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composers on parade
This week marks the birth centenaries of two significant composers. One of them is still alive.
Wednesday: Olivier Messiaen, born in Avignon, France, December 10, 1908. He died in 1992.
Thursday: Elliott Carter, born in New York, December 11, 1908. He's the one who's still living.
Neither has been an obscure name for a half-century or more, but for a long time they tended to be overlooked when lists of great contemporary composers were being drawn up. That's changed in recent decades, and now their centenaries are being marked with some fanfare.
They're very different composers, though, and fans of each tend to stare at the other with some incredulity. Neither is among my favorites, but if I had to choose, I'm definitely on the Messiaen side. He was a mystic Catholic who stands with the great spiritually-inspired composers of the century. He wrote a lot for the organ, which he played professionally, and was often inspired by birdsong as well as by his religion. His best music leaves an impression of stillness within a bleak, dissonant beauty (as I put it in a review). I will be spending some time Wednesday listening to his Turangalîla Symphony and the Quatuor pour la fin du temps.
Carter is a difficult nut to crack, even his admirers admit. He's the last survivor of the generation of the great American populists, and started out writing like Samuel Barber, just not as well. But in the post-war era, when the atonal regime was imported from Europe, and Barber was driven into a corner while other composers trying to keep up with the times merely lost their way, Carter found his way. Systemic complexity suited him, and he became the epitome of the intellectually spiky composer. His five string quartets (the latest written at the age of 86) are considered his masterpieces, and if you want to listen to them, be my guest. There are said to be riches in Carter if you delve deep enough, but there's nothing on the surface to tempt me to do so.
Wednesday: Olivier Messiaen, born in Avignon, France, December 10, 1908. He died in 1992.
Thursday: Elliott Carter, born in New York, December 11, 1908. He's the one who's still living.
Neither has been an obscure name for a half-century or more, but for a long time they tended to be overlooked when lists of great contemporary composers were being drawn up. That's changed in recent decades, and now their centenaries are being marked with some fanfare.
They're very different composers, though, and fans of each tend to stare at the other with some incredulity. Neither is among my favorites, but if I had to choose, I'm definitely on the Messiaen side. He was a mystic Catholic who stands with the great spiritually-inspired composers of the century. He wrote a lot for the organ, which he played professionally, and was often inspired by birdsong as well as by his religion. His best music leaves an impression of stillness within a bleak, dissonant beauty (as I put it in a review). I will be spending some time Wednesday listening to his Turangalîla Symphony and the Quatuor pour la fin du temps.
Carter is a difficult nut to crack, even his admirers admit. He's the last survivor of the generation of the great American populists, and started out writing like Samuel Barber, just not as well. But in the post-war era, when the atonal regime was imported from Europe, and Barber was driven into a corner while other composers trying to keep up with the times merely lost their way, Carter found his way. Systemic complexity suited him, and he became the epitome of the intellectually spiky composer. His five string quartets (the latest written at the age of 86) are considered his masterpieces, and if you want to listen to them, be my guest. There are said to be riches in Carter if you delve deep enough, but there's nothing on the surface to tempt me to do so.
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Of course the American populists made a conscious decision that they should write their music that way. You don't have to descend to citing Robert Greenberg (whom I don't take very seriously as an authority, not after his mendacity over Shostakovich) to prove it: Copland, for one, states that explicitly in several places as his motivation for changing styles in the 1930s. And of course they thought this was the best way, or they wouldn't have done it.
But this was just, as you put it, a milieu, and not an attempt at an enforced hegemony as the succeeding serialist era was. I just find it ironic that Carter should have been moving voluntarily out of an uncongenial environment and into a congenial one (for him) at the same time and in the same direction that others were moving under social and professional compulsion away from their congeniality.
no subject
Yes, that's an irony, indeed, though you will also find plenty of people who will dispute the supposed social and professional compulsion, which seems to have existed primarily at a smallish number of northeastern schools. See my friend Steve Hicken (listen101.blogspot.com) for other views.
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Greenberg can be very entertaining in small doses, but his mannerisms and over-egged explanatoriness gets on the nerves after a while. When SFP calls me up and tries to get me to subscribe to another one of these series, I just tell them that I've already had a lifetime dose of Robert Greenberg.
As for the hegemony, it wasn't universal - Alan Hovhaness didn't starve to death, after all, though he sure looked as if he was about to - but contrary to the disputants it was very widespread, and more to the point, where it did exist it was preached and enforced as compulsory. Testimonies, now that it's fallen back (it's still not entirely over), are multiple. And it was stronger still in Europe.
But we don't even need to get into those enforcement waters. All we need do to see the attitude is to look at the documented statements of Pierre Boulez. Nobody before him declared that a particular style was historically necessary. Nobody before him ever had to.
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Oh, jeez, yeah, Testimonies is not defensible at all at this time. I will take a look at your article. His mannerisms got me after the first couple of hours. I believe they are there for the tape audience more than the live audience. He is rehearsing for the recordings. I am also annoyed that he never left room for or welcomed questions during or after the lectures, for crying out loud.
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(And if you really want to see scorn, see what was written in the 1950s and 60s about Rachmaninoff and Korngold, who hadn't seen a dead end at all. A dismissive article on Rachmaninoff in Grove 5 says that as a composer he wasn't "of his time" at all, a truly meaningless criticism, but exactly what the Boulez circle would claim.)
Another thing about Schoenberg: he proselytized for his system, and why shouldn't he? If he had not thought well of it, he would hardly have employed it. But he didn't belittle or try to erase the significance of other composers, and that's the difference.