Here is the audio and transcript, Mellor is the author of one of my favorite books in recent years The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music & Culture. Excerpt: Rasheed: I’m going to jump right into the first question. Why are there no great Swedish composers? Andrew: That’s a good question. That is one many of us
The post Rasheed Griffith podcast with Andrew Mellor appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Here is the audio and transcript, Mellor is the author of one of my favorite books in recent years The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music & Culture. Excerpt:
Rasheed: I’m going to jump right into the first question. Why are there no great Swedish composers?
Andrew: That’s a good question. That is one many of us have asked ourselves many times. There’s something about Sweden’s status in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century, where it didn’t have this desperation to prove itself and to emancipate itself.
It had been a great nation, and it had been a huge imperial power, and it had lost everything. In a very modern sense, it came to the conclusion that that’s fine. We can exist as a small nation. Again, we don’t need to prove ourselves. We can just focus on a kind of creativity and happiness. And the legacy of that is still felt very much in Sweden today.
I just think the Swedish music isn’t that interesting in relation to theirs. It’s not that progressive. It’s very nice, but it didn’t push the envelope like Sibelius and Nielsen did. And therefore, it doesn’t still seem so relevant. I don’t know why.
It must be somehow connected to Sweden’s grand aristocratic history. It’s idea of itself. It’s always been the Nordic nation with nothing to prove almost. Maybe it still enjoys that status today. So yes, I don’t know, maybe, maybe there are more boring reasons for it, like the education system there or the system of progress and patronage was a little more tied up feudally, so talent didn’t necessarily get through. That’s the interesting thing about Carl Nielsen, of course, is that he was an absolute nobody, a working-class poor young man from a nothing family who, succeeded as a classical musician at a time when normally that you would have had to have status and education to have succeeded.
And of course, he had an education, but only because he was pushed into it by his community kind of gathering around him and raising the money for him to study. The short answer is, I don’t know, I haven’t worked it out yet. Maybe you have some thoughts on it.
And:
In the UK, Every BBC orchestra is headed by a Finn.
Recommended.
The post Rasheed Griffith podcast with Andrew Mellor appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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