That's the bit where I begin to bridle rather. Quite apart from the fact I wouldn't want to be caught putting people into 'categories', I really would want to resist the idea that some people's emotions are more or less valuable, important or genuine than those of others. People's emotions are people's emotions and I can't see, either philosophically or in terms of practical morality, how distinctions can or should be drawn between those which count and those which don't, or which count for less.

And it's partly for that reason why I'm not quite so sold as some are on the idea that what music is really about is the expressing and conveying of emotion, and that it should be judged on how well and in how sophisticated a manner it does that (not that I am suggesting Ian is implying that). 

But I do definitely agree with Ian about the unwisdom of arguing with Russian mafia bosses.

No, and that's exactly what it wasn't - it was one-third of a balanced, interrelated and mutually illuminating concert programme. What I find strange isn't that you thought the Holliger is "absolutely appalling" and "fails miserably" (which isn't me putting words in your mouth, it's exactly what you said) but that it also somehow prevented you from wanting to listen to Schumann afterwards.

Absolutely not. Most quartets are at least partly concerned with relationships between the instruments, be these more traditional (melody plus accompaniment, dialogue, polyphony etc.) or less so (Ives and Carter treating the instruments more as dramatic personae). Holliger doesn't do any of this but hardly even allows single instruments to emerge from the texture, which often has the appearance of more than four instruments playing, and this he does consistently almost throughout the piece, with absolutely nothing "soloistic" going on, and while this kind of idea is a feature of some other quartets, by Giacinto Scelsi (and for that matter Holliger's first), it isn't at all common in the from it takes in this piece.

My goodness, it's a really 'big' piece in all directions, isn't it. First hearing only but it sounded like the real thing to me. I really couldn't work out how some of it was done though. Only one cello in there?! In a way I wish I hadn't known in advance about the humming/singing as I think I would have enjoyed being scared witless, unsure of whether something had somehow emerged that shouldn't have been there, like glimpsing a dead parent through a garden window.

As for the audience response, I wouldn't want to upset anyone's fond prejudices about the Wigmore Hall audience, but it sounded pretty enthusiastic to me.

I sure do wish we'd left it at Evan Johnson's "Thanks for giving it a chance." The rest of this is either already pretty mean-spirited or soon to be so.

The Holliger sandwich upset some people, which is fine, and there's a case to be made for new music being performed exclusively on concerts devoted to new music, the logic being that "New Music" is as much related to classical music as some forms of plop music are... but I'm entirely not in that camp; I certainly think many efforts to mix the two are perfectly apropos, if the performers wish to do so and feel compelled to create the juxtaposition for musical reasons, as is the case w/ this programme. By extension, I can imagine musical reasons for putting some plop music on a classical concert as well.

New music should not be sandwiched between classical pieces just for the sake of exposing people to new music. Not because that unnecessarily shocks/annoys people, but because it's pedantic and not very imaginative.

As for me, I just started to Listen Again (that's an overstatement, as I didn't Listen yet), so will comment on Hollie a bit later on. Perhaps I will too find this juxtaposition not very convincing -- but who am I to say so if that's the way the performers felt about it?

This Schubert is pretty delicious by the way.
plop -- that was at first a typo and then I thought better of correcting it. Guess I'm easily amused.

I didn't intend to give the impression of singling you out. But about the Braxton comment above, it would have indeed been better if the commenter had kept this to themselves, it serves nothing to be simply dismissive like that. Then again, perhaps the commenter was actually interested in the ensuing discussion, in which case we'd just be quibbling about whether they should have said or "Could someone please tell me what the point of that was?"

To make a distinction between those two reactions may be counterproductive: the first sounds dismissive, but the second sounds a bit too dispassionate. John should go ahead and be angry, if that's what he is, no?

Braxton (like many other musics) compels us to listen in new ways, and we differ in how we evaluate (valorize!) such an experience.

To call John's ears insensitive is either accurate or inaccurate, but it's definitely counterproductive as well. The Holliger quartet (which is e-spinning right now) contains many sounds which I am familiar with from other music, so I have an easier time with it than John, and I can evaluate it on Martelian grounds vis a vis density, texture, formal trajectory -- and I can declare it to be very sophisticated in those and many other respects. But I do still remember when my ears were NOT attuned to such things. That version of me would have been at least a little repelled by this music, which I now find quite beautiful. Have I become more sensitive, or just sensitive to more different things?

I try to imagine this Holliger piece without a background of Bartok, Webern op 9, and all that came thereafter, and frankly I cannot. Not sure what that means.

Ian 


Oh Richard, that Braxton thing was something else entirely, the performers were just messing about playing odd notes as far as I can recall 

The Holliger piece of course deserves an audience but I'd be appalled if, as TF/Chafe suggested, as a possibility, the performers CHOSE to sandwich it with Schubert/Schumann just to GET an audience.

While my comments appear dismissive please see that all I'm saying is I don't enjoy some music, particularly in the way it was placed last night. Had it been a concert of only Holliger and similar I would have turned off but not posted anything about it here.


John W
 

I really can't agree with you at all there, arrogant though it might seem to 'rank' emotions. There are forces at play all the time to produce emotional manipulation, not least when one walks into a supermarket, or via political propaganda. And Hollywood and Karl Jenkins aren't so dissimilar. I think it's not just possible, but vital, to make a distinction between these sorts of things and, say, the emotional response one has to a palpably real phenomenon (for example the death of a relative, or for that matter from apperception of some deep emotion manifested in a piece of music, that one can engage with rather than simply 'have done to one'). And music that induces responses in a manner akin to propaganda is the lowest of low, in my book.