“Arvo Pärt’s recoiling into endless primary colour noodling”
I don’t think this is an entirely fair description of Pärt’s later career, inasmuch as there are some works around the turn of the millennium where Pärt suddenly turned up the level of dissonance and conflict in his music (Orient and Occident, Lamentate), making one wonder if he was undergoing some personal crisis at the time.
Okay, so maybe those works (and a few others) go beyond just primary colours, but not by much, and i’d still define the behaviour as noodling. Within the small, narrow confines Pärt’s imprisoned himself within, even the slightest encroachment beyond it can seem ‘radical’ – but in the bigger scheme of things, hardly!
Chris L
3 years ago
I can think of a few composers who, after a hiatus, became more radical in their musical language, but admittedly they tended to start from a comparatively conservative place. Elizabeth Maconchy, with her string quartets from no.8 onwards, is the example that springs most readily to mind.
I think my chief problem with the neo-Romantic Penderecki is the degree to which he repeated himself. I discovered his Polish Requiem (boy, is that an oppressively single-mooded work!) comparatively early on in my Penderecki-listening; since then, I’ve tried to venture further afield, but each time have come rapidly to the conclusion that hearing that one work provides the listener with basically the entirety of latterday Penderecki’s bag of tricks.
Yes, i agree about repetition, Chris. I revisited all 8 of his symphonies recently and was struck how little (after No. 1) they do to explore fresh or individual ideas. It’s like he was just going around in circles, trying (in No. 8 and No. 6 especially) to write a sequel to Das Lied von der Erde or something. As I love late romanticism it’s tough for me to seriously dislike his music, but at the same time it’s practically impossible to admire it.
I’ve just listened to the album in chunks. Yes, from the String Trio onward it’s pretty much Penderecki-by-numbers. It wasn’t so much the folk pastiches that bothered me in the two late quartets; no, my chief irritation-alternating-with-boredom was reserved for those interminable sequences of chromatic descents – never has a stylistic tic been more stultifyingly overused in pursuit of would-be profundity!
“Or perhaps it’s the early, avant-garde works that weren’t genuine, merely the product of a young composer trying out some brash experiments, vainly trying to escape a deeper urge to write altogether more conventional music.” – I think this is more on the mark. As evidence I would remind the reader that the title of Threnody ttVoH when it was premiered was originally “8’37″”. After the premiere, a friend allegedly advised KP that the obviously visceral piece would not go very far with an abstract title like that and encouraged him to find a more emotional title. I don’t remember the source of this allegation, unfortunately, but I don’t think anyone would disagree that the piece would not have the same effect on the listener without reference to this title, (and as Paul Griffths observed, the sounds in the piece make the listener feel “uneasy by choosing to refer to an event too terrible for string orchestral screams”). This kind of cynicism and ruthless opportunism has always seemed to lie at the heart of even his most effective “experimental” pieces from this period and has always made me question their authenticity (if that even matters). However, their very effectiveness prevents one from writing them off so easily. His case is clearly a complex and controversial one either way.
Thanks for this comment, Steven. i’m cautious about regarding the bestowing of titles on compositions ex post facto as being simply “cynicism and ruthless opportunism” – though i acknowledge it’s an easy accusation to make considering the emotional baggage in the particular case of the Threnody. i’ve known plenty of situations where composers (including me!) have written ‘abstract’ works to which they’ve afterwards given more poetic titles, and i think this is a logical part of the way the flow of inspiration moves back and forth between composer and composition. Personally i’d be perfectly happy with 8’37” as the title – and i’ve honestly never really felt that the piece needs the Hiroshima association to be an interesting, successful piece (not that any music could ever do justice to such events as that anyway). i’ve tried on occasions to rediscover the source for the Threnody title story (i.e. who exactly came up with the idea, KP or someone else), and i’ve never found it, only second-hand references to it.
Totally agree that he’s a complex and controversial case; it took some years for the realisation to take hold that he was not, in fact, an avant-garde composer at all, just someone who had dabbled in it during his formative years. Even today my first instinct is to think of him in relation to those (relatively few) early works and not the plethora of neo-romantic stuff that actually makes up most of his output!
James Booth
3 years ago
I actually do like a reasonable bit of his post-textural output to be fair but I have to agree that there is perhaps too little stylistic evolution between those first works in his ‘neo-tonal/romantic/quasi-expressionist’ style and his last, even within the confines of that particular style.
In some ways however I would say it wasn’t an easy decision to make that stylistic switch in the 70s. First off was the inevitable ‘sellout’ accusations from his former modernist community, but perhaps more subtly was the fact that he simply seemed to have a distinct aversion to major chords! His later works are – generally – hardly toe-tapping, Classic FM ‘Hall of Fame’ baiting feel good romps but instead sombre, dark, post-Shostakovitch jeremiads. It’s simply too depressing for many an ‘average’ listener.
“Arvo Pärt’s recoiling into endless primary colour noodling”
I don’t think this is an entirely fair description of Pärt’s later career, inasmuch as there are some works around the turn of the millennium where Pärt suddenly turned up the level of dissonance and conflict in his music (Orient and Occident, Lamentate), making one wonder if he was undergoing some personal crisis at the time.
Okay, so maybe those works (and a few others) go beyond just primary colours, but not by much, and i’d still define the behaviour as noodling. Within the small, narrow confines Pärt’s imprisoned himself within, even the slightest encroachment beyond it can seem ‘radical’ – but in the bigger scheme of things, hardly!
I can think of a few composers who, after a hiatus, became more radical in their musical language, but admittedly they tended to start from a comparatively conservative place. Elizabeth Maconchy, with her string quartets from no.8 onwards, is the example that springs most readily to mind.
I think my chief problem with the neo-Romantic Penderecki is the degree to which he repeated himself. I discovered his Polish Requiem (boy, is that an oppressively single-mooded work!) comparatively early on in my Penderecki-listening; since then, I’ve tried to venture further afield, but each time have come rapidly to the conclusion that hearing that one work provides the listener with basically the entirety of latterday Penderecki’s bag of tricks.
Yes, i agree about repetition, Chris. I revisited all 8 of his symphonies recently and was struck how little (after No. 1) they do to explore fresh or individual ideas. It’s like he was just going around in circles, trying (in No. 8 and No. 6 especially) to write a sequel to Das Lied von der Erde or something. As I love late romanticism it’s tough for me to seriously dislike his music, but at the same time it’s practically impossible to admire it.
I’ve just listened to the album in chunks. Yes, from the String Trio onward it’s pretty much Penderecki-by-numbers. It wasn’t so much the folk pastiches that bothered me in the two late quartets; no, my chief irritation-alternating-with-boredom was reserved for those interminable sequences of chromatic descents – never has a stylistic tic been more stultifyingly overused in pursuit of would-be profundity!
“Or perhaps it’s the early, avant-garde works that weren’t genuine, merely the product of a young composer trying out some brash experiments, vainly trying to escape a deeper urge to write altogether more conventional music.” – I think this is more on the mark. As evidence I would remind the reader that the title of Threnody ttVoH when it was premiered was originally “8’37″”. After the premiere, a friend allegedly advised KP that the obviously visceral piece would not go very far with an abstract title like that and encouraged him to find a more emotional title. I don’t remember the source of this allegation, unfortunately, but I don’t think anyone would disagree that the piece would not have the same effect on the listener without reference to this title, (and as Paul Griffths observed, the sounds in the piece make the listener feel “uneasy by choosing to refer to an event too terrible for string orchestral screams”). This kind of cynicism and ruthless opportunism has always seemed to lie at the heart of even his most effective “experimental” pieces from this period and has always made me question their authenticity (if that even matters). However, their very effectiveness prevents one from writing them off so easily. His case is clearly a complex and controversial one either way.
Thanks for this comment, Steven. i’m cautious about regarding the bestowing of titles on compositions ex post facto as being simply “cynicism and ruthless opportunism” – though i acknowledge it’s an easy accusation to make considering the emotional baggage in the particular case of the Threnody. i’ve known plenty of situations where composers (including me!) have written ‘abstract’ works to which they’ve afterwards given more poetic titles, and i think this is a logical part of the way the flow of inspiration moves back and forth between composer and composition. Personally i’d be perfectly happy with 8’37” as the title – and i’ve honestly never really felt that the piece needs the Hiroshima association to be an interesting, successful piece (not that any music could ever do justice to such events as that anyway). i’ve tried on occasions to rediscover the source for the Threnody title story (i.e. who exactly came up with the idea, KP or someone else), and i’ve never found it, only second-hand references to it.
Totally agree that he’s a complex and controversial case; it took some years for the realisation to take hold that he was not, in fact, an avant-garde composer at all, just someone who had dabbled in it during his formative years. Even today my first instinct is to think of him in relation to those (relatively few) early works and not the plethora of neo-romantic stuff that actually makes up most of his output!
I actually do like a reasonable bit of his post-textural output to be fair but I have to agree that there is perhaps too little stylistic evolution between those first works in his ‘neo-tonal/romantic/quasi-expressionist’ style and his last, even within the confines of that particular style.
In some ways however I would say it wasn’t an easy decision to make that stylistic switch in the 70s. First off was the inevitable ‘sellout’ accusations from his former modernist community, but perhaps more subtly was the fact that he simply seemed to have a distinct aversion to major chords! His later works are – generally – hardly toe-tapping, Classic FM ‘Hall of Fame’ baiting feel good romps but instead sombre, dark, post-Shostakovitch jeremiads. It’s simply too depressing for many an ‘average’ listener.
[…] previously explored, at some length, Penderecki’s strange stylistic regression, from being radically original at the start of his […]