How 'English' are English Composers?

One of the most startling questions that is faced by the English people is exactly how "English" are our composers?

Purcell - Italian and French influences.

Handel - German born and bred; until he became naturalised English citizen.

Elgar - Our most German of English composers. (Listen to his early music.)

Delius - Wrote in the impressionist, French style.

Vaughan-Williams - Murky French, impressionist style (e.g. London Symphony)

Britten - French influences.

Birtwistle - Continental 'avant garde'

Ferneyhough/Finnissy - International 'avant garde'

Oskar Adolf Hermann Schmitz once said that for a [musically] civilised country Britain was"Das Land ohne Musik". He would have been better off saying it was "Das Land ohne Englische Komponisten"!

What is Stockhausen's legacy?

Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the most important composers of the post war era. He is partially responsible for the creation of the post war modernist music. But what is his true legacy? Was he the leading composer in his field? Did he invent the 'timbralist' idea of generating music from a single sound? Well, he did accomplish that concept with "Stimmung'' (Voice) which is completely designed around the single chord of a B flat ninth . But he wasn't the first. Giacinto Scelsi wrote "Quatro pezzi per orchestre" which is based a single note per movement and that work was written in 1959. Quatro pezzi per orchestre - Scelsi I seriously doubt whether Stockhausen knew about Scelsi's achievement when he wrote Stimmung in 1977. Perhaps one of his greatest works is " Gruppen'' (Groups) composed for three orchestras. Did it change the way we use the orchestra? He was a pioneer, especially in the early stages of hi...

In the shadow of a genius.

Recently, I have discovered a fascinating revelation about the composers we admire so much. That behind many geniuses, there usually is a predecessor lurking in the background. It reminds of that often quoted phrase by Picasso A good artist borrows and great artist steals Now, I am not suggesting that the composers who I mention are stealing peoples' ideas - there is no evidence to support that fact. However, I am suggesting that the idea of a genius who came from nowhere may not be accurate. Let's take the case of Ernest Fanelli. Who? You might ask. He is a significant but unknown person in the development of impressionism. He is an Italian born composer living in Paris. He composed a good deal of 'new' music at the end of the nineteenth century. His ideas were quite radical; his instrumentation included harmonics, sul pont., he used wordless choruses. Unfortunately, he wasn't as talen...

Helmut Lachenmann

H elmut Lachen mann is relatively unknown outside of Germany. Nevertheless , h e is a figure wh o is growing in significan ce in modern music circles. Despite his wide experience, h is lack of broad appeal is, in my opinion, largely d ue to the individuality o f his music. He is not easy to categori se in an era which is dominated by trends and cliches. A simple way of describing his music is... *"musique concrète instrumentale". The notion is the creation of a subtlety of transformation of timbre, a manipulation of a continuum from sound to noise, from pitched notes to pitchless textural exploration, and all that in the sphere of (mostly) purely instrumental music. That means that in Lachenmann's music, there's a world of sound that rivals and even surpasses what electronic and electro-acoustic composers can achieve. -Guardian. Essentially , he is a acoustic composer writing electronic sounding music. He is somewhere...

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