A London Symphony: Music and Meaning 

Great talk here. RVW’s London Symphony is my favorite of all his symphonies. And I prefer the revised version to the original. Not only because it’s shorter, but the second movement has a much better and satisfying climax than the original. In the original, it just kinda sits there with no peak that holds it together.

Thank you, Andrew (and others involved). Most interesting. For what it's worth, I am on the side of the argument that VW probably said more than he intended to when he spoke to Mrs Coates and then backtracked (although she almost certainly embroidered things for her programme notes). I have often wondered about the possible links (just alluded to in passing by Stephen) between VW's London Symphony and Holst's Planets - both of them more immediately colourful and picturesque than most of their composers' other respective works.

Great and informative talk, pity nothing was mentioned about the quote from Gerontius in the first movement.

Fascinating topic. It intrigues me, though, that, as evidenced in this talk, "meaning" tends to be associated with images, as indeed it was in Wittgenstein's Tractatus (the "picture theory" of meaning). In his later work, of course, he changed his mind on that and saw meaning more in terms of usage. In the context of music, musical meaning would consist in the way various gestures, intervals etc are used in the musical culture and tradition, rather than any propensity to conjure up specific images. So maybe VW's ambivalence about meaning in his own work has something to do with this? The world does not consist just of images (it also consists of sounds, among other things), and meaning, whether linguistic or musical, reflects this fact.

This is quite marvellous - thank you. I finally found a copy of Tono-Bungay at one of NSW's best regional secondhand bookshops - yet to read it, other than the opening and closing pages. Now I'll get down to it. I would greatly appreciate someone telling me which recording of the symphony was used - I assume the "cut sections" were from Richard Hickox's so welcome CD.

What is Albert Coates and Elgar to do with RVW?

Is it really necessary to include the moments of waiting and faffing about before getting started? Can this not be edited out? It doesn't give the best introduction. (Apologies for moaning, but I think it's an important point for anyone ducking in).