Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. 1960)

[Serial_Apologist]

This would appear to be the first time for Mark - when one of the "younger generation" reaches 60 you know you're getting old!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00126xf

From opinions I've read in the past here I might well be alone on this forum, but do actually like Mark-Antony Turnage, and most of, if not all, his music - or what I've heard of it. Time for a catch-up!

[Frances_iom]

...
From opinions I've read in the past here I might well be alone on this forum,...

for once I strongly agree with you

[Quarky]

Disagree - will listen if there is time in the day.

However I don't think his recent composition celebrating Arsenal 2-0 win over Liverpool did anyone any favours. It was published shortly before Arsenal went down 0-4!

[edashtav]

for once I strongly agree with you

And I make it a Gang of Three on For3.

[Bryn]

This would appear to be the first time for Mark - when one of the "younger generation" reaches 60 you know you're getting old!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00126xf

From opinions I've read in the past here I might well be alone on this forum, but do actually like Mark-Antony Turnage, and most of, if not all, his music - or what I've heard of it. Time for a catch-up!

Hmm, sorry, but for me, it's more a case of Mark-Anthony Turnoff. I have tried, again and again, to find something worthwhile in his music, but with scant success.

[RichardB]

From opinions I've read in the past here I might well be alone on this forum, but do actually like Mark-Antony Turnage, and most of, if not all, his music - or what I've heard of it. Time for a catch-up!

I was reading an interview with him recently on the occasion of the premiere of his execrable Arsenal tone-poem or whatever it's supposed to be, and he admitted at last to having played up his non-existent "working class roots" when younger, which indeed I knew already having been acquainted with him since we were both 22 or so; I know David Hockney famously said that one should believe only what artists do, not what they say, but I think this is part and parcel of what is fake about his music too - it's polite and traditional post-Britten "modern classical" music with a paper-thin patina of what such a composer would regard (to use the now ancient formulation) as street credibility. I'm surprised you're taken in by it.

[Bella Kemp]

Well I greatly enjoyed the excerpt from 'Greek' today - and I can see how it might appeal to younger audiences who, if recent popular music is anything to go by, are moving away from traditional tonality. I don't suppose this is quite the forum for this, but if anyone here can honestly say they can whistle or hum any recent popular hit I will give them a cheerful emoji from such stock as we may find here.

[RichardB]

if anyone here can honestly say they can whistle or hum any recent popular hit I will give them a cheerful emoji from such stock as we may find here.

I can, but I have a teenage daughter so I'd have to be not paying attention if I couldn't! (I'm not sure whether Mark Turnage's music could be said to be very far from "traditional tonality".)

[cloughie]

Disagree - will listen if there is time in the day.

However I don't think his recent composition celebrating Arsenal 2-0 win over Liverpool did anyone any favours. It was published shortly before Arsenal went down 0-4!

Since 1993 and being on the losing side in two finals I’ve no interest in music celebrating an Arsenal win!

[Bella Kemp]

I can, but I have a teenage daughter so I'd have to be not paying attention if I couldn't! (I'm not sure whether Mark Turnage's music could be said to be very far from "traditional tonality".)

Well done. But now I suppose you have landed yourself the challenge to whistle Mr Turnage's merry melodies as you go down the street.

[RichardB]

now I suppose you have landed yourself the challenge to whistle Mr Turnage's merry melodies as you go down the street.

I think not.

[Serial_Apologist]

I was reading an interview with him recently on the occasion of the premiere of his execrable Arsenal tone-poem or whatever it's supposed to be, and he admitted at last to having played up his non-existent "working class roots" when younger, which indeed I knew already having been acquainted with him since we were both 22 or so; I know David Hockney famously said that one should believe only what artists do, not what they say, but I think this is part and parcel of what is fake about his music too - it's polite and traditional post-Britten "modern classical" music with a paper-thin patina of what such a composer would regard (to use the now ancient formulation) as street credibility. I'm surprised you're taken in by it.

I think, for those of us who have spent many years making it our business to get to grips with radical composers and developments in music, Turnage inhabits his own musical language in the way many more celebrated modern-ish composers have not - I'm thinking particularly of Britten - assimilates influences coherently without being imitative, is accepting of atonality in an age when many others featured on New Music Show [sic] shy away from it, and is for the most part well formulated. Many mainstream classical music lovers, up to, say, the stage of Bartok or Berg, might well find his music a challenge, I would submit. He's a useful middle of the road (in some respects) composer similar in some respects to Knussen, who likewise achnowledges what he personally finds of value in The tradition, or say Prokofiev or Barber from earlier generations. It's not a question of being taken in by his music - maybe in my case more by his character?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Well I greatly enjoyed the excerpt from 'Greek' today - and I can see how it might appeal to younger audiences who, if recent popular music is anything to go by, are moving away from traditional tonality. I don't suppose this is quite the forum for this, but if anyone here can honestly say they can whistle or hum any recent popular hit I will give them a cheerful emoji from such stock as we may find here.

I reckon if I whistled half a dozen notes at random of the major scale I’d pretty soon come up with a recent Ed Sheeeran.
With six notes of the minor for Adele.

[jayne lee wilson]

The problem with Up For Grabs is its superficiality - just celebrating the Arsenal win (in what was a cagey, very tense match which as so often turned on a few moments of chance and luck, by no means the classic some seem to imagine - I saw it live) and making fun of Kenny Dalglish's responses, with (so far as I can tell from reviews, interviews and articles about it) no reference to the dreadfully tragic background; just a few weeks after Hillsborough, Dalglish (and the City, and the Liverpool Team) were exhausted by the tragedy itself and the attendance at so many funerals of the fans who died. This eventually led to his resignation in 1991.

Sorry if this seems over-earnest. But the film/Nick Hornby novel about the same event, "Fever Pitch" was very well made of its kind, a romcom which still had compassionate reference to the disaster (I enjoyed it despite being an obsessive Liverpool fan).... but a serious composer of Art Music should reach deeper. Imagine an artwork which embraced the whole story; Dalglish has never been able to visit Hillsborough since, just driven to higher ground nearby and contemplated it from a distance, as the recent film-biog about him showed, very poignantly.

In fact Liverpool and Everton played each other in the FA Cup Final that year - it seemed like a fateful tribute to the people lost, this emotional City itself. I guess we also thought that the Championship would be ours too, for similar reasons.....
Of course, the Beautiful Game never follows any rules or directions except its own, on the pitch (and the Moore commentary is rightly remembered for that striking phrase)....but sometimes the so-called background is just too serious to omit.

[RichardB]

a useful middle of the road (in some respects) composer

What's useful about middle of the road composers?