And so we enter Holy Week; the long pilgrimage of Lent is nearly over, but there is a hard path yet to tread, right down into the cold depths of mankind’s heart, and then a stiff climb straight towards dazzlement.
The rest of G.K. Chesterton’s Palm Sunday poem is here: such wonderfully plain words! It is not easy to write like that.
I have been listening to more Ruth Gipps and can’t resist another post. I make no apology — this music needs to be heard!
Here is her second symphony, for example,which seems to be available on disc here. Its first performance in 1946 earned the composer at least some short-lived prominence before the advent of modernism (as mentioned in my previous post), and indeed has the very qualities that were about to be thrown out wholesale: an ear for melody, an awareness of tradition and (I dare say) an unabashed quest for beauty.
Then there is her third symphony —
rather less accessible than either her previous symphony or her piano concerto,
but I think, as in this last work, that the second and third movements are the
most immediately attractive, and provide the quickest way to the core of beauty running
through the whole work. Gipps still welcomes all listeners in — even those like me whose musical training is slight. If I say that some
of these passages are unlike anything I have heard before (particularly treble), that is not to suggest
that Gipps had suddenly embraced modernism, but rather that she persisted in
the opposite belief, mined tonal music, found it far from exhausted, wrought all kinds of moods and utterances out of it, and thereby out of her treasure-house brought both things old and things new.
This makes it all the more frustrating that there is no commercial recording of this symphony (though an arrangement for piano of the second movement can be heard hereand bought here). Where is her music in the
record-shops and on the radio? Where is her music at the Proms? Why is her work so universally unperformed? I don’t
think that there is any good reason for this neglect, though there are some poor reasons. One is the strong-minded personality to which
my previous post alluded, and about which I have been reading some more in Jill Halstead’s book. Gipps’ rejection of modern musical trends was
not only personal, which in those strange 1960s was alone enough to scupper a
composer’s career, but all her life took the form of loud and uncompromising
protest. On the one hand, she proclaimed
that ‘Amplified “pop” is evil and harms everyone who listens to it’, and on the
other:
‘My music is a follow-on from
Vaughan Williams, Bliss and Walton — the three giants of music since the Second
World War. All were great and inspired
composers… I say straight out that I regard all so-called 12-tone music,
so-called serial music, so-called electronic music and so-called avant-garde
music as utter rubbish and indeed a deliberate conning of the public.’
Rather mischievously I rejoice in
this sort of glorious polemic, and thank goodness that somebody, at least, took
the modernists to task. She even once accosted William Glock, the Head of
Music at the B.B.C from 1959 to 1972, apostle of serialism and the main culprit
for the silencing of light music (a tale for another post!):
With typical boldness she
confronted Glock face to face, and in what was for her an unforgettable encounter
asked him why he wanted so much power and why he felt he had the right to
ostracize tonal music. It is not clear
how Glock responded, but such audacity on Gipps’s part did little to help her
cause.
The cost of this outspokenness seems
to have been extraordinarily high. A
narrow band deemed her music unfashionable (indeed obsolete) and her words unwelcome,
and this was all it took to consign her to an obscurity from which her name is still
to emerge. Gipps herself was resigned to
this state of affairs (‘I know I am a real composer, perhaps they will only realise it when I’m dead’), but in my view it remains unjust. The bluntness of her remarks might be off-putting to some, but beyond their tone they contain something else worthier
and more significant: namely, I feel, a concern for the listener. She was angered by pop music because she
believed it harmed its listeners; she
railed against serialism because she thought it represented a ‘deliberate conning of the
public’. Awareness of and respect
for the audience – in both ‘light’ and ‘high’ culture – have been thin on the
ground ever since the 1960s, being very anti-modern and indeed very anti-post-modern. Yet I cannot be alone in feeling that its
re-awakening would do the arts – and us all – a lot of good, as would a revival
of interest in Ruth Gipps and her music.
Jill Halstead’s book is called ‘Anti-Modernism,
Nationalism and Difference in English Music’ (Ashgate, 2006).
Being an ecumenical sort of chap, I am becoming rather a fan of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. I think that he explains himself clearly and intelligently, and speaks in complete paragraphs of measured English, which is rare in the media these days. His sincerity and sense of humour give him an approachable, slickness-free media presence, which no doubt matches the impression he must give in person. Above all, his faith spills out of him, qualmless and unabashed, in an invigorating and heartening way.
I mention him because the other day I listened to his appearance on ‘Desert Island Discs’ (which should be audible here). Kirsty Young’s questions were not always easy, so he was perhaps less relaxed than I have heard him elsewhere (here, for example), but it was certainly enjoyable. In any case, my main reason for listening was my curiosity about his taste in music (I have admitted to being nosey about this sort of thing!). There was a broad spectrum: Tavener, Beethoven, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, an evangelical worship-song by Matt and Beth Redman, and even ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’.
His fourth choice, however, stood right out from the others:
It is a South Sudanese folk-song called ‘Yesu Odechi’ (the translation is given as ‘Jesus Number One’, so perhaps it is more of a folk-hymn). I was stunned by its freshness, even rawness of sound and by the soloist’s incredible voice. Looking it up, I found that it is in fact very new, having been composed by its very singers (they are members of the Kachipo tribe). In fact, there was apparently some trouble in transcribing the words, Kachipo culture being entirely oral. Although the accompaniment was added later in a studio, the mood and sound seem unfakeably unchoreographed and authentic.
This music speaks (or sings?) for itself, but I cannot resist noting the light it sheds on one of the paradoxes of our age, which is itself made up of two contradictions. The first paradox, as Justin Welby observes, is the brightness of this music against South Sudan’s already bloodstained shorthistory (some of which he has witnessed at first hand). The second, on the other hand, is that we who enjoy relative peace do not write peaceful music, but instead content ourselves with sordid lyrics set to mindless beats or pride ourselves on our supposed edginess. It is needless to say that the victims of war are little to be envied, but I think they (as opposed to the wagers of war) seem to have a firmer grasp of truth, in faith as well as in art, than we do in our indulgent age. Perhaps this is one of the things Pope Francis meant when he said, "Certain realities in life can only be seen through eyes cleansed by tears".
