Am I alone in thinking that this is getting ridiculous ::) ???
With due apologies to Mr McG (whose tongue appears in any case to have been at least partly in his cheek when initiating this thread), didn't it actually start out that way rather than get that way?(!)...
I genuinely do not want to be rude to the thread starters or to those who have contributed. Most, if not all, of the contributions have been thoughtful and restrained. But I cannot but feel that characterising composers now as "right-wing" is really dangerous. Elgar was a child of his time. Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain did possess a vast Empire on which "the sun never set". There were few who regarded that as a thoroughly "bad thing" or that it would not last for more than a few more decades. In writing patriotic music celebrating "empire" Elgar was responding to the popular mood. We know that he came to hate the association of "Land of Hope and Glory" with the Pomp and Circumstance No.1.
Fair comment, I think although, apart from feeling some kind of apparent need to be regarded as a "pillar of the establishment" (for whatever reasons or none), it is hard to imagine what possessed him to write
Fringes of the Fleet or
Pageant of Empire - let alone the comically awful halfpenny-dreadful
Crown of India - especially given that they are for the most part far from Elgar at his best. The so-called (and perhaps unfortunately titled)
Pomp and Circumstance marches could as easily have been called Six Marches for orchestra (at least after Tony Payne had sorted out the last one) and the whiff of quasi-imperialist stigma that's clung about them would almost certainly have been a good deal less noticeable. In some senses, Elgar just
wasn't cut out to become a "pillar of the establishment" anyway - a Roman Catholic in Protestant Britain from a "lower-middle-class" family who suffered many and frequent bouts of lack of confidence doesn't bode well for such candidature. He may in some ways have been "a child of his time", but his more overtly "English" music of all kinds is almost invariably below his best work;
Gerontius was hardly typical "English" fare when it emerged,
Alassio might as well have been titled
Richard in Italy (or maybe
In the Strauss) and the symphonies, concertos and chamber works just don't fit that kind of bill either - even
Falstaff is "English" only on account of what it's "about". Elgar was, after all, once berated for paying scant attention to folk music in his work, to which he apparently retorted "I am one of the folk and I write music, therefore I write folk music", or some such. What music can seriously be regarded as "patriotic", still less "right-wing" in any case if it comes without words?
And if Elgar is to be characterised as "right-wing" (or Stanford as a supporter of the Union with Ireland) how are we to describe the Last Night of the Proms audiences who happily and enthusiastically sing along to "Land of Hope and Glory" or cheer "Rule Britannia" ??? Are they all "right-wing" too ??? Of course not!
True - but then the music of those pieces would not be thought of as such in any cas were it not for the words for which Arne's music was written or those that got stuck to Elgar's like so much excrement hitting the air-conditioning!
IF-and this needs to be demonstrably evident-a composer's music was fundamentally influenced by a particular political conviction then-and only then-do I see the need to understand and comment on that. Otherwise a composer's personal political views are of neglibile interest to me. My own views MAY be diametrically opposite to those of, say, Alan Bush.....but I can and will still appreciate and admire the music as appropriate to its intrinsic quality.
Fair comment -and when one remembers that Sorabji thought very highly of Bush's best music (the piano and violin concertos,
Dialectic, Concert Piece for cello and piano and the symphonies) - and even (in fact especially) his final opera
Joe Hill - any left-wing "value" that anyone might seek to place upon it falls flat on its ugly face.
Composers are also influenced and conditioned by their own emotional psyches. I have come to understand a little-probably in fact enough-of Benjamin Britten's emotional makeup to appreciate how it influenced the music he wrote. But there is a limit to how far I think this needs to be taken. What matters is the music itself and whether it is-crudely speaking-any good.
I would substitute "inevitably" and/or "invariably" for "also" in your first sentence above but, like you, that is, as Schönberg might have observed, a matter for "the composer's workshop".
