Eccentric Symphonies from 20th Century Cult Composers (2) - Havergal Brian & Matthijs Vermeulen

We continue our survey of cult symphonies with works by the English composer Havergal Brian and Dutchman Matthijs Vermeulen.

[Havergal Brian, 1897]

1. Havergal Brian, Symphony No 1 in D minor "Gothic" [1919-27]

• The English composer Havergal Brian (1876-1972) lived a very long life during which he was mostly neglected by the musical establishment. He is known for two things: the large number of symphonies he wrote, mostly at a very high age - the total count is 32, of which 21 pieces were written after his eightieth birthday; and the fact that his first symphony, "The Gothic," is one of the longest symphonies ever composed, if not the longest (at least, according to the Guinness Book of Records), clocking in at between 100 and 110 minutes of music. It is a choral symphony like Beethoven's Ninth and Mahler's Eighth and massive forces are necessary to perform it: at a minimum 750, ideally over 800. These consist of four vocal soloists, two double choruses totaling about 500 voices plus a children’s choir, four brass bands, and a super-sized Mahlerian orchestra. Of course, great time span and numerous performers do not spell intrinsic greatness - but in the case of Brian's Gothic these gargantuan dimensions were indeed necessary to express the ideas of the composer. This is all the more so as Brian was not an extravagant but rather a very concise composer. His later symphonies last only between 10 and 20 minutes, Brian only composed essence and no fillers. The symphony consists of three purely orchestral movements followed by a gigantic setting of the Te Deum and it was the vision that demanded the enormous size. Musically, too, the symphony's scope is very broad, ranging from evocations of Gregorian chant to near-atonality and tone clusters. The choral writing is extremely difficult and a hard nut to crack for even the best choirs. But except in the climaxes, this work is no juggernaut of sound. It is unexpectedly delicate, Brian uses his immense forces with artistic restraint: he has the choir often sing a capella, and there is even a 90 second xylophone solo. 
• What was Brian's vision? "Gothic" as Brian uses the term here, points to the Gothic style in architecture, to ages in which the great cathedrals of Northern Europe were built. Brian saw these huge stone edifices as symbols of Western culture, as monuments to the struggle of the human spirit against immense odds. Such a struggle had just taken place: the Great War, which had shaken Western values by its cruel violence and unbelievable death toll. Brian, however, reaffirms the idealistic Western tradition in the vast choral movements of the symphony - the Te Deum is meant in a secular rather than religious way. On the other hand, in the orchestral movements Brian reflects on the horrors of the war. Take for example the start of the first movement which its violent timpani attack propelling the music forward, or the brutal, raw march in the second movement. But war and peace go together, there are also moments of great beauty such as the passage for solo violin near the end of the first movement. 
• Brian attached a quotation from Goethe's Faust to the symphony, that "those who strive with all their might will be redeemed," something which also seems to refer to his own situation. How can one strive more than by writing such a huge symphony? It is incredible that Brian had the energy to write this massive symphony at age 51, after a life of almost total neglect. Havergal Brian had a working class background and was self-taught in music. As an ardent fan of contemporary English composers he attended many music festivals and so became the friend of his near-contemporary composer Granville Bantock (1868–1946). His first success as a composer came in 1907 when his First English Suite was performed at the Proms by Henry Wood. Unfortunately, also due to vicissitudes in his personal life, Brian could not maintain this success and he fell again into oblivion. He had to work as a copyist to make both ends meet and finally became assistant editor of a musical magazine, a position he would keep until his retirement age. In the 1920s he turned to composing symphonies, with great tenacity, for the first of these was only performed in the early 1950s. The Gothic Symphony saw an amateur performance in 1961 and the first professional performance followed in 1966 under Sir Adrian Boult, when Brian was already ninety years of age!
• Brian's music is not easy on the listener, and even today many critics just don't get it. Brian offers solutions to musical problems that are different from the mainstream - something he has in common with other "eccentric" "cult" composers, who all found their own, individually new solutions. Brian uses traditional (late-Romantic) idioms in a wholly nontraditional way, thereby severely undercutting the expectations of the listener. He places harmonic opulence at the side of lean polyphony, he combines types of music that are mutually inimical, he elides transitions, suddenly switching from one mood to the next. His music is often extremely violent, but that is paired with sudden patches of peaceful and soft music. In other words, he continually pulls the rug away under the feet of the listener. Such music would benefit by a long performance tradition - after all the performers have to pull all those heterogeneous elements together - , but unfortunately today's so-called "top orchestras" prefer to sleepwalk through the zillionth performance of Beethoven's Fifth instead of having the courage to tackle something new.
• Havergal Brian Society website.
• Performance listened to: Martyn Brabbins with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra on Hyperion.

[Matthijs Vermeulen, 1920]

2. Matthijs Vermeulen, Symphony No. 6 "Les Minutes Heureuses" [1956-58]

• The Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen (1888-1967) had - like Havergal Brian - a working class background. Born in the southern part of the Netherlands, he initially wanted to become a priest, but when he heard the 16th c. polyphonic masters in his seminary, he discovered that his true calling was music. In Amsterdam, he received for two years free lessons from conservatory director Daniël de Lange, but due to financial constraints, he never followed a formal musical education. In 1909 he started working as a musical journalist, standing out for his clear style and advocacy of contemporary composers like Debussy, Mahler and the Dutchman Diepenbrock. As a journalist, he soon became a musical authority. In 1914 he completed his First Symphony but as he had a difficult relationship with the Dutch musical establishment in the person of Willem Mengelberg (in his newspaper reviews, Vermeulen criticized Dutch concert life as too much German-oriented, Vermeulen pleaded for a more French orientation), he could not get it performed (until 50 years later, when it was programmed by Bernard Haitink). As he saw no perspective in The Netherlands, in 1921 he moved with his family to France, but also there his music could not find its way into the concert hall. From 1926 to 1940 he worked as the French correspondent for a Dutch colonial newspaper from Indonesia, writing on every possible topic except music. Finally, in 1939 his Third Symphony was performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Eduard van Beinum, inspiring Vermeulen to write two more symphonies during the dark war years. These years also brought heavy personal loss (his son was killed by the Germans). In 1946 Vermeulen returned to The Netherlands where he again became active as musical journalist (he was the best musical journalist Holland has ever known, but of course, that constant journalism also was a waste of his talent). He now continued composing his small but fine oeuvre, where symphonies stand in the central position. Vermeulen wrote a total of seven. Besides that he wrote chamber music: two cello sonatas, a violin sonata and several songs. His difficult music never became popular and his audience remained limited to a small cult following.
• Vermeulen's musical style, besides being atonal and contrapuntal, was in the first place based on the technique of poly-melodicism, the simultaneous combination of several melodic lines. Frequently Vermeulen spins long melismas into continuous melodies, in a free rhythm of flowing lines. Vermeulen saw this multi-voiced, polymelodic way of composition in a political light: for him it was the true expression of freedom, all individuals being able to freely express and develop themselves, without infringing upon the freedom of others to do the same. Vermeulen's music is filled with vitality and power, often leading to an obsessive, march-like propulsion. 
• The Sixth Symphony carries the subtitle "Les Minutes Heureuses," after a poem by Baudelaire, "I know the art of evoking happy minutes." On top of that, the symphony has been composed on the notes la do re, or L'adore, "the adored one." Adoration is the basis of being human and also of music. The arc the music follows is both a crescendo and a spiral. The three movements are played without interruption. The calm first movement ends with an apotheosis of la-do-re in the brass. The second movement is an Andante amoroso with a beautiful melody in the cor anglais, interspersed with brass and percussion fanfares. The last movement is fast and is propulsed upwards towards a big climax. 
• Vermeulen website, also in English.
• Recording listened to: Residentie Orchestra The Hague conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky on Chandos (with symphonies 2 & 7)

Classical Music Index

Graves in Kyoto's shopping arcades (Seiganji)

Kyoto, the old capital, is full of graves. When you walk through Shinkyogoku, the popular shopping street between Shijo and Sanjo that is almost a Harajuku look-alike, you are in the midst of a huge graveyard. Nobody notices, young people are on shopping sprees as if there were no other things in the world.

I learned the truth by looking over walls, and by staying in the business hotels on Kawaramachi Street, where you look down on the many small temples from your room. Then you get a very different view of the area: an endless graveyard with a snake of oblivious youth and abandon slithering through it...

[Tomb of Izumi Shikibu in Seishin-in Temple]

One of the most famous graves here is that of Izumi Shikibu, a woman court poet and diarist who lived around the year 1000. Izumi Shikibu lived a life of love and passion that earned her the nickname "The Floating Lady." So she must still feel at home here, in Kyoto's entertainment center and perhaps she likes the sounds of youth passing by. But nobody stops for her anymore and her grave is stone cold.

The major temple in this area is Seiganji, now standing somewhat forlorn in Shinkyogoku, Kyoto's busy shopping street. But the gate and doors of the main hall are always wide open and from the street passersby can greet the large Amida Buddha seated in the hall.

[The welcoming entrance of Seiganji]

Although the graves remain, Seiganji has lost most of its land. It used to be a huge temple that even claims to have been founded in the late 7th c. Under the influence of Honen it turned to Pure Land Buddhism, as testified by its Amida statue. It only came to this location in last quarter of the 16th c., due to the redesign of Kyoto by Hideyoshi. One of Hideyoshi's concubines sponsored the temple, which then had many halls and even a pagoda. The area around Seiganji became a “town in front of the temple gate" where boisterous temple markets were held and that is how it spent the Edo-period.

The infamous Tenmei fire of 1788 claimed most of the temple buildings, including its original main statue, and modernisation did the rest. In the early Meiji-period, Kyoto Governor Makimura Masanao wanted to revitalize the city which had lost the Emperor, and he did this by creating a modern entertainment district with cinemas and theaters. That was Shinkyogoku and Seiganji gradually was dwarfed into oblivion.

[Wishes written on fans]

It is interesting to note that Seiganji did already have a link with entertainment. The most famous abbot of Seiganji was Anrakuan Sakuden (1554 – 1642), the man credited as being the earliest Rakugo comic story teller. His stories have been preserved in the aptly named compilation Sobering Laughter - apparently he started using comic stories while preaching, in order to keep his audience from falling asleep.

[The Fan Grave]

Thanks to the artistic impulse of Sakuden, the temple became popular with performers and artists who wanted to advance in their profession. The Fan Grave was built as a monument to the remembrance of Sakuden - the fan is the only implement used by Rakugo storytellers - and instead of the usual wooden votive planks, at Seiganji people write their wish on fans. And that is a form of elegance that very well fits the area...

Eccentric Symphonies by 20th Century Cult Composers (1) - Scriabin, Ives & Langaard

This post starts a small series about unique symphonies from the 20th c., written by composers who were considered as "eccentrics"  and sometimes even "outsiders."  It was Stravinsky who once asked the question: "Is it possible to link a musician like Scriabin to any tradition? Where did he come from? Who are his predecessors?" Inspired by this question, I have looked for symphonies by Scriabin and other 20th c. eccentric and intriguing composers. In this post and following ones I plan to write about Rued Langgaard, Jon Leifs, Alan Pettersson, Matthijs Vermeulen, Havergal Brian, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, Alexander Tcherepnin, Charles Koechlin, Alan Hovhaness and others. What were they, mystics or madmen? Visionaries or imposters? Bring on the mavericks and listen to the answer in their music!

[Scriabin]

1. Alexander Scriabin, Symphony No 3 in C minor Op. 43 "Le Divin Poème" [1904]

• The Russian composer and pianist Scriabin (1872-1915) was a sort of solipsist, Nietsche's Übermensch in a sickly body. He considered himself as God and proved it by being born on the same day as Jesus, and by managing to die during Easter. He embraced Helen Blavatsky's Theosophy, because it agreed with ideas he had already developed for himself. He was an aristocrat with a sound musical education who went off in a never before explored dissonant direction. Although famous during his lifetime, he was soon forgotten after his too early death as the Soviets didn't like him. He wrote a sonata called "Black Mass," but also one called "White Mass." In works as "Poem of Ecstasy," he introduced sexual orgasms in music. He devised a color system for musical keys based on the circle of fifths, in which C is bright red, a form of synesthesia. In his "Poem of Fire" he used a specially developed color organ, that projected colored light on a screen in the concert hall rather than making sound. His music was increasingly dominated by "mystic chords" and grew more and more dissonant. At the time of his death, he worked on a final, apocalyptic masterpiece, "Mysterium." This multimedia work that also included a light show and the scattering of perfumes, would have to be performed at the Himalayas, after which "a grandiose religious synthesis of all arts would herald the birth of a new world." Scriabin saw music as a synthesized art form that could put humans in touch with a spiritual realm.
• Scriabin in the first place wrote for his own instrument, the piano. There are preludes and etudes, an early piano concerto, but the greatest achievement here are the ten sonatas. He also wrote five symphonies, including the Divine Poem (1903), the Poem of Ecstasy (1907), and the Poem of Fire or Prometheus (1909). 
• The Third Symphony which I have selected here, is a sort of Fin-de-siecle Gothic "soul drama," written for vast orchestral forces. It came into being at a happy time in Scriabin's life when he had left his teaching post in Moscow and was free for creative composition, but also a time he was reading Nietsche and Marx, abandoned his wife and children for a young mistress and moved to Switzerland for new inspiration (this was in the summer of 1903). The subject matter of the symphony is the development of the human spirit towards the divine. Man's Ego consists of a "divine part" and "slavish part" and these continually struggle with each other, until they finally attain unity and bliss and so true freedom. The symphony consists of three parts, linked without pause: (1) Luttes ("Struggles"), a mysterious and tragic Allegro in "red" c minor; (2) Voluptés ("Delights"), a sublime Lento in "white-blue" E major; and (3) Jeu divin ("Divine Play"), a radiantly joyful Allegro in "red" C major. The work starts with a short prologue (Lento) which introduces the three "leading motives " of the symphony : "Divine Grandeur" (an unforgettable motif in the low brass), "The Summons to Man" (an ascending trumpet call) and the " Fear to approach, suggestive of Flight" (literally "flighty" strings). These are combined throughout the work with the various subjects, and indeed some of the subjects are derived from them; the climax is reached in the "Ego theme" of the finale. And of course, if you prefer to regard all these metaphysics as so much hot air, you can also enjoy Scriabin's music on a purely abstract level!
• Website of the Scriabin Society of America
• Recording listened to: The Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Jarvi on Chandos.
  
  
  
  
  
  [Ives as businessman]

2. Charles Ives, Symphony No. 4 [1910-1916]

• The composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) was completely out of sync with his time. His music was too modern for the ears of his contemporaries and remained largely ignored. Even professional musicians did not understand him - when he showed them his scores, they would respond by either laughter or anger! Ives was the ultimate outsider - although he was already a professional organist at age 14 and trained in music at Yale, he decided to pursue a career in business due to lack of musical perspective. Ives went into insurance in New York and was so successful that he managed to establish his own company. He became a radical in suit and tie. Of course, this meant a dual career, for Ives composed in the evenings and weekends, creating a sizable oeuvre that often had no chance to leave his desk drawer. Indeed, most of his works went unperformed until a decade before his death, when the world finally caught up with him - in 1947, his Third Symphony was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, although it had already been written between 1908 and 1910! And today, Ives is considered as the greatest, truly American composer who ever lived...
• Ives was born as the son of a bandmaster in a small Connecticut town. His life was full of music and he early learned to play the piano and organ. His music is permeated with the marches and hymn tunes he heard in his youth. What especially impressed him was the sound produced by two town bands marching up against each other and mingling their music in dissonance. It was even better when at the same time a hymn sung in a nearby church was mixed into the cacophony! Ives was so impressed by this phenomenon, that as a boy he already wrote bi-tonal pieces and experimented with multi-rhythm - two elements that would become the main stage of his mature work, together with the mixing of popular music with serious music. Perceptually, Ives was influenced by the New England transcendentalist writers Emerson and Thoreau.
• Charles Ives wrote 5 symphonies, 3 orchestral sets (in fact, also a kind of symphonies), 4 violin sonatas, 2 piano sonatas, 2 string quartets, works for organ and hundreds of songs. He wrote most of his music in the 1900s and 1910s, after 1918 when his health deteriorated he wrote very little and after 1926 he wrote no new music at all anymore. The irony about Ives is that the rural, patriotic America he so nostalgically recreated in his music, had no use whatsoever for that same music.
• The first modernist works Ives wrote were Central Park in the Dark, where one hears strains of music from bars and music halls mingle, and The Unanswered Question, a dialogue for a questioning trumpet and answering strings, with the final question about the meaning if life remaining unanswered. Ives left behind material for an unfinished "Universe Symphony," which reminds me of the largely unwritten Mysterium by Scriabin - two huge works that tried to encompass the whole world, but took on more than their composers (or in fact anyone) could bear. 
• Perhaps the most remarkable piece of orchestral music Ives completed was his Fourth Symphony (1910–16). The list of forces required to perform the work is extraordinary and eccentric in the sense that although six trumpets are called for, one of them only plays one note in the whole piece; and a whole choir has to join and sit on stage during the length of the symphony, while it only sees 30 seconds of action at the beginning and again at the end. For a certain part of the work, a second conductor is necessary. No wonder this symphony, although considered as the culmination of Ives' musical achievement, is seldom performed. The first complete performance was given in 1965, more than a decade after Ives' death. The symphony starts with a prelude that asks questions to which the succeeding movements try to provide answers - in the style of The Unanswered Question. It also contains a hymn, "Watchman, tell us the night." The second movement is a riotous multiphony quoting dozens of well-known American tunes, an Allegretto inspired by a story of Hawthorne. Ives himself described the third movement, a fugue, as "an expression of the reaction of life into formalism and ritualism." The final movement, Largo maestoso, is a sort of struggle between dissonance and traditional tonal music, taking up earlier motifs and building to a tremendous climax (with the choir) after which the piece ends quietly with just the percussion playing as if from a distance. Ives said this "had something to do with the reality of existence and its religious experience."
• Website of the Charles Ives Society. 
• Recording listened to: Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Festival Chorus conducted by Seiji Ozawa on Deutsche Grammophon.
  

[Rued Langgaard]

3. Rued Langgaard, Symphony No. 6 "Det Himmelrivende" [1919-20]

• Rued Langgaard (1893 - 1952) was a late-Romantic Danish eccentric composer and organist. We have heard the same story in the case of Ives: his music was so unconventional that it went often unperformed until more than a decade after his death - not because he was radically avant-garde, but because he was so completely "different." Langgaard was not appreciated by his contemporaries and came into conflict with the powers that be of Danish music - in the person of Carl Nielsen - , losing any chance of being performed. Langaard only late in life managed to land his first fixed job, as church organist in the small old town of Ribe. At the time of his death he was already completely forgotten, but since the 1970s, Langaard has been rediscovered as an "ecstatic outsider" and is now considered as an important and visionary composer. 
• Langaard has more than 400 works to his name, including 16 symphonies, the Music of the Spheres, 150 songs, works for piano, organ, and an opera entitled The Antichrist. Langaard saw music as a fight between good and evil and the 6th symphony, with the title "The Heaven Storming" is the embodiment of such a cosmic conflict. Langgaard's music is visionary, extreme and bizarre. 
• The Sixth Symphony of 1919-1920 is one of Langaard's strongest works. The subtitle means "The Heaven Storming." Here Langgaard releases the forces of good and evil, light and dark, and God and Satan against each other. This Christian-based contrasting of "good and evil" is not my worldview, I rather think in shades of grey, but it makes for good drama. The apocalyptic symphony is in one continuous movement that takes the form of variations on a theme. That theme permeates the whole symphony and has two different shapes, a pure, light one, and a dark, chromatic one. Langaard displays absolute technical mastery of the orchestra and invokes the enormous power of the brass to drive "the storming armies of evil under the canopy of heaven." One of the most astonishing symphonies I know. 
• Rued Langgaard website. 
• Recording listened to: The Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi on Chandos (with symphonies 4 & 5)

Classical Music Index