Jones, Nicholas  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7098-6114
2025.
Peter Maxwell Davies's Symphonic Imagination.
Presented at: Music Research Seminar Series,
Maynooth University, Ireland [online],
4 December 2024.
|
Preview |
PDF
- Presentation
Download (305kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Written over a period of five decades (spanning the years 1973 to 2013), Peter Maxwell Davies’s ten symphonies occupy a central position in the composer’s voluminous output. Having established a reputation in the 1960s as the ‘enfant terrible’ of British music, the appearance of a ‘Symphony’ in the following decade caught many critics off-guard. Yet, there is little doubt that the composer had always been deeply attracted to the abstract nature of the symphonic genre. His adoption of the genre also enabled him to employ it as a vehicle to express creatively an array of extra-musical interests, impulses and preoccupations. This paper will consider the influence of landscape, place and the natural world; issues of form and genre; and the symphonic legacy of Sibelius and Mahler. By acknowledging and appreciating the symphonies from these multiple musical and extra-musical perspectives, we, as listeners, can more fully comprehend the fecundity of the composer’s symphonic imagination.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Other) |
|---|---|
| Status: | Unpublished |
| Schools: | Schools > Music |
| Subjects: | M Music and Books on Music > M Music |
| Last Modified: | 22 Sep 2025 14:46 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/181076 |
Actions (repository staff only)
 |
Edit Item |
Download Statistics
Download Statistics