It was on V-E Day, marking Allied victory in Europe on this date in 1945, that Aaron Copland became the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his ballet “Appalachian Spring.” It remains one of the most successful of Pulitzer Prize winners, very few of which have remained in the active repertoire.
This is a good opportunity for me to acknowledge the fact, only slightly belatedly, that this year’s honoree is Tyshawn Sorey, who was awarded the prize on Monday for “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith),” a 20-minute work for alto saxophone and orchestra. Sorey describes the piece, which was co-commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Lucerne Festival, as an “anti-concerto,” designed to “provide a respite from the chaos and intrusiveness on modern life.”
In the past, May 7 was a day for frenemies, as I’ve always been fond of emphasizing the uneasy friendship of Brahms and Tchaikovsky on their birthday anniversaries – artists repelled by one another’s creations, who were pleasantly surprised by how well they got along once they met in person (though they still disliked one another’s music). The alcohol they consumed certainly could not have hurt.
However, today, we put all that frenemy business aside, as all men are brothers, when the birthdays of Brahms and Tchaikovsky coincide with the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The Ninth, of course, is the visionary symphony that climaxes with an ecstatic setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” Everyone knows the melody, even if they think they don’t. The text proclaims, depending on the translation, “All mankind will become as brothers!”
The tune is demonstrated here by Schroeder, insistently joyous even in the face of Lucy’s hostility:
Beethoven’s revolutionary masterwork, striking for both its scale (oversized orchestra with a quartet of vocal soloists and chorus) and length (running to well over an hour), cast a forbidding shadow. Much ink has been spilled about the struggles of composers throughout the 19th century to come to terms with the Ninth. In fact, I remember reading a book by conductor Felix Weingartner, a renowned Beethoven interpreter (he was the first to record all nine symphonies), titled “On the Performance of Beethoven’s Symphonies and Other Essays,” in which he addresses the successes and failures of all the major symphonic composers that followed.
The story of the legendary first performance of the work, on May 7, 1824, is well-known, but bears repeating. The auditorium of Vienna’s Theater am Kärntnertor (Carinthian Gate Theater) was packed – Schubert was in attendance, and so was Czerny – and the orchestra was staffed by many of the great musicians of the day. No complete roster of performers survives, but as was the case with the all-star team that played in the premiere of Beethoven’s 7th, many of Vienna’s most elite musicians participated.
It was Beethoven’s first public appearance in 12 years. By that time, of course, the composer was almost completely deaf. But that didn’t keep him from air-conducting as the ideal interpretation unfurled in his head. The official conductor was the theater’s kapellmeister, Michael Umlauf, and he instructed the musicians to watch him, not the composer, as he had witnessed an earlier disaster with Beethoven in the pit for a dress rehearsal for “Fidelio.”
According to one of the violinists, Beethoven “stood in front of a conductor’s stand and threw himself back and forth like a madman. At one moment he stretched to his full height, at the next he crouched down to the floor, he flailed about with his hands and feet as though he wanted to play all the instruments and sing all the chorus parts.”
When the piece concluded, the hall resounded with applause, but Beethoven was still conducting. The contralto soloist, Karoline Unger, approached the composer and gently turned him around to acknowledge the cheers. Members of the audience, who recognized they could not be heard, waved their handkerchiefs, hats, and hands, so that even in his isolation, the composer knew he had scored a hit.
Mankind never does seem to get its act together, but even as the world teeters on the brink of disaster, the Ninth continues to resonate. Concert halls fill wherever it is programmed. When the compact disc was developed, technicians standardized the length at 74 minutes, so that the format could accommodate a complete recording of the work. (In the days of LP, I recall some rather awkward breaks in the middle of the third movement.) Used as the prototype was Wilhelm Furtwängler’s 1951 recording.
In the history of music, the Ninth stands like the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” (Interesting that Kubrick would use the work to such ironic effect a few years later in “A Clockwork Orange.”) There was music before the Ninth and there was music after the Ninth. From a certain point of view, everything seemed to culminate in its creation, and afterward, all was decadence. It is the Continental Divide of classical music.
For the Romantics, the Ninth changed everything. Every composer for a hundred years had to grapple with its influence. For the rest of the century, experiments with orchestra and chorus became larger and larger, setting all manner of aspirational texts. Mahler pushed 74 minutes to 90 with his Third Symphony. His Eighth is so large, it was dubbed “The Symphony of a Thousand.” In the 20th century, there was nowhere to go but down. Even as composers embraced the leaner textures of neoclassicism they continued to labor in the shadow of Beethoven, whether assimilating his lessons or rejecting them.
The inclusion of the chorus is the most obvious innovation, but Beethoven wouldn’t be Beethoven if there weren’t plenty else to reward a closer look, and musicians and scholars have been dissecting the work and studying its secrets for the past two centuries.
Brahms, who lived from 1833 to 1897, and Tchaikovsky, who lived from 1840 to 1893, were no different from their contemporaries in feeling the heat of the 9th. It is well-known that Brahms experienced enormous pressure in his own mastery of symphonic form, postponing his first symphony for many years, as he continued to hone his skills on works such as the orchestral Serenades and the Piano Concerto No. 1, the latter conceived on a suspiciously symphonic scale. It took him over twenty years to own up to an actual symphony.
At its debut, conductor Hans von Bülow dubbed it “Beethoven’s Tenth,” no doubt because of its excellence, but also because of the perceptible influence of the earlier composer. It was Bülow who also formulated “the three B’s,” grouping Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms in a spontaneously-erected pantheon that music-lovers still invoke. Brahms was surely relieved that the work was so rapturously received, but (being Brahms) he was also annoyed when it was pointed out that the chorale theme that forms the basis of the last movement bears an uncanny resemblance to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” To this, Brahms gruffly responded, “Any ass can see that!”
I’ve cued the theme up for you at the link, but nothing’s stopping you from going back to listen to the entire symphony:
After the First, things came easier for Brahms. The ice broken, he composed his Symphony No. 2, with confidence, in a single summer.
In Tchaikovsky’s case, his own predilection gravitated more toward Mozart. This is evident, of course, in his Orchestral Suite No.4, subtitled “Mozartiana,” but also in the “Variations on a Rococo Theme” for cello and orchestra. He confided to his diary, “I do bow before the greatness of some of his works, but I do not love Beethoven.” That’s not to say he did not respect, or even revere him. His remarks are more nuanced than I make them out to be. You’ll find his complete thoughts here, including the diary entry from which I excerpt, at the bottom of the page:
Fascinating, then, that Tchaikovsky would exhibit such youthful bravado in setting Schiller’s text himself for his graduation examinations at the St. Petersburg Conservatory! This is a stunning display of self-assurance for a composer who frequently struggled with insecurity. He later dismissed the work as immature, but it is certainly worth hearing:
In Beethoven, as in all things, it seems, Brahms and Tchaikovsky were divided. Fortunately, they were united in the brotherhood of drink.
Happy birthday to the Felix and Oscar of classical music, and raise a glass to the most important symphony ever written, with a thought for the brotherhood of man, now to be desired as much as ever.
This brisk performance from 1958 is one of my favorites. Not for every day, perhaps, but thrilling.
Weingartner conducts in 1935
Furtwängler sets the standard length of the CD in 1951
Bernstein celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall with a multinational ensemble in 1989, substituting “Freiheit” (Freedom) for Schiller’s “Freude” (Joy)
Last week, when writing my memorial to Norman Carol – longtime concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who died on April 28 – I recollected reading an anecdote André Previn shared in his book “No Minor Chords” (Doubleday, 1991), an amusing memoir, largely about Previn’s experiences in Hollywood, where seemingly no one in charge knew anything about music (hence the mocking title, taken from a memo handed down by producer Irving Thalberg, “No music in an MGM film is to contain a minor chord”).
Previn was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1946 while still in high school. MGM was “looking for somebody who was talented, fast, and cheap and, because I was a kid, I was all three,” he mused. He worked as a session musician, arranger, and composer, cutting his teeth supplying cues for Lassie movies. He would go on to write music for 50 films, was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and won four. In 1960, he received three nominations in a single year! But Previn never took the movie biz too seriously and eventually he left it all behind to pursue a career in classical music.
He was drafted into the military during the Korean War, and beginning in 1951, while stationed with the Sixth Army Band in San Francisco, he began conducting lessons with Pierre Monteux, then music director of the San Francisco Symphony. The particular passage I was thinking of is about the time he and Carol served together at the Presidio. I’ve been wanting to look it up, so this morning I finally took the book down from the shelf, and of course there’s no index. Thankfully, it’s a lean and entertaining 148 pages, so it didn’t take long for me to find what I was looking for.
Sobering to think that both these gentlemen are gone now.
Beginning on page 47:
I made friends with Norman Carol, another musician stationed at the Presidio. He was even then a most remarkable violinist. Shortly after his discharge from the army he became concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, a distinguished position he has now held for thirty-odd years. But back in 1951, neither one of us could have laid claim to the adjective “distinguished” by the wildest stretch of the imagination. Whenever it was possible, we would commandeer a piano and play sonatas for our own pleasure, and I remember quite a few evenings at officers’ clubs, trying to make some Viennese bonbons audible over the hubbub.
Norman and I were summoned to appear at the office of the reigning two-star general one day. We absolutely could not figure out why. Our small transgressions of the rules were definitely not worthy of generals, and neither of us could come up with a reason to receive a medal. So we shined our boots, pressed our wrinkled ties, and polished our belt buckles, hoping that our smart appearance might lessen whatever blow was to be aimed at us. The general was feeling chatty. “I’m told you two can play the fiddle and the piano pretty good,” he said. “Well, in two weeks’ time there’s going to be a huge meeting of heads of state here in Frisco; Truman is coming, and so are the Russians, the English, the French, and everybody else. After the meetings are over, there’s gonna be a big blowout at the Palace Hotel, and I want you to play for a half hour or so. Understood?”
We nodded rapidly. Yes, we understood. We thank the general, sir. We’ll do our best, sir, yes indeed. We saluted and backed away from the desk, treading on each other’s feet and bumping into a map case. When we got to the door, the general said rather sharply, “Oh, there’s one thing I forgot. You mustn’t play anything recognizably national. Nothing American or Russian or French or English. Understood?”
We looked at one another. Obviously this request was both loony and impossible to fulfill. My misplaced compulsion for jokes surfaced. “If the general agrees,” I said winningly, “we could play a long Swiss medley.”
Not a blink, not a smile was forthcoming. That’ll be fine. See to it,” and the general turned away from us. Silently we went outside. Once we were on the street, Norman turned on me. “You moron,” he started, “you asshole, what are we going to do now? A Swiss medley, you jerk! Name me some Swiss composers except Bloch and Frank Martin! We’ll be court-martialed!”
I calmed him down. “Nobody’ll be listening, Norman,” I said with confidence, “and if by chance anyone does listen, what makes you think they’ll recognize the music? As it turned out, I was right. The ballroom of the Palace Hotel was live with bunting and flags, the guests were representative of the world’s power, and they were not interested in the two GIs on a small corner platform, assaying Brahms, Debussy, and Prokofiev. We ate a lot of very good food, drank a glass or two of wine, and ogled the great and powerful. Our general passed, retinue in tow. This was one night when he was outranked, but he was very scary to us. He gave us the briefest of glances and smiled a smile which never reached his eyes.
In these days when the industry seems to be doing its damnedest to sideline classical music and even physical media (the “vinyl revival” aside), it’s not unusual for the major labels to undervalue their considerable treasures to the extent of just dumping them out onto the market in cheaply-priced boxed sets. Many of these package their individual discs in cardboard sleeves that replicate the original LP cover art and program notes (albeit microscopically), with an accompanying booklet containing frustratingly minimal information. Even so, I must say, it’s nice, from both a collector’s and classical music-lover’s perspective, to be able to own the material!
Characteristically, this set of recordings by Carlos Chávez was issued last year with little or no fanfare. At least none that I could perceive, and you know I’m all over the internet and music magazines. It was released last May, and I only happened across it, purely by chance, online in January. Of course, I ordered it immediately. I’ve been making it a point to listen to everything attentively over the past week, thinking I would write up some of my thoughts for Cinco de Mayo.
Granted, the music of Carlos Chávez is perhaps not for everyone, but I confess this is one of those sets that made my heart skip a beat. I didn’t know some of these recordings even existed!
To give an idea of the significance of Chávez to Mexican music, pour Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and perhaps William Schuman or Howard Hanson into a margarita machine. Not that Chávez’s music sounds like any of these. At his most populist, he is closest to Copland, but when he truly flexes his modernist muscle, he looks across the States to Europe, where he assimilates the lessons of the world’s 20th century masters, but always on his own terms. How Chávez most resembles the Americans I cite is as his country’s most significant composer, conductor, and music educator. (Schuman was president of Juilliard, and Hanson headed the Eastman School for some 40 years.)
Unsurprisingly, Copland and Chávez were very good friends. The earliest of these recordings date from 1938, the year Copland introduced “El Salón México” (written during an extended stay in the country and given its debut with Chávez conducting). It was Copland’s watershed work that led to his greatest successes and his most characteristic sound. The folk song “La paloma azul” (“The Blue Dove”) is included in the set, in Chávez’s arrangement, and is immediately recognizable as one of the tunes assimilated by Copland.
I would love Chávez forever if he had composed only his “Sinfonía India” – tuneful, evocative, expansive in spirit (if concise in structure), immediate, and joyous. It’s also full of good, memorable folk tunes and indigenous percussion. Most significant for American music, it points the way for Copland’s western scores. Never have the native instruments sounded so authoritative as in these recordings. I wonder if this would now be considered cultural appropriation? Back then, it would have been regarded as musicology. More often than not, the set’s performances employ Mexican musicians. How many of them are “Indian” is anyone’s guess.
In the collection’s earliest recordings, the mono sound only lends the works a more modernist edge. The 1940 audio is impressive. The two tracks from 1938 are wonderful for Chávez cognoscenti, but I would recommend getting to know the music first from the later stereo recordings, also included in the set. Over all, the sound lacks for nothing for those of us who grew up in the era of stereo LPs. Just don’t go into it expecting state-of-the-art digital recording.
For Cinco de Mayo, my recommendation would be to start with the recordings of the populist and indigenous selections on CD 2, in stereo. Once the tequila begins to take effect, you can move on to the mono on CD 1. Then when you’re really starting to feel it, advance to the symphonies. (All six of them are here.) Beside the Symphony No. 2 (the “Sinfonía India”), they may seem a little demanding. But you might find yourself quickly warming to some of them. Some may remain tougher nuts. Throughout every one of them, Chávez retains a distinctive voice.
When you’re on the verge of blackout, that’s when you should put on the ballet “Pirámide.” It’s rare that Chávez ever conjures the mescaline visions of his compatriot Silvestre Revueltas, but this one is a real trip!
The disc devoted to “Soli,” chamber music for various combinations of winds and brass instruments, recalls Revueltas’ “Ocho por radio,” though none of the works are as concise or as perky. For me, “Soli I,” the shortest, is also the most successful, but if you’re in the right frame of mind, there’s plenty more modernism to chew over in Nos. II & IV.
A big surprise is Chávez’s Violin Concerto, with the Polish-Mexican violinist Henryk Szeryng. While not overtly melodic in the manner of the grand Romantic concertos, it is lyrical and structurally fascinating. Its four movements are played without break. The scherzo is cast as a theme and variations, and the finale reprises most of the material laid out in the first movement, in inversion! The soloist plays almost continuously, and the seven-minute cadenza falls in the middle of the piece where you would least expect it.
Chavez’s creative trajectory ranges from Romantic Nationalist to Modernist Nationalist. Which is to say, you can take the composer out of Mexico, but you can’t take Mexico out of the composer. Nor can you erase his fingerprints. But beyond some of the populist stuff, there is no way he should be reduced to a mere purveyor of picture postcards. Chávez was a composer of international stature, and you can tell by his music that Mexico City was no musical backwater. As a conductor, he imported all the major composers of his day, and he interacts with all the latest trends in his own music (except, on the evidence of this set, serialism).
By the time we get to selections from the ballet “Pirámide,” recorded in 1973, we are entering avant-garde territory. How fascinating that, on its LP release, this was on the flip side of Copland’s complete recording of “Appalachian Spring!” Here, Chávez conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and Ambrosian Singers.
By the end of the seven discs, you will be well-familiar with Chávez’s “Sinfonía India,” the equally concise, though more severe “Sinfonía de Antígona” (his Symphony No. 1, derived from incidental music written for a Jean Cocteau production of “Antigone”), his “Xochipilli” (speculative Aztec music), and his arrangement of Buxtehude’s Chaconne (a real crowd pleaser in the mold of Stokowski’s “Toccata and Fugue”), as well as Blas Galindo’s “Sones de Mariachi,” all of which Chávez recorded twice for Columbia Records.
Not everything Chávez ever recorded is here. I have his Piano Concerto on another label (originally issued on Westminster with pianist Eugene List) and his “Sinfonía India” (of course) and Symphonies 1 & 4 on Everest (with the Stadium Orchestra of New York), but presumably these are the complete Columbia recordings, as advertised.
What strikes me about Chávez’s music, in whatever creative period, is that it is crafted with great integrity. At every point does it stand toe-to-toe with any art music being produced anywhere in the world at that time – which is to say that it puts most everything written today in the shade.
Again, not for everyone. If your taste for 20th century music stops with Rachmaninoff, you might just want to sample what you can find on YouTube. (Start with “Sinfonía India,” but then try some of the other symphonies before purchasing.) However, if you’re fairly serious about 20th century classical music, this is definitely worth the layout, which is probably about the price of a Cinco de Mayo dinner out, with a pitcher of margaritas.
For Cinco de Mayo, here’s a lovely performance (at the link below) of Manuel Ponce’s “Estrellita,” with soprano Larisa Martínez and her husband, violinist Joshua Bell. I recently learned the couple will appear at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton on May 28.
I’m sure Mexican-Americans must dread our Cinco de Mayo celebrations as much as the Irish do our St. Patrick’s Day, but some of us mean well. Keep an eye out for my more ambitious post about composer-conductor-educator Carlos Chávez, coming soon!
