Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

PC WORLD

W

ould you believe we're up to 1901? It only seems like yesterday that it was the day before. We are well and truly nearing our completeness, not to mention our… our… utterance. As it were. So, while I'm here, let me take in the sights and sounds of MCMI.

Actually, just looking back over my shoulder and peering into last year, I can see the unlikely debut pairing of Uncle Vanya and Lord Jim, as well as Cezanne's superbly titled Still Life with Onions. Also, following last year's relief of Ladysmith and Mafeking, Britain has now annexed the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The Man with the Huge Handlebar Moustache - Elgar - revealed his Dream of Gerontius, something about which Sigmund Freud would no doubt have had something to say in his big book of last year, The Interpretation of Dreams. Elsewhere, The Man with the Huge Handlebar Moustache - WG Grace - has retired, having scored around 55,000 runs in a career spanning forty-five years. As for The Man with the Huge Handlebar Moustache - Sir Arthur Sullivan - er, well, he has died. Oh dear. Jolly popular things, these 'handlebar moustache' thingies. But anyway, back to 1901.

The big news of 1901, of course, was that Queen Victoria died. Yes, the Woman with the Huge Handlebar… actually, no, I'd better not. Just in case. The longest reigning British monarch has finally fi OK, so not true. In fact, a cheap shot. Schoenberg is, clearly, hard to listen to, but it can be very rewarding. There's a choral work, just to take one example, called Friede auf Erden - Peace on Earth- which is just too beautiful for words. That's odd, really, considering it's full of them. gone to be with her consort, and is succeeded by her son, Edward VII. In other news, the Peace of Peking ends the Boxer Uprising, Theodore Roosevelt succeeds the assassinated William McKinley, and the building of the Panama Canal is finally agreed and sealed into a treaty. Great things, treaties. I have this idea that they were the historical version of the office sales conference. I can just imagine people talking about them, in much the same way: 'Hejy, / went on a great treaty last month!' 'Yeah? Where?' 'Oh, only Frankfurt.' Sighs. 'Yeah, last year it was

Washington!' 'Fantastic!' 'It wasn't half. You should have seen the boss signing! It was awful!' 'No-o-o!' 'Oh, yeah!' Pause. 'Mm. Hoping to get 'em to stump up for

Versailles, next time.' '???!' What else? Well, on the whole, much as we passed - officially at least -from the late romantic to the modern age, well so we have passed from the century of steam to the century of electricity. I mean, more or less. In fact, it's a good way of highlighting the 'music' thing - as well as this 'age' thing - because these labels, 'late romantic' and 'modern', or whatever - well, they are just that. Labels. Nothing more. And, just as nobody changed from the century of steam to the century of electricity overnight, so nobody downed romantic tools and took up modern ones. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Romantics would continue being romantic for a good few years yet. In fact, you could argue that they never died out, but we'll get on to that later.

Back in 1901, as ragtime becomes the big thing in the US, over in Paris, Picasso has got the blues - big-time, and he would stay 'blue' for the next four years. (Obviously didn't know about St John's wort back then.) Over in Italy, Verdi has died and left much of Italy heartbroken. Hundreds of thousands turn out to see him to his final resting place in the grounds of the home for retired musicians in Milan - a home he himself founded with the proceeds from his many successful operas. Dvorak is still doing well, though, coming up with many beautiful works from the comfort of an old age where he was celebrated as a living legend. In 1901, he gave us the opera Rusalka, with its stunning aria, 'Song to the Moon'. It's inspired a lot of good music, the moon, when you think - Dvorak, Debussy, sort of Beethoven (even though it wasn't his title). Over in Russia, though, it was doing nothing to inspire the twenty-eight-year-old Sergei Rachmaninov.

1901 was a turning-point year for Rach. He was, generally, doing well. He'd got one piano concerto under his belt, as well as his opera, Aleko, and the ubiquitous 'Prelude in? sharp minor'. The latter was already becoming a bit of a millstone round his neck, and, while he still thought it was a great piece, he resented being asked to play it absolutely everywhere he went. What he needed was another PC. But there was a problem.

To be fair, it was a little cocktail of a problem, one part the critics and public to four parts the composer Glazunov. Glazunov had been entrusted with the premiere of Rach's First Symphony, but had not really done the composer any favours. The performance was an unmitigated disaster, with many people saying that Glazunov was three sheets to the wind. The critics and public slated it, and a sensitive Sergei went into emotional meltdown. He burned the score of the offending symphony - possibly something of a luwie gesture, as the orchestral parts survived - and suffered a crisis of self-confidence and depression. The answer was a much-documented series of consultations with a hypnotherapist, Dr Nikolai Dahl, or 'Tarka'© to his friends. Some say it was 'positive suggestion', or the hypnotherapy, which brought back his muse, some say it had only been a temporary writer's block anyway, and it would always have cleared with a man like Rachmaninov. Whatever the method, the result was, in 1901,. his most enduring work, even now, and it bore the dedication 'To Monsieur N. Dahl'. It was, of course, his Second Piano Concerto. ??? me, the PC2, and indeed, to be fair, most of the Rachmaninov oeuvre, is a taste I have only relatively recently acquired. My innate, immediate reaction to such PURE romanticism was always to put the defences up. I like less 'over the top' works, so I thought, music that didn't give you a piggy-back as it waded through treacle and delighted in its own slush. This was the case right up until my late twenties, when, all of a sudden, I just fell into it, in much the same way as some people inadvertently fall into an entire career. I let myself go, let down my guard, first with Puccini, who we'll come on to soon, and then with Mr Rachmaninov himself. Now, of course, I couldn't live without him, just as I couldn't live without virtually any of my favourite composers you'd care to mention. To me, listening to Rachmaninov is like filling a bath with rich, warm, chocolate sauce and allowing yourself to bathe in it, drink it in, lie in it and lick it all off afterwards. Something I do fairly regularly, now. Musically speaking, of course.

Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto illustrates perfectly what I was banging on about earlier - about the 'periods' or 'eras' being just labels. It was 1901 when he wrote it, a full year after the bell for the so-called Modern Period had gone, and there he was, gaily writing the full-monty, 100 per cent luwie, romantic gush, and so he would continue to do. Three cheers for him.

Incidentally, while we're on the subject of former East German goalkeepers - in my head, at least, I was - let's just try and plot the size of Rachmaninov's hands. To get some idea of the size of those famous paws, try this. Draw a line 10 inches long. Better still, allow me. Now put dots at either end. That's how far his left hand could span, from thumb to little finger. Fair enough, you might say. But now, put dots at 1, 3 and 6 inches along the line. These were the points where his fourth, third and second fingers could go. (Or Ruby Ring, Toby Tall and Peter Pointer, as Rachmaninov used to say.) That changes things a little, doesn't it? And remember, this wasn't just something he could stretch, at pain. This was the kind of chord he could throw in IN PASSING in the middle of pieces. And his right hand? Well, that's on the next page. Look at that.