Illuminations of Now and Beyond
Friday, May 18, 2001 at 8:00 pm.
Paul Hindemith:
Morgenmusik
Six Chansons
Apparebit Repentina Dies
Leonard Bernstein:
Chichester Psalms
Charles Ives:
Psalm 90
Carl Ruggles:
Angels
Texts and Translations
Program Notes
Tonight's brief encounter with remarkable 20th century choral music from a German-born master and three American "native sons" reveals a musical vocabulary which only hints at the broad diversity vocal music of the just-passed century. Indeed, all of what is programmed tonight could be thought "conservative" by today's standards, yet not for a minute is it dull, boring or contrived. In fact, there is much to surprise us and, with any luck, delight us.
In Paul Hindemith, one encounters a musician of protean talent. An acknowledged master of counterpoint, harmony, orchestration and technique, his seemingly effortless facility for turning out a large catalogue of works occasionally made an easy target for glib and uninformed criticism which complained his output was too much of the same thing rehashed. The audible evidence tonight offers a powerful foil to that narrow- mindedness. Leonard Bernstein, a great admirer of Hindemith, also suffered intense criticism during his lifetime - whether the targets for it were his "serious" music, podium histrionics, or extrovert personal life. Yet those privileged to know him and those who performed with him have far different "takes" on his value and influence. Both Carl Ruggles and his good friend "Charlie" Ives were independent-thinking New Englanders, admirers of each other's uncompromising iconoclastic compositions, and unfailing in their oft- expressed impatience with the tunnel-vision focus of the musical establishment which appeared to "have their ears on wrong," as Ives so colorfully put it.
Not so long ago the music of Paul Hindemith was regularly encountered in concert. Today, for whatever reason, this is not so. But even if Hindemith's popularity were at its prior elevated level, the works heard tonight, some of his best work for chorus and brass, would not likely have been very often encountered.
That being said, it is true that Morgenmusik has been a favorite of brass players, and the Six Chansons have been popular with chamber choruses. As for Apparebit Repentina Dies, its considerable technical demands plus the conundrum of what other music to program with so powerful a work have likely conspired to keep its performances few and far between. More's the pity, for this is surely one of the composer's strongest works, full of brilliant color, soaring melodies and virtuoso challenges for all the performers. Morgenmusik is the first and best-known part of a collection of works collectively named Pl ner ner Musiktag - literally, A Day of Music for Plön, a set of pieces for a day-long music festival in the town of that name. Using a four- part ensemble of brass in three movements, the composer has left the choice of instrumentation somewhat free, suggesting various groupings be adopted by the performing forces at hand. Trumpets will be heard tonight playing the top two parts, horns the third, trombones and tuba the fourth. The composer has also asked that the work be sounded from the top of a tower, recalling music written for winds during the Renaissance called, appropriately, Turmmusik. As a convenient tower is lacking, our players will sound forth tonight from a height more comfortably attained.
Homage to the early French chanson is very much evident in the Six Chansons, settings of verse by Rainer Maria Rilke. Here is Hindemith's unmistakable harmonic language and syntax adapted to the most gracefully inflected and text-sensitive vocal declamation that can be found in his work for chorus. The unique liquid and soft sound of the French language, the pastoral subject matter, the very French-like curve of the melodic line, the seductive harmony - all are conscious, carefully considered components of a reflection of a French style of song.
Remarkable contrast to this a cappella calm is the enormous sound of Apparebit Repentina Dies! Ten brass announce its arrival with a bold fortissimo flourish and then embark on a jazzy asymmetric romp to launch the chorus, equally fortissimo, from within a brilliant, pealing A-flat major chord - what a riveting way to begin! The text is a medieval precursor to the later and more familiar Dies Irae, a vivid picture of Christ as avenger of sin and wrongdoing. Taking much of its substance from a paraphrase of Matthew XXV:31-46, it was probably written between 400 and 700 A.D., and appears in the Oxford Book of Medieval Verse. Also an ingenious acrostic, it is written in couplets beginning with successive letters of the 23-character Latin alphabet.
Apparebit Repentina Dies is set in four movements. The first ominously warns of the dire consequences of the Day of Judgment. The second in recitative style frames a dialogue in which Christ as the great Judge separates the righteous from the unrighteous. The beginning of the third movement tells of the unjust being swept back into hellfire, and the baying of Cerberus at Hell's gates is clearly limned by the four French horns. And at the only moment so far when possible redemption for the faithful is suggested, Hindemith employs one of his most memorable melodies in an arching passacaglia which radiates from the brass through the chorus, leading ultimately to a jubilant E-flat major conclusion. The brief final movement owes its form to the chorale so favored by J. S. Bach. With this ingeniously harmonized finale, Hindemith pays homage to his past.
Leonard Bernstein was very much a product of his time, though he would likely vigorously object to this foreshortening of his personality, especially when he was conducting Mahler, whom Bernstein felt he embodied when leading an orchestra through his predecessor's music. But no catalogue of idiosyncrasies, no matter how full, can take away the joy this man brought to millions of music listeners. He was a master of the Broadway/Hollywood music axis - indeed, many believe his most important work was written for these two "stages." He was a born teacher who loved to impart opinionated but always well-informed information, whether to podium hopefuls at Tanglewood, to student orchestras throughout the world, or to the vast hitherto underserved television audience that awaited the broadcasts of his pioneering Young People's Concerts with an anticipation that rivaled what was usually reserved for weekly episodes of Sky King. The depth of the influence of these landmark broadcasts is echoed in the memories of musicians such as Gerard Schwartz, Leonard Slatkin, and many others, who claim they owe much of their passion for music to Bernstein's television-sent enlightenments.
As a product of its time, Bernstein's music, no matter whether for the stage or concert hall, usually contains elements of the American musical vernacular. Is it this very American tang, this almost secular element, when combined with an ancient language speaking sacred Old Testament psalms, that allows Chichester Psalms to enjoy its broad appeal? Perhaps we harbor something of a guilty pleasure in hearing the syncopations and colorful chromatic harmonies of jazz and pop music invade "sacred territory." This, plus a memorable melody that can in fact be hummed as one leaves the hall, and the touching charm of a harp- accompanied angelic boy soprano soloist conjuring the image of a young David, all add up to an irresistible and ultimately very moving work. Cynics would likely add that this is all too calculated. Perhaps. But the powerful rejoinder one might ask is: are we poorer or richer for it?
An interesting foil for the accessible and easy-going charm of Chichester Psalms is the granitic and uncompromising Angels, by Carl Ruggles. Of his music, the critic Lawrence Gilman wrote in an early and unusually prescient summary of the composer's 1942 reworking (newly titled Men and Mountains) of his 1924 William Blake-inspired symphony Men and Angels:
Mr. Ruggles... is a natural mystic, a rhapsodist, a composer who sees and dreams fantastic dreams. The wild, gigantic, tortured symbols of Blake's imagination, his riotous and untrammeled excursions in the world behind the heavens are all of a piece with Mr. Ruggles's thinking. There is a touch of the apocalyptic, the fabulous, about his fantasies. He is the first unicorn to enter American music. He is the master of a strange, torrential and perturbing discourse. We are not always sure that we understand what he is saying, but we suspect that this is our fault, not his. His music seems to us to be utterly original. He has forgotten the gods of yesterday (if he ever bowed to them). He is no polite snitcher of Debussyan, Scriabinian, Stravinskyan formulae. Like Landor, he sips from his own glass.
Further, the Ives scholar and pianist John Kirkpatrick has written:
On November 1, 1920, Carl [Ruggles] wrote Henry Cowell from Grantwood, New Jersey: "I have just finished a rhapsody for 6 horns and orchestra...horns all in unison." This was the third movement of his visionary short symphony Men and Angels...
This Men is a concise balancing of a few episodes related to melodic variation: a pair of fanfares, quiet lento, fantastic five-voice canon that ends adagio, final fanfare. In 1924, Carl discarded it.
Angels is a hymn for six trumpets. Carl told me that when he was working on it at Grantwood, Henry Cowell brought musicologist Charles Seeger, who exclaimed: "There! That's the way music should be!" Carl also mentioned that when he and Seeger were working at it together, they thought they had got just as far as possible from a then-accepted kind of music. But over a half- century later, its hymn phrases still sound tonal. In Carl's own melodic style, "I never repeat till I come to the 9th note, but in Angels I disregarded it." In 1940 he revised and transposed it.
It is this revised version of Angels which we perform tonight. Marked "Serene" and only 47 bars in length, its very densely packed harmonies, "slow-motion" counterpoint and unusual instrumentation of six muted brass instruments - four trumpets and two trombones - create a hauntingly evocative mood of timelessness.
R.D. Darrell reports, "Charles Ives had written 'Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair.' And it was this same fellow-experimentalist who forthrightly berated a shocked listener who booed an early New York concert performance of (Ruggles's) Men and Mountains: 'Stop being such a God-damned sissy! Why can't you stand up before fine strong music like this and use your ears like a man?!'"
Such passion was not unusual for Charles Ives. He was among the great visionaries of the 20th century, and his setting of Psalm 90 remains a landmark of 20th century choral music. Finished in 1924 after first being sketched ca. 1894, it was the only work which fully satisfied the composer. Scored for chorus, soloists, organ, and bells, Psalm 90 is truly one of the most moving works written for chorus. Its first half presents a number of unusual effects - tone clusters, unison chant, strong dissonances, general agitation - all reflective of the text which refers to "destruction," "flood," "anger," "fear," and "wrath." Its second half resolves these conflicts with an utterly calm and unique tonal palette of organ, chorus, and four sets of bells quietly and slowly chiming from different locations within the hall, suggesting distant church bells. In these final sublime moments of this most extraordinary and visionary work, time seems to stand still, and great peace descends upon all those privileged to be within its presence.
Program notes © 2001 by John W. Ehrlich Notes Copyright (c) 2001 by John W. Ehrlich
