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Havergal Brian Symphonies 22-24

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Author Topic: Havergal Brian Symphonies 22-24  (Read 4689 times)
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Dundonnell
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« Reply #45 on: May 06, 2013, 12:26:49 am »

Johan has-as was to be expected-written a thoughtful post which certainly helps to explain the background to the later Brian symphonies (and by "later" I do, of course, mean those from No.20 onwards).

I do not for one moment question the absolute musical integrity which underpins this later Brian. And I accept that this was a very old man who contracted the essence of what he is trying to say into music which is terse and ellpitical. The fact that this may make it more difficult for the listener to grasp is undeniable....which is why I did say that the music certainly does require and repay frequent hearings and study.

I also accept that Nos.22-24 are indeed a trilogy and should be listened to as such. Whether Brian should have combined the three into one-slightly different work-is a moot point....but he didn't, so that is that.

I repeat....I do admire the music enormously. My difficulty remains that because, as Johan writes, it is "harsh and unrelenting" and the moments of beauty and tranquillity are so brief and fleeting the music engages but does not "move" me.

Now, in that respect, Brian is certainly no "worse" than a whole raft of composers whose music has an enormous appeal to me. Indeed, he is palpably better than many of them :) Symphonists like-to pick at total random-William Schuman or Vagn Holmboe or, indeed, Robert Simpson himself-wrote music which I admire, "like", am engaged by. Simpson is indeed one of my favourite composers but, at least with Simpson, the music seems to develop over a longer time-span which makes it easier for the listener "to follow". There is absolutely no reason why Brian should have sought to make it "easy" for the listener. Indeed, given his probable perception that there was relatively little chance of the music being ever performed at all, he is writing exactly and precisely what HE wanted to write.

Early Brian-by which I mean Symphonies Nos. 1-3, 6-10 in particular-have extended passages of such nobility and grandeur that "my breath is taken away". In their, obviously, more extended span I can more easily follow the journey.

This is not intended as criticism of Brian's later music.....let me be quite clear about that! It is merely a stumbling attempt to explain why I find it more difficult to "respond" to the music. If I take a Vaughan Williams symphony or a symphony like Nielsen's 4th or 5th or Shostakovich's 8th or 10th there is a cumulative picture being steadily assembled in my consciousness that grows, develops and ultimately produces an "effect", an "impact" which is an emotional response of incredible power(which is what I mean when I say "moves me"). That is what I find more difficult in late Brian.
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