Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

RACH-ING IT IN

A

t the beginning of 1934, Rachmaninov was, like Hoist, Elgar and Delius, still going strong. However, unlike Elgar, Hoist and Delius, Rach was still going very strong when 1934 came to an end. By this point, he had already toured America a few times - as a pianist, that is - before eventually making it his permanent home. If you compare his 1934 effort with Stravinsky's of 1930 - both Russian, both settled in America - then you get two very different pieces. Totally different. And why? Well, probably because of the audience thing, again. Stravinsky was, more or less, writing for the history books. Rachmaninov was writing for the audience. And I don't mean that as a put-down. I mean, well, he just was. He was by now in America with a place in Switzerland, and touring to make money. And, of course, being a pianist-composer, when he needed a new piece, he simply wrote one. As in 1934. Just think. The German president, Hindenburg, has just died, and Hider has proclaimed himself Fuhrer: the democrats are forced out in Austria, following the revolu- tion; and the thirty-year-old Salvador Dali paints the surrealist William Tell. Now, listen to the lush, gush and dangerous to hush tunes of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Does it really seem to match? I'll leave that to you.

Just one year later now, and the Nazis repudiate the Treaty of Versailles, Mussolini invades Abyssinia, and Hider establishes the Luftwaffe. In a speech to Parliament, Churchill warns of the German menace in the air. Now, imagine a Prokofiev ballet of the same year, Romeo and Juliet. In one scene, his music is set alongside some stunning choreography, which pits the Montagues against the Capulets. If you haven't seen a production, do go.??? now, though, can you bring up the sound of the Montagues and Capulets in your head? Have you got it? Keep it going as you read. The Kenneth Macmillan version has the two opposing sides lined across the stage. They strut, arms alternately outstretched, left, right, left, right - they're strutting so arrogandy, left, right. And then you realize. They're goose-stepping. Left, right. Rachmaninov may not have captured 1934, but Prokofiev has certainly captured 1935.

And then there's the small question of Shostakovich. It's scandalous I've let myself get this far, without really mentioning Dmitri Shostakovich. One year after Prokofiev unleashes Romeo and Juliet, Shostakovich is meant to be coming up with a new symphony. By now, he's only twenty-nine, and he is constrained by the Soviet authorities, who monitor and vet his every note.

Many composers in Russia suffered at the hands of the strict Soviet regime. The Communist Party had a very clear idea of exactly which type of music was good for the people and if they didn't hear it in your music, you were in trouble. Shostakovich had had problems with an opera of his, Lady Macbeth ofMtzensk, which the official state newspaper, Pravda, had labelled 'chaos instead of music' His Fourth Symphony had, more or less, been stopped at the rehearsal stage, and had not even premiered. He was under massive pressure to come up with music that fitted in with the order of the day - 'socialist realism', as they called it. So, in 1937, he unveils his Fifth Symphony, bearing the now infamous subtitle 'A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism'. It was a massive hit - thank goodness for that. It is, regardless of what anybody might say about its inception, a wondrous piece, with a slow movement to end all slow movements. If, after listening to it, it doesn't make you want to just pack it all in, give up your job and take up composition, then I…? No?… It doesn't? Well… flower pressing, then? No? OK, try this.

If, after listening to it, it doesn't make you want just to pack it all in, give up your job and… and… and run your own grouting and repointing business, from home, then I don't know what will? Hmm? Eh? I've hit the nail on the head, haven't I? Hah! Thought so.

That was from 1937. Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of 1938. I'll show you something that'll make you change your dentist.

Nearly forgot, though. Carl Orff, our man in Munich. He's 1937, actually. Now where does he fit in the scheme of modern music? I mean, think of the music from the Old Spice ad. The same one that is used in the Omen films. Have you got it? Well, I mean… quite. Eh? QUITE! It doesn't sound like 1937 at all, does it?

It turns out Orff, who was by then aged forty-two, had set some rather bawdy words written by some rather bawdy monks in thirteenth-century Bavaria - the more astute among you might have jotted down a little note, perhaps on a post-it or something, to remind yourself that I mentioned this on page 25. Orff set them to some distinctly bawdy sounding music and immediately found himself with a hit on his hands. His one hit, too, to be fair. In fact he lived until 1982, which, by my reckoning, means he almost certainly saw his music on TV, advertising Old Spice. Weird. Wonder if he used it himself. Sad thing was, upon the success of Carmina Burana - for it is he - he ordered his publisher to pulp all his previous works! AAAAGGGHHHHHHH! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Anyway, I digress.

1938. By now, we've had a quick game of royal chess - E7 to G5… check… G5 to E8… check… E8 to G6… check: and now G6 can mate. Er, as it were. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that George VI has been crowned. Also, Chamberlain is now PM, and Hitler is being 'appeased', but to no avail. In 1938, he makes himself 'war minister' and marches into Austria as the pogroms sweep through Germany itself. It's also the year Orson Welles created a bit of a panic with his radio production of HG Wells's War of the Worlds. There were some people ringing the station in panic, others ringing to say they were being invaded and even more ringing to say they didn't get the answer to last week's mystery voice. The power of sound, eh? Also, The Lady Vanishes is Hitchcock's big film, Len Hutton scores 364 at the Oval against Australia, Christopher Isherwood says Goodbye to Berlin and, over in America, the twenty-eight-year-old Samuel Barber has come up with a little String Quartet.

By chance, it's heard by the great conductor Arturo Toscanini, who suggests that the slow movement might benefit from being re-scored for full string orchestra. Barber obliges and Toscanini premieres the piece in the November of '38. Again, a bit Uke Carl Orff and his Carmina B, while it could only have been written in the twentieth century, its language is that of another time, with just a sheen of the 1930s. In Barber's case, it sounds like late Mahler more than anything else. Of course, the public loved it. Still do, in fact. It's known simply as Barber's Adagio.

1939. Taken on its own, Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez -particularly the slow movement - seems to be simply evoking memories of a small Spanish town, and, indeed, it was meant to do precisely that. But when you take into account not only the fact that the thirty-eight-year-old Joaquin Rodrigo had been blind since the age of three, but also the year in which it was written, the melancholia of the slow movement seems to blend in well with events. Rodrigo's Concierto WAS written at the onset of war, but was a personal tribute to the Spain to which he had just returned, from Paris. Delightful. But now, as the saying has it… 'Time and Tide are a jolly good read and a now outdated form of soap powder'. So let's kick on.

Of course, to be fair, the first thing that people bring to mind when you say 1939 is not Rodrigo and his concerto. Hitler's determined efforts to unite much of the world in war have finally come to fruition. There is, indeed, a war on. Musically speaking, the war will play its part, takes its toll, as it were. This will particularly be the case when composers come to reckon up the emotional effects of six years of battle. But also I'm thinking in particular, here, first of the French composer, Olivier Messiaen, who had enlisted in the French Army when war broke out. Born in Avignon in 1908, and tutored early on by Paul Dukas, he was then thirty-one and was soon captured and sent to a German prison camp at Gorlitz, in Silesia. It was here diat he wrote what is often referred to as the greatest quartet of the twentieth century. He called it, not surprisingly, considering the view he must have had from his writing desk, the Quatuor pour In fin du temps-the 'quartet for the end of time'.

Luckily for Messiaen, he was repatriated in 1942 and went back to his job as organist of Trinity Church, Paris, a post he held until his death in 1992. Also writing through the war was Shostakovich. He was in the fire brigade at first, in Leningrad. Bad eyesight had kept him from active service, but he was soon moved to the then Soviet capital, Kuibishev, where he put some of his experiences into a new work, his Seventh Symphony. To quote the composer himself, 'Neither savage raids, German planes nor the grim atmosphere of the beleaguered city could hinder the flow of ideas'. It's known as the 'Leningrad? Symphony and, once again, Marquess of Fry rules apply - go hear it live to get a better idea of how impressive it is.

Over in the US, two important composers were brushing shoulders. Aaron Copland had, by 1942, found his voice, as they say in composerland. He had been through a period of experimentation but, at the age of forty-two, was now at home with some of the more Native American folk sounds that found their way into music. He had also done the double - that is, achieved that rare thing of critical acclaim and popular acclaim. In addition, he had also pointed the way for film composers for years to come, who would imitate his 'grand canyon' chords and soaring tunes - more of this later.

Just leaving America in 1942, after a stay of a few years, was twenty-nine-year-old Benjamin Britten, who had gone back to face the Tribunal for Conscientious Objectors and do his part in the war effort - by taking part in official concerts. This he did and, not long after his return, he had come up with one of his most beautiful pieces to date, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. It is, in effect, a song cycle setting a selection of poems by, among others, Blake, Keats and Tennyson to sometimes sublime, sometimes searing Britten music. It is also, in a way, war music.

J never forget a quote I heard about the great jazz trombonist, Jack Teagarden. It was basically along the lines of how he was able to play the tune of virtually any jazz standard and make it sound like it was the way the composer had intended it should be played. I often think of this when I hear Copland's Appalachian Spring. It isn't so much that it sounds the way the composer intended - for that we have recordings conducted by the man himself. No, it's more that Appalachian Spring sounds as if it has been around for ever, a bit like the way I've heard Sir Paul McCartney talk about his song 'Yesterday'. It's said he dreamt the tune one night, and, when he woke the next day, he wandered round with it in his head. Occasionally, he would ask someone, 'Have you heard of this tune?' and hum a few bars. No one he asked seemed to know the tune. After a while, and somewhat reluctantly, he came to realize that the tune was his, and that it had come to him in a dream. Again, forgive me for harping on, but various parts of Appalachian Spring seem like that. Yes, I know it has a Shaker tune -or the 'Lord of the Dance', as we used to call it - in the middle, but it's not that. It just feels like Copland almost wrote down the notes to a great piece, that somehow gives the impression it has been around for centuries.

He did all this, of course, in 1944. Yes, I really have hopped, skipped, jumped and taken away the first number I thought of and, well, jumped on ahead.

It's the year of the D-Day landings, the Battle of the Bulge and the VI flying bombs in London. It's also the year Marechal Petain is imprisoned at Belfort, and Hitler's generals try, but fail, to assassinate him. Elsewhere, there's TS Eliot's Four Quartets, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, and No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre. And, briefly, in the art world, there's the loss of Mondrian and Kandinsky, but Picasso and Braque have gone all, well, organic, I suppose, as they produce The Tomato Plant and The Slice of Pumpkin, respectively. Sod the Turner Prize, just enter them for Best in Show (Section 1, small garden produce). Now, I really need to take a leap, here, so stay with me, if you will. I want to end up in 1957, so I'm going to have to take you on something of a magical mystery tour.