Mahler: Embracing the World

Cowbells in a symphony! Brahms would have turned in his grave to hear Gustav Mahler’s 6^th symphony: no sound was inappropriate, no moment too personal for a Mahler symphony.

Despite being one of the leading orchestral conductors of his day (driven, even dicatatorial), Mahler’s time as a composer really came 50 years after his death, yet he was conscious of his own place as a symphonist and very aware of the spiritual message of his works....in an almost fairy-tale meeting with Sibelius (the other great symphonist of the early 20^th century but completely unlike,  in his laconic terseness), Mahler said,  “The symphony is  like the world, it must embrace everything.” No wonder then that in a work as serious as the 6^th symphony, he can depict the joys of a family vacation in the countryside, with actual cow bells jangling in the background. 

 Mahler was never afraid of exposing his innermost thoughts to his putative audience: if the 5^th symphony’s Adagietto is a passionate love-scene for his wife Alma, his 9^th symphony is an anguished cry for her love and understanding (Alma had numerous affairs and became alienated from him, though they did not actually separate). While another Viennese genius of Jewish origin was telling the world the meanings of its dreams and nightmares, Mahler was actually describing and analysing his own through his works (he did in fact attend psycholoanalysis sessions with Sigmund Freud).

Mahler’s angst was not of course, all about love and longing....his 5^th symphony and many other works have a Funeral March theme, which has been explained as being borne out of his deep, lasting grief at the death of an younger brother in childhood. Most tragic of all are his “Kindertotenlieder” (Songs on the Deaths of Children) and the finale of his 6^th (Tragic) symphony...the searing tragedy of his own elder daughter’s death is, in a bizarre fashion, foreshadowed and commemorated in these works (which were actually written in earlier, happier times!)

Even his heart ailment and the resulting cardiac neurosis find a place in his symphonies, the hushed, subdued , faltering beat of the opening movement of the 9^th symphony literally make us feel his pulse.

Does that make him a morbid or depressing composer to listen to? His obsession with death and resurrection was about defying and transcending, rather than bowing to the inevitable. What can be more exhilarating than the ending of his 2nd ("Resurrection") symphony?

Of course, Mahler’s compositional methods were not merely about expressing angst: his symphonies may be huge and intimidating at first acquaintance (most are 2 hours long!), but they are exquisitely constructed, his sense of orchestral colour, his intimate knowledge of just what sort of orchestral effect really “works” are all reasons for his popularity. 

He was also a  marvellous composer for the voice, and many of his works are really Lieder (German Romantic songs) accompanied by a vast symphony orchestra: “ The Songs of a Wayfarer”, “The Song of the Earth” and parts of the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 8^th symphonies (all of which have prominent roles for vocalists). Even his purely orchestral symphonies, like his 1^st (Titan) carry the themes of his songs (in this case, from “The Songs of a Wayfarer”).

One of the characteristic aspects of Mahler’s music, (and of great influence on the works of his great successors, Schoenberg, Berg and Shostakovich),  is his use of musical quotation: phrases and themes of many of his works are connected, like a diary of his emotional life...to the listener familiar with his works, these episodes are magically revealing.Of course, not all the quotations are from his own music...for me, his work as a conductor of both symphony and opera (he also prepared conducting editions of many works, like the symphonies of Beethoven and Schuman) is reflected by the fleeting aural “snapshots” and transformations of phrases and moods from composers as diverse as Verdi,Wagner and Tchaikovsky!

In the end, Mahler was able to embrace the world through his symphonies, as well as to express the everyday and exceptional joys and sorrows of living in that world; in his soundworld, these are heightened by his ability to juxtapose the happy and the sad, the sublime and the grotesque. Even if his life sometimes reads like  a tragedy (his works, after all, were hardly performed in his lifetime, while his beloved Alma was lost to him for much of their marriage), he did lead a full, productive life and that is why his symphonies, far from being anaemic miserable dirges, are so rich and fresh to our ears even today.

The Rock of Gibraltar

I can remember the time I first started to listen to Mahler in earnest (in my teens) ; Shostakovich came later on, when I was just into adulthood. But I can’t remember a time when I didn’t listen to or love Brahms...he has been there forever, my rock of Gibraltar!

Brahms (1833-1897) may be the very representation of classical music, along with Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, but his life, his music and the world’s opinion of him are all full of contradictions.

He came from stolid German stock, the city of Hamburg to be precise and yet, spent much of his maturity in Vienna, the veritable centre of European culture. His upbringing was modest and his teens were spent accompanying a violinist friend on the piano in shady bars on the waterfront, yet in his old age, he was a living legend, mourned by thousands when he died.

He had to struggle mightily to establish himself, first as a performer, then as a composer, literally dragging himself up by the bootstraps, expanding his horizons in music and literature by sheer application and hard work. Yet he was also blessed to have the committed help and support of his seniors: first, his teacher Eduard Marxsen, who literally convinced his parents to allow the young Johannes to devote his life to music and then of course, Robert Schumann (1810-1856), great composer and influential music critic, who announced his arrival to the musical world with a series of glowing articles in 1852.

Brahms was sometimes called a misogynist and indeed never married (though he came close on two occasions); yet the most important influence on his life was a woman, Schumann’s wife Clara, to whom he was devoted till her death, a year before his own. In fact it was his tragedy that the love of his life was already married to another man, and his mentor to boot; what made it all the more difficult were the circumstances of Schumann’s last years, locked away in an asylum after a suicide attempt. Brahms was obviously torn between the two, yet managed to do right by both the Schumanns: he would visit his mentor regularly, while to Clara, he was a constant support (even if he could not be her  lover)... Schumann’s physicians had insisted that he not see Clara and so it fell to Johannes to tell her of his visits to her husband, in his letters, which he did with incredible sensitivity and tenderness for them both.

Tenderness and Brahms are not always words that go together. As a man he was known to be gruff and straightforwardly rude, while as a composer, his typical “big” symphonies and concertos would all end with 3 emphatic thumps, letting you know fair and square that it was over. Yet he could be playful and delicate, not least in the famous “Cradle Song” written for the infant son of his childhood sweeheart.

Most contradictory of all is the position of Brahms in the musical world. Early on in his life, he set himself up and was, in turn, set up by his followers as the representative of the conservative musical establishment, the heir of Beethoven, the writer of “absolute” music, as opposed to the programmatic spectacles of Liszt and Wagner. Yet, composers of later years, as extreme iconoclasts as the serialist composer Schoenberg would look to Brahms as a major inspiration, particularly in his fascinating ability to write variations on a theme. Writing variations for Brahms was both an expression of his musical scholarship and his passion: not mere note-spinning, but bases for entire works (eg the 4^th symphony).

As a devoted listener, I find it odd to think of Brahms as writer of “absolute” / abstract music: his early works are full of passion and rebellion. The 1^st piano concerto, which began life as a symphony around the traumatic time when he was living with the Schumanns, is a conflicted young artist's defiant journey from adversity into light, the very epitome of “programme” music. The 1st symphony is another epic struggle—it was a struggle not just spiritually but physically, by the way, as he was all of 40 when he could finally let it loose upon the world after 17 years of struggling to break free from Beethoven’s legacy. Despite the struggle, it was a success, though it received a somewhat backhanded compliment along the way, of being “Beethoven’s Tenth”—both because of its significance and because the theme of its Finale is so reminiscent of Beethoven’s Ninth!

Even the “late” Brahms is very emotional music for me—the autumnal glow of his late Intermezzos for piano hides (but not completely) a great melancholy; his Clarinet Quintet is heartbreakingly sad, even if it is strikingly beautiful. Life had been a struggle for him, till the end and despite his many close and devoted friends, perhaps old age was a particularly lonely time for this prickly soul.

Much as we may admire his muscular stoicism, I wish we could also revel in the emotional connect that his works have with us; his music is the very essence of what “classical” music should be, serious, noble, perfect in form, but I for one, also celebrate his ability to sublimate the pain and disappointments of life into his immortal masterpieces.

Moscow to Mysore: The Story of Nikolai Medtner

Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) was the third of a trio of Moscow Conservatory-trained composer-pianists of Late Romantic music.

The most celebrated was ,of course, Medtner’s good friend Sergei Rachmaninov and the second was Alexander Scriabin. While Rachmaninov’s heady mixture of swooning melodies have never stopped sweeping us off our feet, his melancholy, somewhat morbid personality, his tortured love for his Fatherland (he fled from Russia at the onset of the Revolution never to return, though his music was always popular in the USSR), his battle with depression—all make him a fascinating personality even today. Scriabin was the crazy one, his grandiose scheme to convert music into light, his view of himself as the Chosen One—you can love or hate his intensely passionate persona and oeuvre.

Medtner presents more of a dilemma. He was also an exile (to the UK), but there is no record of any psychological/ spiritual problem on par with that of his great contemporaries. He was an accomplished composer when he arrived in the UK, but, somewhat like Rachmaninov in his exile in the US, the compostions somehow dried up, away from his homeland; he became almost purely a performer and teacher.

 The Muscovite found the strangest of passionate patrons though: the Maharajah of Mysore, Prince Jayachamaraja Wodeyar Bahadur became a fan and benefactor, establishing the Medtner Society in London in 1949. It brought some fame and fortune at last to the neglected struggling composer, who was able to perform and record many of his important works ; no wonder then, that he dedicated his 3^rd piano concerto to his patron, a strangely quaint throwback to the age of Mozart and Haydn.

Though Medtner wrote much solo music for the piano, his most important works are his 3 piano concertos. These came into the limelight after long, in the 1990s, thanks to a fabulous award-winning recording by Nikolai Demidenko, yet another émigré Russian pianist! Medtner’s neglect earlier on, is understandable: after all, his works are few and far between; although he could write emotional tunes, his music sounds somewhat pallid and underpowered, almost watery beside that of Rachmaninov. But it is undoubtedly interesting and individualistic, especially in the understated narrative element: much of his work is based on and around old Russian folktales and legends. Its ephemerality, the lack of that really big emotional message, gives it a somewhat mercurial  character, like English weather, not dramatic but changeable!

Either way, the  journey of Medtner’s music has been fascinating, taking in Moscow and London and even Mysore along the way...in a sense, Demidenko’s famous performances have brought him home to Russia at last...

Chopin: The (Non)Salon Composer

Hear the opening of Chopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise—is this music in keeping with the popular notion of Chopin (1810-1849)as the delicate consumptive composer-performer of tinkly little salon pieces?

What were salons by the way? These were small domestic gatherings of the rich and famous, the “beautiful people” at some stately home where music and poetry were performed and discussed; nothing wrong in that by the way, except that such occasions were pitifully small-scale and exclusive.

Of course Chopin was a darling of such groups and of course he wrote some of the most delicate music of all time for the piano (for many pianists, Chopin IS the piano!). Lion of the keyboard he was not, a la Liszt, the other great pianist-composer of the day: reminiscence tells us that Liszt had much the bigger sound and brassier personality, whereas Chopin was indeed, the quieter one. It is also true that he suffered from consumption (tuberculosis) for most of his adult life and his frail health would have failed him even earlier, had it not been for his dominating innamorata, George Sand (the French authoress).

But Chopin was not merely the delicate Francophile exile in Paris that he was perceived to be in the 19^th century: he was a Polish patriot, able to write “big” music for piano and orchestra, music that is as virile as it is tender. His music is full of his love and longing for his motherland...the Polonaises and Mazurkas are after all, magically transfigured Polish dance music, while in works like the “Revolutionary” Etude, he was asserting his anger and defiance at the failed Polish uprising against the occupying Russians.

While his most typical works are his intimate, ephemeral Nocturnes and Waltzes, he could also write in larger forms for the solo piano: his sonatas (especially the 2^nd “Funeral March” Sonata), Ballades and Scherzos are grand creations, containing a wealth of detail. 

Chopin could and did write, for instruments other than the piano..his cello works are particularly entrancing, while I love his 2 piano concertos.... for long dismissed as episodic and  lacking in understanding of the orchestra, these are miracles of balance, perhaps the most poetic of all the great Romantic piano concertos.

It is time to stop taking poor Fryderyk Franciszek for granted and explore the depth and complexity of his music.

Discovering, completing & realizing the masterpieces

What does one do with an unfinished utterance? Do you cobble together a complete version or leave it be?

Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony is the archetype of the unfinished, but is unique in the sheer perfection of its two completed movements. One doubts whether Schubert or any other man, would have done better ...amidst the lyrical stoicism of his typical works, it is a majestically eloquent , searingly passionate statement.

The romantic notion of the work is that the composer’s early death prevented him from completing it: this is not absolutely true as it was written in 1822, some years before Schubert’s death (in 1828) and was succeeded by his other great symphony, the “Great” C major symphony (1826). On the other hand, if you look at someone like Brahms, who took as long as 17 years to complete his 1^st symphony, a composer can be allowed any amount of time to get things right! Beethoven too, would carry around themes for years before the finished product.

Of course, some works are left unfinished because the composer simply lost interest or inspiration or suffered some such jolt to his creative drive. Is it right to pluck these fragments from obscurity? To mention Brahms again, the great German composer was notoriously cagey about his attempted works, regularly destroying them, rather than allow the world at large to envision his creative struggles.In the case of the older composers, fragments and half-completed works abound: Mozart, Haydn, Schubert...not all of these were meant to reach the public.

Mind you, sometimes, it just doesn’t feel right to let a composer be the judge of his own works, sometimes his standards are set too high! Sibelius, for example, wrote 7 symphonies but one of the tantalising tales about him, is that he also wrote an 8^th, which disappointed him so much that it was consigned to the trash can.

There genuinely are, however, works which were left unfinished at a composer’s death: the finest (Mozart’s Requiem, Mahler’s 10^th symphony) are just so magnificent that they cry out for an audience, even for a completion.

Completion is what “realising” classical music is about...over the years, musicologists and musicians have strived to complete the incomplete works they were passionate about, either composing small portions by themselves (as did Mozart’s student Sussmayr in completing the Requiem), or using earlier material.

Schubert’s Unfinished used to be performed with the Finale of his 4^th symphony even in the 19^th century, while a later performing version was created using materials from his sketches for the later movements—none of this has really made audiences happy and conductors today leave well alone, only playing the 2 movements that Schubert himself wrote.

On the other hand, Deryck Cooke’s performing version of Mahler’s 10^th symphony (only the 1^st movement was complete when he died) is regularly performed and recorded, because, being a musicologist, Cooke was really able to get under Mahler’s skin.

Returning to Sibelius and his trash can, though one may wring one’s hands at the tale, sometimes masterpieces have actually been salvaged from similar oblivion. The two greatest stories of discovery in music were Mendelssohn’s unearthing of Bach’s St Matthew Passion from an obscure attic in Leipzig and Schumann’s discovery of Schubert’s “Great” C major symphony in a cupboard at the composer’s brother’s home in Vienna.

Just as one has to feel thankful that Max Brod disobeyed his friend Franz Kafka’s earnest request to destroy all his writings, so one has to breathe a sigh of relief that these immortal masterpieces could reach us despite the odds!

Funeral Music

Does funeral music celebrate death or life before and beyond death? Why have composers reserved some of their grandest thoughts for music related with death and why do we listen, by choice, to music that is (at least partially) filled with morbid thoughts?

Mozart’s Requiem Mass K 626, his last (incomplete) work, was supposedly commissioned by a mysterious stranger and according to the film “Amadeus” is filled with thoughts of his own impending mortality. How likely is it that a young man of 35 (as he was when he died) would foretell his own death? Even if you do ignore the romanticised myth behind the writing of it, the Requiem is the definitive music for the dead. Of course, an earlier work, less well-known but more typical of Mozart the man, is the Masonic Funeral Music, which ends on a long rising note played by woodwinds, like the departed soul rising heavenwards.

The 19^th century came to see other grand Requiems: Berlioz’s Grand Messe de Morte, Verdi’s Requiem and Faure’s Requiem. Despite the religious context of the work, the composers did not shy away from writing on an almost symphonic scale (Berlioz), nor from using the voices in an operatic style (Verdi). The grandest and noblest of them is Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, which is unique in having German, rather than Latin words.

Funeral music or funereal music did not necessarily have to be religious music though: Beethoven in the FuneralMarch from his Eroica (3^rd) symphony or Chopin in the Funeral March from his 2^nd piano sonata, were not writing for a religious ceremony, nor even about a particular person, but rather expounding their thoughts on death as a concept.

Writing about death could not leave the composer unaffected mentally though; but as Gustav Mahler found after writing his “Songs on the Death of Children” (Kindertotenlieder), it could have tragic consequences: his own eldest daughter passed away soon after. Even though this was just a very sad coincidence, the work is particularly haunting and affecting.

Writing about death was not just a philosophical exercise: sometimes, the composer really would use it to express his own anguish and fear of mortality: Shostakovich’s 14thsymphony is almost a Symphony for the Dead, a terrifying nightmare-world. Hearing it, one can only try to console oneself with the immortal words of John Donne:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Slava & the Greatest Cello Concertos

The cello has always been an important orchestral instrument, but this “big mournful violin” had to wait till the 20^th century for most of the great concertos written for it. Of course arguably the two finest cello concerti, the ones by Schumann and Dvorak, had already been written by then, but in many ways, it was one man, the insanely gifted, driven Mstislav Rostropovich(1927-2007), who made it all happen.

When the young “Slava”, as he was called, premiered the senior Soviet composer Nikolai Miaskovsky’s Cello Sonata no 2 in the 1940s, his talent and his ability to reveal the potentialities of the cello, really hit Miaskovsky’s friend and younger colleague, Sergei Prokofiev. Prokofiev’s Cello Concerto no 1 had been lying about, a curiously shapeless, yet lyrical work that no one much cared about. It was with Slava’s support and input that he reshaped it into the Symphony Concerto for Cello and Orchestra to great acclaim in 1952. It remains a big work, its pyrotechnics for the cello balanced by its sour eloquence: it is a work I adore but appreciate that it takes time to love.

That was the start of it. Prokofiev’s concerto inspired his younger colleague, Dmitri Shostakovich to write both his Cello Concerti. The 1^st of these ,  is the better-known work, characteristically eloquent and demonic in its energetic last movement. Typically of Shostakovich, the triumph of its ending is ambiguous.

Shostakovich’s concerto created a sensation on its premiere in 1959 and deeply impressed Shostakovich’s far-away British contemporary (and later friend), Benjamin Britten, who in turn wrote his Cello Symphony (1963) for Slava. This is perhaps the biggest and most difficult of all the concertos, moving from almost unbearable intensity to a life-affirming ending.

Slava went on to commission and premier many other important works, well into old age, after his defection to the UK from USSR. He was not the greatest cellist of the 20^th century but the most important. Pablo Casals remains the yardstick against whom cellists measure themselves, and Slava’s own Soviet contemporary, Daniil Shafran was a less famous, but no less talented performer (hear his electric performance of the ProkofievSymphony Concerto). But Slava remains paramount, thanks to his ability to coax and cajole the great composers of his time to churn out great works for him to perform and enrich the cello concerto repertoire beyond the wildest of imaginations. His recordings also remain living testaments to their art and thought.

The Guitar in Classical Music

Of all Western instruments, the guitar is probably the one most associated with popular music and least with classical music. It has never been a member of the standard orchestra, yet a significant body of classical music for solo guitar as well as magnificent concertos do exist.

For a while, guitarists had to scrounge around for works to play: some of the first “guitar music” is actually Baroque music for lute (in transcription) by the likes of Bach and Vivaldi. For all that, these transcriptions are perfectly idiomatic and authentic, as well as interesting to hear.

The two best known composers for the classical guitar are Mauro Giuliani, the 19^th century Italian composer and Joaquin Rodrigo, the 20^th century Spanish composer, though many others have written “new” music for the guitar in the last 2 centuries (including Villa-Lobos, Ponce and Castelnuovo-Tedesco).In both cases, they were able to write what they did because they had an outstanding performer to write for: in the case of Giuliani, himself and in the case of Rodrigo, the great Andres Segovia.

Giuliani wrote copiously for his instrument, including 3 fine concertos, graceful and lyrical with just a touch of melancholy, as well as many dazzlingly difficult solo works. Rodrigo, the miraculous blind composer, is rememberd for the immortal Concierto Aranjuez (about the gardens of Madrid),the Fantasia para una Gentilhombre (reworkings of medieval Spanish courtly dances) and many many others.

Considering that the number of outstanding classical performers on the guitar has risen exponentially in the last century: Segovia, the Romeros, John Williams, Julian Bream,etc, it is ironic that when we think of the guitar, we think not of them but of some average Joe strumming along hopelessly to folk and country music. Of course this does a grave disservice not just to these great classical guitarists but also to the great “pop & rock” guitarists, Jimi Hendrix , Dave Gilmour and Mark Knopfler, etc.

It is time to reclaim the guitar from John Mayer!

East meets West

It would have been a cliché to say that the East and the West have enriched each other through their interaction, had it not been so very true!

Western composers , when presented with Oriental music, have incorporated and celebrated the influences for years. Starting from the Turkish themes in works by Mozart (All Turca, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail) and Rossini (L'italiana in Algeri), composers have gradually been exposed to the Middle and even the Far East.

In an earlier essay, I have described the often stereotypic way that Western tunes are Orientalised by the odd quivering flute/ violin, making the mundane sound sinuous and mysterious. Witness Verdi’s Aida & Othello and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

Of course the Russians had an Eastern influence from very early on: half of the country is in Asia after all! It served as an integral part of their nationalist heritage, hence works like Balakirev’s Islamey suite and Borodin’s Bogatyr (2^nd) symphony.

Towards the early part of the 20^th century, Japanese and Polynesian cultures hit the West in a big way, with their distinctive prints and rhythms . The French Impressionists, in particular, Debussy and Ravel were entranced & sprayed their music with these exotic new sounds.

At the same time, Eastern culture, as a whole was starting to enter the Western consciousness: they say Beethoven and Goethe read the Vedantas; but by the 19^th century definitely, thanks to the Western Orientalist scholars like Max Muller and William Jones, Indian philosophy had reached the West. By the 20^th century, of course, began the great journeys of the great Indian thinkers to Western shores: Tagore and Vivekananda and later Gandhi.

A work that stands out in the mainly colouristic background of Eastern influences on Western music, is Alexander Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, which is basically a set of 4 orchestral Lieder settings of poems from Tagore’s Gitanjali. Nothing could be farther from Tagore’s own Rabindrasangeet than this lugubrious, heavy-footed work but it has undoubted nobility of purpose.

Tagore himself, of course, spent much of his youth in England, from where the folksong influence on his music and poetry has been much documented. He was also undoubtedly influence by classical music of the West as well, his older brother Jyotirindranath after all, being something of an aficionado. His Nrityanatyas (Dance Dramas), such as Balmiki Prativa and Chandalika, could only have been written by someone deeply interested in and aware of Western opera and ballet.

By the middle of the 20^th century, the gates between Europe and Asia had fallen open, thanks to musicians like Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison, who collaborated extensively with Ravi Shankar, the legendary sitarist: unique hybrid works such as Shankar’s and Andre Previn’s Sitar Concertos were born through this interaction.

Western classical music has continued to have a huge influence on Eastern thinkers and auteurs. Satyajit Ray was possibly the first Mahlerian in India as far back as the 1960s when Mahler was still something of an exotic composer in the West; he composed many of his own soundtracks and many of his themes carry Mahler’s influence, including the perennially popular theme tune of his detective films about Felu Da and his fantasy musicals Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Hirok Rajar Deshe.

In this era of World Music, it is important to understand how it came to be, about the gradual two-way organic nature of its evolution and to appreciate that it is no mere marketing gimmick but a result of the artist’s natural curiousity and openness about the world around him…

Melancholy Tune: Mixed Feelings in Classical Music

When Shelley wrote “ Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought” he was in real earnest. Indeed, the most memorable music  is usually happy with just that touch of sadness that lifts it beyond  the mundane. Romantic music abounds with sadness and longing but for me, the most telling tunes are from composers who bridge the Classic-Romantic period: the Rossinis, the Giulianis, the Boccherinis, the Paganinis: Italians all, and composers of jubilant tunes with a melancholy lilt that renders them unforgettable.

Rossini’s overtures are glittering showpieces, each with a big jovial tune that literally sets the ball rolling but what gives them the necessary gravitas are the secondary themes, eloquent and yearning, usually stated first on a woodwind instrument and forming a perfect foil to the more extrovert character of the rest of the music. The same holds true for the virtuoso violin concertos of Paganini , the guitar concertos of Giuliani and even Boccherini’s famous Minuet—each a perfect synthesis of the mournful and the majestic..
Rossini Overture to "An Italian Girl in Algiers",  Boccherini Minuet , Giuliani Guitar Concerto no 1, Paganini-Violin Concerto no 1,

Politics in Classical Music

How far does music reflect contemporary issues and how much is too much? Politics has had immense effect on classical music over the centuries, both in the making of it as well its performance and acceptance.

Beethoven started it all, as was his wont, when he first dedicated his 3^rd  (Eroica) symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte and then tore out the title page on hearing that the erstwhile Republican had declared himself Emperor of the French. So did that make Beethoven a full-fledged democrat in today’s terms? Not really, as he lived at a time when princes ruled and there was no such thing as universal suffrage; artists would dream of liberty and equality, as he did when he set Schiller’s Ode to Joy (actually the poet’s Ode to Freedom, renamed for fear of attracting princely disapproval). In practice, then (as now), one had to put up with the society one was born into and that was that!

That didn’t mean, mind you, that one was not allowed to subtly ridicule present-day mores or to accept them tongue-in-cheek, while in fact covertly saying something quite contrary. Hence, Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” is just as important a politically charged classical masterpiece as the Eroica symphony: the way it sets and even adds to Beaumarchais’s play about the frivolity and profligacy of the nobility and contrasts it with the honesty and loyalty of the working classes, is actually extremely bold.

In a similarly covert way, Verdi, supporter of Garibaldi in French-occupied Italy, could write the famous Prisoner’s Chorus in his opera “Nabucco”, ostensibly set in Biblical Egypt, but in reality a representation of the Italian struggle for freedom. No wonder then, that VERDI VERDI VERDI came to be plastered as graffiti on walls through Italy, standing for the name of the great composer as well as being a convenient acronym of the Nationalists’ rallying call “Vittorio Emmannuelle Re D' Italia.”

Indeed, through the occupied countries of Europe, music became the channel for nations to assert their national identities and their defiance of foreign occupation, be it German-occupied Bohemia (Dvorak, Smetana), or Russia-occupied Finland (Sibelius). Even Russia itself, a mighty nation but still primitive compared to Western Europe had its Mighty Handful, a group of five composers led by Balakirev & Rimsky-Korsakov. It was not that all nationalist works were political but the composers willy-nilly came to be associated with their respective national identity movements.

Of course even with nationalism, there can be too much of a good thing: perhaps the most parochial and controversial of all composers was Wagner; his Ring and other operas may celebrate Teutonic myths and legends but he was also not above writing anti-Semitic rants in his essays on music, no wonder then that he became the Nazis’ favourite composer.

The Nazis were, undoubtedly, the most repressive force in the world of music leading up to the 2^nd World War: composers of Jewish origin, composers with Leftist leaning, composers who just didn’t get on with the Nazi elite, were ruthlessly exiled, their works proscribed as degenerate art. Even older masters were not spared: Mendelssohn’s name was wiped from the repertoire overnight, thanks to his Jewish ancestry.

The situation was not much better in Stalin’s Russia as composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev found themselves composing with a gun to their backs, forced to churn out retrogressive crowd-pleasing numbers for the Common Man: a strange turn of events in the land of freedom, where the period immediately following the Revolution had in fact, seen dazzling innovations and experimentation in music. Just why it was important for composers in the 20^th century to try to write like Tchaikovsky was never explained, nor how it fitted with the Marxist dialectic. But the likes of Shostakovich found themselves having to bow and scrape to the comrades at home and to defend them abroad.

Yet again, though, secret messages and symbols came to be means of resistance: grand heroic passages written to sound hollow, popular tunes presented in a deliberately banal way, dangerously dissonant passages disguised as depictions of the “reactionary enemy” all these abound in the works of Shostakovich. Even today, a controversy rages: how much of what he wrote is disguised satire and how much genuine public-spiritedness!

The message is clear: politics and music are inextricably linked, and music is able to be political in a more abstract (and hence, more effective way) than say, literature or painting, but at the end of the day, artists need their freedom and will always find a way to rebel, no matter what the circumstance.

Sonnet for ---- (2005)

When you come floating down those stairs

You are the answer to my prayers

And then you flash your little smile-

Half acknowledgement, half surprise

As if you knew but didn't expect

Such desire, such awe, such respect!

Later on, I wonder why,

I know it's hopeless but I

Can only see you then,

Entranced, beguiled but when

We say goodbye and walk away

I know it's right what they all say

But I shall still be waiting here

With love and hope and trust and fear

RETURNING (1998)

And now its back again

To talking about you

Rather than talking to you--

O how much I’d rather do that,

Like trying to touch

The sunshine at the edge of the clouds.

TO A CHILD ON THE METRO (1997)

Peacefully you lie on your father’s lap

Asleep ‘cept for

The odd jolt of the train

That makes you spring disappointedly awake--

Your station is still far away.

If only you knew

You might never want this journey to end--

To never realize long long after--

When all your most earnest contriving has failed

To recreate this idyll of snuggling slumber

That now was your Bethlehem

LIVING A DREAM (1997)

Youth who tug wearily your cricket bag home

Be not discouraged by its weight

And the long walk ahead.

All your mornings of six o’clock nets,

Be it hot or cold,

All your exercises and all your hopes

May come to nothing more than

A regular place in some unknown club side--

Your goal may remain to you as distant

As to all those cynical,world-weary office-goers,

Thankful for the passage of another dreary day,

But be not shy to let them gaze at you,

Clad in grubby whites and vibrant endeavour,

And wonder,half grudgingly,

Half admiringly,

At one who lives for his dreams.

CHILDHOOD (1997)

                                                       (1)

That lost kingdom never shall be regained

All the thrill of a sprightly morning shave

Shall never quite equal that radiant runny nosed innocence.

The magic I try to live down

With all kinds of (empty) rational criticism

Yet it bursts forth more magical than ever before.

And that redeeming touch of your hand

Shall be ever elusive

Except for some rapturous dream at dawn.

                                                       (2)

There was in those days the assurance

That anything you achieved was just a bonus

Over and above your belonging.

As a child I scorned my toys,

Longed to be judged by the world around,

Not just as me,but as one

Who has achieved something of note.

Now that I find the air thick with judgements--

Teachers,friends,the man in the street--

Oh!the yearning to be once more

Nothing more

Or less than me.

MEMORY (1997)

My wounds are celebrating their anniversary--

Year after year they remember to pay homage

To their cause,lest I ever forget.

But I console myself I still have blood

And so may bleed.

ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A CELEBRITY (1997)

The future which we had each

Thought up for you

Never came to be--

How life would have--

Should have(?)

Turned out for you

Remained ever unknown to me.

Your life was not ours to order

And perhaps also

Was not yours.

In Memoriam Bhombol (2010)

Basking in the attentive sun yesterday,

Life was still ahead—who knew

How the day would end?

Buried forever in earth’s breast,

Quiet, alone in eternal rest.

Your eyes were so, so dead

Like an empty house—

The spark had fled....

But now the thunderstorms

Can scare you no more

As you lie asleep in the rain

Under your cloak of earth.

Mental: Genius in Anguish

Reading biographies of great artists or watching films about their lives, one would have to think that suffering is essential for art and that all great artists have to be a little mad! The truth is of course, far more mundane, genius is after all 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, so to produce great art means that the creative spirit also has to train itself, work to order and have sound business sense!

But in all honesty, mental illness and neurological disease have played no small part in the production of great art and music is no different. The Romantics may have played up their wild side: all long hair, laudanum addiction and umpteen mistresses, but one of the foremost Romantics, Schumann had to cope lifelong with genuine mental illness.

He was plagued by bouts of feeling low and miserable, culminating in his attempt to drown himself in the Rhine, following which he spent his last 5 years locked away in an asylum, not allowed to see his wife and family, with only his devotee Brahms for support. The mental illness has been sometimes diagnosed as a bipolar disorder and as neurosyphilis: the stigma of the latter has evoked strong objections from Victorian critics, but today in 2011, we know that no illness is a punishment, all are unfortunate accidents of life. As we battle cancer and AIDS, we can understand and sympathize with an era where syphilis was an incurable disease, a silent killer which would flare up and destroy lives. Either way, Schumann’s  achievements in music are remarkable inspite of, or even because of his illness. His mercurial musical personality has often been interpreted as bipolar, hence the music he wrote was affected in no small way by his condition. His productivity itself would come in spurts, mirroring the manic phase of his illness, while later in life, he was plagued by musical hallucinations, mistaking his own works as having been sent to him in a dream by his beloved Schubert. His Violin Concerto is almost too painful to hear, trying to preserve his artistry and his love by way of a repetitive stating of tunes : neurologists and laymen alike hear his demons taking over in this work and it was suppressed for almost 100 years by his family and friends: for me, it is the most heroic, awe-inspiring work I know, a fight for life in minims and crotchets.

Hugo Wolf was another Late Romantic composer of vastly influential songs who spent much of his short life locked away in an asylum, while Bedrich Smetana, the Czech nationalist, became deaf, blind and mad in late life as a consequence of neurosyphilis.

Maurice Ravel wrote some of the most colourful and voluptuous music of the 20^th century but in person he was a curiously elfine asexual figure: the later part of his life saw him completely debilitated by a neurodegenerative condition (possibly Pick’s disease) and he was at the end, unable to compose or even function, to name or recognise everyday objects. Yet his immortal “Bolero” with its hypnotically repeated theme, is borne out of the disease, its repetitiveness being cited by neurologists as the yearning for stability in the fractured consciousness and inability to concentrate typical among Pick’s disease sufferers.

All these great composers had to transcend their illness to create great art, sometimes the illness even contributed to the pattern of their art, and even though their illness won at the end, it was their triumph that their heroic struggles will never be forgotten.

Prokofiev: Sublime and Bathetic

Call me over-cute, but Prokofiev & Shostakovich sometimes seem to me to be the 20^th century equivalent of Mozart and Beethoven: the older composer possessed of a tremendous facility, yet hard to pin down in mood and character, admired but not always respected by the younger, more passionate composer.

Prokofiev was the Stravinsky who never left Russia, or rather the Stravinsky who left an “ enfant terrible” and came back a sage.

Of course the reality was much more complex. Yes, Prokofiev loved the bizarre and dissonant, but he had a great gift for melody and could write easily and idiomatically in any style. He had a neo-classical phase early on (the 1^st “Classical” symphony and the 1^st piano concerto), where he mimicked earlier models (Haydn and Tchakovsky respectively) while simultaneously and riotously sending them up. When he was churning out his brazenly dissonant ballets for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, he could still write the sweetly eloquent Violin Concerto no 1. But for a time, it seemed he would be known as a composer of jagged little pills like The Fiery Angel and The Love for Three Oranges.

When he returned to the USSR  in the Thirties (he had gone into exile at the time of the Revolution) , he returned from a sense of loneliness, from a need to reconnect with the freezing plains of his Fatherland and set about writing music “for the people”.

For his pains, he was chastised by Stalin and his cultural stooges almost immediately; they attacked him, Shostakovich, Khatchaturian and others for writing “formalist” music: he had not only to renounce his earlier dissonance, but also to buckle down and write hymns to the comrades. Somehow, his music never quite recovered from the blow: Shostakovich, who had, if possible, endured worse epithets than his, was able to continue difficult and challenging music with a tongue-in-cheek nod to the “masses”, but Prokofiev’s facility was, for once, defeated by his ideological confusion.

He continued to write copiously in all forms, his ballets (Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, The Stone Flower), operas (War and Peace), symphonies (nos 5-7) and concertos (violin concerto no2, symphony concerto for cello) being accepted and loved by audiences worldwide. But the impish mischievousness of some of his earlier works was gone, the language sometimes pallid and strait-laced.  Of course, at the best of times, he was still able to spice up the conventional Tchaikovskian soundworld with bizarre harmonies and rhythms.

Listening to these, I kind of think that Prokofiev did win in the end, in the sense that he continued to write music that was hard to characterise: just as in his youth, he would write wicked tunes with a touch of the sublime, so in his last years, he would write sublime tunes with a touch of the wicked!

The Story of the Left Hand

The story of Paul Wittgenstein, the classical pianist and younger brother of the philosopher Ludwig, is the greatest classical music movie never made. The virtuoso lost his right arm in WWI, but with heroic application and will, was able to carve out a career for himself as a one-handed pianist. Of course, coming from a privileged background, he was able to virtually create a new repertoire of left-handed piano music all for himself. He commissioned some of the greatest composers of the day to write works for him and they responded with some unusual masterpieces (Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Prokofiev’s 4^th Piano Concerto, Schmidt’s Piano Concertante and Britten’s Diversions). Strangely enough, he never really played any of them: the music was too modern and different for his tastes and his technique not quite strong enough: Prokofiev’s work for example was never played at all (though he did pay up).

Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, is the greatest work to be commissioned by Wittgenstein and the only one which has become standard repertoire. It is a mesmerising one-movement work, with a solo part so incredibly virtuosic that it sounds like four hands rather than one ! Wittgenstein rejected it initially, for its language and technical demands, but later performed and even recorded it to great acclaim. Ravel’s jewel-like orchestration is here disrupted, and thereby enriched by a seething anger and loneliness, which is very apt for the context of the work. It was to be Ravel’s own last great work: he suffered from Pick’s disease (possibly) and after this work was completed became unable to compose or indeed, even function: the hypnotic repetitive rhythms of this work and of “Bolero”, his most recognisable composition, are said to be a result of his neurological condition, a quite fascinating element of his genius.

Today, hearing the greats of the keyboard perform this work (some of them even arrange it for two hands), one would have to rate Wittgenstein’s recordings technically inferior; but perhaps no one could (or would want to) equal his unique physical connection with the music, perhaps no two-armed pianist can play it so transcendentally as someone with just his left hand to conquer the incredible demands it makes on the soloist.

Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

High on Bach: Transcendental Baroque

I was fortunate as a teenager to have classical music around me: where others in my position would have looked to get high on pills as a way out of their angst, I had Bach.

It is difficult to describe the range of emotions that a stodgy-looking gent who died all of 261 years ago can still evoke. We can read of the formal perfection, the mathematical logic of his works, but what of the passion, the fire? What nails it for me, at a time of turmoil, is the comforting repetitive cadence of a Baroque tune, it seems to tell you that a time, place and person are just specks of sand on a beach, yet curiously asserts that you and I and all that we love will endure.

So, when you’re down and out and reaching for support, transcendental Baroque will sort you out: the Brandenburg Concerti, the Goldberg Variations, the Cello Suites: not the biggest sounds/ tunes but remarkably strong and resilient...

Bach Brandenburg Concerto no 6, 3rd movement, Bach Cello Suite no 1, 1st movement, Bach Goldberg Variations-Aria

Learning to Fly: The Journey of the Fate Symphony

The Romantic symphony is typically about Fate: the artist is first knocked about by Fate ( in the First Movement), introspects (in the Second Movement) and strengthens himself (in the Third Movement) , before dealing Fate the knockout punch (in the Grand Finale). The trick is simple, but vital and inspiring, which is, of course, why it works everytime!

The first and greatest Fate symphony is of course Beethoven’s 5^th: the composer himself said of the Ta-ta-ta-tum motif that “Fate knocks at the Door.” From there to the wild jubilation of the Finale is one of music’s greatest journeys which can leave few people unmoved. Because the Fate symphony not just opens up the composer’s anguish to the listener, but also the listener’s own anguish to himself, and thereby  forms a connection which makes one able to relate to the music.

Even if it is ultimately a form, a device, but the reason it works (most of the time) is the genuineness of the emotions depicted, the way they reflect what we all feel and would express if only we could know how to notate for trumpets and trombones and oboes and timpani!

Two of my own favourite Fate symphonies are Brahms’ 1^st and Tchaikovsky’s 5^th (though it is his 4^th which is actually called the “Fate Symphony”). In the 19^th century, if you loved Brahms you could not love Tchaikovsky but thankfully in 2011, you can, and these two works both work because of the masterly way they express  angst and build up the emotional connect before  resolving it in grand jubilant finale. (If you want a “Fate Concerto” by the way, Rachmaninov is your man!)

Sometimes, though the struggle and its aftermath would be more ambiguous: what does one make of the quiet ending of Tchaikovsky’s 6^th (Pathetique) symphony?: here the artist has clearly lost at the end. In Shostakovich’s 5^th and 7^th symphonies, probably the two most popular “big” works of the 20^th century, the Finale is not a victory at all, more about surviving than conquering Fate, reaching a compromise to live rather than smashing Death to pieces...

UK/USSR: The Land(s) of the People’s Composer

Through the 20^th century, much gnashing of teeth and many tears were associated with the whole question of what classical music should be and who it should be for. Composers like Schoenberg, Stockhausen and Boulez in Europe and Cage and Carter in the USA felt they could not and should not write music which would be beautiful and easily comprehensible to the unsophisticated layman: they wanted the listener to come to them rather than the other way around.

In Britain and the USSR, on the other hand, two vastly different countries, composers felt, from within and without, the urge to write music for the Common Man. Of course, “formalism”, “muddle instead of music”, etc, etc were epithets flung at composers in the USSR only, when they failed to write catchy tunes in the style of Tchaikovsky for the peasants of the Steppes, but even in Britain, the pastoral tradition had a great importance and significance to composers like Vaughan Williams.

Looking back, in the 21^st century, we can be thankful that big juicy concertos and symphonies in the old tradition were still being written 50 years ago (and even now!): they have enriched the core repertoire of classical music and allowed people outside the Conservatories to relate to contemporary “serious” music—all this, without necessarily compromising their integrity. The best music of those times, Prokofiev in his Romeo and Juliet, Shostakovich in his 1^st Violin Concerto and 10^th Symphony, Britten in his operas, all have used the old forms to anchor and elucidate their thoughts for the wider audience, while writing music that is  filled with contemporary cultural allusions, music that is undeniably of its own time.