David Matthews at 60: Visions of reality

Musical Times, Spring 2003 by Hyde, Thomas

On the other hand, the symphonic poems show varying musical structures originating from their non-musical point of inspiration. For A vision and a journey (1991-92/revised 1996-98) Matthews imagined a journey through a wide-- open landscape but interrupted this by three `visionary moments' that redirect the music, thereby creating a more surprising musical narrative than originally expected. The music of dawn is an extended progression from the cool stasis of dawn to the fiery energy of the midday sun.

To compare In the dark time with the Third Symphony brings the dissimilarities of approach into sharp focus. Both works are in a unified single-movement, but they differ in the type of their unity. To the first-time listener, the symphonic poem probably appears more unified because thematic ideas evolve and transform within a structure that appears to be self-generating. In short, there is a sense of flow. In contrast, the Third Symphony seems, on the surface at least, to have a greater sense of juxtaposition. Crucially, there are few moments of contrasted musical ideas being offset against each other. Everything is sharply honed, and the differentiation between sonata-allegro, scherzo and slow movement is more pronounced. Where In the dark time's one-- movement form seems to be freely evolving, the symphony's form appears to involve an artful balancing and interaction of different movement-- types.

However, from the description above one should not be lead to think that the Third Symphony is a mosaic piece, along the lines of, say, Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra. The sense of juxtaposition is heard within the context of a greater sense of structural unity, achieved through the interconnection of ideas. The symphony is a large fantasia on a single melody (taken from an earlier setting of Kathleen Raine's Spell of sleep), which is presented, against gently sustained string chords, in all its delightful simplicity in the works coda (ex.4a). Once again it is triadic in shape, and the 3/8 bars provide much needed rhythmic lilt. Before the coda, however, it has provided the basis for most of the symphony's ideas - for example, the outline for the violin's first theme (ex.4b) at the opening.

If the Third Symphony's coda is not only peaceful but also relaxed in its simplicity, then the equally quiet coda of Matthews's second symphonic poem, Chaconne (1986-87), provokes only feelings of questioning and doubt particularly in its `cut-off' sequence of final chords (see ex.7). Chaconne is a meditation upon an English landscape, such as Towton, which was once the scene of an horrific slaughter during the Wars of the Roses. Matthews was inspired by Geoffrey Hill's poem sequence on the subject, Funeral music, which Hill himself described as 'a florid grim music broken by grunts and shrieks'.

Hill's words suggested both the form and atmosphere of the work: two chaconnes, containing `long passages of meditative counterpoint', interspersed with three contrasting interludes. The first interlude is dreamlike, briefly suspending the progress of Chaconne I; the second recalls the innocent pastoral tradition of the past (though, again, it is closer to early Tippett than anything else); and the final interlude is the horrific music of battle. This interlude is not only the culmination of Chaconne II, but also the grim shrieking `anti-climax' of the entire work.