Havergal Brian.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

As I say,this is what comes of not hanging on to Malcolm MacDonalds books! My advice,if the baliffs ever call! Give them the car & the leather settee,but hide the books!
Wish they'd reprint them!

The HBS has the remaining copies. If you join, this is what you can see in the Newsletter:


Malcolm MacDonald, The symphonies of Havergal Brian Kahn & Averill
Vol 1: Nos 1-12 hardback (no dustjacket)      ___ @ £7.00*   
Vol 2: Nos 13-29, 2nd edition (softback)       ___ @ £9.00*   
Vol 3: Nos 30-32, Survey and summing up (hardback)     ___ @ £12.00*   £___
...discount on any two volumes purchased together      ___ @ –£3.00*   £
...discount on all three volumes purchased together      ___ @ –£5.00*   £__



So - they are yours for £23

[Karl Henning]

Finished listening to the Brabbins Gothic. Of course, I was there in the hall on 17 July 2011, but hearing the performance on CD is something else.

Yes, indeed! One's own experience in the space is irreproducible by any recording of even the very same performance. Is't not wonderful? : )

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Yes, indeed! One's own experience in the space is irreproducible by any recording of even the very same performance. Is't not wonderful? : )

If it had been a DVD of the televised event, though, the in-hall experience could have come close to being reproduced...

[cilgwyn]

£23 is a good price,but with the credit crunch on,I think it's going to have to be the rent & gas first!
Or I could sing some of Havergal Brian's songs outside Tesco.........before the customers move me on!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

£23 is a good price,but with the credit crunch on,I think it's going to have to be the rent & gas first!
Or I could sing some of Havergal Brian's songs outside Tesco.........before the customers move me on!

Piping down the valleys wild... 

[John Whitmore]

£23 is a good price,but with the credit crunch on,I think it's going to have to be the rent & gas first!
Or I could sing some of Havergal Brian's songs outside Tesco.........before the customers move me on!

Go for it. I can't stand Tesco. Make 'em suffer.

[hbswebmaster]

Rob Barnett at MusicWeb has referred to the 'Fantastic' symphony a couple of times in reviews as the 'Dance symphony' (a la Copland?) - maybe confusing it with the Festal Dance, which originally formed the finale of the 'Fantastic'...

Brian did nothing apart from finishing the 'Tigers' orchestration for three years after the Gothic's completion, and then plunged into composition again with the second symphony; I don't recall reference to a follow-up symphony larger than the Gothic - although of course the Siegeslled is pretty large. The elephant in Brian's room is maybe Prometheus Unbound of 1937-44, a potentially huge cantata of four hours' duration for which the full score is lost. Some of the choruses have been performed from the vocal score, but that's it.

Anybody know where the full score is? (There's a reward!)

[John Whitmore]

Rob Barnett at MusicWeb has referred to the 'Fantastic' symphony a couple of times in reviews as the 'Dance symphony' (a la Copland?) - maybe confusing it with the Festal Dance, which originally formed the finale of the 'Fantastic'...

Brian did nothing apart from finishing the 'Tigers' orchestration for three years after the Gothic's completion, and then plunged into composition again with the second symphony; I don't recall reference to a follow-up symphony larger than the Gothic - although of course the Siegeslled is pretty large. The elephant in Brian's room is maybe Prometheus Unbound of 1937-44, a potentially huge cantata of four hours' duration for which the full score is lost. Some of the choruses have been performed from the vocal score, but that's it.

Anybody know where the full score is? (There's a reward!)

It might be in my sock draw. I've found all kinds of things in there. I'll have a look after tea

[cilgwyn]

Rob Barnett at MusicWeb has referred to the 'Fantastic' symphony a couple of times in reviews as the 'Dance symphony' (a la Copland?) - maybe confusing it with the Festal Dance, which originally formed the finale of the 'Fantastic'...

Brian did nothing apart from finishing the 'Tigers' orchestration for three years after the Gothic's completion, and then plunged into composition again with the second symphony; I don't recall reference to a follow-up symphony larger than the Gothic - although of course the Siegeslled is pretty large. The elephant in Brian's room is maybe Prometheus Unbound of 1937-44, a potentially huge cantata of four hours' duration for which the full score is lost. Some of the choruses have been performed from the vocal score, but that's it.

Anybody know where the full score is? (There's a reward!)

Thank you for clearing that up. I thought I'd read that somewhere,(but I can't remember where) & that it was only contemplated,as opposed to actually writing anything down.
I obviously confused this with references to the 'Fantastic symphony'.
I MUST be getting old!

It's hard not to picture Brian's 'Prometheus Unbound' sitting somewhere in a drawer,garage or attic or library somewhere. There,but no one knowing it's there!
Of course,that's the best case scenario.....in a way!
  The English Suite No 2 'Night Portraits (1915) is another one I would particularly love to hear & probably never will!

I also notice,in the Havergal Brian website list of (lost items); 'String quartet' movements (?1903-4) AND a symphonic poem 'Hero & Leander' (1904-6)..............lost by.....SIR THOMAS BEECHAM!!!!

[cilgwyn]

I think I have located the source of some of my confusion!!! According to the HBS website,Brian was working on sketches for a 3 movement symphonic drama entitled 'Razamoff'! This,like the 'earlier' (abandoned) 'Fantastic symphony' would have programmatic 'conception'.
I think I saw a mention of this in the liner notes for one of Brian's later works & confused the dates!
Most of Brians music prior to the 'Gothic' was,apparently,programmatic,as was the lost symphonic poem 'Hero & Leander' I mentioned in my previous post!
Victor Herbert's Symphonic poem 'Hero & Leander',I note,dates from 1900!
Attempts at 'googling' 'Razamoff' have,so far,yielded no clues as to what Brian's 'programmatic' Symphonic drama could possibly have been about. (But maybe when I have more time!) It sounds like the sort of programmatic title Granville Bantock dallied with!

[Dundonnell]

With the Brabbins' Gothic blasting my apartment in full, glorious splendour....and Yes, Johan, I do think that the performance IS utterly magnificent ....

.....I am reading, for the first time, the cd booklet notes by Calum(Malcolm) MacDonald.

You can imagine my joy at reading the quotation from Deryck Cooke in "The Penguin Book of Choral Music", my copy of which has been lost behind a virtually immovable bookcase for many years.

Cooke described Brian's Te Deum as "a dithyrambic paean of complex neo-medieval counterpoint like nothing else in music" that "reveals the mind of a truly visionary genius".

THAT was the very passage I read aloud to Malcolm 49 years ago as I recall in the quad. of our school in Edinburgh It was that very passage which sparked off his interest in a composer on whose music he is now the leading expert in the world.

So.........really, it is all MY doing  

NO, seriously, I am simply delighted to see that passage, the precise wording of which I had long-forgotten, reproduced in the cd booklet.

It is a wonderful piece of music-no comparisons relevant   And the Brabbins performance glows on disc in fantastic sound quality. The BBC/Hyperion engineers have done a marvellous job in allowing us to hear the work in its full splendour.

For those of us lucky enough to have been present the visual spectacle was quite overwhelming. Perhaps, just perhaps, that slightly detracted from one's ability to focus sufficiently on the music itself and on the performance. I am not really qualified to make the sorts of detailed judgments on the performance and interpretation that others have made: the Boult, Schmidt, Lenard, Curro, Brabbins each and every one has much to be said for it in different ways. But, for me, that night Brabbins nailed it. And now I and others can listen again to the music in its full, glorious grandeur.

Mirabile dictu.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Beautiful post, Colin. It remains one of the crucial discoveries of my intellectual life - seeing the first volume of Malcolm MacDonald's Brian trilogy on an Amsterdam library shelf in November 1977... Now, 34 years later, I am writing this in answer to the man who sparked MM's interest in the first place. Quite extraordinary. Today is my daughter Dunya's 12th birthday. I think I'll play the Brabbins Gothic again tonight in celebration...

[Dundonnell]

Just you go ahead and "Play It Again, Johan"

It makes you think though, doesn't it, what a small world this now is with the amazing facility of the Internet to bring people together whose paths would almost certainly not have crossed during their short lives but who have common interests, enthusiasms, passions and who can now share their delight

I remember that my father bought me the Penguin book. I remember reading the Cooke passage and thinking "that sounds great; just the sort of stuff that Malcolm and I would love to hear".

Ultimately, it is a real testimony to the power of language to inspire, motivate, electrify our imaginations. That the late, great Deryck Cooke could in only a few words open up vistas of hope, expectation, excitement in the minds of young boys.

That is the real triumph

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I happen to be active on the Deryck Cooke Facebook page and know one of the people who is running the Deryck Cooke Archive. Your words are wonderful, Colin - may I quote you?

[Dundonnell]

I happen to be active on the Deryck Cooke Facebook page and know one of the people who is running the Deryck Cooke Archive. Your words are wonderful, Colin - may I quote you?

Of course you may, Johan

I am enormously flattered

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Happy New Year!


I found a French review of the Hyperion Gothic. It gets some of its facts wrong, but it is enthusiastic. On Twitter, a few days ago, someone found 'the growth in public knowledge of the music of Havergal Brian' one of the most important musical facts of 2011.


http://www.resmusica.com/2011/12/26/le-gothique-de-la-demesure-d'havergal-brian/

[John Whitmore]

Happy New Year!


I found a French review of the Hyperion Gothic. It gets some of its facts wrong, but it is enthusiastic. On Twitter, a few days ago, someone found 'the growth in public knowledge of the music of Havergal Brian' one of the most important musical facts of 2011.


http://www.resmusica.com/2011/12/26/le-gothique-de-la-demesure-d'havergal-brian/

What's it say? I was only any good at science and music at school

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

"Composée surtout la nuit, car le jour Brian travaillait comme journaliste ou copiste, la partition ne ressemble à aucune autre !"


Composed during the night, as Brian worked as a journalist and copyist by day, the score looks like nothing else!


"Le traitement choral évoque Berlioz, Elgar ou même le jeune Schoenberg, tandis que l'instrumentation n'épargne aucun pupitre à l'image de la redoutable cadence confiée au xylophone dans le deuxième mouvement. Les chocs entre les parties chorales et orchestrales sont véritablement explosifs, pas si éloignés des expérimentations de Ives ou Varèse, tandis que les passages choraux évoquent la musique anglaise de la renaissance.  L'écriture du compositeur est particulièrement libre dans ses développements chromatiques et modaux."


In short: the choral writing evokes Berlioz, Elgar and even the young Schoenberg, and the orchestration doesn't scrimp, including a fearsome xylophone cadenza in the second (!) movement. There are explosions reminiscent of Ives and Varèse, whilst some of the choral passages hark back to Tudor times. The writing is freely chromatic and modal.


"Chef d'une rare flexibilité, grand défricheur de raretés, Martyn Brabbins est le partenaire idéal. Il galvanise des forces chorales et musicales engagés comme rarement. De par sa culture musicale, il fait ressortir l'originalité de l'écriture et les multiples influences ou les aspects modernistes. Cette lecture portée par une énergie unique, surclasse les deux autres versions disponibles : celle pionnière de Boult (Testament) ou celle trop  modeste d'Ondrej Lenard (Naxos)."


A conductor of rare flexibility, great decipherer of rareties, Martyn Brabbins is the ideal partner. He galvanises his choral and orchestral forces, who are exceptionally committed. He clearly brings out the originality of the writing, the multiple influences and the modernist aspects. This reading, imbued with a unique energy, outclasses the two other available versions - the pioneering Boult one and the Lenard.

[John Whitmore]

Thanks Johan.

[John Whitmore]

I should have some good news for you all in a few weeks time. A couple of professional LP transfers are on the way. Not by me. Proper professional ones. I'm partly involved - I've had a sneak preview of one of the files and I am very hopeful indeed.