Like your recently featured Naomi Pinnock work “The field is woven”, Lamb’s work here is sonically generous but musically rather meager, isn’t it? An episodic chain of subtly shifting sound and color has its attractions, but so does the wind whistling through a copse of trees. The difference between whistling wind and a work by, say, Stravinsky, is vast, but here the difference is smaller—and it seems valid to ponder the question, why?, and to question not only why composers content themselves with this minimalist sonic aesthetic, but listeners as well.
Appealing sounds to be sure, with evident craft and discerning aesthetic, but all in the service of rather thin gruel, I’m afraid
No, i don’t believe it is meagre, and if i did, i wouldn’t have bothered to write about it. i guess it depends whether you go to music to get certain things from it – i.e. with certain preformed definitions and criteria of what to you constitutes a ‘satisfying’ listening experience – or attempt to approach a piece on its own terms, according to its definitions and criteria. The latter is what i strive for.
If this piece doesn’t provide you with sufficient nourishment, fair enough, but as with so much music (at least, so much good music), to my mind there’s a great deal more to this piece than just the moment by moment sounds that we’re hearing. The same goes for Naomi’s piece too.
[…] revised and expanded portions transparent/opaque, given its first performance last Monday, with the incomplete version performed in 2014. The movement titles have changed – from “expand”, “saturate”, […]
[…] / opaque, at its first performance at the Proms in 2023, struck me as less effective than its earlier incarnation, premièred nine years earlier. This muted rendition of the first movement certainly didn’t […]
Unlock with Patreon
Like your recently featured Naomi Pinnock work “The field is woven”, Lamb’s work here is sonically generous but musically rather meager, isn’t it? An episodic chain of subtly shifting sound and color has its attractions, but so does the wind whistling through a copse of trees. The difference between whistling wind and a work by, say, Stravinsky, is vast, but here the difference is smaller—and it seems valid to ponder the question, why?, and to question not only why composers content themselves with this minimalist sonic aesthetic, but listeners as well.
Appealing sounds to be sure, with evident craft and discerning aesthetic, but all in the service of rather thin gruel, I’m afraid
No, i don’t believe it is meagre, and if i did, i wouldn’t have bothered to write about it. i guess it depends whether you go to music to get certain things from it – i.e. with certain preformed definitions and criteria of what to you constitutes a ‘satisfying’ listening experience – or attempt to approach a piece on its own terms, according to its definitions and criteria. The latter is what i strive for.
If this piece doesn’t provide you with sufficient nourishment, fair enough, but as with so much music (at least, so much good music), to my mind there’s a great deal more to this piece than just the moment by moment sounds that we’re hearing. The same goes for Naomi’s piece too.
[…] revised and expanded portions transparent/opaque, given its first performance last Monday, with the incomplete version performed in 2014. The movement titles have changed – from “expand”, “saturate”, […]
[…] / opaque, at its first performance at the Proms in 2023, struck me as less effective than its earlier incarnation, premièred nine years earlier. This muted rendition of the first movement certainly didn’t […]