Review: Voices of Today

Author(s): Thomas Hall

Review by: Thomas Hall
Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 138, No. 1848 (Feb., 1997), p. 41
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1003598
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without concern for the ways in which his
ideas link up with, say, Federhofer's more
general assessments of Schenker's cultural
milieu and the same author's comparison
of Schenker's theories with those of Hugo
Riemann and Ernst Kurth. Nor has he
tapped the Schenker archives for whatever
light they may shed on the origins of his
thought, preferring to regard such things as
the contents of Schenker's library and the
chronology of his writings as matters for
speculation.
To give one example, we read in a foot-
note on p.43: '[Oswald] Jonas reports the
existence of an unpublished Lehre des
Vortrags ...'. Such a work has been known
and talked about for some time, is easily
accessible in the Oster archives in the New
York Public Library, and is about to be
published by the University of California
Press. In the same note Blasius speculates
that a polemical attack on editorial
practice, in 'Abolish the phrasing slur'
(1925), may pre-date the First World War
on the grounds that German writers do not
Voices of today
THOMAS HALL
A Hilliard songbook:
New Music for Voices by
Barry Guy, Morton Feldman,
Ivan Moody, Piers Hellawell,
Paul Robinson, Veljo Tormis,
James MacMillan, Arvo Part,
Elizabeth Liddle, Joanne Metcalf,
Michael Finnissy, John Casken
The Hilliard Ensemble
ECM 1614/15 (2 CDs)
First-rate ensemble that they are, the
Hilliards have rallied a whole clutch
of first-rate composers to help address the
problem of the dearth of new music for
their essentially 17th-century line-up of
counter-tenor, two tenors and baritone.
But pity the casual seeker after pleasing
airs and ditties lulled by the innocuous
sounding title of this anthology only to
meet with Barry Guy's 1994 Hilliard
Composition Prizewinner Un coup de dies
(A dice throw). But it does grow on you.
Especially with Guy's sonic explorations
on double bass adding a colourful fifth
dimension to the ensemble's realisation
of his graphic score. Filtering impressions
of modern architectural concepts through
his own abstraction from MallarmCs poem
of the title, Guy taps the essence of the
This content downloaded from 104.239.165.217 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 21:05:35 UTC
deal with this subject in the 1920s; yet
two writings published just prior to the
phrasing-slur polemic, 'The art of listening'
(1922) and 'True performance' (1923),
are also concerned in the main with bad
editorial practice.
This constellation of writings on textual
matters in relation to performance and
listening suggests to me that Schenker,
far from reacting to the contemporary
literature on music, was pleading as a lone
voice for a return to performance styles
that were current in the 18th century, a
style that was threatened with extinction
when the classics became encrusted with
editorial markings. In this respect, as
in so many others, he may be understood
as a musician ahead of his time, and
should be hailed as a champion of histori-
cally informed, as well as intelligently
conceived, execution. So I would add the
intellectual founding of the early music
movement to Blasius's impressive list of
Schenker's achievements as an early 20th-
century writer.
CD REVIEWS
term aleatory music as, indeed, the ensem-
ble's 'every thought... Gives off a dice
throw'.
From high-intensity to subtle intensifi-
cation, the 21-year-old - and therefore
pre-graphic - Morton Feldman's Only for
counter-tenor solo expands gently lilting
whole-tone motion to encompass a
yearning minor ninth. Of the two other
composers not writing directly for the
ensemble, both Arvo Part's 'mini-opera' in
recitative style And one of the Pharisees, and
his Summa (a setting of the Credo) tend
towards unadorned prosody while Michael
Finnissy's Stabant autem iuxta crucem is
marked 'Simply without dramatising',
leaving dramatic function to the distribu-
tion of voices and progressive elaboration
up to the freely spun melismatic utterances
of Christ from the cross.
Even further extended melismas make
up Joanne Metcalf's Music for the star of the
sea in which individual syllables from the
line 'O ave maris stella' are drawn into
warmly abrasive cross relations over a
modal base, Similarly interested in modal
inflection, Paul Robinson creates menacing
melodrama out of Byron's grisly curse with
Incantation followed by the exciting epic
gallop Kullervo's message by Veljo Tormis.
Superimposition of text, and its
attendant layering of musical material,
meet a wide range of expressive ends; from
Elizabeth Liddle's strophic hymn tune
THE MUSICAL TIMES / FEBRUARY 1997 41
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Boos eceve
David Brodbeck: Brahms: Symphony no.1.
Cambridge UP, ?22.95, ?7.95 pbk.
John W. Freeman: The Metropolitan Opera
stories of the great operas, vol.2. Norton, ?25.
Mike Heffley: The music of Anthony
Braxton. Excelsior/Kalmus, ?23.70 pbk.
Thomas E Heck: Mauro Giuliani: virtuoso
guitarist and composer. Orph&e/Kalmus,
?61.75.
Tom Johnson: Self-similar melodies.
Editions 75 (75 rue de la Roquette, 75011
Paris), FF120.
Jeremy Siepman: The piano. Everyman-
EMI Music Companions. David Campbell,
?25 (includes 3 CDs).
Andrew Steptoe: Mozart. Everyman-EMI
Music Companions. David Campbell, ?25
(includes 3 CDs).
Peter Washington: Bach. Everyman-EMI
Music Companions. David Campbell, ?25
(includes 3 CDs).
Derek Watson: Bruckner. Oxford UP,
?12.99 pbk.
supporting the Brittenesque, extended
tonality of the solo voice in Whale rant to
what many may regard as the jewel of this
collection, Piers Hellawell's The Hilliard
songbook, setting portraitist Nicholas
Hilliard's 'descriptions of precious stones
and their colours'. Simple, interwoven
melodic strands trace the contours of for-
mal Elizabethan syntax in a sequence of
exquisite, luminescent miniatures.
No such understatement attends either
James MacMillan's ... Here in hiding... or
John Casken's Sharp thorne. Both open
with chilling, expressionistic clusters, but
while MacMillan intercuts and conflates
Latin and English versions of Aquinas's
poem 'Adore te devote' to develop a haunt-
ing, despairing supplication, Casken's
alternation of 15th-century verse and
Sylvia Townsend Warner's 'The Lenten
offering' renders the agonies of the cross
excoriatingly relevant to our times.
Ivan Moody's clearly heartfelt Endechas
y canciones might have meant more had a
Spanish to English translation been
provided, while his Canticum canticorum I
communicates a beguilingly tender
response to verses in Latin from the Song
of Songs. It is in the nature of anthologies
that they won't please everyone all of the
time. But whatever fails to please, issue is
unlikely to be taken with the ensemble's
consistently excellent performing stan-
dards.