In 1957 Peter Maxwell Davies, then one of the most recently emerging young British composers, began an opera reflecting his fascination with English Renaissance music. This opera, "Taverner," was about a Roman Catholic composer who recanted his faith when faced with the stake for heresy, but found that in so doing he had lost his creative life. Three works were spin offs from Davies' preoccupation with this story and the deep study of Renaissance music he made in connection with it. The "First Fantasia on Taverner's In Nomine" was a kind of preparatory study for the work. The Second Fantasia starts with material from Act I of the opera. It is a major orchestral score, lasting forty minutes. It continued to deepen Davies' absorption of fifteenth and sixteenth century musical techniques. It is a single-movement work falling into thirteen sections. It is possible to analyze it as falling into a quasi-symphonic form: Sections 1-6 make a Sonata-form, with an introduction and epilogue. Section 7 is an interlude, sections 8-10 reflect a typical three-part Scherzo, Trio, and Scherzo, and the rest serve as a finale. Davies has recaptures the techniques of Renaissance music more deeply than any prior composer. He uses a rich web of polyphony, often supported by a cantus firmus, "Gloria Tibi Trinatas," which was the foundation for Taverner's In Nomine. The dramatic situation of the original music from the opera Taverner stems from the spiritual crisis of Taverner at his trial. The music is in a constant sense of transformation. It begins with solo string quartet: Three important melodic figures are stated. One is on cello, a second on viola with the first violin providing as counterpoint its own retrograde, and finally a third is on second violin, with the first violin playing a variant of the retrograde version of the second subject. This then brings on the full orchestra. The counterpoint is at times very dense, and it frequently seems that Davies is primarily interested in the vertical combinations of sounds the countermelodies will make. It is an impressive, logical work and overall is very contemplative in effect.
The work articulates a defining moment in Maxwell Davies’s vast and still-evolving output. A quasi-symphonic expansion of material from the opera “Taverner”, which occupied Maxwell Davies throughout much of the 1960s (Henze had then recently done something similar with his Fourth Symphony and the opera ‘King Stag’), and it represents a culmination of his early work in which the composer was assiduously building up and refining his technical skills. At the same time it looks forward to the disruptive and parodistic elements which were about to invade and burst apart the austere and strictly ordered musical language Maxwell Davies had been painstakingly assembling and of which the Fantasia itself is a paradigm. The Second Fantasia is cast in 13 sections which play continuously and whose precise beginnings and endings are not always readily In the background, characteristically, is the ghost of a symphonic form, a three-movement slow-fast-slow structure that foreshadows, for example, Maxwell Davies’s Sixth Symphony. In the foreground is a veritable hall of mirrors in which the form content and of individual sections are variously glimpsed, previewed, recalled, echoed and parodied (in the ‘old’ meaning of the word). The musical material, built upon Taverner’s ‘In Nomine’ cantus, which is heard at the outset played by string quartet, is worked through in what is one of the earliest and most systematic examples in Maxwell Davies’s concept of ‘continuous development’. In this the contours of musical shapes are gradually but relentlessly manipulated until entirely new shapes are formed, rather in the manner of the word-game where a word is changed one letter at a time until a new word is formed containing none of the original letters. This is filtered through functional, organ-like orchestration, which is at the disposal of the musical discourse by supplying separate coloration of discreet strands of argument. The epicentre of the Second Fantasia is the highly extended 12th section, which is almost entirely for strings alone, a sustained adagio which is quite hypnotic in its slow but inexorable build-up to an apparently final crystallisation of the harmonic essence of the work (in fact the whole-tone ‘death’ chord from the opera). But this would-be catharsis is denied the listener, as the carpet is pulled by the unanticipated appearance of the final, and shortest, section - a few desultory bars of indifferent mutterings from the woodwinds. This quietly shocking gesture was to be the precursor of any number of these quizzical endings in Maxwell Davies’s scores, where we seem to have reached the clinching moment only for it to peter out with an off-hand gesture, negating the implied finality of what has just gone before (try, for example all ten Strathclyde Concertos, not least the 10th!). If the Second Fantasia thus turns out to be a question rather than the answer we thought we were getting, it is nevertheless a question that yielded what from a 2006 perspective seems like one of the essential musical utterances of the 1960s.
Yes, it's been a permanent fixture on my imaginary Desert Island Disc pieces since I first got hold of the Groves recording in the '70s and it never loses its grip. Much as I love and admire many of the later pieces it's this one which most easily argues the case for PMD as a really major figure. I only got to hear Worldes Blis much later and I think it has that stature too. I'm afraid comparisons with Henze just reveal (to me) the latter's ephemeral quality. I do sometimes think Max was, as it were, a Mahler trying to be a Sibelius, but the tension between two apparently opposed understandings of what music is is entirely productive here. Btw, I've never seen the woodwind ending as desultory, more as a QED - though certainly a question too. What a piece!
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In 1957 Peter Maxwell Davies,
then one of the most recently emerging young British composers,
began an opera reflecting his fascination with English Renaissance music.
This opera, "Taverner," was about a Roman Catholic composer
who recanted his faith when faced with the stake for heresy,
but found that in so doing he had lost his creative life.
Three works were spin
offs from Davies' preoccupation with this story and the deep study
of Renaissance music he made in connection with it.
The "First Fantasia on Taverner's In Nomine" was a kind of preparatory
study for the work. The Second Fantasia starts with material from
Act I of the opera.
It is a major orchestral score, lasting forty minutes. It continued to deepen
Davies' absorption of fifteenth and sixteenth century musical techniques.
It is a single-movement work falling into thirteen sections.
It is possible to
analyze it as falling into a quasi-symphonic form:
Sections 1-6 make a Sonata-form, with an introduction and epilogue.
Section 7 is an interlude,
sections 8-10 reflect a typical three-part Scherzo, Trio, and Scherzo,
and the rest serve as a finale.
Davies has recaptures the techniques of Renaissance music more deeply
than any prior composer. He uses a rich web of polyphony, often supported
by a cantus firmus, "Gloria Tibi Trinatas," which was the foundation for
Taverner's In Nomine.
The dramatic situation of the original music from the opera Taverner
stems from the spiritual crisis of Taverner at his trial.
The music is in a constant sense of transformation.
It begins with solo string quartet:
Three important melodic figures are stated.
One is on cello, a second on viola with the first violin providing as counterpoint
its own retrograde, and finally a third is on second violin, with the first violin
playing a variant of the retrograde version of the second subject.
This then brings on the full orchestra.
The counterpoint is at times very dense,
and it frequently seems that Davies is primarily interested in the vertical combinations of sounds the countermelodies will make.
It is an impressive, logical work and overall is very contemplative in effect.
Beautiful piece !!!
Great... Thanks for upload of this rare piece!!!
The work articulates a defining moment in Maxwell Davies’s vast and still-evolving output. A quasi-symphonic expansion of material from
the opera “Taverner”, which occupied Maxwell Davies throughout
much of the 1960s (Henze had then recently done something similar with his Fourth Symphony and the opera ‘King Stag’), and it represents
a culmination of his early work in which the composer was assiduously building up and refining his technical skills.
At the same time it looks forward to the disruptive and parodistic elements which were about
to invade and burst apart the austere and strictly ordered musical language Maxwell Davies had been painstakingly assembling and of which the Fantasia itself is a paradigm.
The Second Fantasia is cast in 13 sections which play continuously
and whose precise beginnings and endings are not always readily
In the background, characteristically,
is the ghost of a symphonic form,
a three-movement slow-fast-slow structure that foreshadows,
for example, Maxwell Davies’s Sixth Symphony.
In the foreground is a veritable hall of mirrors in which the form
content and of individual sections are variously glimpsed,
previewed, recalled, echoed and parodied (in the ‘old’ meaning of the word).
The musical material, built upon Taverner’s ‘In Nomine’ cantus,
which is heard at the outset played by string quartet, is worked
through in what is one of the earliest and most systematic examples
in Maxwell Davies’s concept of ‘continuous development’.
In this the contours of musical shapes are gradually but relentlessly manipulated until entirely new shapes are formed, rather in the
manner of the word-game where a word is changed one letter at a
time until a new word is formed containing none of the original letters.
This is filtered through functional, organ-like orchestration,
which is at the disposal of the musical discourse by supplying
separate coloration of discreet strands of argument.
The epicentre of the Second Fantasia is the highly extended 12th section, which is almost entirely for strings alone, a sustained adagio which is quite hypnotic in its slow but inexorable build-up to an apparently final crystallisation of the harmonic essence of the work
(in fact the whole-tone ‘death’ chord from the opera).
But this would-be catharsis is denied the listener, as the carpet is
pulled by the unanticipated appearance of the final, and shortest, section - a few desultory bars of indifferent mutterings from the woodwinds.
This quietly shocking gesture was to be the precursor of any number
of these quizzical endings in Maxwell Davies’s scores, where we seem
to have reached the clinching moment only for it to peter out with
an off-hand gesture, negating the implied finality of what has just
gone before (try, for example all ten Strathclyde Concertos, not least
the 10th!). If the Second Fantasia thus turns out to be a question
rather than the answer we thought we were getting,
it is nevertheless a question that yielded what from a 2006
perspective seems like one of the essential musical utterances
of the 1960s.
Yes, it's been a permanent fixture on my imaginary Desert Island Disc pieces since I first got hold of the Groves recording in the '70s and it never loses its grip. Much as I love and admire many of the later pieces it's this one which most easily argues the case for PMD as a really major figure. I only got to hear Worldes Blis much later and I think it has that stature too. I'm afraid comparisons with Henze just reveal (to me) the latter's ephemeral quality. I do sometimes think Max was, as it were, a Mahler trying to be a Sibelius, but the tension between two apparently opposed understandings of what music is is entirely productive here. Btw, I've never seen the woodwind ending as desultory, more as a QED - though certainly a question too. What a piece!
Anyone can provide the chapters in this work?
Thanks for uploading! Who are the performers, and when was this recorded?
Is this the New Philharmonia Orch. recording from 1972?
Might this not be PDM's later recording with the SWR Sinfonieorchester?
@@johnrichards328 Yes it is