Alexander Goehr, "Two Choruses"
-- Liner Notes from Angel S36387 --
side one, bands 1 & 2 [4' 25" 81 3' 38"]
Alexander Goehr
Two Choruses, op.14
I had hope when violence was ceas'd
from Milton's 'Paradise Lost'
Take but degree away
from Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida', 1.3
During the late 1950s. the first generation of British composers to have accepted the innovations of the Viennese serialists was beginning to gain a hearing. The time-lag characteristic of British music, together with a certain innate conservatism, has produced a group of composers whose methods are especially interesting. They have avoided the paths of some of the extreme continental experimenters, and have taken what best suits them from various sources.
All four composers represented here conform to this pattern. Typically. none of them has found it necessary, in accepting the Schoenbergian experience, to restrict himself to twelve note [or even serial] methods. Each writes against the background of serialism, but has also to a greater or lesser extent integrated it with other methods.
Both Alexander Goehr [b. 1932] and Richard Rodney Bennett [b. 1936] are more obviously in the line of succession to the second Viennese school, though Bennett has proved himself an astonishing master of every style. His light music, his third stream jazz, his film scores and his serial music are all composed with impeccable technique, and show real personality-above all in the warmly romantic atonalism which recently he has made his own.
Goehr, too, has tended to follow paths that stem from Schoenbergian expressionism. Despite the high norm of dissonance, his idiom can be accepted on comparatively few hearings as harmonically euphonious in the traditional sense. Witness the Two Choruses. The complex rhythmic developments and variations particularly need the listener's concentration. They stem mostly from Messiaen, whose classes Goehr attended when studying in Paris in 1955. Goehr's vision is rich and powerful. Like many post-war artists he has occupied himself, in works such as The Deluge, Sutter's Gold and Hecuba's Lament, with the subject of tragic desolation. -- Anthony Payne, 1965
side one, bands 1 & 2 [4' 25" 81 3' 38"]
Alexander Goehr
Two Choruses, op.14
I had hope when violence was ceas'd
from Milton's 'Paradise Lost'
Take but degree away
from Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida', 1.3
During the late 1950s. the first generation of British composers to have accepted the innovations of the Viennese serialists was beginning to gain a hearing. The time-lag characteristic of British music, together with a certain innate conservatism, has produced a group of composers whose methods are especially interesting. They have avoided the paths of some of the extreme continental experimenters, and have taken what best suits them from various sources.
All four composers represented here conform to this pattern. Typically. none of them has found it necessary, in accepting the Schoenbergian experience, to restrict himself to twelve note [or even serial] methods. Each writes against the background of serialism, but has also to a greater or lesser extent integrated it with other methods.
Both Alexander Goehr [b. 1932] and Richard Rodney Bennett [b. 1936] are more obviously in the line of succession to the second Viennese school, though Bennett has proved himself an astonishing master of every style. His light music, his third stream jazz, his film scores and his serial music are all composed with impeccable technique, and show real personality-above all in the warmly romantic atonalism which recently he has made his own.
Goehr, too, has tended to follow paths that stem from Schoenbergian expressionism. Despite the high norm of dissonance, his idiom can be accepted on comparatively few hearings as harmonically euphonious in the traditional sense. Witness the Two Choruses. The complex rhythmic developments and variations particularly need the listener's concentration. They stem mostly from Messiaen, whose classes Goehr attended when studying in Paris in 1955. Goehr's vision is rich and powerful. Like many post-war artists he has occupied himself, in works such as The Deluge, Sutter's Gold and Hecuba's Lament, with the subject of tragic desolation. -- Anthony Payne, 1965
Labels: Alexander Goehr, Avant Garde Project, jodru
posted by jodru at 20:56
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