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Implications of Stanford's Chromaticism

This discussion has brought to the surface a number of very interesting points concerning late 19th century music generally, and Stanford specifically.

1. "...a number of modulations and chromatic wanderings - it's the late nineteenth century / early twentieth century style after all!)". That's what Chris wrote, and he's 100% correct. Having a talented proffesional around here such as he is so valuable.

The old school of music theorists and critics used to deplore the late Romantic period for exactly that kind of practice, but it seems never to have occured to any of those bushy-tailed, semi-communist haters that it was that precisely that kind of harmonic usage that made the music what it was. [Thankfully, most of those bitter old goats have died off, but there are still some of their like-minded stuadents around].

Imagine that if you removed all of those sophisticated harmonic twists out of the music of Bruckner, Wagner, Mahler, Alban Berg, Schoenberg [prior to atonality], Zemlinsky, Busoni, Scriabin, Holst, etc. etc. etc. etc. What would you have left?

Certainly not THEIR music. The harmonic adverturousness is in INTEGRAL part of the expression of the time.


----------BUT----------


2. HERE'S THE ESSENTIAL POINT to all of this.

Stanford seems to be known as a Brahms epigone. When Chandos first started releasing his symphonies back in the late 1980s- early 90s, all of the critics described him as a corn-cob conservative strictly in the Brahms mould. I've only briefly heard one of his symphonies, and it did actually sound Brahmsian, albeit, not quite as dry and conservative with 'rather a great deal more counterpoint' as one Fanfare critics dismissed it.

Still, I wouldn't have expected Stanford to have gone to the length he has in his Stabat Mater harmonically. Certainly, the ending is surprising coming from him. What all of that suggests is that our knowledge of Stanford needs to be expanded quite a bit before we may make summary judgements about him, as already the critics have. How'd he get from there [earlier phase] to here? Was the more advanced harmonic usage already there the whole time?

Even more, Stanford's harmonic scheme illustrates how pervasive chromatism was between approximately 1890 and 1920.

The decade from 1900-1909 was especially fecund, and saw the composition of Mahler's 6th and those which followed, and which saw Sibelius make a conscientious break from late Romanticism to his mature, 20th century style, to take only two examples.

That decade, and the one which followed, produced seminal work after seminal work [including The Rite of Spring], and great works from both greater and lesser composers. I regard it as the most artistically fertile period in history. That's saying a lot, and I know how naive that may sound, but the more you study those 20 to 30 years, the more you discover, and the more amazed you become. I'll be starting a new thread on the subject of 1900-1920 in the near future.
Severius! Supremus Invictus

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