More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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2 May
Giving effect to what it says, how would you summarize the following*?:
Warlock's cycle is a monument to an idiosyncratic composer whose career was cut off too soon by his tragically short life
It is possible to read these phrases quickly and seem to understand the message, but I suspect that it may not really be self evident, even in context, that an idiosyncratic composer and Warlock are one and the same person (deemed to be writing his own monument in the song-cycle being discussed).
My own feeling is that the writer of these programme notes, at or around the time of compiling them, may have been overeager to say several things and have conflated them:
* Warlock died early
* His career - not surprisingly - died with him**
* It was regrettable, in terms of that musical career and what Warlock might yet have written, that he died when he did
* Whether it was seen as - or intended by - Warlock as a monument to him, it is suggested that it is one
* The work itself may be idiosyncratic,
* Presumably one can infer that it is, if it is a monument to Warlock, and if he was an idiosyncratic composer
For me, rather too much message for just 21 words, and in danger of being radically incoherent, when notes of this kind should ideally open up easily to examination in the concert-hall
End-notes
* Taken from notes (by Jo Kirkbride) in a concert programme.
** However, I do acknowledge that, in the case of a composer in the position of Delius, it was his health / incapacity that threatened to cut short his career (or cut it even shorter***).
*** More shortly?
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