In the 1980s when I was having lessons with John Tavener, he played me part of a piece by Arvo Part. "People say he's like me. Or the other way round", the sage of Wembley Park said in his scratchy patrician voice, "I don't hear it myself though". I remember some chugging strings, fairly static; then an abrupt gear change. Then John turned the music off and we went on to other things.
A year or so later Part's Second Symphony appeared on the Proms programme. I went along. It sounded to me like an Estonian Vaughan Williams. I was somewhat against Vaughan Williams at the time and thought the piece dull; duller anyway than the brief snatch Tavener had played me.
While I was still at College I went to the British premiere of Part's St John Passion, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble. As I remember this piece meandered on for an hour or so in A minor, ending rather strikingly in a blaze of A major. I wasn't totally sure it was worth the wait.
Then that was that for a while. I remember people talking highly of a piece Part had written as a memorial to Britten, but heard nothing more of his music until the chance discovery of the cello version of Fratres, a slow meditative piece which the composer has arranged for many instrumental combinations. This I really liked - simple, but with a masterly grip of musical architecture.
So last Sunday's all-Part Manchester Camerata concert was the immersive experience for part-timers like me. What was it like?
Interesting and enjoyable. We got Fratres again, this time in a string orchestra version; I prefer the one for cellos, because the thumb-stopped harmonics at the start of the piece have a special unearthly quality that high violins can't match, but it's still very striking. There was a nice little unaccompanied choral piece sung by Vox Clamantis. Then the choir and the Camerata did the Stabat Mater, a longer and more substantial work, harmonically static, perhaps G minor this time, but often richly decorated. After the interval we had Da Pacem Domine, a minature version perhaps of the same idea, and then a much bigger orchestra arrived - triple woodwind no less - for Como cierva Sedienta, a solo motet for high soprano.
Como cierva Sedienta was perhaps the least successful performance, sometimes overscored and with the soprano inaudible in the lower register. I thought there was too much instrumental colour, like a pastiche of Richard Strauss with all the gorgeousness removed. Moreover the musical language seemed to reach back to the duller more romantic idiom of the Second Symphony. Music essentially lives and dies by the quality of its invention, and there was nothing in it I found memorable or interesting.
In the other more obviously liturgical pieces, scored for strings only, Part's ideas seemed to be better served by a narrower and more focused range of sounds. Their language suited his particular version of minimalism better too. You might describe it as Neo-Baroque if that didn't call to mind Stravinsky's hyperactive take on that idea nearly a hundred years earlier. It's less reliant on melodic ideas than Como cierva Sedienta, much more on Part's ability to spin extended musical paragraphs which sit there looking at the view.
Is Part a minimalist? Kind of. You could certainly walk in and out of the longer pieces without missing much. Perhaps that's the intention. My wife didn't think it was static music, but harmonically most of it is, very much so. Fratres was much the most inventive harmonically of the strings only pieces, but rests on a grounding open fifth in the basses; its tonality is never in doubt. The liturgical pieces had surface movement, but rested for very long periods in the same key. I was interested to find Part paying attention to the little orchestral details which composers use to help maintain the audience's interest. There were pizzicato punctuations in the Stabat Mater placed structurally in exactly the same way Elgar uses them in Nimrod. This was not ruthless minimalism of the Philip Glass variety, but minimalism in which the composer is doing his best to make sure the audience doesn't nod off.
But Part, like so many post-war composers, is either not very good at writing fast music or not very interested in it. I find a lot of Tavener's music too rooted in contemplation to make a whole evening's worth, and when Part did get busy in a couple of places in the Stabat Mater it was in brief flurries of elaboration rather than because the fundamental pace of events had quickened.
When conductor Gabor Takacs-Nagy, doing a fine job as usual, gestured towards the audience at the end, it took a moment for me to grasp that Part was actually there in the hall. I had no idea he was still alive, let alone in Manchester. To see this elderly chap, frail but still sprightly, make his way onto the stage was particularly moving. For one thing it was there that I last saw Tavener, only a few months before his death. But Part has made a great contribution to European music, and it was fantastic to see the hall - packed for contemporary music people like (as opposed to all the other stuff they don't but which gets foisted on them anyway) - rise as one in acknowledgment of his achievement.
Part, like all elderly composers, bore the marks of his struggle to produce great art, but also looked totally chuffed to receive the cheers of his admirers. As well he might.
Tuesday 14 July 2015
Greece, Simon Schama and putting the cool people in charge
In November 2011 I wrote on this blog, "I can't see any way in which Greece will still be in the Euro by the end of 2012".
So that prediction went well.
What I had not then realised is that those who get to the top in the Game of Euros are by definition committed to the Project. They'll do pretty much anything to keep the show on the road. So the bail-outs, the interminable conferences, the late night agreements, the postponement of appointments with reality, the can-kicking forever and ever.
But in the last four years I have become wiser and thus am not terribly surprised this morning, 14th July 2015, to find that Greece is still in the Euro, 48 hours after its premier Mr Tsipras finally caved in to the Eurogroup's demands and agreed to take them back to Athens for ratification by the Greek parliament.
At the heart of this shambles is a problem of democracy. The Greeks desperately want to be in Europe - Tsipras said he had a mandate for rejecting European demands but not for leaving the single currency. The German government on the other hand answers to an electorate which is fed up of paying for Greek failure.
The electorates of both countries are deluded. The Greek people don't seem to have noticed that it's being in the Euro which is one of the prime causes of their troubles, or that you don't have to be in the Euro to be part of Europe (look at Britain). The German electorate on the other hand doesn't seem to have realised that not every country can be like theirs - not every country can have a strong economy whose exports have benefited enormously from having a currency lowered by its association with weaker economies like Greece - and that for every creditor nation there must by definition be a debtor nation.
Both Mrs Merkel and successive Greek leaders have lacked the guts to tell their electorates the truth.
And the consequence of all this? Greece has had it. It has apparently signed up for outside supervision and interference in the running of its economy. It must run a surplus. If it doesn't run a surplus it must cut spending further, thus guaranteeing its economic nosedive will steepen. It must find 50 bn Euros of state assets to sell, and put the money into a fund beyond Greek control to pay off its debts. And if it jumps through all these successive hoops then there might in future be a discussion of debt relief, at least in the form of extended maturities.
There seems absolutely no prospect of this plan working. Greece owes too much money. Some of it needs writing off. And while we wait for conclusive proof that the plan isn't working Greeks face a future of bleakness unimaginable to Britons.
What does this tell us about Europe? Firstly, that Germany is boss. Even though France apparently wanted kinder terms, their ridiculous bespectacled penguin of a leader was unable to face the Germans down. It tells us that all the talk about the club of nations, about solidarity, about co-operation is just so much flannel. It tells us that Euro area is not a currency union at all, but merely a hard currency peg from which smaller nations slip at their peril. The ECB, remember, pulled the plug on funding Greek banks a couple of weeks ago in what may well be a breach of its duty to ensure financial stability. That was a political act as much as an economic one.
None of the European leaders come out of this well. Mr Tsipras overplayed his hand. He gambled the Germans would give ground. They didn't. He made no preparations for a return to the drachma and when the banks had to close he had nowhere left to go. He ended up with a deal significantly worse than he and Varoufakis could have got five months ago, and significantly worse than the one his countrymen roundly rejected in a referendum.
That's what happens when you put the cool people in charge.
On a superficial analysis Mrs Merkel got what she wanted. But the plan she wanted won't work and we'll be back here again, perhaps within months. And that's even if the Greek parliament ratifies the deal. Moreover the watching world has learned things about the dynamics of Europe and the Eurozone which are exceptionally unpalatable. Essentially its partners were willing to let Greece go to the wall rather than face down their own electorates.
After so many earlier failures I am wary of making predictions. Better leave it to others. And here's a stonking great hostage to fortune. Two days ago Simon Schama wrote on Twitter, "If Tsipras was wearing the crown of King Pyrrhus this time last week, Merkel is wearing it now. Her ultimatum beginning of end of EU".
That's a big claim.
So that prediction went well.
What I had not then realised is that those who get to the top in the Game of Euros are by definition committed to the Project. They'll do pretty much anything to keep the show on the road. So the bail-outs, the interminable conferences, the late night agreements, the postponement of appointments with reality, the can-kicking forever and ever.
But in the last four years I have become wiser and thus am not terribly surprised this morning, 14th July 2015, to find that Greece is still in the Euro, 48 hours after its premier Mr Tsipras finally caved in to the Eurogroup's demands and agreed to take them back to Athens for ratification by the Greek parliament.
At the heart of this shambles is a problem of democracy. The Greeks desperately want to be in Europe - Tsipras said he had a mandate for rejecting European demands but not for leaving the single currency. The German government on the other hand answers to an electorate which is fed up of paying for Greek failure.
The electorates of both countries are deluded. The Greek people don't seem to have noticed that it's being in the Euro which is one of the prime causes of their troubles, or that you don't have to be in the Euro to be part of Europe (look at Britain). The German electorate on the other hand doesn't seem to have realised that not every country can be like theirs - not every country can have a strong economy whose exports have benefited enormously from having a currency lowered by its association with weaker economies like Greece - and that for every creditor nation there must by definition be a debtor nation.
Both Mrs Merkel and successive Greek leaders have lacked the guts to tell their electorates the truth.
And the consequence of all this? Greece has had it. It has apparently signed up for outside supervision and interference in the running of its economy. It must run a surplus. If it doesn't run a surplus it must cut spending further, thus guaranteeing its economic nosedive will steepen. It must find 50 bn Euros of state assets to sell, and put the money into a fund beyond Greek control to pay off its debts. And if it jumps through all these successive hoops then there might in future be a discussion of debt relief, at least in the form of extended maturities.
There seems absolutely no prospect of this plan working. Greece owes too much money. Some of it needs writing off. And while we wait for conclusive proof that the plan isn't working Greeks face a future of bleakness unimaginable to Britons.
What does this tell us about Europe? Firstly, that Germany is boss. Even though France apparently wanted kinder terms, their ridiculous bespectacled penguin of a leader was unable to face the Germans down. It tells us that all the talk about the club of nations, about solidarity, about co-operation is just so much flannel. It tells us that Euro area is not a currency union at all, but merely a hard currency peg from which smaller nations slip at their peril. The ECB, remember, pulled the plug on funding Greek banks a couple of weeks ago in what may well be a breach of its duty to ensure financial stability. That was a political act as much as an economic one.
None of the European leaders come out of this well. Mr Tsipras overplayed his hand. He gambled the Germans would give ground. They didn't. He made no preparations for a return to the drachma and when the banks had to close he had nowhere left to go. He ended up with a deal significantly worse than he and Varoufakis could have got five months ago, and significantly worse than the one his countrymen roundly rejected in a referendum.
That's what happens when you put the cool people in charge.
On a superficial analysis Mrs Merkel got what she wanted. But the plan she wanted won't work and we'll be back here again, perhaps within months. And that's even if the Greek parliament ratifies the deal. Moreover the watching world has learned things about the dynamics of Europe and the Eurozone which are exceptionally unpalatable. Essentially its partners were willing to let Greece go to the wall rather than face down their own electorates.
After so many earlier failures I am wary of making predictions. Better leave it to others. And here's a stonking great hostage to fortune. Two days ago Simon Schama wrote on Twitter, "If Tsipras was wearing the crown of King Pyrrhus this time last week, Merkel is wearing it now. Her ultimatum beginning of end of EU".
That's a big claim.
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