I thought it would be good to have some music on this blog. Not least because it seems to be such an innovative way (to me — probably old hat to everyone else!) to share music I have heard with others who might also enjoy it. In any case, there are very few things that music (rightly used) does not enrich, and I don’t see why this blog should be an exception.
In music as in all the arts, I can never resist rummaging around to find the characters and lives behind composers’ names and their works. Ruth Gipps (1921-1999) was a name unknown to me before I came across her via Corentin Boissier’s remarkable collection of orchestral music. Yet what a discovery to find a composer of music like this:
Now this (Piano Concerto in G Minor, 1948) is my kind of music, with rippling keys and soaring orchestra; with some parts light and airy, and others to be played with furrowed brow! Here is the quieter second movement, with delicious oboe, which is perhaps more immediately appealing:
I have the impression that Ruth Gipps’ career was encumbered above all by its timing. When young, she was patronised and overlooked because she was a woman, in spite of her evident competence; the apparently brusque personality described in her biography not helping matters. Later, when her career should have been flourishing, her work was disparaged and left unbroadcast because she rejected musical modernism and held steadfastly to tonal music. She endured first the prejudices of the old culture, and then those of the new culture which replaced it. Thank goodness that she remained ultimately undaunted, and her music untainted, by such head-winds.
Further reading:
Halstead, Jill. Ruth Gipps: Anti-Modernism, Nationalism And Difference in English Music. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). (Preliminary extracts are available via Google Books here.)
Obituary by David Wright:
Interesting article by Pamela Blevins:
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