by Tim Rayborn
Modern composers also have something of a tougher time of things in general, having to compete against so much posthumous greatness. Composer Arthur Honegger once quipped, “The public doesn’t want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.”
With that in mind, as we move closer to our own age, we begin to encounter composers who have passed much more recently and are even still in the living memories of some. Here, the whole point of this book—presenting the grotesque in music history with a humorous twist—begins to get a bit shaky. Is it proper to present a gruesome story about someone who may have living children or grandchildren, especially in a humorous light? Not really. In the interests of good taste, we will tread a bit lightly here and generally leave the truly contemporary composers of our own time out of it all.
Composers in World War I (1914–1918)
The lost generation
The Great War (as it was then known) utterly changed the face of Europe, altering nations, leaving millions dead or injured, and shattering earlier popular ideas about war as a means to achieve nationalist glory. It left permanent scars across the continent and in Britain, and set the stage for an even more devastating war two decades later. A good number of composers in England, France, and Germany felt called to serve. Some did not return, and those that did had their lives changed forever.
Among the more tragic of the English was George Butterworth (1885–1916), once considered one of the most promising young composers of his generation. In addition to his musical gifts, he was a collector of English folk songs, a practice that had developed in the Edwardian years to help preserve traditional songs from being lost forever. He was also an avid folk dancer. Nevertheless, when the opportunity to serve in the military came in August 1914, he eagerly took it. He was killed by a sniper’s bullet during the Battle of the Somme on August 5, 1916, and mourned by many. Composer Ernest Moeran would later declare, “The death of Butterworth in 1915 [sic] was a tragedy, the nature of which no country with any pretensions to the preservation of culture and a respect for art can afford a recurrence.”
Another promising young Englishman who lost his life was Ernest Farrar (1885–1918), a gifted composer and teacher from northern England. His service came quite late in the war; he was killed in the Battle of Épehy on September 18, 1918, less than two months before the armistice. His pupil, composer Gerald Finzi, later poignantly wrote in the 1950s, “then I was about fourteen and he was just over thirty. Now I am over fifty and he is still just over thirty.”
The great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) desired to serve, but by 1914, he was already forty-two—too old for regular combat. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as an ambulance driver in France and had the terrible job of helping the wounded from the field and transporting them to makeshift hospitals. He survived the war, but it affected him deeply. His third symphony, the Pastoral, is in many ways his war requiem. Despite its name, it evokes the battlefields of northern France. He famously later stated, “it’s not really Lambkins frisking at all as most people take for granted.” The sound of artillery shells exploding nearby may have contributed to his increasing deafness late in his life.
For the French, Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) also felt called to protect his country from invasion. He wanted to join the new air force (developed in 1909) but was rejected due to a minor heart problem. Instead, he joined the Thirteenth Artillery Regiment in 1915, a potentially dangerous job that brought him under enemy fire. Fortunately, he escaped harm, though his health suffered from the terrible conditions of the battlefield.
During the war, Saint-Saëns (see the previous chapter) and others established the Ligue Nationale pour la Défense de la Musique Française, which advocated for a ban on performances of German music. Ravel, who had also taught Vaughan Williams a few years earlier, declined to join, believing that international contacts in the arts were still needed. He said:
It would be dangerous for French composers to ignore systematically the productions of their foreign colleagues, and thus form themselves into a sort of national coterie: our musical art, which is so rich at the present time, would soon degenerate, becoming isolated in banal formulas.
The Ligue was not happy with this response and, in a show of sour grapes, banned his music from its concert productions.
On the German side, composer and violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962) was a notable recruit. As a violinist he had spent much time touring, including in England. Indeed Edward Elgar (of Pomp and Circumstance fame) composed his Violin Concerto for Kreisler, who performed it in London in 1910. With the outbreak of the war, however, he was recalled to duty and sent to Germany’s eastern front. As a musician, he was keenly aware of the different types of sounds in battle and recorded his observations about them in his memoir:
My ear, accustomed to differentiate sounds of all kinds, had some time ago, while we still advanced, noted a remarkable discrepancy in the peculiar whine produced by the different shells in their rapid flight through the air as they passed over our heads, some sounding shrill, with a rising tendency, and the others rather dull, with a falling cadence.
As with the English and French, however, the hope of war glory soon faded:
Enthusiasm seemed suddenly to disappear before this terrible spectacle. Life that only a few hours before had glowed with enthusiasm and exultation, suddenly paled and sickened.
Kreisler was wounded by a bayonet while in battle with Russian troops and spent seven hours lying in a trench before he was discovered and rescued. He was later judged to be too seriously injured to return to battle and was released from further service. Eager to get back to music, he moved to New York, but encountered considerable anti-German sentiment. He lived again in Europe for a time before becoming an American citizen in 1943.
Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
Fallen in with the wrong crowd
Strauss (no relation to the waltz king, Johann Strauss) is most famous today for his 1896 piece Also sprach Zarathustra (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). You’ve heard it, or at least the first ninety seconds of it. It was used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey as the famous opening music. Oh, right, that piece! He also wrote a large quantity of other music over his long life.
The big point of controversy surrounding him was his affiliation with the Nazis—or not, and that’s the bone of the contention. The question is just how much of his activity was him trying to survive in a very dangerous time, even remaining apolitical, and how much was a sincere belief in their goals? His behavior earned him the scorn of some of his colleagues, including the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini, who declared, “To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again.”
So, what actually happened?
In November 1933, Joseph Goebbels appointed Strauss to the post of president of the Reichsmusikkammer (the Nazi State Music Bureau), without consulting him or asking his consent. Goebbels saw him as useful but also considered him a “decadent neurotic” who would eventually have to be replaced. Strauss, for his part, thought of Goebbels as a “pipsqueak” who represented “untalented, lazy mediocrity.”
Strauss kept the post, noting in his journal, “I accepted this honorary office because I hoped that I would be able to do some good and prevent worse misfortunes,” but generally he wanted to remain outside of politics. Being “German” was not important to him, as he noted in a letter to his friend Stefan Zweig: “Do you suppose Mozart was consciously ‘Aryan’ when he composed? I recognise only two types of people: those who have talent and those who have none.” Many saw his desire to remain separate from the issues of the day as naïve, then and now, and some have condemned him for not refusing the appointment. He was known to have befriended some important Nazis during his years in the post. Yes, he could have refused it to begin with, but did he really have a choice?
It seems that he was trying to use this position of influence to protect some of his Jewish friends, as
well as Alice, his Jewish daughter-in-law, and her children from persecution. He does not seem to have supported Nazi anti-Semitism; he refused to call Hitler “der Führer” and he tried to help those close to him as much as he could. It’s entirely possible that he was simply playing the game well, doing just enough to satisfy the Nazi authorities while keeping himself and his friends alive. But he ultimately seemed to alienate both the Nazis and their enemies in the process, the former at great risk to his life, the latter at risk to his reputation. It was a no-win situation.
He had to resign from the presidential post in 1935 because he refused to remove the name of his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig, from an opera program for his work Die schweigsame Frau. He had also written a private letter critical of the Nazis to Zweig, which the Gestapo intercepted. The opera was banned after only four performances.
He skillfully managed to avoid official persecution, but eventually some of his friends did suffer. In 1944, Alice and his son were arrested by the Gestapo. He was able to secure their release from prison, but they remained under house arrest until the end of the war.
Despite these dangers he made it through World War II, and was recognized by a music-loving American soldier in his house during the occupation, which spared him from harassment by American troops. However, he was investigated afterward on suspicion of Nazi collaboration. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing or complicity and was allowed to resume being a composer. Aware that his life was coming to an end and that his work was beginning to be seen as dated, he amusingly declared at rehearsals for the London Strauss Festival in 1947, “I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer!”
Erik Satie (1866–1925)
Mona Lisa’s Moustache
Satie is one of the more colorful characters from the Impressionistic movement and could also be featured in the Romantic chapter, but many of his most important works were composed after 1900; he also certainly rejected various aspects of Romanticism in his music. He exerted a great influence on both Debussy and Maurice Ravel, the main representatives of Impressionistic music. Known for his immaculate, if flamboyant, dress sense, he would frequent the local cafés in his neighborhood, soaking up Parisian atmosphere on a daily basis. No one was ever permitted in his home, however, and after his death its contents were found to be surprising, even shocking, to those who knew him.
The son of a French man and a Scottish woman, Satie was born in Normandy, and after a brief time in Paris was sent there again following his mother’s untimely death. His father eventually remarried a pianist, Eugénie Barnetche. She wanted to assist with his music training, but he didn’t like her and resisted. She enrolled him in the Paris Conservatoire in 1879 but he made a poor impression, described by his first piano teacher, Émile Descombes, as the “laziest student in the Conservatoire” and by his intermediate piano teacher, Georges Mathias, as “worthless.” He hated his time there and only stuck with it to avoid lengthy military service. In the end he was supposed to serve for one year, but he avoided that as well; he was invalided after deliberately infecting himself with bronchitis to get out of service in 1887.
Satie returned to focusing on composition and moved to Montmartre in Paris. For the last decade of the nineteenth century he was involved with the Rosicrucian Order, a self-styled secret society that most likely originated in the early seventeenth century. He was fascinated with the medieval, and the austere sounds of Gregorian chant moved him, influencing a good number of his works. Debussy referred to him as “a gentle medieval musician lost in this century.” This quieter and more minimal sound went against the Wagnerian bombast that was the rage at the time. Satie was clearly an outsider.
He also indulged in jokes. His piece Vexations, for example, while only one page long, has written instructions on the score that it is to be repeated 840 times, a task which would make the piece twenty hours long. Critics and musicians dismissed it as a joke, though the experimental composer John Cage actually organized and oversaw a complete performance of it!
Other pieces included wonderfully silly titles, such as Five Grins or Mona Lisa’s Moustache, Veritable Flabby Preludes (for a Dog), Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear, and Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Boob Made of Wood. He would scribble musical directions on some pieces—not the usual indicators, such as andante or allegro, but rather such whimsical instructions as “to be jealous of one’s playmate who has a big head.” The writer Jean Cocteau explained that Satie employed these ridiculous titles as a way of shielding himself from those “obsessed with the sublime,” in other words, the snobby world of high-art critics and society that had so often disdained him. Satie collaborated with Cocteau on the 1917 avant-garde ballet Parade that also included costumes designed by Picasso—what a combination!
One of his writings, A Day in the Life of a Musician, outlines a mock daily routine through a number of whimsical entries. He notes that he is inspired between 10:23 and 11:47 a.m. precisely, takes lunch from 12:11 to 12:14, and feels more inspiration from 3:12 to 4:07 p.m. Dinner takes place between 7:16 and 7:20 p.m., and he only eats white foods: eggs, sugar, bones, fat, salt, coconut, rice, and certain kinds of fish, among other dishes. He sleeps with one eye open and has his temperature taken once an hour. He smokes on the advice of his doctor, for if he did not, someone else would do it for him.
While living and performing in Montmartre, Satie encountered Debussy, who was deeply impressed with and influenced by his works, though this would not be recognized until much later. Indeed, Ravel and Debussy grew famous while Satie long lived in obscurity, something that frustrated him greatly. Later, as he finally gained some acclaim, his relationship with Debussy became a bit strained.
At the end of 1898 he moved to the Paris suburb of Arcueil and remained there for the rest of his life. Amazingly, no outsider was to visit or even set foot in his flat there until after his death.
Throughout these years Satie, like so many others, indulged in heavy drinking, particularly absinthe. He died on July 1, 1925, of cirrhosis. After his death, his friends finally were able to enter his apartment, where they had never gone during his lifetime. What they found there was a bizarre scene. A complete mess confronted them, including many compositions previously unknown or thought to have been lost (often in piles behind his piano or even stuffed into the pockets of his coats), litter and rubbish strewn about (including some human excrement in one corner), and a general scene of chaos that was extreme, even for a rebellious alcoholic artist. Somehow he would leave this squalor behind every day—dressed immaculately in his velvet suits—and visit the cafés and bars of the neighborhood, dreaming up his humor-laden works and perhaps thumbing his nose at the artistic establishment, all while sipping fancy French coffee or his beloved absinthe.
Louis Vierne (1870–1937)
Organ failure
Vierne was born with a congenital cataract condition, leaving him nearly blind. Though his sight was partially restored after an operation when he was six years old, he was never able to see well. Regardless, he had a tremendous interest in music and developed considerable skill on keyboard instruments, most notably the organ. He was able to study at the Paris Conservatoire and eventually ended up as the principal organist at the famed Notre Dame Cathedral, a position he held from 1900 until his death. However, owing to political reasons and nepotism he was passed over more than once for the post of professor of organ at the Conservatoire, causing him much frustration. The loss of his brother and one son in World War I, a second son to tuberculosis, and a divorce from his wife left him seriously depressed and financially unstable, but he pressed on and won the admiration and backing of various wealthy patrons. His compositions for organ and other instruments are important; his organ music is a standard part of the repertoire.
Despite his hardships, his life ended exactly as he would have wanted. While giving his 1,750th organ recital at Notre Dame on June 2, 1937, he suffered a heart attack (he was a heavy smoker and took medi
cations) just as he finished the main concert and was preparing an improvisation. He fell forward and then off the bench, his foot hitting the E note of the pedal. He had mentioned several times in the past that he wanted to die at this very organ and, amazingly, he got his wish.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
Triskaidekaphobia
Schoenberg, loved or hated, is hugely important in the history of “modern” classical music, having created the twelve-tone system of atonal composition that seems like mathematical musical heaven to some and mathematical noise to others. He was an important music theorist and taught composition. Unlike Strauss, he wisely left Germany with the rise of the Nazis and ended up living in Los Angeles.
The reason for including him in this book is that he had a morbid, obsessive dread of the number thirteen throughout his whole life. This phobia is explored in more detail in the chapter on music superstitions in Part II.
Percy Grainger (1882–1961)
Where there’s a whip, there’s a way
Born in Melbourne, Grainger was a native of Australia but spent considerable time in Europe and later settled in America. As composers go, he was quite the innovator, and like several of his contemporaries, he was keenly interested in collecting and preserving English folk songs. Living in London from 1901 to 1914, Grainger hiked around Britain collecting such songs and was also the first to make wax cylinder recordings of many of them, ensuring greater accuracy in preserving them. This was a practice that the musical establishment was not completely convinced was necessary, but it marks him as an early ethnomusicologist. He arranged many of these tunes in settings for solo piano.
