British composer scores major European prize
NewsThis year’s Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival goes to Hannah Kendall from Wembley, North London.
Hannah, 37, is currently in New York, doing a doctorate at Columbia.
The prize, in its 33rd years, is worth 20,000 Euros. Festival director Christian Kuhnt says: ‘Hannah Kendall shows an enormous compositional diversity, ranging from classical heritage to experimental ideas. The fullness of sound that she creates with seemingly playful ease, her clear structure, her energy and uncompromising attitude have delighted us without reservation.’
Wow, what were they listening to?
How does diversity sound?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAUrBAWzXYU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omtcv8E7jZE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbpauBt9Tag
https://www.facebook.com/bostonsymphony/videos/174825007453349/
It sounds the same as all the conventional non-diverse new music.
Post Second World War East European harmonic and melodic centricity meets a 21st Century pointillistic take on worn out 20th Century minimalism. And she writes the same piece over and over again.
It’s all cannily orchestrated but lacks any dramaturgical significance. Who knows how long each new work might be having listened to the motifs at the outset? Seven, 11 or 19 minutes? It seems she works with pencil and ink and paper, but only to produce this kind of open-ended graphic thing:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05f4jp1
I wonder if she really writes actual notes. In a Guardian interview she states: “I start with a graphic score, then I harmonise the structure at the piano and then I put it all on the computer”, and adds she frequently “consults her hairdresser”. Just what it sounds like.
It’s all pretty lame; it fills me with ennui. Same old shit that no one really wants to hear. When I think of the supreme technical skills and inspiration shown by past (and passed) composers, the poverty of music in this music is astounding. This music has a life expectancy of about four years. Truly, the impetus to write this stuff eludes me.
Life expectancy: 4 weeks
Impetus: dosh
So you assume she only won the prize because she is a non-white woman?
Correct.
Indeed. It’s a woke reward.
Black woman beats any other hand, i.e. white hetero/gay man, Asian hetero/gay man, Latino hetero/gay man, and any other colored females. If there’s a black transgender midget, then he/she/it will win every music competition there is.
She might well benefit from investing the prize money in a copy of Fux or Sechter, and a pile of music paper, pencils and erasers.