Robert Simpson
        Symphonies

* Symphony No. 2 (1955-56)
* Symphony No. 4 (1970-72)

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Vernon Handley
Hyperion CDA66505 Total time: 74:50

Summary for the Busy Executive: Already a favorite disc.

Robert Simpson doesn't write throwaways.  The major part of his output
consists of symphonies (10, with four withdrawn) and string quartets
(15).  The gravitas of it all certainly discouraged me from plunging in,
despite the fact that I had read nothing but good things about the music
and always loved his writings *about* music.  If only there had been a
harmonica concerto or a cheap little ballet, I would have heard Simpson
the composer a lot sooner.  I finally listened, essentially on a dare.
I listened to the ninth symphony first, and it knocked me over.  I became
a Simpson freak.

Simpson commented tellingly on Bruckner, Mahler, Beethoven, and Nielsen,
partly, I believe, because they inspired his music.  Having heard Simpson's
symphonies, I suspect that Simpson writing about Beethoven is Simpson
writing to a great extent about himself.  For example, his widely-known
dictum about the symphony from his essay, "Stravinsky, Hindemith, and
Others" applies to his own symphonies:

   In a symphony the internal activity is fluid, organic; action
   is the dominant factor, through and through.  At the end of
   a great symphony there is the sense that the music has grown
   by the interpenetrative activity of all its constituent
   elements.  Nothing is ever allowed to lapse into aimlessness,
   or the kind of inactivity that needs artificially reviving.
   At times the activity of particular ingredients is abated -
   we can find passages in Beethoven's symphonies when nothing
   but rhythm is left, for instance - at such times, however,
   we always feel that the other things are merely latent.
   Often it is as if all the elements of the music have suddenly
   concentrated themselves into a rhythm or a harmonic progression,
   or a flash of pure tonality; but such moments are impossible
   in isolation.  The great thing to keep constantly in mind is
   that no single element is ever abandoned, or deliberately
   excluded, that the composer must master them all and subordinate
   them to the demands of the whole.  In this sense a symphony
   is profoundly inclusive.

Simpson studied dodecaphony, to the extent of actually composing
works in that language.  He decided he disliked the language itself
and destroyed all his efforts.  Besides, he recognized that the kind
of symphonic movement he wanted for his music probably wasn't possible
taking Schoenberg's approach.  However, he did share Schoenberg's passion
for Beethoven and, I think, looked at Beethoven partly through Schoenberg's
eyes.  Some of his procedures and compositional concerns seem very
Schoenbergian to me, particularly the micro-attention to thematic cells,
often no more than four notes, and the emphasis on independent counterpoint,
particularly what I would call "puzzle" counterpoint - ingenious canons
with the subject played against its retrograde or inversion and especially
palindromic movements (music that sounds the same played forwards and
backwards).  However, Nielsen's influence leavens some of this, both
formally and emotionally.  Simpson's music has a great deal of light and
space in it.  His voice is a serious one, but it also lacks the hysteria,
the extreme, over-the-top statement so much a part of Schoenberg's
artistic personality.  It partakes of Nielsen's sane balance.

The Symphony No.  2 comes from the Fifties, and it must have appeared
incredibly eccentric for the time.  It seemed to belong to no particular
English or international school.  It had little in common with Vaughan
Williams, Britten, Tippett, or Walton and worked on a larger canvas than
Boulez or Darmstadt.  Nearly fifty years later, we can easily see the
influences: Nielsen, Beethoven, and Bruckner, two of the three, at least,
not very well known at the time outside of Austria and Scandinavia.
Simpson's language may not show strong, individual profile, so you
probably wouldn't guess him in a "drop-the-needle" game.  But what he
does with his materials is one of a kind.

The symphony begins with that kind of "thread-y," free-floating quality
I associate with the opening to the Nielsen Fifth.  It quickly picks up
heft and steam - a driven symphonic waltz. I should note the quality of
Simpson's ideas.  They're not song-like or hummable, but you do remember
them, mainly because Simpson takes the trouble to build in some rhythmic
or intervallic quirk - here, a dotted-quarter/eighth/quarter rhythm
consisting of an upward minor third and the descent by a half-step.  Yet,
one mistakes them if one considers them only quirks, for these things
take on a large share of the responsibility of moving the music along.
The music not only moves, it opens out on large vistas, with phenomenal
architectural reach.  The movement builds to two main climaxes, introduced
by two fugal passages - the first led by strings, the second by winds.
After the second climax, the music slows with a recapitulation of the
opening theme and radically fades to nothing.

The slow movement begins as a kind of contrapuntal chorale, with again
a characteristic quirk in the main idea - this time, "rocking" minor
thirds (apparently, the "typical" interval of the symphony).  About
midway through, the direction of these thirds changes: instead of, say,
mainly C to E-flat, it goes from E-flat to C.  Indeed, the direction of
all the characteristic ideas in the movement seems to shift into reverse,
and it shouldn't surprise anyone that the movement is a musical palindrome
(with five new bars added at the end).  Now, anyone who can write music
can come up with a musical palindrome.  But as Simpson himself pointed
out, such a palindrome has little point if the listener doesn't "get"
it.  I guess what impresses me most is the intensity of the movement,
generated largely by the strings and reminiscent of a Bartok string
quartet.

The last movement disappoints a bit. In the previous movements, Simpson
pushes the envelope of what a symphony can tolerate and still remain
tied to the tradition of the past two hundred years.  The finale seems
to fall back on something more conventional.  I can imagine a composer
like Arnold or Alwyn writing this movement, while I can't anybody but
Simpson writing the first two.  Nevertheless, it's a brilliant flourish
and makes a wonderful noise, all the more wonderful when you realize he
employs an orchestra of classical size.

The Fourth Symphony comes from the early Seventies.  By that time,
the "tonal-atonal" wars were in full rage, with atonal gaining the
temporary advantage.  Of course, it was a war over little more than turf.
The mostly rather dumb aesthetic ideas - "Atonality is the Music of Our
Time," "Tonality is Hard-Wired in Our Brains," "Atonality is Not Found
in Nature" - may linger, but not with the same intellectual force, thank
goodness.  Simpson's symphony must have struck people even more strangely
in this context.  The long, visionary reach of the Second extends even
further (the Fourth misses double the Second's length only by a little).
The Nielsen influence remains (in this case, as Matthew Taylor points
out, the "sound-world" of the Sixth Symphony), and Nielsen - thanks
largely to Simpson's major study of the composer - by this time was a
known quantity.  It's not that Simpson is unclear about his aims, but
people must have questioned why he wanted to pursue them.  The first
movement consists of various flowerings from a perky little theme, rather
than a sonata-allegro.  There's almost no climax to speak of, except at
the end, and therefore very few builds and fades.  The first movement
jogs along at mainly an even keel, once in a blue moon a Tourette's blast
from the brass, but usually with very bare textures, often just two
lines.

The second-movement scherzo is the most blatant steal from the scherzo
of Beethoven's Ninth.  As Eliot wrote, "Immature poets imitate; mature
poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it
into something better, or at least something different.  The good poet
welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different
from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something
which has no cohesion." How well Simpson does "the good poet" astonishes
me.  One can of course hear the model, but Simpson's language transforms
that scherzo into something equally Jovian, but more sinister and complex.
Simpson takes a huge risk in the trio, which alternates between quiet
immobility and thunderous immobility.  It risks, because for Simpson a
symphony indeed means movement - purposeful movement along an argumentative
line as strong as steel.  The effect, after a principal strain that moves
like seven-league boots, is like waiting for the kettle to boil over,
which of course it finally does.

The slow movement counts as my favorite of the symphony.  Mae West once
said, "I like a man what takes his time." This movement does exactly
that, but with great determination and furthermore, genuine originality.
Again, I find it hard to think of anybody but Simpson when I hear this
movement.  It's singing, but with counterpoint of a Nielsenian sort -
not classroom counterpoint, but in the sense of separate planes of
activity.  One also finds this approach in Vagn Holmboe as well.  Simpson
again takes great risks flirting with immobility.  The movement threatens
to stop.  In fact, at one point, it actually does stop, but the sense
of momentum continues.  One gets the feeling of palindrome again, whether
or not Simpson wrote it palindromically, as elements from the beginning
(slightly condensed) return in reverse order for the recap.

The finale follows immediately - a big symphonic waltz a la Dvorak or
Nielsen.  Matthew Taylor's liner notes talk about the transformation of
first-movement themes as the basic material for this movement - "converted
into a swinging, triple-time metre." In any case, the themes constantly
vary here, their continual transformation far outweighing their source
in importance.  Simpson again supplies a brilliant coda - in his words,
"of fierce joy" - and this time the fireworks are entirely his own.  The
final measure vividly transmutes the symphony's opening theme (full of
upward fourths) to an idea both melodic and harmonically cadential and
thus brings the work to a great, substantial close. For concentrated
power, very little rivals it.

I can't say enough good things about Handley and the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra.  I count the performances among Handley's considerable
bests.  They not only tell you of the majesty of these symphonies, they
show that, like Beethoven's symphonies, you will never get to the end
of knowing them and being amazed by them.  Hyperion's sound is wonderful.

Steve Schwartz