1964 Copenhagen

May 28, 1964 – Jun 3, 1964
Copenhagen

Festival info

Start: May 28, 1964

End: Jun 3, 1964

Locations: Copenhagen

Hosting member(s)

Description
Description

From contemporaneous reviews:

“There was something rather ironic about the vivid juxaposition of Beatle-like noises from the entertainment park and the ‘sound-events’ of the avant-garde. Never was the gulf between popular and ‘progressive’ music in our day more clearly exposed. On the showing of last night’s new works, it is small wonder that the Beatles win hands down.”

–Donald Mitchell, “Poor Musical Fare at Copenhagen — Extreme Works,”
The Daily Telegraph, June 3, 1964, p. 19.

“Despite all the contrasting dogmas and techniques, random or determined, and the different personalities of the composers, what emerges after the act of ‘processing’ has been accomplished is a quite remarkable and depressing uniformity.

…

“[T]here were occasionally … works at Copenhagen in which personality broke through, and it was usually some aspect of the composer’s technique, not his aesthetic, which was responsible for the restoration of communication. For example, in Franco Donatoni’s ‘Movimento,’ aside from the ingeniously planned antiphony between harpsichord, piano and nine instruments, there was also a lively and audible rhytmic organization. And in the British contribution to the Festival, Harrison Birtwistle’s ‘The World is Discovered,’ for an instrumental ensemble, the density and striking interest of the harmony, not to speak of the composer’s instrumental imagination, made an immediate and comprehensible appeal, all the more so in the impoverished harmonic atmosphere of the I.S.C.M., from which harmony, like so much else, has been virtually banished.”

–Mitchell, “No Tricks in Opera in the Round,” Daily Telegraph, June 6, 1964, p. 11.

Programme information
Locations