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.
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.”
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.
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!
Coventry Cathedral, old and new |
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.
1. Andante ma non troppo. Allegro energico
Benjamin
Britten (1913-1976) is one of the most important 20th 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!