t have composed a dull piece if he tried Well that's a matter of opinion. Or possibly just a matter of hyperbole. idiosyncratic and individualist one-offs Michael Nyman... Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle  Thanks for the Zephaniah pw! |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #3 on: 13:27:58, 22-06-2008 » |
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I don't really understand what Philip Clark is on about. I have more respect for artists who refuse honours than for those who accept them, especially ones with directly royalist associations, but I don't think that "a nod from the Palace impinges on the substance of a composer's work" at all. It may impinge on our view of whether an artist himself is hypocritical or not, but to single out Michael Nyman for this hardly seems like news.
And "by definition, the hand of the Establishment, and Government, has never been willing to feed radical music in this country" is just bad logic. If it's 'by definition', then it's not just 'in this country'.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #4 on: 14:19:26, 22-06-2008 » |
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I don't think that "a nod from the Palace impinges on the substance of a composer's work" at all. It certainly says something about how that composer and their work has come to be thought of in the higher echelons of government and/or monarchy. And there are questions to be asked about the meanings associated with music than can be appropriated in such a manner. Anyhow, the original phrase is the following: 'To what degree a nod from the Palace impinges on the substance of a composer’s work is an open question.' And "by definition, the hand of the Establishment, and Government, has never been willing to feed radical music in this country" is just bad logic. If it's 'by definition', then it's not just 'in this country'. What happens in other countries is another matter (I don't imagine there's something like an 'Commander of the Order of the Third Reich' that is awarded to composers in Germany, akin to our 'Commander of the Order of the British Empire'). The logic is fine as long as one's definition of 'radical' precludes that with which the Establishment and Government can feel comfortable (in terms of 'Establishment', I think that is automatically true by definition; there is the possibility of a 'radical' Government, I suppose (the Attlee and to a lesser extent Wilson administrations might vaguely count as such, at least in the context of the administrations that preceded them; certainly not the Blair/Brown governments, though), but in the present time, I'm happy to believe to 'Government' is not going to be radical almost by definition). |
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« Last Edit: 14:30:29, 22-06-2008 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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richard barrett
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« Reply #5 on: 09:54:39, 23-06-2008 » |
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What occurred to me when reading the article was not much more than a mild surprise that it's only now Nyman is receiving such an "honour". If I'd read instead that he'd received a CBE five years ago, or ten or even twenty, I wouldn't have been surprised. His days as a non-establishment composer are, as pw implies, long past. The only time I was in the same room as Nyman was in 1981 when, asked why he had adopted the style he had then recently begun to work in, he answered superciliously that he wanted to write "the kind of music his mum would like", which even then I wasn't too naive to realise was code for "the sort of music he could make a pile of money with". And it's well known that making a pile of money with one's music is the main qualification one needs for receiving official honours.
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pim_derks
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« Reply #6 on: 10:43:53, 23-06-2008 » |
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The only time I was in the same room as Nyman was in 1981 when, asked why he had adopted the style he had then recently begun to work in, he answered superciliously that he wanted to write "the kind of music his mum would like", which even then I wasn't too naive to realise was code for "the sort of music he could make a pile of money with". Many thanks for sharing this anecdote with us, Richard!  Perhaps you can publish this anecdote in a magazine article? I think Nyman's "mum" could become just as famous as Terence Rattigan's "Aunt Edna".  |
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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richard barrett
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« Reply #7 on: 14:09:03, 23-06-2008 » |
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I don't think that "a nod from the Palace impinges on the substance of a composer's work" at all. No more nor less perhaps than a nod from Rupert Murdoch impinges on the substance of a journalist's work? Pim, I'm glad you enjoyed the anecdote, but I'm not sure I care enough about Michael Nyman to consider devoting an article to him or his mum. Let us starve them of the oxygen of publicity, as Mrs Thatcher once said. |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #8 on: 14:28:06, 23-06-2008 » |
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"the kind of music his mum would like" Now one could never accuse present company of that, could one Richard? (Thought I might as well ask while you're here on the couch...  ) |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #9 on: 14:38:10, 23-06-2008 » |
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I don't think that "a nod from the Palace impinges on the substance of a composer's work" at all. No more nor less perhaps than a nod from Rupert Murdoch impinges on the substance of a journalist's work? But that was my point. There are much more direct 'lines of patronage' that are likely to affect a composer's work, such as ... oh, I don't know, signing a publishing contract with Faber Music, to take an uncontroversial example. I think a knighthood is, in the scheme of things, a fairly cosmetic honour. As for the sort of music that anyone's mum would like, I can only speak from experience, but I would have thought having a son who wrote interesting experimental music was one of the things most likely to remove any barriers a parent had previously found to their enjoyment of such music. My mum found the sort of stuff I started listening to as a teenager pretty unfamiliar and weird, but after 10-15 years of me playing it to her and talking to her about it she quite enjoys some of it. My dad's an old punk/new wave fan who now (as I recently discovered) plays his friends La Légende d'Eer to show his friends what you can do with 96-bit CD technology. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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richard barrett
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« Reply #10 on: 16:14:13, 23-06-2008 » |
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Now one could never accuse present company of that, could one Richard? (Thought I might as well ask while you're here on the couch... ) Indeed not. Time, I knew that was your point of course. There are all kinds of pressures to conform and compromise thrown at composers all the time, capitulation in the face of which passes mostly without comment. At least by the time a composer is deemed old enough to receive such an "honour" as an OBE he/she has probably passed the point where such a thing is going to "impinge" on their "substance" - usually because all the necessary impingement has already been done in the course of the "services to British music" or whatever the "honour" is supposed to be a reward for. |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #11 on: 16:49:22, 23-06-2008 » |
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There are certainly many capitulatory pressures bearing upon composers, which few resist wholly, but basking in the glory of an honour associated with the genocidal British Empire is another. The latter is not usually of any great concern to Middle England, nor to the culturatti, of course (but it certainly is to Zephaniah), but once again, I think it is no better than if a German composer accepted an honour named after the Third Reich.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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time_is_now
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« Reply #12 on: 17:09:52, 23-06-2008 » |
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I agree - that's why I think accepting a knighthood is just a case of slightly misplaced priorities, but anything ending in 'BE' could justifiably be considered downright offensive/insensitive.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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richard barrett
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« Reply #13 on: 17:27:54, 23-06-2008 » |
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I agree - that's why I think accepting a knighthood is just a case of slightly misplaced priorities, but anything ending in 'BE' could justifiably be considered downright offensive/insensitive.
Actually a knighthood also involves conferring the "honour" of "Knight Commander of the British Empire", does it not? |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #14 on: 17:30:40, 23-06-2008 » |
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Actually a knighthood also involves conferring the "honour" of "Knight Commander of the British Empire", does it not?
Does it? I didn't know that. At least they don't brandish it at the end of their names in public. That would of course change my argument. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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