Today's Listening

Hi Tagalie!

Yes the CD that I obtained is Mathias choral music/Wells Cathedral Choir/Owens on Hyperion. (Wells Cathedral - great place. When me and Hildegard were on holiday down in Somerset we attended an evensong at Wells about five years ago or so - which was excellent. The service included an anthem by a forgotten English composer Charles Wood).

Mathias' choral music grabs you and it keeps the interest going - and this CD is useful in that it contains a Magnificat/Nunc Dimitis, a Missa Brevis and a Te Deum, plus a few anthems and shorter pieces.

Very melodic - one piece that I think is superb is a short In Excelsis Gloria - first recording. Totally in agreement with you that it's more than just nice listening.

Have my eye on a Lyrita CD on Amazon of Joubert/Mathias First Symphonies. The only thing I know of Joubert is his famous carol Torches, but the Penguin Guide says he is a shamefully neglected composer. And as I say, time to explore some Mathias instrumental stuff methinks.

I pulled out my lp of the Moeran yesterday (the Lyrita) for a re-check and came to the same conclusions. Yes, if you can ignore all the cribs it's a pleasant piece but it's such a magpie's nest of influences, some of them almost direct quotes.

The Sibelius influences are perhaps forgiveable - just about every English composer after Elgar has the Sibelius stamp - but at times those influences border on straight lifts. Aside from the final chords (right out of Sibelius 5) there's Tapiola in the slow movement and finale and something I can't quite identify (Sibelius 2?) in the first movement. Bax (himself much influenced by Sibelius of course, but at least digested) makes many guest appearances and there's a fair sprinkling of Hamilton Harty through the work. Nice quote from Brahms 4 half way throught the finale, that morphs into the funeral march from Elgar 2.

Vaughan Williams, particularly the VW of the London Symphony, appears everywhere, especially in the first movement and scherzo where the sort of jaunty dance sounds to me almost like a crib from the third movement of VW2. The brief trumpet fanfare in the scherzo I'm sure is a lift from somewhere but I can't quite place it.

Then there's Walton. The coda of the first movement is Bax meets Walton before it becomes VW2 again, and the opening statement of the finale is a rework of the same passage of Walton 1.

Those whooping horns in the finale are a lift from somewhere, Holst perhaps? And there's a nice quote from Butterfly mid way through the slow movement.

From a stanpoint of identifying where he got his ideas, the work is lots of fun. I'm sure others can pick out many bits I've missed. And somehow it works as a symphony, all credit to the composer. But had he submitted it as his college thesis, I fear he may have been shown the door for plagiarism.

As for the Lyrita back catalogue, it's the only one that tempts me to throw my hat into the back-to-vinyl ring, along with some of the best Deccas of that period. Tempted, that is, before I come across a passage (usually the start or finish of an lp) that sounds like it was recorded in a hailstorm.

I'm with you there, Mark. I gather from friends teaching at colleges or schools that plagiarism is now rampant, and difficult to detect. We've even had cases of it on this forum, as you'll recall.

Some would argue that 'copied from' and 'influenced by' are barely distinguishable. I would agree that somewhere in the middle there's a grey area, but in the vast majority of cases the vast majority of people have no trouble distinguishing. How much is 'quoted', in what form and for what reason are all factors to consider. For instance, the Bax Tristan quote in Tintagel comes nowhere near plagiarism. It's in there for a purpose (we're talking two works anchored in the same small part of the world) and is a brief direct quote before it is worked through a variety of treatments to become part of the development.

I'm not trying to offend anybody here. The Moeran symphony is an enjoyable work in many ways. It's just that I can't listen to it as anything but a clever collage of other people's ideas and to rate it alongside such great British symphonies of that period as Walton 1, VW 2-5, Rubbra 3 and 4 or any of the Bax cycle is a huge reach.

Try it for yourself, Mark. I believe there's a good Naxos recording as well as the Boult Lyrita. EMI also recorded it, I had it for a while on vinyl before I bought the Lyrita, which is certainly preferable.

I envy you your cathedral-hopping. The things I most miss from the UK are cathedrals, football, pubs and the Scottish Highlands. Certainly not the weather.

A totally different kettle of fish from what we have in the Moeran work. I was hoping you, of all people, would grasp the difference between quoting and plagiarism.

Shostakovich 15 is much closer to the Bax/Tristan/Tintagel example I gave. The composer is consciously quoting to get points across and doing so brilliantly. Understanding what the quotes are and why they're being used is fundamental to our understanding of the work. In Moeran's case I don't believe he's quoting for a purpose. In fact I'm not even sure he knows he's doing so. Besides, they're not exact quotes but allusions or near-copies.

Just as Shostakovich quotes others, several composers quote him. Tishchenko, for one, uses Shostakovich's signature DSCH. It's an acknowledgement, a salute.

By the way, I missed you first time around on the subject of Respighi's operas earlier in this thread. La fiamma is a first-class work. I only know it via recording so can't say how or whether it works on stage, but would love to see it. If Cilea is still getting a run out I can't see why opera companies don't give Respighi a crack.

I'm positive it's possible to 'copy' without realizing it. I'm picking on Moeran here but I bet you could come up with a long list of composers whose work contains references, or allusions, to the work of others. Particularly early works. If you're familiar with middle or late Gerhard you'd probably think it ludicrous to suggest there's anything of Sibelius in there. But listen to his 1941 'Homenaje a Pedrell' and for all its Spanish roots you can't miss Finland. There's an unmistakable Tapiola-esque passage.

Standard progress for symphonic composers seems to be to digest, or shed, salient influences by the time they get to symphonies 3 or 4. There's plenty of Tchaikovsky in Sibelius 1 but you're hard put to hear it by #3. Which is why we should back off poor old Moeran perhaps. By nature a miniaturist, his production of large scale works was insufficient to allow him to synthesize all those influences into something totally personal. It's for this reason that when I've dived into a new (to me) composer in the past, I've tended to start in the middle. Early works are often derivative and inspiration can flag in late ones. It took Holmboe 3 or 4 symphonies to find his voice.

Interesting you should hear Mahler, history man. I haven't caught it, although there are plenty of fleeting moments when I find myself asking, 'Who was that? I know that phrase from somewhere.'

You make a very good point tagalie,we should not judge any composer by his early works.Even Mozart who composed masterpieces for fun,did not get "really"interesting until post K 200.
Moeran did not enjoy good health also had mental health issues.If he had the life span of say RVW we possibly could have had a serious composer on our hands.
I did think you was being a little harsh in your first post on this subject,although a lot of your remarks are plainly true.I felt uncomfortable with the word plagiarism being associated with Moeran's symphony - I looked it up in my 1949! Concise Oxford Dictionary. "Take and use another persons (thoughts,writings,inventions) as one's own".
I must admit I also heard the Sibelius flying swans section from his 5th symphony in Moeran's symphony....here we go again!

I don't believe either that Moeran' Symphony betrays a direct "plagiarism", Tagalie, not even "undigested influences". His Symphony betrays his various and inevitable, to a great extent, influences by various composers, works and even folk elements. However, his work is a well structured symphonic one with a truly great rather complex sonata form First movement.

By the way, I don't agree Moeran was "by nature" a miniaturist. I believe he was by choice, if we consider his good amount of songs and most of his piano works. However, his String Quartets, the Violin Sonata, the Piano Trio and the Violin Concerto are far from miniaturist works from a non prolific composer.

Finally, plenty of composers demonstrated their talent from the very start; sometimes, some of their most impressive works were written in their early years (Beethoven's early String Quartets are supreme masterworks, his early Cello Sonatas, his Piano Sonatas, op.7 or op.13/ Brahms' Piano Sonata op.5, The Haendel Variations, op.24 or the monumental Piano Quintet, op.34./ Mendelssohn's early Lieder ohne Worte, String Quartet, op.13, the superb String Quitet, op.18 etc.). So, it's not necessary always to start from the "middle"...

Parla