There is not true affliction without social degradation or the fear of it in some form.
Simone Weil
The Sonata in A minor, D. 784 (1823), and the Sonata in B flat major, D. 960 (1828), are the first and last of Schubert’s mature works in this form. The former was almost certainly written at the time that Schubert first learned of the seriousness of his illness. The chilling desolation of its first movement’s first subject seems to be a direct response to that tragic news, the ‘strong–weak’ appoggiatura in bar 2 sighing wearily or angrily throughout the entire movement in both melody and accompaniment. However, as in so much of Schubert’s work, it is the moments of major tonality that seem the saddest. Perhaps only Mozart equals Schubert in this ability to transform the sunshine of a major key into a mood of heartbreak and pain.
The second movement is strangely unsettling for three reasons: because of the almost enforced normality of its theme after the bittersweet bleakness of the first movement; because this theme is doubled in the tenor voice, a claustrophobic companion seeming to drag it down; and because of the constant, murmuring interjections (ppp) between the theme’s statements. The helter-skelter finale introduces a note of panic, as triplets trip over themselves in their scurrying counterpoint. Here, as in the first movement, the glorious second subject, in the major, seems unsure whether to laugh or cry, calling to mind Rückert’s poem ‘Lachen und Weinen’, which Schubert set the same year.
Beauty captivates the flesh, seeking permission to pass directly to the soul. Beauty is a fruit which we contemplate without trying to grasp it.
Simone Weil
The opening movement of the Sonata in B flat major goes beyond analysis. It is one of those occasions when the pen has to be set down on the desk, the body rested against the back of a chair, and a listener’s whole being surrendered to enter another sphere. Here there is neither the superficial gloss of refinement nor the mawkish self-consciousness of profundity; rather Schubert’s miraculous ability to bare his soul without a trace of narcissism – a combined result of his humility and universality, and an exquisite unawareness of both.
Art is waiting: inspiration is waiting. Humility is a particular relation of the soul to time. It is an acceptance of waiting.
Simone Weil
This movement’s nine first-time bars (117–25) have been the subject of a certain controversy for two reasons: first, because of their strange, dislocated character; and second, because they force the pianist to repeat the movement’s exposition. Hence they have often been omitted. I feel that they are important, not only because the same genius who wrote the rest of the work also wrote these bars, but also because their radical nature should alert us to a hidden message beyond the obvious. This weird, stuttering, hesitating passage has an important psychological significance in the structure of the movement: it emphasises the fact that even in the most lyrical moments there lies disquiet; it contains the only example of the shuddering bass trill played ff – a terrifying glance of ‘recognition’; it is a premonition of drama to come in the development section, and it enables both the return of the opening bars and the C sharp minor second-time bar to have a greater, magical effect. The other objection – that repeats for Schubert were a convention he was unable to shake off, and that to hear the exposition once is enough – doesn’t convince me. These nine bars are as far from convention as is possible, and a repeat is never a duplicate. It is ultimately a matter of patience – with the music, with oneself – of allowing something time to unfold and to grow.
Affliction is by its nature ‘lost for words’. The afflicted silently implore to be given the words to express themselves.
Simone Weil
With the second movement a new dimension of isolation and alienation seems to be introduced, which is underlined by a contrast and separation of texture. The right hand’s sorrowing song of lament seems in another world from the left hand’s detached, almost oblivious accompaniment, a shadow of dance making the poignant melody even more heart-rending. The contrast here is not opposition but incomprehension. Again the paradox of Schubert’s tonality: the central section, in sunny A major, should be consoling, but there is no music more anxious or troubled, a desperate attempt to remain cheerful amid overwhelming sorrow.
The third movement’s marking con delicatezza seems to refer more to a fragility of emotion than just a delicacy of touch; and the finale’s extraordinary subtlety of major/minor nuance, with its alternating use of playful and tender articulation, displays Schubert’s ability to prise open the most resolutely locked human feelings, and to touch the most hidden nerves.
* * *
Simone Weil (1909–1943). ‘A woman of genius’ (T. S. Eliot). ‘The only great spirit of our times’ (Albert Camus). Apart from wearing unprepossessing spectacles and dying tragically young in her early thirties, Weil had little obviously in common with Schubert: she was French, Jewish, an intellectual, a political activist, and a social critic. But her writings on affliction, attention and beauty, and her stand as an ‘outsider’ seem to me to give her a hidden connection with Schubert across the century and beyond the confines of their different artistic disciplines.
Poetry: impossible pain and joy … A joy which through its unmixed purity hurts, a pain which through its unmixed purity brings peace.
Simone Weil
The shifting sandals of York Bowen: a note for a CD
As the twentieth century, which tended to live for tomorrow, is now an unquestionable yesterday, its fiercest modernism seeming almost old-fashioned, the three-day shadow of its angry young men a whiter shade of grey, it is time to re-examine a figure such as York Bowen. He is one of those artists who begin writing in the style of their time, and, feeling comfortable and inspired in that style, are reluctant to change. If you can mine a piece of ground for only a short time you will never get very deep. Bowen was a composer who loved the ground he dug, and found a lifetime of contentment in sifting through its contents.
I first came across his name as the Associated Board editor of the Mozart piano sonatas, and I also had a copy of his Twelve Studies op. 46, which had been given to me along with the other musty contents of a deceased lady’s piano bench. Years later, I heard a wonderful performance by Philip Fowke of the Second Suite op. 30 on the radio. The composer’s name lodged in my memory. Then I read the composer and critic Sorabji’s chapter on Bowen in his book Mi contra Fa and came across the following description of the 24 Preludes op. 102:
In this work [is] the finest English piano music written in our time … With York Bowen we are in the great tradition of piano writing, the tradition to which, for all their individual and idiosyncratic differences, men such as Ravel, Rachmaninov and Medtner belong. York Bowen is master of every kind of piano writing, which, great artist that he is, he uses not to the ends of trumpery and empty virtuoso affichage, but to the purposes of the powerful brilliant glowing and rich expression of a very individual beautiful and interesting musical thought.
Inexhaustible pianistic invention, endlessly fascinating and imaginative harmonic subtlety and raffinement, a musical substance elevated and distinguished, a perfection and finely poised judgement, combined to produce an aesthetic experience as rare and delightful as it was exciting … York Bowen is, at the present time, the one English composer whose work can justly be said to be that of a great Master of the instrument, as Rachmaninov was or as Medtner is.
This audaciously enthusiastic opinion certainly piqued my interest in this neglected Englishman, and I resolved to explore all the music of his I could find.
I immediately discovered in Bowen a pianistic craftsman of the highest quality – piano writing so elegant and refined that it seemed to slip around the hand like an old lambskin glove, the curling counterpoint almost nestling between the fingers rather than lying under the hand. Here was a contrapuntal tailor whose voice leading, always met gracefully and inconspicuously at the seams.
His harmonic language was endlessly inventive t
oo; rich enough for the sweetest tooth, but with enough subtlety to satisfy the more sophisticated palate. A particular characteristic of Bowen’s music is a love (in the less good pieces, perhaps an obsession) for a melodic idea repeated with changing harmony – like ‘shifting sandals’ that walk the same path but by a different route. A melody will appear and, like a man trying on a handful of ties, Bowen lays many different fingers of harmonic colour over the melody’s crisp, white cotton.
Edwin Yorke Bowen (the ‘Edwin’ and the ‘e’ of Yorke were later dropped) was born on 22 February 1884 in Crouch Hill, London. His mother was a musician and his father a founder partner in Bowen & McKechnie, whisky distillers. After early studies at the Blackheath Conservatoire with Alfred Izard, in 1898 the boy won the Erard Scholarship of the Royal Academy, where he became a student of the famous pedagogue Tobias Matthay (whose other students included Myra Hess, Moura Lympany and Eileen Joyce). He won a string of prizes and scholarships during his time there in both piano and composition and, in 1905, at the age of twenty-one, he completed his studies. Prior to this, there had already been many London performances of his works, including his First Symphony, and a symphonic tone poem The Lament of Tasso, both given at the Queen’s Hall, the latter in a Promenade Concert conducted by Henry Wood. During the next ten years he appeared all over Britain and in Germany playing his own compositions as recitalist, and with such partners as Fritz Kreisler, Lionel Tertis, Joseph Szigeti, Hans Richter and Landon Ronald. Three piano concertos and two symphonies were performed in this period, all with the finest orchestras at the large London halls, and in 1908 Tertis premiered his Viola Concerto at a Philharmonic Society concert conducted by Landon Ronald. It was probably at this time that Saint-Saëns described Bowen as ‘the most remarkable of the young British composers’.
Although the performances continued after the First World War (he was in the Scots Guards and invalided home from France in 1916) the momentum had been lost and, from his early successes, it is hard to explain fully Bowen’s eventual slide into obscurity. Changing fashions, a splintered, post-war world and the composer’s modest nature could all have played a part in Bowen’s relegation to the sidelines of musical life. The strangely ‘English’ suspicion of the home-grown professional musician and the whiff of vulgarity that the post-Victorians found in a stiff collar moistened by the sweat of enthusiasm could also have contributed to the neglect. He continued writing music that increased in inspiration and craft in the post-war years, and artists such as Beatrice Harrison, Aubrey and Dennis Brain, Leon Goossens, and Carl Dolmetsch performed his works, but teaching (fifty years at his alma mater, the Royal Academy of Music) and examining (for the Associated Board) took up most of his time. Although he played quite frequently (most notably some fairly regular Wigmore Hall recitals) and a number of his works were included in the Proms (his Second and Fourth Piano Concertos with Adrian Boult conducting), the years passed and the invitations to compose or perform became less and less frequent.
Sorabji, Clinton Gray-Fisk and Jonathan Frank were three prominent critics who constantly championed his cause in these years, puzzling in print why he was so inexplicably neglected. By the time of his death on 23 November 1961 he was a name from the past, and an obituary in The Times, under the heading, ‘Mr York Bowen, Composer of Romantic Lyricism’, was inaccurate and condescending. In reply, Jonathan Frank wrote an article for Musical Opinion on Bowen, and made this observation: ‘The greatest music of York Bowen is written with a conviction, mastery, and individuality that make considerations of ‘modern’ or ‘old-fashioned’ completely immaterial.’
The 24 Preludes op. 102 in all the major and minor keys, referred to with such ecstatic praise by Sorabji, quoted above, were written in 1938 and published in 1950 with a dedication to that admiring critic. They follow the key scheme used by Bach in Das wohltemperierte Klavier and encompass a vast range of moods: from the first in C major, a soaringly romantic piece full of ardour, to the mysterious humour of the E minor will-o’-the-wisp; from the dramatic intensity of the Scriabinesque G sharp minor, an astonishing tour de force of virtuosity, to the tenderly lilting lyricism of the D minor; and from the whiplash of the furioso B flat minor to its musing major counterpart.
The Ballade no. 2 in A minor op. 87 is one of the more ‘English-sounding’ works on the record. The siciliano rhythm of the opening theme, with its gently haunting chromaticism, recurs throughout this sonata-form piece. Although the title is an obvious tribute to Chopin, in Bowen’s work the climax occurs in the centre of the piece, and the coda explores the earlier material as if in a dream, winding down in a trance of improvisation.
The Sonata in F minor op. 72 is one of Bowen’s finest works (he wrote six piano sonatas of which this is the fifth) and it was written in 1923. The material is inspired and memorable, and its tightly argued development dismisses any suspicion that Bowen is merely a lightweight miniaturist. Of particular note is the opening triadic fanfare motive, a most arresting flourish, which is transformed into the lyrical second subject of the first movement (I’m not aware of a similar device in any other composer – introduction becomes second theme). This motive returns at the end of the third movement, firstly as a misty memory, and then, on the last page, as a triumphant paean before the final tumultuous octave passage. And, in case we miss it, the very last bar of the piece reproduces again, in four ferocious F minor chords, the rhythm of this fanfare.
The Berceuse op. 83 was published in 1928 and its title again comes from Chopin. Although it is of encore length, it seems to inhabit an unusually private world: reflective, restrained and intimate. Its harmonic world is rich and chromatic, but nevertheless cool and distant. It is dedicated to Bowen’s only son, Philip.
The Moto Perpetuo (Suite Mignonne op. 39), from 1915, is very much the encore piece, a vivaciously virtuosic note-spinner, reminding us of so many salon pieces from the period. Bowen wrote five ‘Suites’, collections of three to seven small pieces of a generally light mood.
The Toccata op. 155 was written in 1957 when the composer was seventy-three years old. It is truly astonishing that a man of his age could conceive a work of such manic energy and brilliance, let alone play it, as he did at the Wigmore Hall in 1958. Although his subsequent recording of it (on Lyrita in 1960) sounds rather laboured and tired, the piece itself has a vision and a dazzling display of pyrotechnics that is truly invigorating and an eloquent witness to the composer’s undaunted perseverance in the face of discouragement and lack of recognition. In recent years it has become a favourite student showpiece and I was told that, at one point, six Juilliard students were learning it.
The Romance no. 1 op. 35 and the Romance no. 2 op. 45 were written in 1913 and 1917 respectively, and were both dedicated to his wife, the singer Sylvia Dalton. They are in an ABA form, and are full of the characteristic Bowen harmonic puns and twists supporting the loveliest melodies. They both shine with a most touching sentiment and warmth, the first exploring a more level plain, the second reaching a passionate central climax reminiscent of Tristan.
Mompou and the music of evaporation: a note for a CD
yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say
Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.
John Henry Newman: The Dream of Gerontius
Hush!
if we
make but a sound
time
will begin again
Paul Claudel: Cent phrases pour éventails
The music of Federico Mompou is the music of evaporation. The printed page seems to have faded, as if the bar lines, time signatures, key signatures, and even the notes themselves have disappeared over a timeless number of years. There is no development of material, little counterpoint, no drama nor climaxes to speak of; and this simplicity of expression – elusive, evasive and shy – is strangely disarming. There is nowhere for the sophisticate to hide with Mompou. We are in a glasshouse, and the resulting transparency is unnerving, for it creates
a reflection in which our face and soul can be seen.
When asked once how to play his music, the composer replied, ‘It’s all so free.’ Indeed it is, but not just free from rhythmic constraints and structural rules; it is free from affectation, posing, fashions and fads, and has the ecstatic liberty of childhood. ‘Unless you become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 18:3); and without a spirit of childhood in the listener Mompou’s ‘kingdom’ is closed and some of his music can seem almost infantile. Such is the innocence of Mompou’s world that Wilfrid Mellers (in his book on the composer, Le Jardin retrouvé) has compared it to a return to Paradise before the Fall. The composer himself called his style ‘primitivista’, referring to its lack of bar lines and key signatures, yet it entirely lacks the pulsating passion we tend to associate with the label ‘primitive’ – the leering masks, the gyrating dances and indeed the mesmeric music of primeval cultures. Where these have tended to see life beginning after some initiation ceremony – a coming of age – in Mompou we see rather a wisdom in childhood itself that should be cherished and protected. The composer’s muse begins and ends with innocence as a search for air beyond the smoke of experience.
There are numerous influences discernible in Mompou’s music – Chopin, Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin, plainsong, folk music and jazz (its harmonies rather than its rhythms) – and he was accepted by his contemporaries in Paris, Les Six, as a sort of honorary member (making an unofficial baker’s half-dozen). But his principal and fundamental stylistic ancestor, along with a whole generation of French composers, was the eccentric iconoclast Erik Satie. However, in spite of Mompou’s enormous debt to Satie in so many formal and musical ways, the two composers are poles apart in their personalities and spiritual vision. Where Satie used naïveté or childishness to mock the pretensions and pomposity of adulthood, Mompou rather took the insights of maturity to rediscover the magic of childhood. Satie’s smile has a knowing look, his eyes narrowing into cynicism; Mompou’s eyes are wide open, sparkling like a child’s, and his smile has all the surprise and enthralment of Creation itself.
Rough Ideas Page 20
