Something Final

For various reasons I've been thinking lately about the ways in which music seems to embody meaning. And then, quite fortuitously, I played the final Ninth Symphony of Sir Malcolm Arnold this evening. I've been struggling with this work for a while now, being aware that it has its detractors and it's not difficult to see their point. For example, here's Edward Gregson on the piece, taken from an otherwise highly appreciative account of the symphonies as a whole: In Arnold's case I fear the mind was not in control of the material and the result is a fractured musical syntax, devoid of any real meaning or substance.

There is something very simple - too simple - about the music, in stark contrast to the accomplished fireworks of just about everything else he produced. Yet, I think I got the point this evening. I felt the exhaustion of the piece, especially that of the final fourth movement. The mind is in control of the material, but too weary to be concerned about doing much else than mourning its own defeated condition. This is the music of wreckage - but leading to that gentle, almost affirmatory final D major, an acceptance of the wreck of a life, the blame, and what somehow survived it.