Listening Project

Couldn't upload HB's full note, and I have no idea whether it's out there somewhere.

Chris, I was at part of some such thing - Birtwistle and Harsent were talking to Patrick Carnegy. I may have missed the talk you mention though. HB does do a rather good job with the prickly public persona. This really is nostalgia - it was before I moved over here, and I got to the first run of the Mask of Orpheus and (this has really stuck in the memory) the premiere of Earth Dances. I am virtually certain it was in one of those wonderful triple-decker BBCSO concerts - don't know if they still happen - with the Zimmermann Dialoge and Stravinsky's Threni.

Of its time? I honestly don't feel it to be more so than anything else, and as Chris says Birtwistle is always sharply distinctive, even in a piece which now feels "early." I really need to think and listen some more. By the way, Gawain, as you likely know anyway, is coming up at Salzburg this summer, with Metzmacher conducting, and Sir John Tomlinson still singing the Green Knight!

Guillaume - I take the point, but would dispute whether the opera stands or falls on its fidelity to the medieval poem, which as you say has a lot of sophisticated comedy. Looked at in that regard it might seem heavy-handed, though I think there is still comedy: Lady de Hautdesert's weird little Birtwistle waltz, even those ferocious onomatopoeic clip-clops at the Green Knight's first entrance (the Fool, who has no equivalent in the poem, is more sinister than comic). But the in key ways it's really a different work, just as Otello is not by a long way Othello and doesn't intend to be. Harsent's libretto is pretty clear about its departures from the poem (it could be seen as a rather "medieval" exercise in revision and revamping), not least with the altered emphasis on the figure of Morgan le Fay, who is a major physical and (crucially) vocal presence from the outset in Birtwistle's opera.

My sense FWIW is that B is drawn by the pattern of repetition-with-variation in the poem's narrative - beheadings, seduction bids, hunts - because it works well with his own compositional practices, i.e. the patterns and symmetries that as Chris points out are apparent even in Tragoedia. Which was why I mention the Act I masque as a kind of "acid test" - in the terms of conventional operatic narrative it would be opera on the blink, but for me it was a high point, before the cuts. I have missed some other Birtwistle work in recent years, but The Minotaur seems interested in more linear narrative.

DST, if I can so abbreviate your name, thanks for your considered reply to my comments on Gawain. You remind me that the much expanded role of Morgan le Fay was one of the things I most objected to in Birtwistle's opera. You're right that there's no reason why an operatic version of a literary text should stick slavishly to the original; however I feel that it should at least be in the same spirit.
I need to revisit Birtwistle's Gawain somehow, as also his other music. He interested me greatly in the 1980s but since then I've sort of lost touch with him. So I'm grateful to this thread for reviving my interest.

I finally got around to listening again to Schubert's 10th last night. The Andante (adagio in the Bartholemew version) must rank with the composer's finest slow movements (along with those from the last quartet, the quintet and the Great C major) and the rest naturally pales a little beside it. I like the first movement but there is not enough drama in the development. Schubert would have most certainly developed matters further here. The finale, I recall, received little love but I enjoyed it. I think, however, that it would have worked better in a binary form similar the the finale of Sibelius's third where, instead of the regular recapitulation, we get a broadening and a peroration more worthy of a symphonic ending. I thought Newbould was heading in such a direction when the fugato began but he seemed to have lost courage. Still, it remains a valuable addition to the Schubert discography.

If Schubert's "10th" was a "valuable addition" to the composer's discography, more recordings would follow plus enough live performances. However, this does not seem to be the case, nor this Symphony seems to be pure Schubert (as Chris wisely suggested only the composer himself could tell whether these "reworkings" are worthy of his work).

I concur with Chris that this "(re)construction" is just a bonus to Schubert's discography, beyond any comparison to any other original score of the composer.

Parla

OK, I suppose that as the substitute originator of this selection, I should sum up the posts on Tragoedia, before we move back nearly a millenium to the Song of the Sybil.

After the extraordinary deafening silence that greeted the Schumann Humoreske, I suspected that this thread was running out of steam, but not a bit of it!

I was not expecting many comments, but in the event several of us found Tragoedia to be a worthwhile listen. DST and I seem to be the 'oldies' of the group, and indeed, like him, I remember the excitement of first hearing many of Birtwistle's works in the first or early performances. They are certainly key works of their time, and only time will tell whether they endure. So I very much concur with DST and Bazza (no idea about 'your time' Bazza!), and indeed with Parla's "a masterpiece of the last century'  It does seem that it's not just oldies who enjoyed it!

Masterpiece or not (and Brumas obviously thinks not) it was certainly a key work in HB's development. Asked to nominate his greatest, along with Earth Dances, I would rate Gawain as one of his finest works, so far. DST, I had not heard that it is to be performed at this year's Salzburg Festival. That's very good news (incidentally it is being given in his 'third' version from 1999 - no idea what that means).

Mark, I started to wonder, with all that versification, whether you had thought that the work we were supposed to be considering was Verses for Ensembles, another superb piece, IMO.

So etymology aside, it seems like 'a hit'!

Chris