Title: ‘Like a Bird Sings’: The Piano Works from the Op. 66 Sonata to World War 1
Abstract:IT is perhaps fitting that a sentiment expressed by a legendary figure from a distant past, outside the Western tradition, should encapsulate Scott's approach to musical creation, for he was a compose...IT is perhaps fitting that a sentiment expressed by a legendary figure from a distant past, outside the Western tradition, should encapsulate Scott's approach to musical creation, for he was a composer who embraced many different traditions of thought in the formulation of his own aesthetic. If the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the iconic example of an entire work emanating inexorably from a pithy nuclear motif, Scott's music often meanders disarmingly, apparently unconcerned with path or quest. This was a defining feature of his writing in connection with works as early as the Sonata in D, Op. 17, and the Scherzo, Op. 20. His method was empirical and sensuous rather than orderly and cerebral. Grainger put it most poetically when he remarked that Scott composes ‘rather like a bird sings’: unpredictable in detail and order, while unified in aesthetic concept. This perhaps also explains why Scott's large quantity of music for piano resists categorisation. Attempts to order his entire piano output into a small number of compositional ‘types’ invariably founder, faced with some works that seem to straddle two or more categories, and others that fit nowhere.Read More
Publication Year: 2018
Publication Date: 2018-10-19
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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