Weekly Listening: Symphony No. 1 by Bohuslav Martinů

Not being much of a performer, Martinů was one of those composers that I just flat-out missed during my undergraduate studies. Several of his earlier chamber works would appear on some of my friends' recitals, but they never really registered as anything special and were often accompanied by complaints of the performers about how hard they were and how low the payoff ended up being.

This all changed in my masters when I was introduced to his orchestra music—namely his symphonies and concerti (it is ALL about his orchestral works!). Of these works, he often gets a lot of attention for his first piano concerto and his sixth symphony, albeit way after slogging through the importance of his chamber pieces. One of my more favorite pieces in this part of his output is actually his first symphony, which you can listen to here.

A Brief Overview of Martinu

Bohuslav Martinu was one of those composers who embraced a pretty typical trajectory of many early 20th Century composers. He was famously born at the top of a church tower in then-Czechoslovakia, and has stated that his residence in said tower drastically influenced his objectivity towards his own music. At the age of 16, he departed to Prague to study violin, and promptly earned expulsion. He "deputized with the Czech Philharmonic before playing three seasons as a full member," and then departed to Paris in 1923.

As was the case at the time, Martinu's existence was steeped in the influence of Igor Stravinsky, French Impressionism, and American Jazz idioms. He admittedly embraced the influence of the Russian prodigy, observing a severe change in Stravinsky's output from piece to piece due to inventive and unabashed experimentalism. Many of his pieces from this time reflect the culmination of these influences and include some of his most-performed works.

Upon the occupation of France by the Nazis in 1940, Martinu fled to the United States, where he received a sudden and warm embrace by many of the major musical forces on the East Coast, most prominently from Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony. It was in this period of his output that he began producing much larger works, including a symphony a year nearly every year in the early 40s, and some truly remarkable works like his Concerto for Two Pianos. Some typical elements found in his music during this time included musical chattering, focus on the construction of phrase over meter—typically resulting in atypical patterns within a written meter, strong references to Czech folksong, and more minor aspects such as the near-exclusive use of minor modes for pitch, and the heavy use of orchestral piano.

Boosey and Hawkes' Patrick Lambert makes the claim that Martinu's music was a pre-cursor to aleatory—I find them hard pressed to credibly back this up—but there is speculation that his compositions, if examined more readily and significantly in academia, might yield great insight into the trajectory of American music given his status as a composer and pedagogue for the better part of a decade.

A bit about the piece

This piece reminds me that there was a whole of cool stuff going on in the 40s and 50s that just get ignored by academics across the world. First off, this work basically hits you in the face to start with some masterfully orchestrated ascending strands that snap into a full-on presentation of a Czech lullaby. Its charm is in the delicate and deliberate colors that support a lesser-common metric presentation of a melody (I say lesser-common in the sense that the piece really is just in a constant compound meter in which the melodic contours do not readily fit).

His harmonic palette is pretty tame for the time, except for a wonderful flavor of blue notes that permeates the textures of the second movement and characterizes the melody of the third movement. By today's standards, it is not anything terribly different or new, but at the time standard harmonic convention was unconventional as it were (think of what was going on in the output of other compositional giants such as Bartok, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg). Later symphonies—most notably his sixth symphony—relied heavily on pitch saturation, depicting clearly Martinu's interest in planing 4th and 7ths instead of 3rds and 6ths as a way to create a larger sound with a more-complete harmonic resonance than was typical in more Germanic styles of composition.

What I find his works following this one is the apparent direct link to Martinu's famous falling accident. As described on many a website, Martinu took a "near-fatal fall off of an unprotected terrace." This accident resulted in "complete deafness in one ear for the remainder of his life.". More interesting, though, is that his letters indicate that he was not deaf, but was plagued by an incessant buzzing in one ear, a characteristic that apparently not only significantly influenced his output from that point on, but was audible pre-fall and only became louder post-fall, as was confirmed by several of his students over the years. It reminds me so much of Percy Grainger's piece, The Immovable Do, except that it was for EVERY piece after that moment, and not just the one piece written on that one instrument.

My thought is that the significance of most of Martinu's works written during and after World War II remain to be discovered, but for those interested in exploring a very different facet of a composer typically boiled down to a handful of early chamber works, this is the gateway to something extraordinary!

Weekly Listening: Musica Boema by Zdeněk Lukáš

There are not a huge amount of specific pieces I can point to as direct and significant influences on my own compositional voice. The exception is Music Boema, which I had the great pleasure of playing my sophomore year of undergraduate, and hearing again in tandem with the performance of my master's thesis, Supernal Dragonfly, by the same ensemble many years later. 

I have found it VERY difficult to find a recording of this piece that I legitimately like, since I feel I was spoiled by the nuance of Robert Ponto's interpretations, but some of the better sounding ones are Rutgers Wind Ensemble playing both movements here and here.

A Brief Overview of Lukáš

Lukáš was immensely prolific, creating a catalogue of music well over 300 works. He prominently served as a choir director to Česká píseň, as well as the program director for the National Broadcasting Company. As such, he is most known for his works in radio theatre and choir, though he is by no means lacking in other areas of compositional output.

He is kind of an anomaly in the grand scheme of a composer in that he was not financially privileged, he went to school almost exclusively to become an educator. From what I can tell, it was purely by his sheer incessant writing and output that he developed such a unique compositional voice while still retaining a bizarre level of universal accessibility.

He wrote music up until the end of his life in 2007.

A bit about the piece

I have found that one of the best speakers on this piece is my former professor and always teacher, Robert Ponto.  Here, I present his program notes for this work, which so eloquently illustrates the work:

“Musica Boema (Bohemian Music) was commissioned in 1977 and premiered in 1979 by the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Wind Ensemble under the direction of Stanley DeRusha. Because of the hostile relationship between the United States and the Warsaw Pact of nations during those years, the music had to be smuggled out of [then]-Czechoslovakia for its scheduled premiere.

To my knowledge, the composer never offered program notes or source materials for Musica Boema. Consequently, I do not know whether the composition is derived from folk music, original themes, or a combination of both. The work, consisting of two movements, is highly sectionalized. Formally, it is almost cinematic in nature—perhaps a reflection of [Lukáš’] work in radio theater.

As a descendent of Central Europeans myself, I have long been fascinated by the sociological and artistic consequences of living in a part of the world that has served as a battleground for much of Europe’s history. Bearing in mind this notion, here is my wholly personal narrative of this music:

The first movement begins with alternations of trumpet calls and solemn processions, each growing in numbers and intensity with each repetition. Spurred on by ‘war drums’ (five tom-toms), these give way to other resolute hymns and dances, each one more restive and belligerent.

The opening trumpet calls soon return—and fade—as we are drawn in to an entirely different scene: a flute transports us to a dreamlike space suggesting, perhaps, reminiscenes of other times and places. Harp, bells, and xylophone create a guileless, almost childlike, atmosphere. This trio, along with droning clarinets, are soon joined by an optimistic quartet of saxophones. As is the case with all good Central Europeans however, the cheerfulness must soon end as more militant voices—first heard at the beginning of the movement—return and demand obeisance.

If the first movement is a call to arms, the second is the battle proper. From the very beginning, martial fanfares grow and spread throughout the ensemble. During these, we hear brief vignettes, as though we briefly glimpse remote events concurrent with the battle in progress: war songs; poignant farewells to loved ones; and the like.

A solo clarinet then calls for quiet, perhaps out of respect for a fallen soldier’s funeral cortège. Outbursts of grief and anger can be heard as the procession passes. Eventually, after oration by the bassoons, the military music resumes.

The battles and piece soon end—victoriously we presume—as the opening trumpet call from the first movement is heard once more, but this time in a major key. The music is strong, optimistic, and indomitable.”

–Robert Ponto

Weekly Listening: Le Destin by Nikolai Tcherepnin

A more—in my opinion—off the beaten path piece by possibly an off the beaten path composer, this work is just kind of interested all around. This week, I have 'Le Destin,' Three Symphonic Fragments on a Ballad by Edgar Allan Poe, op. 59 by Nikolai Tcherepnin.

You can check out this piece in three movements here.

A Brief Overview of Tcherepnin

Tcherepnin is actually three people if one is not specific about their nouns: Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873 – 1945), Alexander Tcherepnin (1899 – 1977), and Ivan Tcherepnin (1943 – 1998). Obviously, I am looking at the eldest of the group.

Admittedly, I do not know a whole lot about this guy, but that is simply because I learned about him a few weeks ago while forcing my way through the Grawemeyer Award recipient playlist, which is grandson, Ivan, won in 1996. Nikolai had some significant contributions to western music over the years, including conducting and having his ballet, Le Pavillon d'Armide, performed in the inaugural season of Ballets Russes, taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he got on the bad side of Alexander Glazunov for interest in modernistic experimentation, and had many works dedicated to him, including Prokofiev's first piano concerto. According to his bio from the Tcherepnin Society, his success as a composer was greatly overshadowed by Igor Stravinsky, who had come into the fold of Ballets Russes a few years later.

Like many across the world, WWI and WW2 obliterated much of a national support for Tcherepnin's music. He did follow into the company of Serge Koussevitzky at the Boston Symphony, and his completion of the Mussorgsky opera, Sorochinsky Fair, was added to the repertoire of the Metropolitan Opera, but he was never quite able to get back to his pre-Stravinsky success and seemed mostly doomed to fade into obscurity.

His music in general is remarkably French—not Russian—another aspect that seems to have played as a disadvantage. While many of his works are quite compelling, masterful compositions by themselves, it seems that his uprooted national identity, "confused" compositional voice, and duel career as a composer and conductor seemed to dilute his notoriety in the contemporary world. His catalogue on a whole is pretty neat, and quite refreshing in contrast to the limited examples of early 20th century Russian Primitivism or French Impressionism that academia is able to provide.

A bit about the piece

'Le Destin,' Three Symphonic Fragments on a Ballad by Edgar Allan Poe is based on Poe's writing, The Mask of the Red Death. As the title suggests, there are three fragments, each based on a different part of the story. The work was popularized by Serge Koussevitsky during his summer tours with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Though it seems to be a heavy criticism of his music, this piece is a mix of Russian and French aesthetics, drawing on the characteristics of primitivism and impressionism, veiled with a glimmering sheet of symbolism. While the titles provide the most explicit indication of a program, the exact story captured in the notes is more up to interpretation than I would have thought, which is a positive in my book!

While it seems unlikely this piece will be programmed by any ensemble in the near future (at least in this country), I highly recommend giving it a few listens to indulge in this refreshing mixture of textbook styles. It really is a wonder in form and orchestration from beginning to end and does not disappoint!