Simon, I admire your integrity – praising the Gothic Symphony against the (majority) critical grain back in 2011, doing the opposite here. For my own part, I found it a diverting enough listen, but not a patch on Payne’s previous Proms commission, Time’s Arrow, from waaay back in 1990, which it resembles thematically at several points. The latter was, IMHO, one of the most fascinating studies in musical momentum since Sibelius, exploring on the now-somewhat-outmoded theory that space-time will one day do an about-turn and begin collapsing in on itself.
It’s a long time since i’ve heard Time’s Arrow, must give it another listen sometime. Didn’t realise my opinion was opposite to others (as i may have said before, i don’t tend to read the scribblings of (ahem) ‘professional’ critics for, i hope, obvious reasons), but it doesn’t surprise me. And no doubt in due course the piece will enter the repertoire of our green and pleasant land’s indescribable choral societies.
Funny you should mention choral societies, as the Arts Desk reviewer’s criticisms were squarely of the singers, not the piece itself. Regardless of the latter’s musical merits, it was with some relief that I discovered that Payne’s words weren’t the Tippettesque cringefest I’d feared they might be…!
i’ve never been overtly bothered by Tippett’s self-written texts; although i’ve always wondered what Child of our Time would have been like if T. S. Eliot had agreed to write the text (and, of course, it was Eliot, turning down the request, who convinced Tippett to write his own texts in the first place).
As something of a Tippett fan, I’ve learned to live with the artless would-be intellectualism of much of his prose, even to the point of enjoying Part 2 of the 3rd Symphony (which, of course, really does quote Beethoven 9 – repeatedly, for rhetorical effect). Others, it goes without saying, are less forgiving, some even to a “deal-breaking” degree…
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Simon, I admire your integrity – praising the Gothic Symphony against the (majority) critical grain back in 2011, doing the opposite here. For my own part, I found it a diverting enough listen, but not a patch on Payne’s previous Proms commission, Time’s Arrow, from waaay back in 1990, which it resembles thematically at several points. The latter was, IMHO, one of the most fascinating studies in musical momentum since Sibelius, exploring on the now-somewhat-outmoded theory that space-time will one day do an about-turn and begin collapsing in on itself.
It’s a long time since i’ve heard Time’s Arrow, must give it another listen sometime. Didn’t realise my opinion was opposite to others (as i may have said before, i don’t tend to read the scribblings of (ahem) ‘professional’ critics for, i hope, obvious reasons), but it doesn’t surprise me. And no doubt in due course the piece will enter the repertoire of our green and pleasant land’s indescribable choral societies.
Funny you should mention choral societies, as the Arts Desk reviewer’s criticisms were squarely of the singers, not the piece itself. Regardless of the latter’s musical merits, it was with some relief that I discovered that Payne’s words weren’t the Tippettesque cringefest I’d feared they might be…!
i’ve never been overtly bothered by Tippett’s self-written texts; although i’ve always wondered what Child of our Time would have been like if T. S. Eliot had agreed to write the text (and, of course, it was Eliot, turning down the request, who convinced Tippett to write his own texts in the first place).
As something of a Tippett fan, I’ve learned to live with the artless would-be intellectualism of much of his prose, even to the point of enjoying Part 2 of the 3rd Symphony (which, of course, really does quote Beethoven 9 – repeatedly, for rhetorical effect). Others, it goes without saying, are less forgiving, some even to a “deal-breaking” degree…