Bloggo Symphonico: Northern Voyages with the GSO

My first encounter with the music of Benjamin Britten was his War Requiem, written in the early 1960s to commemorate the new Coventry Cathedral, the old one having been bombed in World War II. I was still in high school and I’m not sure how I first heard of it, though it might have been in chorus class (I was quite the singer back in the day, and was chosen for the Maryland All-State Chorus in my senior year), but more probably by my musically

 sophisticated friend Alan Hart, who played piano and went to Oberlin to study. We lost touch after that, as I did with almost all of my high school friends, until Facebook reared its strange and sometimes but not always ugly head. Just months after graduating from high school in 1965 our family moved from Maryland to Florida, and soon after that I joined the Air Force and became a Russian linguist, far from any of the fighting in another horrific war, that fought in Vietnam. I seem to remember writing Alan while I was in the service, but then we lost touch – so it goes. Nice to think of him now after all these many years.

The War Requiem is a version of the requiem mass, with the traditional parts written by Britten to be sung in Latin by chorus and soloists. But in this case the two soloists, a tenor and a baritone, also sang Britten’s renditions of nine poems by Wilfred Owen, the British poet who died just one week before the end of the GREAT War, as it used to be known, better known now as World War I.  

Yesterday, the same day I was in attendance at the concert, I also finished reading a fine book, recommended by my former colleague, the excellent British educator Tim Kidd, called Now All Roads Lead to France, 

about Edward Thomas, an author who wrote primarily as a critic until he met Robert Frost. The two became great friends and one of the fruits of the friendship consisted of Thomas reinventing himself as a poet – one of the first order. Alas, like Owen and Rupert Brooke and other poets, along with thousands upon thousands of other men and women, Thomas was killed in the Great War, in this manner, quoting the book’s author, the excellent Matthew Hollis: “A shell passed so close to him that the blast of air stopped his heart. He fell without a mark on his body.”

The War Requiem, which I owned in the form of a vinyl LP and nearly wore out, builds in intensity to the penultimate piece of music written for it, a duet based on Owen’s poem, “Strange Meeting,” between two soldiers. Late in the poem, and late in the requiem (all that remains after it is the “Requiem Aeternum and Requiescant in Pace”) one of the two men reveals his identity in this devastating if simple line that I remember perfectly: “I am the enemy that you killed my friend…” The last line of the poem is another very simple sentence, “Let us sleep now,” which in Britten’s music becomes an extended fugue-like duet, soaring as if heaven bound, probably the most beautiful part of a powerful work of art.

How fitting that the requiem was first performed in a cathedral that had been destroyed by war. On my first trip to England, in 1986, I stopped in Coventry on my way to Stratford-Upon-Avon simply to see the cathedral.

Coventry Cathedral, old and new

 I should say the cathedrals, because what is left of the old remains standing just next to the new. I must have been reaching back to musical experience with the War Requiem when I stopped at Coventry. The requiem and the visit to Coventry came back to me once more when I visited in Berlin in 1999. There too an old, bombed out church stands next to its modern counterpart. “Only connect,” E.M. Forster reminded us in Howard’s End. And I have been connecting and re-connecting here. But then Dottore Gianni likes connections!

Berlin, 1999, near the Zoo Station
a bombed out church and its replacement

However, I digress! Hmmm – is it possible for one to begin an essay with a digression? From what is one digressing when one is only just beginning to write? Digression or not, I confess to starting this post oddly, not even invoking my alter-ego Dottore Gianni (only threw him in just above as an after-thought), but in first-person singular. I became caught up in memories that seemed appropriate here, but, friends and readers, the music by Benjamin Britten in the concert yesterday was NOT the War Requiem!

In fact it couldn’t have been farther from the requiem and still be the music of Benjamin Britten. It is called Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, but it is better known as The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. This delightful piece features every section of the orchestra, interrupted by narration that explains the function of each of the sections. The musicians were in good form, but the music director of the Greenville Symphony (GSO) Maestro Tchivzhel, who acted as narrator, was truly in his element.

Even if you don’t know classical music you’d recognize instantly the main theme of the Britten. Tchivzhel, in an ironic apology at the beginning of his narration, told us that of course we sophisticated ones did not need a guide to the orchestra, but that the piece was more enjoyable and made more sense with the narration than without it. And he immediately jumped in, speaking in his strongly accented English that made some of his witty rejoinders unintelligible to his audience. At one point while remarking on the role of the double bass versus the cello he looked up and said, “You don’t get it do you? Murmers from the audience. He then repeated the comment as we strained our ears, and paused after…a little forced laughter from the audience. Tchivzhel again, shaking his head: “You don’t get it.”  And immediately after he charged happily ahead, not at all flustered.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) is one of the most important 20^th century British composers. Another musical child prodigy, Britten has written, 

Benjamin Britten

in addition to the War Requiem and Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, several operas, the most famous of them Peter Grimes, but also Billy Budd, Death in Venice, The Turn of the Screw and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The first of these propelled him into the ranks of the finest composers of twentieth century opera in the world, and the others secured his reputation. In addition to opera he wrote much sacred music, including the Hymn to St Cecelia and A Ceremony of Carols. He composed song cycles, many of them for his life partner, tenor Peter Pears; he wrote works for the cello particularly for the great Rostropovich, and a variety of other kinds of music. He and his partner were conscientious objectors, something that would certainly be clear upon hearing the War Requiem. Together with Pears Britten created the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, which remains an important festival of mostly classical music. In addition to his composing Britten was an excellent pianist and a frequent conductor of his own and other people’s music.

The second composition chosen for the concert was also by an Englishman, Edward Elgar (1857-1934). A “concert overture,”  Cockaigne, Opus 40 (In London Town) lasts about fifteen minutes and is said to be a portrait of Londoners, particularly Cockneys (Cockaigne). First preformed in 1901, it is a spirited piece, described in Wikipedia as beginning with “a quiet but bustling theme which leads into an unbroken sequence of snapshots: the cockneys, the church bells, the romantic couples, a slightly ragged brass band… and a contrastingly grand and imperious military band.” It ends, continues the Wikipedia article, “in a characteristically Elgarian blaze of orchestral sound.” The article goes on to quote George Bernard Shaw, who compared the piece favorably to Wagner’s prelude to Die Meistersinger. Shaw, with characteristic wit, wrote that while it might seem sacrilege to make such a comparison with the famed German composer, “Personally, I am prepared to take the risk. What do I care for my grandson? Give me Cockaigne!” Shaw, in case you didn’t know it and shame on you if you didn’t, was a frequent critic of music and the theatre before he became one of the great modern playwrights. You can pick up a volume of his critiques of music or of the theatre at a good used book store if you care to read it. Shaw always makes for good reading, as well as good watching, in my book.

In the GSO’s program notes, local arts reporter and critic Paul Hyde also talks about the “string of snapshots” mentioned above, and good for him for hearing all that in the piece. I must confess that, whether it’s the piece itself or whether the orchestra did not acquit itself well, Dottore Gianni failed to hear anything particularly “London” about it, and received no impression of cockneys whatever from the piece. Perhaps the good doctor has a tin ear (quite likely in fact), but musical portraits such as this one frequently strike him as suspicious and of dubious quality. Indeed, of all the work I’ve heard by the GSO this one was…”fine” (he wrote, damning it with faint praise), but while I have enjoyed several pieces I came in prepared not to during their current season, this music was a slight disappointment to me.

But who is Dottore Gianni, Dr. Jack, or just plain old Jack Hatrack, or Jack Carcrash as some of my colleagues of younger days used to call me (there are other such teasings not fit for print in this highbrow blog), to say?

Whatever I thought of the piece itself, Elgar deserves a brief bio, at least, as some of his music is much more pleasing to my ear, and I imagine would be familiar to your ears too! He began composing as a boy, influenced by his father, a piano tuner and owner of a music store by trade but also a good violinist, learned to play the violin and piano, worked in orchestras, 

Edward Elgar - is he wearing the mustache
or is the mustache wearing him?

played bassoon in a wind quintet, but was a bit of a starving musician in his early adulthood. At age 29 he married one of his pupils, a woman three years older than he and above his station…to parody the parodists Gilbert and Sullivan, “she was the very daughter of a modern major general” and daddy disinherited her for daring to marry, to quote the Wikipedia article, “an unknown musician who worked in a shop and was a Catholic.” They were a love-match however, and her death, many years later, crushed him. He wrote a short piece for violin and piano called Salut d’Amour as an engagement present for her, and dedicated the piece to her as well – good for him! He continued to struggle as a composer until his 42, when his Enigma Variations were premiered in London. He wrote of them: “The Variations have amused me because I've labelled them with the nicknames of my particular friends ... that is to say I've written the variations each one to represent the mood of the 'party' (the person) ... and have written what I think they would have written – if they were asses enough to compose.” The “enigma” lies not in guessing which friend Elgar was representing in each section, but an overarching theme which many have guessed at but of which there is no satisfactory conclusion to this day. Even Dottore Gianni is clueless! (A state of being he has become quite used to.) The German enigma code was broken during World War II, but the secret of the Enigma Variations is still intact.

But you will know Elgar most easily by the first of his five Pomp and Circumstance Marches, written between 1901 and 1930. The first was written in 1901, about the same time that Cockaigne was composed. A trio within that march was put to lyrics and became one of England’s best known national songs, “Land of Hope and Glory.” A real rouser, if you ask me. But in the U.S. we know that trio best as the “graduation march,” for it is standard at almost all high school and college graduations.

Dottore Gianni at his LAST graduation
Spring 2011

Of course Elgar wrote much more, a lot of chamber music, including a violin concerto commissioned by the brilliant Fritz Kreisler, a cello concerto written at the end of World War I, a piece that reflects the composer’s sorrow and despair over the great loss of life wreaked by that conflict. While his critical reputation has varied wildly since his death, certain of his pieces remain in the international repertoire, even if Dottore Gianni thinks Cockaigne should be consigned to the dustbin.

*******

Whatever I felt for the first part of the concert, I looked forward mightily to the lights going down after intermission, as it signaled the start of Symphony No. 1 by the great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). Probably best known for the great musical tribute to his country, Finlandia, he was as well the prolific composer of seven symphonies, much chamber and choral music, the nationalistic, folk-based Karelia Suite, a beautiful and melancholy short work in waltz form called Valse Triste, a suite of music based upon the Finnish national epic the Kalevala (which Dottore Gianni has read and enjoyed thanks to his former student Jessica Martenson) called the Lemminkäinen Suite, the best known of which is The Swan of Tuonela, and late in his career a tone poem called Tapiola, which also uses the Kalevala as its source, as well as incidental music for Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Sibelius was born to Swedish speaking parents and was called Janne as a child. He began using the French form of his name when he was a student,

Jean Sibelius
painted by fellow Finn
Akseli Gallén-Kallela

and is now generally known as Jean Sibelius. His first goal musically was to become a virtuoso violinist, but while he was adept at the instrument he would never attain fame of that kind. He began to study law in Helsinki but found himself much more interested in music, dropped the legal studies and continued with music. An early influence on his work was Richard Wagner, but Sibelius soon tired of that composer’s technique, considering it, according to Wikipedia, as “too deliberate and calculated.” Longer lasting influences were Busoni, Bruckner, and especially in Symphony No. 1, Tchaikovsky. But he developed a unique style that brought him to the forefront of composing in the late nineteenth century. His major rival musically was Gustav Mahler, though their styles contrasted starkly. Musically Sibelius remained his own man, and outside the mainstream, particularly when many were turning towards modernist tendencies in music. A quote attributed to him displays his attitude toward his contemporaries: “Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public pure cold water.”

While he may have offered his public water, I have heard that he himself indulged in stronger stuff. In an excellent article in The Economist (http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/arts/house-sibelius-fell-silent?page=full), 

Could this have been Sibelius's "poison?"
 Finnish vodka given me by Jessica Martenson

Julian Barnes writes that Sibelius “was a committed drinker who would often go missing for days (but could always be located in ‘the best restaurant serving oysters and champagne’). And though the drinking was lifelong, and his tastes remained luxurious…” Much as Dottore Gianni approves of this way of living, his lifestyle, along with other causes – he sold outright Valse Triste, for example, the popularity of which could have made him wealthy – left him deep in debt for much of his life.

That same article discusses the “silence of Ainola,” which refers to a stoppage of musical output for the last thirty years of his life. Barnes writes: “There is something heroic about those writers and artists who choose silence when it would be easier to supply profitable titbits to an adoring audience.” Barnes points out that only one other composer, Rossini, was silent musically longer, but that the Italian went back to composing. In contrast, “Sibelius was implacable. He fell silent, and remained silent.”

Sibelius married a woman of strong artistic tendencies named Aina, and in 1903 they moved out of Helsinki to an area about 40 kilometers distant, to a cabin-style house that he called Ainola, in honor of her. They had six

Ainola

daughters, one of whom died young. Of the others several also became involved in the arts. Ainola was appropriate for a man who loved nature as much as Sibelius did. Wikipedia quotes his Finnish biographer, writing of an event that occurred at the very end of his long life: Sibelius “was returning from his customary morning walk. Exhilarated, he told his wife Aino that he had seen a flock of cranes approaching. ‘There they come, the birds of my youth,’ he exclaimed. Suddenly, one of the birds broke away from the formation and circled once above Ainola. It then rejoined the flock to continue its journey. Two days afterwards Sibelius died of a brain hemorrhage at age 91…in Ainola, where he is buried in the garden.”

Dottore Gianni has left out much in the brief biography of Sibelius, as he could go on for a long time about the composer. Some of you may think he already HAS gone on for a long time…he tends to, for better or for worse. Read the Wikipedia article if you’d like more information, better yet read the Barnes piece in The Economist that I quoted from. There is also a nice site with many photos and biographical remarks located here:

http://web.abo.fi/fak/hf/musik/Sibelius/EN/1.htm

Symphony No. 1 was written in 1899, while the Russians ruled the Finns, who were trying to throw off the Russian yoke. The work is a fervent piece of what is known as Romantic Nationalism (the Romantic Movement in arts and letters was fervently Nationalistic), one of many examples throughout a Europe that was controlled by reactionary, royalist forces. In the GSO’s program notes, Paul Hyde quotes conductor Simon Parmet about the symphony: “It is music of a young giant, full of fiery love for his country and flaming defiance against its oppressors. It is a song of praise to his beloved land in a time of distress.” I couldn’t describe it better. It’s written in four movements

         1.   Andante ma non troppo. Allegro energico

         II.  Andante (ma non troppo lento)

         III. Scherzo, Allegro

         IV. Finale (quasi una fantasia)

To briefly characterize the symphony as best one who is not an expert can, the struggle between love of country and anger at those who oppress it is clear in the juxtaposition of beautiful melodic passages with darkly menacing sections, often led by the brass, which use a technique that Dottore Gianni believes is known as sforzando: an abrupt, strong note pulled back from but then slowly built back up; and another more familiar: the crescendo, used in the good doctor’s opinion to increase the oppression. In the finale it’s almost as if Sibelius is assaulting the tyrants with the power of the full orchestra, using music as literally as it can be used to defeat repression. The symphony ends in a gigantic wall of sound, pulled back from only at the last instant with a drumroll and two plucked chords.

It is an amazing piece of music, and the GSO played it wonderfully, especially that last movement. Aaaah!

One other small objection to a portion of the concert (you’ve already read the doctor on Cockaigne) – after this magnificent piece Tchivzhel offered a short bright encore (another piece by Elgar), which made most of the audience very happy I’m sure, but I wanted to leave the hall with Sibelius ringing vibrantly in my ear. A minority view, I’m certain, but…there you have it!