Staking Out the Territory and Other Writings on Music, With Rough Circles William Scott

by Wood, Hugh

• ISBN13: 9780955608711
• ISBN10: 0955608716
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-15
• Publisher: Plumbago Books

Summary

'For a long time now I've been sleeping badly, and as often as not awake unwillingly to hear the first bird's solo breaking through the indigo darkness, before the light and the general dawn chorus. Naturalists will tell us that this choir, although it seems to be one of Nature's arbitrary beauties, has in fact a strictly functional significance. Each bird is renewing its claim to its own territory for the 24 hours which lie ahead. It struck me that composers, too, sing in order to stake out their territory: in fact we sing - or should - in order to find out what our territory is. Part of the process of creating art (part of its function too) is the slow, painful business of self-discovery. It's enough for most of us to discover truly where our territory lies.'

Author Biography

Hugh Wood was born in 1932. He taught first at the Universities of Glasgow and Liverpool and later at Cambridge, where he was a Fellow of Churchill College. As a leading British composer he has written Scenes from Comus (1965), Concertos for Cello (1969), Violin (1972 and 2004) and Piano (1991), a Chamber Concerto (1971), a Symphony (1982), a Cantata (1989), a set of Orchestral Variations (1997), a Serenade and Elegy (1994), a Divertimento for strings (2007), five String Quartets (1962-2001), a Piano Trio (1984), a Horn Trio (1989) and several collections of songs.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. viii
Preface	p. ix
Author's Preface	p. xiii
Editor's Preface	p. xiii
Staking Out the Territory
Viewpoint (1954)	p. 3
'The Composer Speaks' (1970)	p. 5
Staking out the Territory (1973)	p. 8
Teachers and Pupils (1980)	p. 14
Finding Your Own Voice
Thoughts on a Modern Quartet	p. 17
May I Quote You?	p. 21
Thinking about Composers
Beethoven	p. 24
Frank Bridge and 'The Land Without Music'	p. 34
A Personal Reflection	p. 40
A Photograph of Brahms	p. 44
Memories and Tributes
Stravinsky	p. 65
Dallapiccola	p. 67
Schoenberg 25 Years On	p. 69
Hans Keller 1919-85	p. 72
Derrick Puffett 1946-96	p. 77
Rough Circles
Illustrations
Concert Hall Essays (1973-78)
Life, Mortality, Music and Time (Birtwistle's Triumph of Time)	p. 85
Falling into the Public Domain (Wagner's Prelude to Die Meistersinger, Wesendonk Lieder and Siegfried Idyll)	p. 87
The Honest Listener (Stockhausen's Gruppen)	p. 91
A Philosophical Opera (Schoenberg's Moses und Aron)	p. 93
An Imaginary Andalusia (Iberia from Debussy's Images)	p. 96
Holding a Perfect Balance (Beethoven's Emperor Concerto)	p. 98
The Roots of Art in Life (Brahms's First Symphony)	p. 100
Rendering the Peasant Soul (Stravinsky's Les noces)	p. 103
Forces from Outside the West (Holst's The Planets)	p. 106
After a Lost War, Comedies (Schoenberg's Serenade)	p. 109
Entering the Last Style (Debussy's Jeux)	p. 112
Running Faster than the Scientist (Schoenberg's Die Jakobsleiter)	p. 116
A Furthest Point of Exploration (Schoenberg's Die gluckliche Hand)	p. 119
Chamber Music Essays (1991-93)
Bariolage a la Berg (Berg's String Quartet, Op. 3)	p. 123
A Very Beautiful Cat (Ravel's String Quartet in F)	p. 127
An Inordinate Amount of Work (Brahms's Piano Quintet in F minor)	p. 130
The Early Days of the Waltz (Johann Strauss I and Joseph Lanner)	p. 136
A Last Great Monument (Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht)	p. 141
255 Combinations (Mendelssohn's Octet)	p. 144
The World of the Scarlet Tanager (Dvorak's String Quartet in F, Op. 96)	p. 148
List of Other Programme Essays	p. 151
Reviews for the Times Literary Supplement (1999-2006, except 1 (1977))
Arnold Schoenberg	p. 155
Leos Janacek	p. 163
Gustav Mahler	p. 167
William Walton	p. 174
Hector Berlioz	p. 179
Edgard Varese	p. 184
Gustav Mahler to Alma	p. 189
Michael Tippett	p. 193
Igor Stravinsky	p. 198
Appendix	p. 203
Index	p. 205
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