Isaiah 40
A letter to The British Bandsman, 1998
Back in 1998, having won the British National with Scottish CWS Band playing ‘Isaiah 40’ by Robert Redhead (a piece of religious music) I made a comment to a reporter along the lines that I took no real notice of the music’s programme, and that a C major chord is just a C major chord. This caused a negative comment from a Mr J Hales to which I replied, writing that this was an off-the-cuff remark to your reporter which didn’t look too good in print, but which was not meant to be disrespectful to the composer or to the beliefs which he and many others hold. The subject is however very interesting.
The background to my off-the-cuff remark was my opinion that a performance of any work relies on finding and displaying the musical thread of that piece, and not on sharing the feeling and emotion of the title, subtitle, the composer’s explanation or any press release seeking to influence the listener. The storyline or scenario that a composer adopts for a composition may have some value to him or her during its composition … and may stimulate interest in his listeners … but music self-evidently cannot describe a series of events that has not been previously outlined.
Music can certainly illustrate a theme, story or scene if prior knowledge is available through the title, or by a blow-by-blow account of the scenario that the music accompanies. Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ is the benchmark for this sort of thing, with the score specifically noting dogs barking, guns shooting, rain dripping, winds blowing, birds singing, insects buzzing, drunks sleeping it off, shepherds and shepherdesses.... need I go on? Many thousands of copied sounds from real life can be found in composed music but they are simple one-off illustrations: they can’t be strung together to tell even a simple story without a script. Prior knowledge of the programme of a piece allows it to be followed with empathy by those who are already tuned in to the subject. At the down-beat the audience is ready to go, literally turned on and tuned in.
The composer’s storyline added further value to the experience of listening to ‘Isaiah 40’ for those with pre-existing Christian beliefs. The value of ‘Isaiah 40’ to that particular part of the audience was that the piece revealed itself at once, and didn’t need repeated listenings before full enjoyment could start.
There is, I am told, an officially entitled state of mind in the psychology books entitled “They’re playing our tune”, which covers specific moments of deep emotion which have been accompanied by music. (The usual cliché here is a couple’s special romantic moment linked to a particular tune.) The moment and the music are then inextricably linked for the participants. It also applies to emotional likes and dislikes, a predisposition to be favourable to a piece … or not.
A totally different scenario would have served the general listener just as well, if not the composer and his like-minded listeners. Going from the would-be sublime to the downright ridiculous... if there was a suitable interest in a composer’s mind, one could imagine, for example, a rip-roaring ‘Symphonic Study for Brass on the Life and Loves of the Dung Beetle’, an heroic little fellow in his way. We would know nothing more about him, and would still have to go to the biology textbook for the details, but the piece, musically, might very well be good. (I suspect it would have to be thought very good indeed to surmount the barrier of the title.) Any programme note would struggle to carry the audience with it before the performance. There would be more than a few permanently wrinkled noses in the Hall. Such is the closed mind of human prejudice!
In composing ‘Songs for BL’, intimate scenes from Elgar Howarth’s family life may have prompted him to conceive the piece in the first place, and then helped him to write it. I wouldn’t know. But we are no wiser about his domestic arrangements after listening to the piece numerous times than we were before, and I’m sure the composer had no intention of informing us about them. ‘Songs for BL’ couldn’t have been a musical illustration of battles in the Second World War because it did not give off the suitable musical signals, but it could have been about any one of countless stories that could match the piece’s mood changes. Joseph Horowitz got it just about right with his ‘Ballet for Band’ when he wrote that there was a story behind the piece, but he wasn’t telling! Not a word! In effect, he was saying, “If you need a story, use your own imagination!”
With regard to ‘Isaiah 40’ I simply did the best job I could with the notes on the page : when the music suggested energy or vivacity or spirituality, I tried to present them as best I could. I tried to manage the shape of the piece’s sounds according to my best judgement in order to achieve as good an overall performance as possible.
‘Isaiah 40’ was popular with the vast bulk of the audience for another reason, as was expressed by another of your correspondents, W Thompson, when he said that the National audience comes ”to be entertained, not educated.” I find Mr Thompson’s sentiment is exactly right for this event. If it is not enjoyable what is the point? The audience pays its precious after-tax pounds for something to spoil its sweet tooth, not for the raw broccoli of improvement, however ‘good for you’ it might be. Education and improvement is available in other places and at other times for those of us who want them.
So, to Mr Hales, my explanation, and if he wishes it, my apology. My special congratulations to him also for using the Authorised Version of the Bible for his quotation. I must admit I didn’t carefully read the Foreword to ‘Isaiah 40’. This is something for which I cannot apologise, and indeed something about which I would like to complain very strongly, for the reason that I would have read it if the composer had quoted the sonorous, the musical, the timeless King James version, and not one of those tuneless modern translations. Strange that one of Western Europe’s most important texts of the last 2000 years was quoted in a version so bare of musicality as to put the teeth on edge, and which reads like a badly written leaflet from a low budget insurance company. How could a musician do that ?
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