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"The [composer] may admire many of his illustrious predecessors and contemporaries and may love their work. But he will not show these feelings by imitating their styles, but by striving to come near to their spirit of adventure and independence of thought in his own work." Gordon Jacob, in The Elements of Orchestration
Comments
from Riverdale
Ensemble
Gordon
Jacob (1895-1984), in common with the generation of British
composers that includes Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Howells, Bax
and so on, studied with Charles Villiers Stanford; however, any
resemblance between his music and that of those composers ends
there. Far from the lush, overt Romanticism of his elders, his
writing is more simple and sparse, inspired partly by Baroque and
Classical models (some of the works under his name are in fact
arrangements of Baroque music), sometimes angular and dissonant
but never inaccessible. He summed up his ethos of composing in
this statement: "I think the question of communication is
important, because one never wants to write down to an audience,
but at the same time I personally feel repelled by the
intellectual snobbery of some progressive artists… the day
that melody is discarded altogether, you may as well pack up
music…"
Jacob had
a special affinity for wind instruments, for which he composed a
large body of concerti and chamber music, including the Trio for
clarinet, viola and piano, written in 1969. These works
demonstrate deep knowledge of instrumental technique, also evident
in his authoritative textbooks on composing and orchestral
writing.
