Composer of the week : Robert Simpson

Here’s a man for whom it’s worth succumbing to the collectors’ curse of completism. His works are not necessarily all of even stature, but I’ve yet to find sloppy or pot-boiling Simpson and even pieces that don’t totally convince pay some rewards. Forty years after first hearing his music, here is my personal take.

Simpson’s craftsmanship is his strength and perhaps his Achilles heel. In spite of his, sometimes almost belligerent, assertions that music should speak for itself and that explanation is superfluous, he loves talking about his palindromes, inversions and wedge-shapes, as if losing sight of the fact that if they’re not apparent to the listener or aren’t meaningful within the context of the piece, they don’t add much. Perhaps I’m misreading dubrob’s comparison with Xenakis, because from my limited exposure to him (thanks to dub and others, I rate Kraanerg the most astounding piece of music I’ve heard in years) Xenakis surely composes from and for the gut (despite all that mathematical structuring). On the other hand Simpson is a cerebral composer, perhaps prone to constructing works that look rather better on paper than in performance. A bit like Brian. There’s a reluctance to let it all hang out. Sure, there’s lots of excitement and drama in his music, but it’s mostly rather controlled. You get to know the man’s beliefs and preferences, but not the man himself.

So much for the negatives. The positives swamp them. Influences are Beethoven and Nielsen, the former almost an obsession. Some Bruckner too, especially in symphony 9. Relationship between keys is fundamental to his music, the creation and relaxation of tension caused by key juxtapositions, and in this respect he is a master. Take the finale of the fifth quartet which explores interactions between C and E minor. The resolution at the end, a dying echo of two chords before a couple of punctuation marks, hits me as one of the great homecomings in all music.

Symphonies and quartets are the backbone of his oeuvre and for the sake of brevity I’ll focus on the former. For me, his symphonic achievement forms a reverse arch, as he himself would no doubt put it. The voice is already fully formed in symphony 1, in fact it’s one of my favourite Simpson works with a catchy, lilting triple-time tune in the finale that expresses a pure, personal joy rather rare in Simpson’s works. Symphonies 2-5 extend that high standard although the first movement of 3 is rather bombastic, like being harangued by a latter-day and slightly tipsy Beethoven. To my ears there’s a patina of aridity about symphonies 6, 7, 8 and the first half of 10, a little too much rhetoric and over-working that borders on cleverness. I don’t quite go along with all the praise heaped on 9, which seems to labour rather to state its case. In the back half of 10 and through 11 something emerges that we’ve heard rarely before; Simpson himself. There’s a valedictory feeling, a greater willingness to bare his soul that is touching after so much self-abnegation.

For the Simpson-curious I’d recommend diving in at symphonies 2 and 4, or symphony 11 coupled with the Variations on a theme by Nielsen, two superb Hyperion discs. If they don’t do it for you, Simpson’s probably not your man. But I have to emphasize that despite the reservations expressed above I don’t believe there is such a thing as bad Simpson. With very few exceptions, to my ears he runs from OK to superb.

Dub, I tend to agree that there's less 'cleverness' in the quartets and totally agree re. the 11th symphony. In it, he let the stiff British upper lip slip a little and produced a beautiful work.

I'm pondering yours and John's query re. the quartets. Certainly 4 and 5 are excellent works, the finale of 5 a tour de force as I said. I'll have to go through them again. 9 I recall as a bit dry but overall his quartet cycle is probably my favourite after the Bartok. His quintet and trios are worth investigating too. In fact the only relative 'dogs' I've found in his music are the piano concerto and a choral work called 'Tempi' which strikes me as the composer at his most clever and cutsie. Although there are Simpson fans who completely disagree with me there.

I can't help the feeling that if one of his mates had told him lighten up there Bob, everybody knows you're a bright lad, it might have added that tiny something that's missing from some of his music.

I think he was intelligent enough and talented enough to choose his own course with little limitation. In themselves there’s nothing good or bad about palindromes, inversions, wedges etc. and there’s no doubt Simpson is technically very adept in their usage. Surely the two big questions are how well do they serve the musical argument, and are they of any use to the listener? By ‘use’ I mean can we hear or at least feel them? Simpson is an absolute master in his handling of keys. The listener may not know that E minor and C are having a little shindig here (finale of quartet 5) but he/she has to be tone deaf not to recognize that some discussion is going on, that we’re on some kind of course, and at the end we arrive somewhere in an apotheosis that takes your breath away. These kinds of moments abound in Simpson. I’m not sure he gets anywhere near the same mileage out of some of his other wizardry.

When I say I’m not sure, I sincerely mean that. Time and again I’ve revisited a Simpson work and found something that didn’t work for me first time round has now clicked. On the other hand I still find that in a certain mood his fiddling around can irk me no end. I feel like yelling throw away the slide-rule man and go crazy!

In his discourse on the ninth symphony he points out the successive piling-up of fourths and what they eventually lead to. Is a fourth in itself a wonderful thing? Not really, only in so far as it makes up something that is meaningful to us, the listeners, and I would argue that in the case of this symphony there’s a kind of monochromatic feel, perhaps a result of all those fourths, that mitigates against its success.

The question of what ideas or musical germs make good symphonic material is a huge one. And how should a composer combine the various elements that make up a piece of music? Is Prokofiev too obsessed with ‘tunes’ to be a good symphonist? Is Tchaikovsky too emotional and loose? I suspect Simpson would say yes, and I believe he erred just a bit too far in the opposite direction. When he allows a great idea to take wing, as in the finale of symphony 1, or a little genuine personal emotion to peek through, as in the second half of symphony 10 and into 11, he adds that last ingredient to his art.

Excellent discussion, everyone.  I've always been sympathetic to Simpson's arguments, without ever actually having been convinced.  I dip into his symphonies at least a couple times each year.