bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Composer in Interview: Benjamin Lees
Authors: Johnson Bret
Published: November 2009

BL: The Concerto dates from 1966. It was written for Gary Graffman. We had worked together two years previously on the Fourth Piano Sonata, which I wrote on a Ford Foundation Grant. In those days the foundation was very active in getting performers and composers together and commissioning works. So we decided to do a Concerto. By chance a letter arrived from Eric Leinsdorf, then Music Director of the Boston Symphony, on another matter and when I mentioned in my reply that I was doing a Concerto for Gary, Leinsdorf said he wanted to do the première.
Robert Saxton in the 1990s
Authors: Wright David
Published: November 2009

The recent NMC recording of chamber music by Robert Saxton has broadened our knowledge of his oeuvre, complementing the perspective on his music that had been opened up by recordings of his orchestral works and the opera Caritas in the early 1990s. Certainly, the period 1990 to his fortieth birthday in 1993 represented a highpoint in terms of public recognition, but in recent years much of Saxton's composition has been in the more private sphere of chamber or solo music, or in the less prominent medium of choral writing, and it has received less sustained attention than its quality deserves. But while most composers are subject to fluctuations of interest, the not unalloyed distinction of being called a sucéss d'estime is a very real hazard of today's musical climate, especially for a composer who writes the sort of serious music that Saxton does; and from being frequently programmed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, his work currently seems to present less of a fashionable surface while continuing to be highly regarded by many serious commentators. But Saxton has made creative use of the 1990s as a time for thinking through the implications of his earlier music and reconsidering aspects of his style and approach to structure. This article looks at some of the music of almost the decade from Caritas (1991) to his current major project, The Legend of the Wandering Jew, an opera being conceived specifically for the medium of Radio. In the music of this period, Saxton has continued to demonstrate the ability to harness his wide intellectual interests to an essentially consistent compositional style and a single-minded artistic vision.
Moeran, Warlock and Song
Authors: Banfield Stephen
Published: November 2009

Fifty years ago this December E J Moeran, Jack to his friends, died as he fell off a pier into the Kenmare River on the west coast of Ireland in a storm; he was only 55. Seventy years ago this December Philip Heseltine, Peter Warlock to his public, died in a gas-filled basement room in Chelsea; he was younger still, only 36. Suspicion of suicide has attached to them both, and while Moeran probably met his end through natural causes (a cerebral haemorrhage), Heseltine probably did not. Barry Smith's Warlock biography adduces evidence that makes death at the composer's own hand seem still more likely than was hitherto thought, even if another recent book, the memoir of Heseltine's son Nigel, counters this with a temptingly shocking though fairly untenable theory of murder by fellow-composer Bernard van Dieren.
Composer in Interview: Colin Matthews
Authors: Galloway Malcolm
Published: November 2009

Colin Matthews is one of Britain's most best respected contemporary composers. He studied classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall, and at the same time with Nicholas Maw. In the 1970s he taught at Sussex University and completed a doctorate on the works of Mahler. During this time he also worked with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst. Currently he is the administrator of the Holst Foundation, a trustee of the Britten-Pears Foundation, and the founder of the influential record label NMC. The interview was conducted by e-mail over a few days in November 1999, and is particularly interesting in the light of the mild controversy caused by the successful first performance of Pluto: see Raymond Head's review in Tempo 213.)
From Herbert to Ralph, with affection
Authors: Pike Lionel
Published: November 2009

Herbert Howells's debt to Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis is both well known and well documented. I have shown elsewhere how the features of the phrygian mode lead to the use of I–bII and V–bVI (sometimes expressed as parallel fifths) in both Vaughan Williams and Howells. There are three particular tributes from Howells to Vaughan Williams that especially bear the stamp of this influence. Two are the paired set Ralph's Pavane and Ralph's Galliard from Howells' Clavichord (published in 1961 but written earlier), a work in which individual pieces are inscribed – as Elgar would say – to ‘my friends pictured within’; the third is Sarahande for the 12th day of any October from the Partita for organ (published in 1971). These three pieces derive some of their features from a Vaughan Williams work written much later than the Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis – the ‘Pavane of the Sons of the Morning’ and the ‘Saraband of the Sons of God’ from job (1930): and some features come from John Dowland's Lachrimae (‘Flow my tears, fall from your springs…’, first published in 1600, but written earlier). Howells's use of Renaissance models – Pavane and Galliard pair, elements of Dowland's Lachrimae, and modal features – vividly illustrates Vaughan Williams's remark that he sometimes felt Howells to be the reincarnation of one of the lesser Tudor luminaries.
Wagner and the ‘Paradise Garden’: An Inter–Operatic Reference in Delius
Authors: Doran Mark
Published: November 2009

What kind of contribution can a person make to the study of music for which they have no intuitive sympathy? Music which doesn't ‘click’ with them, which fails to generate a compelling affective response? Many possibilities, surely, are ruled out. One would hardly expect that anything approaching meaningful analysis might emerge where the work in question was not being artistically understood; nor would reasonable criticism seem to be possible in such circumstances. On the other hand, at least a little may be ‘ruled in’. Were 1 myself, for example, not baffled by Delius, I might not have made the observation upon which the present article rests.
Recent Cello Music by Graham Whettam
Authors: Miller Malcolm
Published: November 2009

The recent spate of world premières, concerts and several newly-released and imminent CD recordings have indicated a renewed interest in the music of the British composer Graham Whettam, who celebrated his 70th birthday with a concert in 1998 (see review in Tempo 206) and is still busy producing new works. As recently as February he completed his Fifth Symphony, for chamber orchestra (a Sixth is in progress) and his String Quartet No.4 is scheduled for a première later this year.
Schoeck the Evolutionary
Authors: Holloway Robin
Published: November 2009

The full story of 20th-century music has yet to be told disinterestedly. Every writer — composer, commentator, historian — has an axe to grind, often unwitting. Time does its work of pure ablution; the merely worthless slowly sinks beneath the horizon. But what then happens, it seems, is that we're left only with the huge grim important Easter Island figures of the great pioneers. Such Academy- or ‘History’-hallowed idolatry, tremendously impressive, is difficult to resist, and tends to demote any music that doesn't accord to the accompanying ideology, denaturing a richer understanding of the whole. Art isn't so clear-cut. Any attempts to make it so are simply not true. The true story of what is distinctive, valuable, permanent, in the last romantics, the moderns, the neo-classicists, serialists, constructivists, folklorists, neo-romantics, minimalists, neo-tonalists, neo-moderns, post-moderns of the past 100 years or so — the huge span remains discrete because we're still so hugely involved in every phase of it; it's still being digested — will need vast efforts of listening and assimilation, evaluation and revaluation, to amount eventually by thousands of individual small siftings and shiftings to a complete re-alignment of the field. Probably the main patterns as currently received are not all that far out: certainly we will be able to agree upon some seminal masterpieces without risking the dogmatic claustrophobia of Boulez's recent concert-programming. But what must yield is the very idea of main lines only, and only the main lines permitted, admirable, right — so deceptively definite, so crudely black/white, so cruelly denuded of detail.
Composer in Interview: Edward Rushton – an Englishman in Switzerland
Authors: Walton Chris
Published: November 2009

A time there was when it was de rigueur for the self-respecting English composer to sample the life and art of our Germanic neighbours. A little time in the Land der Musik, it seemed, might help them make their own a little less ohne. Elgar supped at the springs in the Bavarian Highlands; Sullivan, Stanford and others in the Leipzig low-lands. It remains perplexing to the German mind that a reference to the ‘Frankfurt School’ in conversation with an Englishman can elicit praise for Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter and Co., but not a word about Adorno. Even Britten would have studied with Alban Berg, had the RCM not declared him ‘immoral’, thus forcing Ben to seek out immorality closer to home. To be sure, the rise of National Socialism reversed the tide for a while (the present writer is typical of his generation in that he owes the quality of his musical education to German-Jewish émigrés). But Gemiania proves today as seductive as ever to the English. Thanks to better pay and employment prospects, our finest graduates are regularly lured across the water to join their countrymen in maintaining the high standards of provincial German opera houses and orchestras. Our composers might on the whole be not as popular; but mentioning the name of Brian Ferneyhough still elicits the same mixture of awe, reverence and enthusiasm in German conservatories and radio studios as would a reference to the Pope in Cracow or to David Beckham at Old Trafford.
Art as a Vocation: Vladimir Vogel's dramma-oratorio ‘Jona ging doch nach Ninive’
Authors: Geiger Friedrich
Published: November 2009

The composer Vladimir Vogel was born in Moscow in 1896. His mother was Russian, his father a businessman who came from Dresden. After the end of the First World War Vogel went to Berlin where he was admitted to Ferruccio Busoni's masterclass, along with Kurt Weill. His studies completed, his career was at first extremely promising, but it came to an abrupt halt with the relinquishing of power to the National Socialists. In jeopardy on three counts, as a Communist, a Jew and a so-called Neutöner or ‘new-note composer’, Vogel roamed Europe for a number of years. Finally he found a refuge in Switzerland, where he produced new compositions until the end of his life without managing to emulate his own early success. He died in Zurich in 1984.
Composer in Interview: Martin Derungs
Authors: MacDonald Calum
Published: November 2009

By any standard, Martin Derungs must be one of the most versatile composers in Switzerland, not only for the wide range of his compositions but for his ability to pursue parallel careers as a respected Early Music performer and as an activist and administrator in the politics of Swiss music.
Franz Schreker and the Pluralities of Modernism
Authors: Hailey Christopher
Published: November 2009

Vienna's credentials as a cradle of modernism are too familiar to need rehearsing. Freud, Kraus, Schnitzler, Musil, Wittgenstein, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka conjure up a world at once iridescent and lowering, voluptuously self-indulgent and coolly analytical. Arnold Schoenberg has been accorded pride of place as Vienna's quintessential musical modernist who confronted the crisis of language and meaning by emancipating dissonance and, a decade later, installing a new serial order. It is a tidy narrative and one largely established in the years after the Second World War by a generation of students and disciples intent upon reasserting disrupted continuities. That such continuities never existed is beside the point; it was a useful and, for its time, productive revision of history because it was fuelled by the excitement of discovery.
The Recovery of Modern Music: George Rochberg in Conversation
Authors: Reilly Robert R.
Published: November 2009

Composer George Rochberg (b. 1918) is the pivot point around which American music took a decisive turn away from Arnold Schoenberg's systematized dissonance, generally known as 12–tone or serial music, and back toward tonality. If it is now safe to return to the concert halls, it is largely because of him. Before turning against 12–tone music in the mid–1960s, Rochberg had been one of its most adept and prestigious practitioners. Thus his ‘conversion’ provoked an outraged reaction from the musical establishment and the avant-garde. However, Rochberg's courage helped to free the next generation of composers from the serial straightjacket to write music that was once again comprehensible to audiences. On a two–CD set, New World Records has re-released recordings of Rochberg's Quartets Nos.3–6, brilliantly performed by the Concord String Quartet (New World Records 80551–2). These works, especially the Third Quartet, were very much at the heart of the controversy caused by Rochberg's attempt to ‘regain contact with the tradition and means of the past’. At his home in Pennsylvania, I spoke with Maestro Rochberg about what is at stake in modern music and about his own extraordinary spiritual and musical journey.
The Rite of Beauty: an introduction to the music of Leonid Desyatnikov
Authors: Manulkina Olga
Published: November 2009

Leonid Desyatnikov is one of the most successful Russian composers of his generation and one of the most distinctive and individual on the contemporary Russian scene. He represents a rare instance of a contemporary composer in his mid-forties who has had all his works performed, some of them on many occasions. In the West, his music has been played by the Deutsche Sym-phony and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. His vocal cycle Five poems by F. Tyutchev has been performed recently in London and Aldeburgh. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Gidon Kremer became the main champion of Desyatnikov's music; he has commissioned, performed and recorded a number of Desyatnikov's original works as well as his arrangements of Astor Piazzolla's music. To date, Kremer has performed Desyatnikov's Russian Seasons, for violin, female voice and string orchestra, composed in 2000, fifteen times in Europe, the Baltic countries and Russia. On 1 May 2002, he will present its American premiére at Carnegie Hall. The fact that Kremer, who earlier brought the music of such composers as Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina to international attent ion, has now ‘chosen’ Desyatnikov speaks volumes for the quality of the music.
Inside Webern's workshop: a glimpse of op.9 no.6 in the making
Authors: Davies Benjamin K.
Published: November 2009

The Webern Collection of the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel holds a fair copy of an early version of the Drei Stücke für Streichquartett (1913), comprising the song ‘Schmerz, immer Blick nach über’ together with what later became numbers 1 and 6 of the Sechs Bagatellen op.9. This document is highly interesting on many counts: here I will mainly discuss one, the existence of a discarded ending to the third piece (later op.9 no.6). This passage is heavily blacked-out in mauve pencil in the manuscript, but the notes, dynamics and indications can be discerned with a strong light and magnifying glass.
Composer in Interview: Per Nørgård Recent and Early
Authors: Anderson Martin
Published: November 2009

PN: We talked about fractals in connexion with the infinity row–this way of letting music grow in what you could call open hierarchic layers. It's not a director and a slave; it's an interdependent way of producing music. If you choose a scale — for instance, the chromatic scale — it contains itself an infinite number of times; my Second Symphony is based on realizing this characteristic. But if instead of letting it move in this expansive way, where you get wider and wider waves, you then construct it in the opposite way, you get a figure where it never gets out of itself. But it creates still a fractal rhythmic figure, which was very inspiring for me in all my percussion music from the 1970s. I discovered that feature in the beginning of the 70s when I composed the Third Symphony. I found the infinity row at the end of the 50s, but it was not until I had composed the Third Symphony and some works before it that I realized it contained its dark side, which is just as rhythmic and just as hierarchic. In my Third Symphony it comes out like an inevitable development. If you imagine the place in the beginning where it gets up to a very high trill, it comes in lower at half-tempo, and then again more slowly further down. It contains itself, like a Russian doll or a Chinese box.
Karsten Fundal: Entropia in Detail
Authors: Jessen Edward
Published: November 2009

In a recent article on Freud for the Guardian Review, AC Grayling wrote: It is characteristic of highly speculative enquiries that the thinkers who most influence them are those who find the most compelling vocabulary — one which offers a new way of expressing and articulating its subject.
Symphonic Momentum and Post-tonal Dramas: Simpson's First Symphony
Authors: Phillippo Simon
Published: November 2009

Robert Simpson died on 21 November 1997, leaving behind him an impressive body of works. At its core are 11 symphonies and 15 string quartets; also three concertos, two string quintets, sonatas, some choral music, even some much admired pieces for brass band. While a thoroughly individual, music-as-process modernism imbues all he wrote, the prevailing image of Simpson is that of the conservative classicist, clinging to the apparent certainties of antiquated forms and diatonic tonality – a view that begins to some extent with the composer himself. He is widely known for his influential writings on Beethoven, Nielsen, and Bruckner among others; writings that, along the way, fiercely and polemically extol the enduring virtues of symphonic composition, manifestly swimming against the tide of contemporary music of the mid-century. Simpson's symphonism was always ideologically opposed to the post-war trends towards total mechanization, as much as to the experiments with extreme irrationality and chance in the 1960s.
The Music of Jane Joseph
Authors: Gibbs Alan
Published: November 2009

In a photograph reproduced in A Scrap-book for the Holst Birthplace Museum, the leading lights of the 1928 Whitsun Festival at Canterbury Cathedral are pictured. Posing in the sunshine after a performance of The Coming of Christ, Masefield's modern mystery play with music by Gustav Holst, are 30-odd participants with the Dean, Dr George Bell, and Holst in the centre. Between Holst and Mrs Bell, and taller than either, sits an efficient-looking lady in her early thirties, clearly of some importance to the festival. This was Jane Marian Joseph, who first came under Holst's spell as a pupil at St Paul's Girls' School and had gone on to act out the principles for which he stood, not least in her meticulous organization of these festivals, and as a composer. After her untimely death, he was to describe her as ‘the best girl pupil I ever had’ in an assessment of her compositions.
‘These Things Should Be Known’: Interview with Denis Aplvor
Authors: Derus Kenneth
Published: November 2009

A fragment of an interview, really. Denis Aplvor began talking on tape early in 1998, when blindness made letter writing impossible. He talked about Margot Fonteyn and Bernard van Dieren and Federico García Lorca and old girl friends and being a doctor in India during the war. Mostly he talked about his music. This is ten minutes of conversation lifted from 16 hours of tape.
Hoddinott's Programmatic Structuralization
Authors: Matthew-Walker Robert
Published: November 2009

Alun Hoddinott has written music steadily for 50 years and, as a constantly prolific composer, has amassed an impressively wide-ranging body of work: six operas, ten symphonies, 20 concertos, a dozen piano sonatas, five violin sonatas, with vocal, choral, orchestral and instrumental works of equal abundance – in all, an output of about 300 works with which even his most ardent admirer will have found it difficult to keep up.
‘Hearing the Subconscious’: Interview with Sofia Gubaidulina
Authors: Lukomsky Vera
Published: November 2009

(This is the second of two interviews Vera Lukomsky conducted with Sofia Gubaidulina while she was Annual Guest Composer during the festival of her music which took place at San Jose State University School of Music, California in April 1995. The first interview, ‘The Eucharist in my fantasy’, appeared in Tempo 206. In this second interview, recorded at Gubaidulina's hotel on 5 April 1995, she talks more about her technical procedures, especially regarding structural proportion. The interview took place in Russian and is here presented in Vera Lukomsky's English translation.)
Harmonic Practices in Oliver Knussen's Music since 1988: Part I
Authors: Anderson Julian
Published: November 2009

At fifty, Oliver Knussen has an output of formidably accomplished works behind him, composed at consistently high levels of invention and imagination, instantly recognizable both for their harmonic language and their clear, resonant instrumentation. Yet, surprisingly in view of Knussen's long-established international reputation, the musicological and analytic fraternity has been slow to pick up on what Knussen has been up to since the mid-1970s. There is almost nothing in print which goes into any technical detail as to the painstaking methods by which these spontaneous-sounding pieces are built up. Knussen himself has written little about his own work – preferring, as with his conducting activities, to place the advocacy of the work of others on higher priority than his own.
Renaissance Man: a Portrait of Lukas Foss
Authors: Yiu Raymond
Published: November 2009

His name may not be familiar to some readers, but since the première of his first major work The Prairie in 1944 Lukas Foss has remained one of the most distinctive voices in American contemporary music. He is a unique kind of musician, equally renowned as composer, conductor, pianist, educator, and spokesman for his art.
The makings of a cycle? James MacMillan's Cello and Piano Sonatas
Authors: York John
Published: November 2009

At a time when composers usually write only one piece in any particular genre, since they seldom get the commission or — like Brahms and Beethoven – feel the urge or need to make it two or three at the very least, it is more than just good fortune that James MacMillan's cello compositions, large and small, are rapidly becoming a major corpus of work for the instrument. It is a tribute to, and result of, his confidence with the cello's ability to carry his thoughts, and also of its inherent suitability to express the singing, dancing and searingly intense things he wants to say.
Aspects of Walton's Second Symphony
Authors: Matthew-Walker Robert
Published: November 2009

Any consideration of William Walton's Second Symphony should begin with some mention of its predecessor, first performed complete in November, 1935, twenty-five years before No.2. The First Symphony created an enormous impact, coming soon after the successes of the Viola Concerto of 1929 and the oratorio Belshazzar's Feast of 1931. The Symphony's vast scale, its emotional power and fierce utterance, allied to an impressive consistency of style, conspired to declare a work of originality and almost instantaneous appeal. An early Decca recording of it under Sir Hamilton Harty, who had conducted the first performances, enabled the Symphony to be heard worldwide.
Pierre Boulez in Interview (2): on Elliott Carter, ‘a composer who spurs me on’
Authors: Albéra Philippe
Published: November 2009

(In Tempo 216 Pierre Boulez, interviewed by Simon Mawhinney, talked about his own recent music. The present interview, conducted in French, in Paris in June 2000 was published under the title ‘…un Compositeur qui m'oblige a avancer…’; it appears here in English for the first time, translated by Sue Rose.)
The Savage Parade-from Satie, Cocteau, and Picasso to the Britten ofLes Illuminationsand beyond
Authors: Drew David
Published: November 2009

This article arose from the author's review of Daniel Albright's recent studyUntwisting the Serpent – Modernism in Music, Literature and Other Arts (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press).The review, now published in the Spring 2001 Issue of theKurt Weill Newsletter (vol 19, no. 1),concentrates on Schoenberg and Weill, while the article explores other aspects of Modernism considered by Albright. Tempo'sown formal review ofUntwisting the Serpentis contributed by Peter Quinn on p. 00 – Ed.).
A Portrait of Brett Dean
Authors: Solare Carlos María
Published: November 2009

It surely must take a lot of courage to resign from one of the most prestigious (and best remunerated) positions in the musical world to pursue a career as an independent, free-lance composer. But this is precisely what the Australian Brett Dean did a year ago, when he left the Berlin Philharmonic's viola section after 15 years and went back to his native Queensland. And for all that, composing hadn't even been a part of Dean's training at the Conservatory in Brisbane, or had it?
Paradise, Panic and Parody in Britten's Frank Bridge Variations
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: November 2009

Britten's first masterpiece, A Boy was Born, paid tribute to the English choral tradition which had played so prominent a part in our musical history, albeit with a technical virtuosity very different from the manners, if not the modes, of conventional British pastoralism. Although A Boy was Born is not strictly speaking a religious work, it is about the burgeoning of life in innocence, and Britten's ‘cleverness’ involved a knack of discovering musical images that ‘enact’ aurally and even physically the visual images of the poems: a marvellous instance of which is the simultaneously burning and freezing major and minor seconds that aurally ‘realize’ the Bleak Mid-Winter of Christina Rosetti's poem.
Thoughts on Ronald Stevenson's MacDiarmid Songs
Authors: Scott-Sutherland Colin
Published: November 2009

There is no more apposite coalescence between Ronald Stevenson the musician and Hugh MacDiarmid the poet than in those lines (a lyric from the long philosophical poem-sequence To Circumjack Cencrastus), which Stevenson set around 1975 as The Song of the Nightingale. There are few singers in today's world, even though there is much left to sing about. But the singer – if he can be found – is of necessity a solitary: an individual (nay an individualist) whose pipings, heard perhaps in Eden, are now all too often swamped in the chaotic noise of what passes in so many areas, not least in music (where noise is at least a concomitant) as the hallmark of progress.
The Recent Music of James Clapperton
Authors: Gloag Kenneth
Published: November 2009

In a review of the first performance of James Clapperton's The Parliament of four Futtit Beistis, Jonathan Cross described the work's ‘blatant but effective modality’ as being ‘evidently an aspect of Clapperton's self-realignment with his Scottish roots’, and concluded, ‘whatever its origins, the end result is more effective than anything of his I have previously heard’.
Impressions of David Horne
Authors: Nickalls Susan
Published: November 2009

David Horne is one of the most interesting – and so far under-rated – Scottish composers writing today. Since 1989 he has based himself in Philadelphia, which has inevitably led to lack of exposure here. On the other hand, his departure from the British contemporary music ‘scene’, may in some ways have secured the creative development of a very special talent. The British musical establishment suffers from occasional bouts of the Paul Gascoigne syndrome: a promising young talent is fussed over, exploited, drained and then abandoned. Home has not only avoided this, but also planted a flag of independence and distance, which may be no bad thing.
Thoughts for the Future
Authors: Mitchell Donald , Perle George , Anderson Julian
Published: November 2009

The obsession with the Millenium was doubtless inevitable. It is certainly inescapable. None of us can avoid introducing catch phrases like ‘the new century that awaits us’ or ‘as we move into the new century’ into what we write or speak: we've been conditioned so to do. It is tempting of course to take stock from time to time and reassess how reputations stand, of individuals, of institutions, of movements in the arts. I have lived long enough myself to have witnessed the post-war ascendance of Modernism and the more recent arrival on the scene of Post-Modernism. More specifically, Mahler has been brought in out of the cold and enjoyed a triumph, the global scale of which, even at my most incautiously optimistic, I could never have predicted; and sure enough there are today stirrings here and there, of what my old friend Hans Keller might have spelled out as ‘resistances’ to Mahler's music, couched in terms that risibly arouse memories of the stone-age (stone-deaf) opinions of Eric Blom or Frank Howes, not to speak of Vaughan Williams's immortal judgment: ‘… Intimate acquaintance with the executive side of music made even [sic] Mahler a very tolerable imitation of a composer’.
Incognito: Berthold Goldschmidt (1903–96)
Authors: Drew David
Published: November 2009

When Goldschmidt visited the USA for the first (and last) time 13 years ago, he was quite unknown there, and arrived unheralded. He had recently celebrated his 80th birthday, but only with friends: in his native Germany he still counted for nothing, and in England, which had been his home since 1935, he was known to a few professional colleagues, admired and loved by a handful, and dismissed or ignored by the rest. As a ‘failure’ perhaps? Not even that.

Yet his bearing in those times might already have been taken for that of some illustrious figure constrained to travel incognito while in possession of secrets unknown to the world's governments or their corporate overlords; and that, indeed, was precisely what he was, and how in his last years the continent of Europe began to discover him – much to his amused and delighted astonishment.
Universal Messages: Reflections in Conversation with Günter Wolter
Authors: Volkov Solomon
Published: November 2009

(This interview with the editor of Testimony took place in New York in 1995, in connexion with the twentieth anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich's death, and is published here in English for the first time.)

Günter Wolter: Mr Volkov, how would you describe the acceptance or importance of Shostakovich's music since 1979? Has there been any significant change as a reaction to the publishing of ‘Testimony’.

Solomon Volkov: Generally speaking, there was a rather drastic increase in Shostakovich's position on the musical scene of the 20th century. But it is very difficult for me to assess the particular importance in this process of the publication of Testimony because, if you are realistic, you understand that no single book, and no single performance could change the fate of a composer. But it could be part of a much broader process, and this process of change certainly occurred in the case of Shostakovich.
French Spectral Music: an Introduction
Authors: Moscovich Viviana
Published: November 2009

The composers belonging to what would later be called the ‘spectral music movement’ started their careers in an unstable political period in France. Between 1962 and 1974, under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, France (the 5th Republic) was what we can call a ‘Gaullist Republic’. But in the middle of the 1960s the economic policy of the government aroused the hostility of the French people. The ‘Stabilization Plan’ of 1963 induced unemployment for the first time since 1945, and the authoritarian character of a government which, in 1967, legislated in the form of ordonnances, turned the people against the presidential policy in every domain.
Music of the Absurd? Thoughts on recent Kagel
Authors: Pace Ian
Published: November 2009

In recent years, Europe has seen numerous retrospectives of the music of Mauricio Kagel. The last such in Britain was the 1995 Huddersfield Festival; since then a handful of his works have been performed in London. In tandem, Disques Montaigne have been steadily issuing their Kagel edition, which currently stands at eight volumes: the first four were reviewed by Antony Bye (and the first also by Nicolas Hodges) inTempo188. In a similar manner to recent retrospectives of Stockhausen and Nono, the focus has been upon the work of the last 10–20 years, perhaps not least because of the many country premières then available, but maybe because of a fashionable tendency to treat music of the 1960s and early 1970s as rather passé.
The Many Patterns of Per Nørgård
Authors: Anderson Martin
Published: November 2009

Per Nørgård makes an improbable Grand Old Man. For a start, he's not nearly old enough; though he was 65 on 13 July this year, you wouldn't imagine to look at him that he was much past his mid-forties. Nørgård, moreover, cuts no establishment figure: he is a large, imposing man, with a thatch of reddish-blonde hair splashed on top of a rugby-player's frame that suggests he is about to explode into action at any moment. But Grand Old Man he already is: with the deaths of his teachers Vagn Holmboe (last September, at the age of 88) and Finn Høffding (this March, at an Olympian 98), Nørgård is now the senior figure in Danish music; there are older composers, of course, but none of his international standing. He doesn't act the part, though: his gestures are gentle, his conversation calm. Indeed, he talks about himself and his music with a quiet conviction that draws in the listener like a youngster listening to a bedtime story.
The String Quartets of Iannis Xenakis
Authors: Harley James
Published: November 2009

He clung to the few experiences he had shared with her: the gift of a flute whose sounds had astonished him, her wish that he should enjoy music and especially play the cello. He refused to let her go.

If the tenderness of Anton Webern's musical expression at the loss of his mother is difficult for some listeners to hear in his scores, how much more so for the iconoclastic music of Iannis Xenakis? Be that as it may, Matossian's revelation of this intimate memory from his childhood provides a clue to the composer's attraction to the cello, and, by extension, to the chamber string genre, particularly the string quartet. This perhaps surprising personal inspiration is reinforced in the recently published interviews with Bálint András Varga.
Grieg, Delius, Grainger and a Norwegian Cuckoo
Authors: Hold Trevor
Published: November 2009

The feeling of nature I think is what I like so much in Grieg's best things. You have it too & I think we all 3 have something in common.

Delius to Grainger, 10 June 1907.

Spring always means for me a longing for Norway.

Delius to Grainger, January 1914.

A ‘Norwegian Cuckoo’? Well perhaps not Norwegian literally, but certainly figuratively. Perhaps, as we shall see, nothing more than an accidental cadence. Delius thought so, even if Grieg didn't; and it was probably Grainger who inadvertently acted as the go-between.
Between the lines: When culture, language and poetry meet in the classroom
Authors: Melin Charlotte
Published: November 2009

Teaching poetry in second language (L2) classrooms raises theoretical and practical questions about how best to treat literature when target language and culture is also being negotiated. Current pedagogy derives from disparate sources, including the experientially-driven practices of individual teachers, the quantitative and qualitative research methodologies of Second Language Acquisition, and the aesthetic, historical, and philosophical traditions of literature and cultural studies. This paper surveys the knowledge base that shapes literature pedagogy, examines the conceptual implications of two common approaches (close reading and genre-based treatments), and argues for new teaching objectives.
The Genesis of the Institute
Authors: Hansford R. F.
Published: November 2009

The Institute of Navigation was born on 12 March 1947 in the Boardroom of Lloyds Register of Shipping. More will be said of this later, but the birth is well documented and defined.

It will surprise no one that the conception is much less easily defined, but it is certainly no less significant a part of the genesis of the Institute. This article is an attempt to outline the early history of the Institute.

During 1944 and 1945 an Institute of Navigation was formed in the United States and, in May 1945, it held its first Annual General Meeting with Professor Sam Herrick — a well-known American astronomer — as its Executive Secretary. Its meetings were attended by the Navigation Specialist on the British Air Commission in Washington (Squadron Leader D. O. Fraser) and duly reported back, through the Commission, to the Air Ministry in the United Kingdom.
The Journal — In the Beginning…
Authors: Richey Michael
Published: November 2009

The first issue of the Journal of the Institute of Navigation (Journal of Navigation since 1972 when the Institute assumed the title Royal) appeared in January 1948, ten months after the Institute's foundation. It may be appropriate now, some fifty years later, to record some of its history. The Journal was published ‘Under the authority of the Council and edited by the Executive Secretary’ (an appellation later changed to Director), a situation that was to remain constant so far as personnel goes for the next thirty-six years. It was printed by William Clowes and published by John Murray.
The Journal — As of Now
Authors: Kemp John
Published: November 2009

To follow Mike Richey's authoritative article on the launch and subsequent development of the Journal is almost as daunting a task as it has been to follow his thirty-nine years as Editor.

My own time in post has amounted to a mere eleven years, a period which I have found both enjoyable and rewarding. Mike set and maintained a very high standard in the content and in the presentation of the Journal. Such was die reputation and the standing of the Journal that few changes were needed, and it was straightforward enough to continue on much the same lines. Straightforward, but not at all easy. It was only when I took over as Editor that I fully appreciated the care and attention to detail that Mike had invested in producing volume after volume to such a consistently high standard. Fortunately I have always had a dedicated and efficient Assistant Editor, most recently, Rebecca Dudley.
The Treatment of Navigational Errors
Authors: Anderson E. W.
Published: November 2009

This is a condensed version of a seminal paper which was first published in the Journal in 1952 (Vol. 5, p. 103). It is followed by comments from John Parker. The numbering of the figures
and tables, some of which are omitted, follows that of the original paper.

In recent years, the most striking development in the philosophy of navigation has surely been the change in attitude towards errors. Ten years ago an error was regarded as something that just did not happen in the best navigational circles; today we accept it as the normal concomitant of observation, and we study to reduce it.
Navigation and the Airlines
Authors: Pike E. W.
Published: November 2009

This paper was first published in 1957 (Vol. 10, p. 398). It is followed by comments from David Page.

With the comparative absence of navigation aids in the earlier days of flying, up to about ten years ago, the navigator was constantly engaged in associating observations, calculations and chartwork in what was essentially a high-class guessing game. The low speeds (just over 100 knots on flying boats and just under 200 knots on landplanes) provided enough time for this rather intriguing exercise to be carried out in a fairly relaxed atmosphere, conducive to an individualistic approach that could be justified by results. The navigator's performance was largely (at that stage of aviation) judged on the neatness of his plotting, the accuracy of ETA'S and the absence of late course corrections before arriving at destination or a check point. If there is anything in the view that navigation is an art, this particular yardstick certainly induced considerable artifice in the navigator.
The Development of Shipborne Navigational Radar
Authors: Hansford R. F.
Published: November 2009

This paper was first published in the Journal in 1947 (Vol. 1, p. 118). Sections 1 and 2 are summarized in order to save space. Sections 3, 4 and 5 are reprinted with only a little abridgment. The paper is followed by comment from the original author.

The original paper gave a comprehensive account of the development of navigational radar in the United Kingdom from the beginning of World War II up to the time of writing.

The use that was made of the very early radars was mentioned and the improvements brought about by the introduction of the PPI (Plan Position Indicator) and centimetric radar were described. An account was given of how radar assisted the Normandy landings, and of the techniques employed including the use of radar predictions of the Normandy coastline (produced in great secrecy) which were optically superimposed on the PPI. Also shown on the predictions were the planned approach tracks to the shore. An example of one of these predictions compared with the post-invasion radar photograph is shown in Fig. 1. This superimposition of geographical information on the PPI was to become of great significance in later years.
Manœuvres to Ensure the Avoidance of Collision
Authors: Calvert E. S.
Published: November 2009

This paper was first published in 1960 (Vol. 13, p. 127). It is followed by comments from John Kemp. The paper has been abridged, including the omission of section 5 which described a proposal for a new radar display.

When the problem of collision in the air is discussed, it is usual to start by pointing out the enormous closing speed of two modern aircraft meeting head-on, and to conclude from this that avoidance on the ‘see and be seen’ principle has ceased to be possible. The fact is, however, that the great majority of mid-air collisions (about 85 percent) occur within five miles of an airport and the typical case is not the head-on one, but the case in which the two aircraft crab into one another from a direction which may be anywhere around the whole enclosing sphere. Since the field of view of the aircrew covers only about 20 percent of the enclosing sphere, the aircrew of colliding aircraft seldom see each other. It would seem, therefore, that the ‘see and be seen’ principle never did afford much protection, even when speeds were low. In other words, the fact that the number of mid-air collisions in Europe has hitherto been small is not primarily due to seeing and evading, although this sometimes happens, but to the fact that the airspace is very large compared to the volume of all the aircraft in it at any given time. However, as traffic densities go up, the risk rapidly increases, and in congested airspace, such as that around New York, the problem of avoiding collision has already become acute. In the period 1948–57, there were 159 mid-air collisions in the United States, and many of these made headlines in the world press. One can imagine the public outcry if two large transports were to collide over a housing estate; but unless something effective is done, something like this will presumably happen eventually. At very high altitudes the ‘see and be seen’ principle certainly fails, by day, because the speed will be high, and in addition, the range at which a pilot can see an object the size of an aircraft may be less than 1½ miles due to what is sometimes called ‘high-altitude myopia’.
Land Vehicle Navigation — A Worldwide Perspective
Authors: French Robert L.
Published: November 2009

This paper was presented at the NAV '90 conference and was first published in the Journal in 1991 (Vol. 44, p. 25). It is followed by comments from Christopher Querée.

The future shakeout and consolidation of vehicle navigation technologies and systems approaches will occur primarily in the vehicle location, mobile data communications, and man/machine interface areas. Digital maps will not be directly affected because, although there is still a dearth of formal standards, there is already a high degree of uniformity among approaches being pursued in all parts of the world.
Analysis of Long-Range Air Traffic Systems: Separation Standards — I
Authors: Reich P. G.
Published: November 2009

This paper was first published in Volume 19, p. 88, in 1966. Parts II and III were included in following issues of the Journal. The paper is Crown Copyright and is reproduced with the permission of H.M. Stationery Office. It is followed by comments from Stanley Ratcliffe.

The main task of air traffic controllers is to plan traffic flows so that aircraft are allotted sufficient separation to absorb not only systematic differences in speed but also the imperfections of navigation and piloting, which we term flying errors. To this end, they usually work with three separation standards, to be applied in, respectively, the along-track, across-track and vertical dimensions of space. The separation standard for any one dimension is the minimum intended (i.e. planned) separation permitted in that dimension when the intended separations are less than standard in the other two. The problem is to choose standards which are safe enough, but not so large as to lead to unnecessary traffic delays and deviations.
Navigation in Animals
Authors: Matthews G. V. T.
Published: November 2009

This paper was first published in the Journal in 1969 (Vol. 22, p. 118). It is followed by comments from John Kemp.

The last twenty-one years have seen some very striking advances in our knowledge of how animals can determine their location. In many cases we have learned that they have available a wider range of stimuli than ourselves for recognizing landmarks and for pilotage within their home area. Thus the associated senses of smell and taste are extraordinarily well developed in some species. The ability of the males of certain moths to detect the scent emitted by females at very considerable distances had long been known. More recently the extreme sensitivity, and selectivity, of fish to waterborne odours has led to an understanding of how they locate their home waters. As but one example, eels have shown reactions to concentrations of chemicals as low as 3 × 10−18, equivalent to but two or three molecules within the fish's olfactory sac. In other cases animals have developed sensitivities of which we have little or no conception. Ecolocation is employed by certain birds, by many marine animals and reaches a peak of efficiency in the case of bats. Not only do the latter detect sounds of much higher frequency than ourselves, they also respond to echoes of sounds they emitted but 0·001 seconds earlier. We have little appreciation of the sensations produced by the pressure-receptors in the lateral-line organs of fish.