Bernard Chasan wrote:

>I have been listening to the Skalkottas Quartets and the music of Gerhard-
>particularly the not easy Fourth Symphony.  They need some repeated
>listening but I would rather go that route than listen to stuff that is too
>easy.

In principle, I agree entirely.  In practice, I find that it can be
difficult to tell on first hearing whether something is worth repeated
listening or not.

Suppose that, while listening to the radio, I hear something I don't like.
I can either make a mental note to avoid that composer in future, or I can
decide that the music had something to it, buy the CD, and listen to it
again in the hope that my opinion changes.  There has to be a convincing
reason to take the second approach - "someone else likes it" isn't normally
good enough.

Conversely, if something is appealing on first hearing, it would be a
mistake on my part to dismiss it for that reason as "too easy".  I'm sure
that Rachmaninov's reputation has suffered in the past from this - there's
a lot more to Rachmaninov than good tunes, but people heard the tunes and
decided not to listen again.

>Incidentally it was only when I bothered to read the program notes
>accompanying my Set of Shostakovitch Quartets did I learn what many on this
>list probably could have heard:  he used tone rows in the late quartets.

Another unexpected 12-tone row comes at the start of Jones's 9th Symphony
(which is not otherwise an atonal piece - to me, it sounds rather like
Hindemith).  The CD liner notes point out that the first eight notes of the
tone row are the tone centres of his first eight symphonies.  The ninth
note is the tonal centre of his 9th Symphony, and sure enough, when the
10th, 11th and 12th symphonies appeared, they were centred on the remaining
three notes in the tone row.

Peter Varley
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