OPINION OR FACT?
Dr David C F Wright
I recently heard a
BBC announcer refer to Holst as a great
composer and that The Planets Suite
was a masterpiece.
Is either statement
true?
The fact that the statement
has been made will mean that some people
will believe it.
Let me make it clear
that I have no axe to grind about Holst.
I neither like nor dislike his music.
I am merely using this statement as
an example to lead us to consider the
difficult subject of what is opinion
and what is fact.
May I also make it
clear that the purpose of this essay
is not to offend in any way whatsoever
or be bellicose but to cause healthy
consideration and discussion.
St Paul's Cathedral
in London is a marvellous architectural
achievement. That is a fact, but my
opinion is that it is an ugly building.
Thus opinion and fact are distinguished.
Salisbury Cathedral
is an even more amazing achievement
particularly when you consider when
it was constructed . It is a great building.
That is a fact whether I like it or
not and I have to say that while I admire
the skill in its manufacture I do not
care for it and I am happier in a little
Welsh chapel.
The Forth Bridge in
Scotland is a fine piece of engineering.
It is a great achievement but many do
not like it and they are entitled to
that opinion but the fact remains.
The paintings of Velasquez
are full of skill, excellent craftsmanship
and design. There is no doubt that he
is a great painter and artist but, sadly,
there are those who do not respond to
his work. If someone were to say, I
do not like his paintings, that is an
opinion but the fact is that they are
great paintings because of the tremendous
skill of the artist in producing them.
By contrast, here is
an artist, so-called, who pours yellow
paint on a canvas and rides his bicycle
through it and so you have one bicycle
track across yellow. That is not a great
painting. It has no skill in its production
and yet the man who did it gets a handsome
cash reward for this work of art.
We often try to elevate
our opinions into facts.
I saw a pleasant painting
recently of a simple scene where the
use of colour was very telling. Later
I discovered it was a painting by numbers
work where the drawing was supplied
as were the colours and each section
had a number showing what paint to use.
The painter followed the instructions
and took his time and was careful but
it had little skill and was 'textbook
stuff' '. There is no way you can call
that painter a great artist or his work
a masterpiece but I liked it.
That we like something
does not mean that it is good or a masterpiece.
There is in music the
equivalent of painting by numbers. A
so-called composer can copy the style
of an existing work and follow harmonic
patterns and 'play safe' and, in so
doing, produce a competent work even
if it is not original in the correct
or any other sense of that word. You
can take a musical textbook and compose
a piece following all the guidelines
and, again, produce a competent piece.
But that does not make you a great composer
or your work a masterpiece.
In any event the first
essential ingredient to justify any
composer being great is that his music
is original and not a copy , parody
or pastiche. I heard a great conductor
say that any work which consists of
a set of variations on a theme of someone
else cannot by definition be a great
work in itself.
But that is another
matter.
I suppose the term
is music modelling. On a more advanced
scale one can say that to some extent
Grieg modelled his Piano Concerto on
that of Schumann. The difference here
is that Grieg used some personal skills
as well and I think his concerto may
be preferable to Schumann's. Perhaps
this is due to a more imaginative orchestration.
A composer who relied
on the ‘painting by numbers’ scheme
was Schubert. He looked at the scores
of other composers and wrote down in
his notebooks from their examples how
to cope with technicalities in music
such as, for example, modulation. Therefore
he saw how Telemann once made an effortless
modulation from C major to F minor and
copied it note for note and whenever
Schubert wrote such a modulation it
was always the same with no acknowledgement
to Telemann. Such predictability in
music often shows a lack of skill, competence
and imagination. The other problem with
Schubert is that chunks of his works
are by other composers with perhaps
one slight alteration. He is a real
‘painting by numbers’ composer and therefore
is not a great composer.
I discussed this with
the late Roger Fiske and supplied him
with evidence which he examined for
himself and found that what I said was
right. In his Eulenberg score of Schubert's
Symphony no 6 he quotes the results
of my research which he verified.
In the opening movement
of this Symphony four bars are clearly
'lifted' from Beethoven's Prometheus,
bars 12 -15 are from Rossini's Overture
La Gazza Ladra, bars 31 -38 are 'lifted'
from Haydn Symphony no. 100, bars 77ff
are from three works of Beethoven namely
the second and fourth symphonies and
the first Piano Concerto, Bars 134ff
are from Beethoven's Symphony no. 1
and from 349ff there is Beethoven's
Leonora Overture no.3. The slow movement
is 'lifted' from Rossini's Barber of
Seville and the third movement is a
combination of four Beethoven works,
the Moonlight Sonata, Symphony no. 1,
Prometheus and Egmont. The finale is
a clear theft from Beethoven symphonies
1 and 7.
Schubert would have
known these works and so these thefts
cannot be called accidental. The lame
excuse that all composers do this is
not true and because there is no defence
for Schubert's actions his devotees
will accuse me of rubbishing him.
I could give examples
of many other works of Schubert which
will prove the same points. Therefore
it is a fact that Schubert was and is
not a great composer.
These thefts still
happen today. To quote one obvious example
Britten's Violin Concerto uses 'stolen
property' upon which Britten has put
his name. An American conductor said
of his Britten, "He rustles cattle and
put his brand over the brand of the
legitimate owner." As someone commented,
the best part of this concerto was written
by Prokofiev and there is no doubt that
the final pages come directly from Constant
Lambert's Rio Grande. Therefore, there
is no way that this work can be called
great or a masterpiece.
The same principle
exists in writing. I have written articles,
some of which are on this website, which
have been copied and the new 'author'
has put his name to it. In the process
he may have changed two words or removed
a paragraph but the work is not his.
It is plagiarism; it is deception; it
is a breach of copyright; it is illegal.
It is interesting to note that the word
‘plagiarism’ comes from the Latin which
means 'to kidnap'.
Copyright exists on
all written work even if it is unpublished.
copyright is an automatic right and
it gives the author exclusive rights
over his work. Only he has the right
to allow it to be copied, quoted, used
or stored in any library or retrieval
system. Only he has the right for it
to be downloaded. Each essay, dissertation
and thesis submitted to any university
or seminary is copyright. Every review
of a CD is copyright. The only requirement
is that the work is in a permanent form
... on paper, on a floppy disc or hard
drive, on audio or video-cassette etc.
This also applies to short extracts
because often a main point is a brief
and succinct one. The penalties for
breach of copyright can be quite severe
and may even include a prison sentence.
The word masterpiece
is often misused. Originally it might
be a work of outstanding originality,
mastery and skill but that correct definition
has been bastardised to mean a person's
best work. If that second definition
is correct and acceptable then it follows
that a composer can only write one masterpiece.
One cannot therefore say of a work,
"This is one of several masterpieces
by Mozart!"
If we are honest we
will agree with Aaron Copland that while
there is a lot of good music about there
are very few masterpieces and therefore
very few great composers.
If a masterpiece is
the composer's best piece what is Mozart's
masterpiece? What is Beethoven's masterpiece?
And so the questions mount up!
I am very fond of the
music of Telemann but is he a great
composer? What work of his is his masterpiece?
Can we list all his works that are outstanding,
completely original, masterly and very
skilful?
Can you have a flawed
masterpiece?
Let us return to Holst's
Planets Suite and I must remind you
that I am neither for nor against Holst.
There are serious orchestral flaws in
the work which would equate with several
spelling mistakes in a written text.
Therefore, is The Planets a masterpiece?
It may be accepted
that most composers have written works
that are substandard or not as good
as others. I have before me a song by
Schubert in which the whole of the piano
part consists of three chords, tonic,
sub-dominant and dominant and it is
boring. It is the sort of thing that
pop groups do. There is no skill in
that!
Here is a composer
who marks a movement allegro. Allegro
means quick, merry and lively. In the
hands of a great composer like Haydn
a movement marked allegro would have
lots of quavers and semiquavers and
would be merry, quick and lively and
bounce along. But Elgar writes allegros
and has semi-breves and dotted minims
all over the place. Therefore the music
is not really an allegro but an andante
about half the pace of a Haydnesque
allegro because Haydn uses very short
notes and Elgar long ones. If a movement
is allegro it must be quick, lively
and merry but an andante is a walking
pace. An allegro is a sprint not an
amble. An allegro is athletic not a
stroll. The wrong use of words devalues
music and makes the user lose some credibility.
An Elgar allegro is like a novel called
‘Murders at Hill House’ when the novel
contains no murders and no location
called Hill House.
Let us take the music
of Johann Strauss the waltz king. While
it is popular in some quarters and was
written to accommodate a current trend
in the snobby society of its day it
is not great music. This composer never
wrote a really great or original work
although there are some moments to admire.
No musician would call him a great composer
or any of his works a masterpiece.
But snobbery works
in reverse. The works of Jerome Kern
are not regarded in some circles and
dismissed by others are merely show
songs and romantic trivia and lacking
in class.
That is prejudice.
His songs are far far
better than those of Schubert. Take
, for example, The way you look tonight.
The harmony is always changing, the
accompaniment is imaginative and the
melody is really sumptuous.
There are the comparatively
unknown songs of Eric Coates which are
superb little gems. His songs are vastly
superior to Schubert's in that they
are well written, with important piano
parts and vocal lines full of interest
and expression.
But I wonder if I can
safely call Kern or Coates great composers.
The originality of
Wagner makes him a great composer. He
introduced real drama into music. His
orchestration is truly superb but the
old cliché raises its head namely
that Wagner wrote marvellous moments
but long half hours. One of his greatest
skills was the use of stunningly original
chromatic harmony.
However, there are
people that hate Wagner and probably
because he was not a pleasant man being
racist and a political revolutionary
. He was troublesome and arrogant and
I, for one would not have liked him
if I had met him particularly for his
anti-semitism.
People are fickle in
that they castigate Wagner for his immorality,
life style and private life and yet
will not apply the same principles to
Schubert who misused women all his life
and died of syphilis or apply the principles
to assess Elgar who was a ruthless womaniser,
stealing other men's wives as well as
being bisexaul and a man of extreme
arrogance. Then there is Mozart who
wrote sexually perverse and grossly
offensive songs with his own depraved
words.
This raises the issue
of morality in any composer or musician,
a subject on which I have ventured before
and received hostile criticism. The
fact that a composer is a decent human
being, such as Haydn or Bruckner is
no guarantee that their music is decent
and good, although I believe they are
both very fine composers. The fact that
a composer is a 'bad boy' and thoroughly
despicable and immoral does not mean
that their music is decadent or awful.
I think of the Welsh composer Grace
Williams and what an absolute nuisance
she was at rehearsals tugging angrily
at a conductor's tails and telling him
it was 'all wrong' when it was not.
She was an awful liability and yet some
of her music is truly inspiring and
of immense worth. How Arwel Hughes or
Mansel Thomas put up with her I will
never know!.
People become so agitated
on these issues even to the point of
being rudely aggressive, uttering slander
and libel and resorting to terminating
friendships and badmouthing those with
whom they disagree.
There is a legitimate
argument: Does it matter if a composer
is great or not? Does it matter if a
composer is called great when he isn't?
Does it matter if Holst's Planets Suite
is called a masterpiece and it isn't?
If an opinion is elevated
to be a fact does it matter?
Is it not all down
to that feeble expression: I know what
I like and that's all that matters!
I hope not.
The same principles
must be considered in performances and
reviews of discs should note these principles.
Otto Klemperer was
a great musician ... but a great conductor?
I have him on disc conducting some Mozart
symphonies. One particular movement
is marked allegro molto, that is to
say very quick and lively, and most
conductors obey Mozart and this movement
on all the recordings I have lasts about
3 minutes 55 seconds to 4 minutes and
three seconds and all the repeats are
observed. Klemperer takes five minute
19 seconds with exactly the same material
and repeats. It is agony but this feature
pervades most of his recordings.
Another conductor,
whom I shall not mention, actually alters
notes and the composer's orchestration
and does not tell us so. He does it
all the time and yet he is called a
great conductor? Is he?
The facts are that
Klemperer is too slow and the other
bloke does not honour the composers
he conducts but violates their wishes.
It raises another problem
for you to consider.
Barbirolli was not
a great conductor. Let me quote two
examples to prove the point. He would
enter into contracts to conduct certain
concerts and repertoire which was notified
to him in detail and in advance. But
the difficult scores he was absolutely
useless at and he would get George Weldon
to conduct them after a couple of rehearsals
where Barbirolli's incompetence revealed
itself again. This happened constantly.
He was put in a position once where
he had to conduct a new British symphony
and could not back out of this contract,
and so what he did was make cuts in
all the movements and these cuts were
the bits he could not cope with. The
performance went ahead with these cuts
and the symphony was poorly received.
Norman del Mar took the symphony up
and performed it whole without the excisions
and it was very well received. Barbirolli
never acknowledged Del Mar again.
Does that tell us that
Weldon and Del Mar were better conductors
than Barbirolli or that they were better
musicians, or both? What is the fact
and what is the opinion?
I read a review of
a disc in which the reviewer said that
the performances complied with all the
composer’s instructions. That reviewer
did not have a clue. The performances
left out the essential piano part which
the composer never authorised but actually
writes in the score that the piano part
is essential.
It must be so that
a work cannot be a masterpiece if its
content is not in keeping with its theme
or purpose. Let us take Britten's War
Requiem. We all know what war is and
what a requiem is. Much of this work
is irrelevant and the final homosexual
love-duet is really unsuitable for such
a work.
As we said at the beginning
this essay is not to anger or annoy
but to cause us to consider the issues
and be non-prejudicial and, hopefully,
an honesty and musical integrity will
take its proper place.
Copyright David Wright
2004
